Be Careful Jumping to Conclusions

Chuck Gaidica was a local weatherman in Detroit for years. I always liked him; he seemed sincere and honest about forecasting. One thing I recall him saying in an interview about ten years ago was that after 5 to 7 days, all bets were off about the weather. We simply couldn't know with any certainty what would happen after that. 

That sounds about right to me. Generally, the forecasters can't go very far into the future, and we've all known times where they were wrong about the next 24 hours, let alone next week. Even with science, we can't predict the future, especially the far future, with any reliability. And that's one of the main reasons I'm skeptical of the value, and the inherent fear involved, with issues of climate change.

We don't know how much snow we're going to get next Monday but we know Miami will be underwater in the year 2100. Bah and humbug. Yes, we might be able to take decent guesses about the coming days, weeks, or even months. But knowing for sure, with anywhere near complete accuracy? Color me skeptical. Especially considering that so many models, so much 'science' is based on mere human thought and action. It is after all human beings making up the various catastrophic scenarios for our future based on the data they feed into the algorithm they have chosen and developed. Human thought being human thought, that means guesswork will enter in the equation. Bias will too, even if unintentional. I can't help wonder how many scientists (many of whom are directly or indirectly paid by a government somewhere) are actually superimposing their belief on the endeavor. And I haven't even addressed the issue of presumption: they claim that simply because one thing has happened one way it will continue to act in exactly that way into eternity. That's an assertion fraught with peril, particularly when you're asking for trillions of dollars which will keep you, erstwhile scientist, in the driver's seat about my life, and the lives of millions of others, born and yet to be born.

I'm not saying that future climactic catastrophe isn't in the cards. But knowing that nature is resilient and men fallible, I simply don't believe the crisis all that foreboding.

And So It Begins

Winter, I won't say I loathe you.

Okay, I will say I loathe you.

Detroit had somewhere around an inch of snow over this past Saturday night. They, the famous they, although in this case they are weathermen and they are to be particularly despised, are calling for one to three inches of snow tonight. It seems a bit early in the season for measurable snow just yet, but man proposes and God disposes, right?

Winter and I get along all right when she arrives late and leaves early. She appears to have other ideas for Winter 2021-2022. I do not find that amusing.

Darkness Descends

I woke up this morning with every intention of seizing the day for all it was worth. Anticipating that, I grabbed a favored hoodie and pulled it over my head.

Suddenly it was dark, very dark. I know it was early morning, ahead of the sunrise, but I never expected the darkness to take over so suddenly and completely. The feeling was so overwhelming that I thought something horrible yet astoundingly fast had come over me. Had I left the earthly realm of my bedroom for something else, some new adventure?

Of course, there was a simpler explanation. I had thrown the hoodie on backwards and was then temporarily out of sorts, the deep darkness not affording my eyes any reference points so that they might make sense of the world. I was sure I had checked that I was putting it on correctly too. 

Pity the Pups

My son and his family, the Ohio Cosgriffs, are up this weekend for Thanksgiving. They brought their dogs along with them, and that's cool. Gaspode and Riley are quite welcome here at this one branch of the Michigan Cosgriffs.

Naturally enough, the animals pay more attention to my son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter than to me, at least when the aforementioned folks are nearby. Yet they have learned to begrudgingly live with the lesser evil if their more direct adoptors are not at hand.

Yesterday the Ohioans went shopping, leaving the pups home with me. The pets spent the appropriate amount of time pining for their masters, whining a bit and routinely marching between the living room window and the closed dining room door where they had witnessed the departure of their Ohio family.

But they eventually gave that up and, to my surprise, began paying attention to me. I was working at the desktop computer, doing real work and not playing video poker at all, mind you, occasionally arising for a cup of coffee or to make myself a turkey sandwich or whatever. Quickly enough the dogs would jump off the couch where they had laid, having given up all hope of their favored humans returning, and follow me around. 

I hope it was to show that they loved me and wanted to make sure I didn't leave them either. Yet I suspect it was really only in the hope of getting a treat or two out of pity. 

They did get that. After all, I'm not inhuman, even knowing they would abandon me when the Ohio Cosgriffs returned. Which they promptly did.

Thanksgiving 2021

It doesn't have to be perfect. Indeed, it can be quite flawed and still be a good holiday. The food doesn't have to be fit for, well, the Food Network. The house doesn't need to be set for, well again, House Beautiful. I would go so far as to say that if any holiday can past muster if all is simply okay, Thanksgiving is it.

Of course, I mean that in the sense of the trappings (the trappings being the least important part of any holiday). But the point of the day, to remember all the good things which we have and, Lord willing, shall continue to have, that's the idea. Be thankful. Thankful for friends and family. Thankful for the roof over your head. Thankful, yes, for the food and festivity. All those things are little perfects which, left to themselves and seen by themselves, will allow you to have a very good day. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

For those who might like a more serious on somber look at what makes Thanksgiving important, and why we should guard its origins zealously, click here: 400 Years of Thanksgiving

History Repeats

Sometimes, in putting these little bits of wit and revelry to, well, not to paper anymore, yet putting it out into the ether just doesn't strike a chord with me, I come across an instance of the old writer's block. I have no idea what to say. When that happens I get cutesy. Sometimes I pull up a webpage and offer a This Day In History column. Sometimes I simply reprint an old missive or reword an old story. I'm sure you folks have noticed that.

Today I thought I would try something different. I though to meself, Self, why don't you look back to exactly one year ago, to November 24, 2020, and republish that. Do it just for kicks: hey y'all, look what I writed on this day last year. So I scrolled back through my records, and, well whaddaya know?

I didn't write anything new last November 24. My entries leapt from November 23 to November 25. 

It's true. History repeats itself. Sort of, in this case.

Practical Poison

I'm not sure how I got on their radar, but my Facebook feed will occasionally offer me posts from a group called Science and Atheism. They tend to post short videos defending atheism and knocking religion. Where exactly science comes into this is beyond me, seeing as science and religion are quite compatible while the arguments for or against God are ultimately philosophical. But that's a question for another time.

Occasionally I will take a moment and watch their short videos. You really never know what you might learn, and you should know your enemy, right? This particular one asserted that believers invented God as an explanation for things. To be fair, that's a plausible philosophic argument. But it strikes me as hollow: it dismisses talk of God without actually considering any of the arguments that He exists. But that too is for another time. 

My point today is this: don't the folks who preach to us (and it is a form of preaching as it tends to take on a kind of religious quality) that we must follow science urge us to do so because we need answers to our questions? Don't they assert (rather strongly) that if we would all just become scientists we would eventually have all the answers? 

The trouble is science can't have all the answers, for science is ultimately very rote and therefore a comparatively low form of knowledge. Science can tell us that injecting a body with poison will kill it...but it does not, it cannot, answer the question of whether we ought to inject a body with poison. This morning I simply want to point out that such scientists as the one I gave two minutes of my life to this morning are speaking with a bit of a forked tongue. Don't go to religion to find explanations, come to us, they say. Come to Science. Left to itself, that's really saying nothing more than 'Don't do things his way, do them my way' and all shall be well. 

I will deign to say, that hardly strikes me as scientific.