TWENTY-OH WHAT?
Musings on Time and its Measurement

15 April 2014 AD

It’s far too late to do anything about it now, but during the past decade I found myself in a etymological back-water, excluded from the common parlance; an outcast, tragically misunderstood. 

My mistake was to suppose that when the year 2001 dawned, it would be appropriate to use the same convention in place for the past Five Centuries if not longer, and call the year Twenty-O-One.  It just seemed to make sense. When did TR assume the Presidency? Nineteen-Oh-One. When was the dwarf planet Ceres discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi? Eighteen-Oh-One. When was Captain Kidd hanged as a pirate? Seventeen-Oh-One. And so it goes on down the corridors of recorded time and honored tradition. “Twenty-Oh-Something” should have been a natural when its time finally came. Waiting in the wings, eager to flex millennial muscles, it would not only be timely, it would be ubercool.  When I was in school, anyone who said: “One Thousand Nine-Hundred and Eighty Nine” was either on heavy drugs or recently arrived from Kalashnipur, Lower Baluchistan. 

But it never happened. The stranglehold the talking heads had on our collective psyche proved Herculean. In SONY and Fox and NBC boardrooms it was decided and so decreed: The awesomeness of pronouncing: “THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND AND SOMETHING SOMETHING” in Magnificent Ten-Syllable Tones was undeniable.  It would be Policy.  Deviation therefrom would be the exclusive province of hoary pundits like Dan Rather in an oppositional/defiant mood.  It was, after all, The Third Millenium.  Any reference to twenny-oh anything would be met by confused looks and then the slow, slow dawning of understanding.  It was a battle not worth fighting.

Still, from my perspective, since the first 14 years of the long-awaited Third Millenium have proven among the bloodiest and cruelest in human history we might as well skip the histrionics. Personally, when referencing a given mass-murder, species extinction or genocide which took place in say, 2007, I still recommend avoiding the bloated pomposity of using 6 ponderous syllables when “twenny-o-sevn” does the job admirably with just 3.

Regarding the other Time issue...now filtering in from the province of Archeology...about the appropriateness of the term "B.C."  I don't have problems with the retention of antique terminology whether appropriate or not.  Antique terminology gives our culture charm and tradition. There is no need for computer programs to suddenly be called "apps" just to sound cool. Jews don't have to call a Christmas Tree a Hanukkah Bush to avoid apostasy. It's OK to refer to a freezer as an icebox. I wouldn't even balk at someone calling a CD-player a victrola. It gives us some continuity rooted in the past. 

B.C. however was always a little weird since it was English whilst AD was Latin, but never mind that.  When thoughtful archaeologists, striving to do good, changed it to B.C.E. (before Christian Era) they unwittingly implied that the Christian Era was the only one worth establishing as a boat-anchor for Time.  The next iteration kept B.C.E. but changed its meaning to "Before Common Era" which in a way was even worse because it directly implied that all other Eras were either Uncommon or by inference, Abnormal.  Thus, Buddhists are left with the suggestion that the saintly Siddharta Gautama attained parinibbana not in the Blessed Year 1, but in the year Negative 545 of the Abnormal Era. 

My suggestion is that we return to B.C. but change AD to A.C. (and add the periods for uniformity). However, since this gives an air of presumptive and arrogant English Chauvinism, how about we keep AD and start referring to the Year Zero on back as AnDi (ANte DominI)?  Things are consistent, the language is the same used during the epoch we are fretting about and everybody is happy.

Lunchtime in America 

1 April 2014

Despite the date, I kid you not about the content below. This is a real story reported by actual talking-head reporters on multiple websites (e.g. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-sues-mcdonald-napkin-article-1.1708068)

The problem is that in its telling and retelling, the rapidly narcotized, minibyte attention span, e-reading public in the U.S. and internationally is led to accept nonsense like this as just another story, rather than proof that civilization is just about done for.  I think it's time to correct this wearying trend by re-writing stories like this accurately.   What follows is the original version (from a deliberately unidentified website which nevertheless shares verbiage with the identified website because coherent prose is so f-ing rare nowadays) which got published in...of all places...Japan!

What follows that is the Emails From Earth version, lightly edited for enhanced versimilitude to actual events.
 

The Original Version That Got Published in Japan:
How many napkins are you offered with your order at McDonald's? Do you think it's enough? One man is suing the Golden Arches for a lack of napkins after only receiving one at his local McDonald's. According to TMZ, Webster Lucas was unhappy with his local McDonald's in Pacoima, CA after he received just one napkin. When he asked for more, Lucas claims he was denied. That did not sit well with Lucas, who told the manager on duty, "I should have went to eat at the Jack-in-the-Box because I didn't come here to argue over napkins. I came here to eat." According to Lucas, who is African American, the manager then made a racially-motivated remark, allegedly saying something about "you people." (The manager is reportedly Latino.) After the verbal disagreement, Lucas emailed the general manager of the McDonald's to say that Napkingate caused him "mental anguish," which has prevented him from working. The general manger offered Lucas free burgers, but Lucas instead decided to sue McDonald's for $1.5 million. Based on this account, do you think Lucas deserves compensation?

The Revised Version:
How well do you understand life in America? Do you think it's enough? One man saw an opportunity to make some BIG Money in the typical American Way. Webster Lucas saw his chance at a local McDonald's in Pacoima, CA. After he allegedly received (according to him) just one napkin, Lucas cried out publicly that he needed more and could not get them - even though they are dispensed free and without limit at every McDonalds on the planet. Since the typically Spanish speaking, probably-minimum-wage, quasi-legal, Hispanic menial he was dealing with could probably not understand what he was ranting and raving about, Lucas, who has some partial African ancestry, then cried out that a McDonalds Manager had muttered something about "you people". Seizing this opportunity, the eager Lucas ran to a delighted California lawyer who also saw a chance to make REALLY BIG Money by creating an otherwise non-existent "incident". The lawyer instantly labelled what Lucas thought he heard as a "racially-motivated remark" knowing this would attract intense news coverage. At the lawyer's urging, Lucas emailed the general manager of McDonald's to say that the manufactured "incident" caused him "mental anguish," which prevented him from going to work. Regardless of how idiotic this was, the general manger, awed by the great edifice of Justice in America, offered Lucas free hamburgers. Having no interest whatsoever in food, the excited Lucas and his equally breathless lawyer are suing McDonald's for $1.5 million. Based on this account, do you think Lucas and the lawyer should be tried and executed for diverting important attention away from the serious problems which truly plague our people and our planet?

MH 370 Diary: Three Weeks Gone Today

29 March 2014

We have become very good fishermen!  The 20 or so natives who are with us here are good with nets and they have been bringing us food and clothing regularly.  We built a palm frond fish roaster and so we've had enough to eat.  I hope the people on the other island are doing as well.  We cannot understand them though and Tagluk, who seems to be their boss, gets angry and shakes his gun whenever we ask about when the rescue boat will come.

This island - I think it is near Batti Island in the South Andamans - is a new one they took us to and there are some old American Quonset huts here, probably from WWII.  Tagluk knows a little English and keeps saying "One week go home" but he has been saying that for what seems like a month.  

My friend, who knows a little about commercial aviation, says the small flash we saw about 2 hours before landing was probably a small decoy plane with one of our transponders or ACRS.  His rationale is that if the pilot was going to confiscate all our electronics and then turn off all of our flight's communication devices, why would he risk being detectable by satellite?

I agree.  If this airplane has been sold for nearly a half-billion dollars (as he thinks) it would be nothing for them to introduce a decoy to fool the satellites.  Anyway, after the initial shock it was amazing to see the decoy (if that's what it was) slowly flying away from us and due south toward what must be Antarctica or southern Australia.

Well, that's all for today's news.

- From a note found in a plastic juice bottle on a beach in Sri Lanka , January 7th 2015

MH370:  Wouldn't it Be Nice For a Change....

We live in a world dominated by the unrelenting grim realities of intentional international murder, destruction and evil.  We are almost certain that Flight MH370 lies in pieces somewhere with the precious lives of its passengers just as scattered.

But maybe, instead, for once,  THIS could be what happened...

March 15th 2014  AP - Sources in Thailand's vacation island of Phuket report that the remains of a hot-air ballon have been found on a beach containing a note from one of the passengers on the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the note was written two days before and was a secured to the home-made balloon - which was then released by someone with knowledge that the primarily easterly winds would carry the fragile craft to a landfall in Thailand.

Although the translation remains unconfirmed, the note reads in part:

"...I was a passenger on Flight MH 370....we were told we had to make an emergency landing and all our cell-phones were confiscated.  We were blindfolded and taken in several boats away from the landing field.  We have been stranded on this beach for three days with very little food and water.  We think this is a small Island somewhere near the Andaman Islands.  There are over 230 people here and we have very little shelter.  Please send help...."

I'm sure the reality will prove to be much more dreadful, but we can hope, right?

High Noon on Titanic Beach
18 February 2014

Getting away from New York and Connecticut for a while may be a good idea in this weather.  How about Saturn?

The Cassini-Huygens probe launched by NASA and the European Space Agency in late 1997 went into orbit around Saturn in 2004 and has been returning stunning data and pictures ever since.   In December 2004 the satellite released a sub-probe called Huygens which soft landed on Saturn's giant moon Titan a few weeks later.
 

Titan has since become famous as the only OTHER place in the solar system where waves gently lap the shores of remote beaches and gentle rains wash down from the mountains in chuckling rivulets, emptying into peaceful lakes.  

Before planning your next vacation though it's instructive to look more closely at this promising vacation spot:

• 1. It's a bit chilly: -290oF 
• Leave the shades home.  The sun looks like a very bright star at high noon.  That's about it. 
• The lakes and seas are not water; they are crystal-clear liquid methane - Natural gas. 
• Sure, go for a swim - but since liquid methane's not particularly buoyant you'll sink like a stone. 
• Want to build sand castles?  Fine, but since the sand on Titan is a weird hyper-solid water ice, watch where you put the grill!  "Oh no!  Dad melted the beach!" 
• Better forget the grill altogether since the atmosphere's mostly nitrogen.  Add enough O2 to get a good flame and the lakes explode (Right. Natural gas)

Bon Voyage!

A Seasonal Carol for Atlanta 
...and Tuscaloosa, and Tel Aviv, and Leningrad, and Mumbai...  
Think: "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!"
12 February 2014

It’s beginning to look a lot like Norway, 
Here in Tel Aviv,
There’s already a foot of snow, And everyone wants to know,
 
Can we ski the Pyramids on Christmas Eve? 

 

It’s been hotter than hell in Novosibirsk,

For a month at least …but tovarisch, don’t you know? 
To Siberia I’d go - Just to catch a breeze!

 






Glaciers retreating and subartic heating 
The jetstream’s out of control… 
Carbon emissions confirming suspicions
The ozone’s peppered with holes;

  

But Eskimos are fi-nally enjoying guacamole!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Moscow, 

Here in old Bombay, 
For a change it is very nice, 
But my curry has turned to ice, 
and they’re skating on the Ganges, so they say;

 
They used to have sun in Ala-bama,
Not so long ago,

 

But the funniest sight to see 
Are the “experts” that will be
There on Fox TeeVee,

Climate change it’s NOT, 

It’s a Liberal Plot!

JUDICIAL EXECUTION OF CONVICTED FELONS
5 February 2014

I'm not against capital punishment for heinous criminals and murderers.  On the other hand, executing someone after 10 or 20 years in prison is barbaric.  

In one sense, the Chinese are not too far off the mark here.  They convict someone.  They take them out back.  They shoot them in the head.  The end. 

Here in the U.S., where we damn other countries for human rights violations, we convict someone and then...

• We keep them in prison for many years at huge taxpayer expense.
• We let them reform and find religion.
• We let them dedicate their lives to helping other felons 
• We encourage them to find aspiration, education and purpose
• We let them hope and pray for life
• We tell them all appeals have failed and we are going to kill them.

 And then, we give them another few months to think about this after which we dramatically lead them to horror-movie rooms where they are either slowly electrocuted or to strapped to tables surrounded by poison-containing machines.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment?  The Chinese may occasionally execute the innocent and harvest the organs, but at least they do it without 20 years of psychological torture.