Please buy
Maine.Make an offer to Trump that he
can’t refuse.Remind him Maine did not
vote for him in the last election.Offer
to trade him England; he won't know the difference.Say you will recognize him as King of America
– appeal to his vanity.
Maine has
great natural resources and a thriving tourist economy, so it would make sense for
Maine to become one of your maritime provinces.
Mainers are so much like Canadians that there would be little adjustment
– though we might balk at God Save the King.
As you age, one of the things you worry about is falling.
Getting in and out of a tub is doable but becomes more complicated with
age.
I have seen the ads for walk-in tubs; a woman lying back
in a spa-like setting in a sitting tub with a door.
And an advantage is you can't tell the farts from the bubbles!
This seemed the perfect answer to replace our
bathtub.
Fortunately, we live in an information age.
I have never seen one of these tubs, and I don’t doubt
they give you a safe and comfortable bathing experience, but there are
downsides.
The tub volume is forty to sixty gallons, and you must
enter and sit there while the tub fills, which could take five minutes or
more. When your bath is finished you
must sit there while the water completely drains. The
sidewalls are high, so in an emergency, you are pretty much stuck in the tub
until it drains.
These tubs are expensive and the cost of the tub doesn't include the cost of installation, which could double the price of the tub.
We have a walk-in shower, so the tub to me is just a luxury,
a place to sit and soak with a book and a cup of tea.
The walk-in tub looks good, but I think I will pass.
Astrophysicists
are constantly concerned with the possibility of a giant asteroid, similar to
the one that caused the dinosaur extinction hitting the Earth. But what happens to Earth if a large
asteroid misses us but strikes the Moon?
Would it knock the moon out of its present orbit? What happens to Earth if the Moon changes its
orbit even slightly?
Everything
is in equilibrium. We can place
satellites in space where the gravities of space objects cancel each other. If the moon’s orbit changes will satellites
fall out of the sky?
Why do
vampire hunters always enter the vampire’s crypt minutes before
sundown?
Why do working people vote for Republicans?
the Ol'Buzzard
Sunday, March 9, 2025
I consider
myself a liberal person and to some extent a Buddhist, but most of all a
free-thinking individual. I refuse to
identify myself with any group think.
Our Maine Governor
and Donald Trump are in a standoff about transgender girls competing in girls’
sports. I must admit I have some conflicting
feelings on this subject.
However, I
try to isolate myself from feelings and view subjects with a logical mind.
How a person
wishes to dress is none of my business.
The gender a person wishes to identify as is none of my business.
Who a person
wishes to have sex with is none of my business.
Preferred
sex acts of other people are none of my business.
Transgender
athletics is none of my business, and I will not enter into the fray: I don’t
have a dog in that hunt, but I would be uncomfortable strictly from a fairness
position.
Boys have a
different pelvic structure than girls, and boys have a distinct muscular build and
a different hormonal makeup than girls.
A
transgender woman or girl has every right to dress the way she is comfortable,
and every right to associate herself with the gender she is most
comfortable. She has every right to
surgery to make herself more comfortable in the role she chooses.
But, if she
does not have, or has not had, ovaries and an egg that drops every month causing the
hormonal rollercoaster of a period, and the internal organs designed for pregnancy and
carrying a fetus to term, then strictly speaking she is not female.
Males competing against females in a physical sport would likely have an unfair advantage.
But again, I
don’t have a dog in this hunt. and I do support our governor standing up to
Trump.
Maine's governor, a woman, has been the only person who has shown the toughness to answer Trump back to his face.
Our biggest
threat is not climate change or WMDs, it is likely Artificial Intelligence. We can program a computer to self-learn but still
do not know the internal process taking place.
Over a short period, Google Chess AI downloaded every chess game ever published, taught itself the rules of chess, and is unbeatable by any human
Chess master.
So far, we are controlling AI by programming
them to operate within a narrow function.
We presently know how to program a supercomputer to allow AI to teach
itself independently, but we do not have a supercomputer capable of handling the capacity required for a totally independent AI.
Assuredly, computer science will advance to that capability. A
supercomputer that could download all human knowledge. A God computer? It is a given that bots can replace humans, with
greater efficiency, in most jobs. What
assurance do we have that a Supercomputer would not decide that humans were an
unnecessary annoyance and decide to eradicate us?
All we have to fear is fear itself;or perhaps a nuclear holocaust, a worldwide pandemic plague, total climate destruction, an asteroid collision, or: I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.......
As yellowdog granny would have said: We're Fucked.
My wife and
I occasionally eat at restaurants. While
waiting for our meal I often observe the other diners, and there is a pattern I
have observed.
At every
table with four or more diners, especially diners forty years or older, there
will be a person holding court, and dominating every conversation.
For every
table of six or more the self-appointed master-of-ceremony will talk louder than
anyone else – controlling the conversation and allowing no dead airtime to
exist. If drinking is involved, at that
table there will be a person who brays like a donkey, booming laughter at something that's probably not that funny.
People under
thirty do not fall into this loquacious category, as they sit at their table
with their cellphones, probably texting each other rather than talking.
And then
there is the family with young undisciplined children…
Your bill will total over one hundred dollars and you are sitting next to this!
