Not MyTube

Yesterday, I posted about how much I enjoy listening to live music on YouTube and how well their algorithms seem to find similar music and similar artists that I enjoy.   I concluded by saying that, at least when it comes to music, YouTube is MyTube.   On topics other than music, however, the YouTube algorithms seem to miss their mark as to what I’d like to see.

The Great (Gasp) Google Conspiracy

If you come around here very often, you know I am a scientist. A scientist with an Inner Curmudgeon who is totally exasperated by conspiracy theories, especially those that can be dispelled by simple reason. Personally, I am sometimes amused by the more ridiculous claims. Consider what I will call The Great Google Conspiracy about COVID-19. For some weeks, this has been circulating on Facebook and Twitter. It goes like this. Open your device or computer and Google any three digit number, followed by the words new cases. Up will pop multiple news pages showing exactly that number of new cases, proof positive that Google is faking articles to match any number of cases for some nefarious purpose. A few days ago, someone posted this YouTube video of an unknown woman demonstrating this in order to blow your mind. The truth is she ought to use hers instead of trying to blow yours.

Shake (Quake!)

This morning at 5:06, the house began to shake.   Our impressive collection of tchotchkes rattled on their shelves and tables.  The walls creaked.  My wife, Muri, and I sat up in bed, ready to duck and cover.    As 48 year residents of Southern California, when we first feel an earthquake we wonder: is this is the worst it will get or will the shaking increase in intensity and become a major event?  This one was over before we could even get out of bed.  It felt as if someone had momentarily touched our house with a huge vibrator, but it did no damage except for freaking out my cat, Claude.   There were two little bumps, aftershocks, in the next half hour.

Here We Go … Again

This week, during  podcast titled Winging It, Steph Currie asserted that he didn’t believe we had ever landed a man on the moon.   Of course, three other NBA players, Vince Carter, Kent Bazemore, and Andre Iguodala agreed with him.   As the biggest star of the group, Currie is getting the most attention for what the press is calling his mental air ball.   Given Kyrie Irving’s even more outlandish declaration the the earth is flat, I am wondering whether the NBA has ever produced an educated player.  Easy folks.  I’m just joking.  I was tempted to cite Bill Bradley as an educated NBA player, but given that he is white, and our country’s penchant for political correctness, I’d probably be called a racist.  So, instead, I’ll cite a post on Reddit, All-Time Nerd Squad: The Most Educated NBA Players  which offers a mixed race selection of NBA scholars.  Mr. Currie and Mr. Irving are not among them.

Stars for President

There is a scene in the film Back to the Future that I think of often lately.  In it, Marty McFly, after traveling to the past in a time machine invented by Doc Brown, is trying to convince a much younger Doc that he is indeed from the future by knowing the president of the United States in the future.

The scene is actually funnier here in 2018 than it was in 1985 given the propensity of show business types to decide that, based on their vast experience in the make believe world of show business, they should bring their questionable talents to government.   If that sentence doesn’t give you a hint how I feel about the trend, then go back and read it again.

The Eclipse Curmudgeon

When I was a boy, I saved up my money and bought a 3 inch reflector telescope from Edmund Scientific.  I believe it cost $29.95, which tells you how long ago it was, in the 1950s.  I don’t remember how old I was … I would guess twelvish.  With this telescope, from the hay field behind our house I could see the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, some of the larger nebulae, double stars and of course, incredible detail of the surface of the moon.   Nobody ever told me not to point my telescope at the sun.  Nobody had to.  I was a smart kid.  But when I learned about sunspots and heard a report of exceptional sunspot activity, I certainly wanted to.   I don’t know where I found the piece of green plexiglass that became my solar filter.  To the eye, it was opaque but if I held it up to the sun, I could see the sun through it … which gave me an idea.  Using my Dad’s jigsaw, I cut a circular piece the size of my telescope tube and taped it over the open end.   Wallah.  Sunspots at 60X power.   I seem to remember watching a partial eclipse using my improvised solar filter, too.  Those was the good old days … or the bad old days, depending on your point of view.  No one checked the transmittance of my plexiglass disc, checked if it was compliant with the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard.   Was my tape job sufficiently secure to assure the filter wouldn’t fall off, vaporizing my eyeball?  Yep, it was.  I still have two working Older Eyes.

Just Breathe

My sister is a trained Yoga instructor.  If you have ever done Yoga … or practically any meditation technique … you know that proper breathing is part of the way to a relaxed, mindful state.   Through the nose, breathe into your belly, then gently expel through the mouth.  Notice how it feels on the inhale and how it feels different when you exhale.  Breath in light.  Breath out negativity.  You get the picture.  When my Dad was in assisted living, his primary caretaker was my sister, since she lived less than an hour away, while I live in California and our brother lives in Ohio.  Whenever my Dad was agitated about something, my sister would say, Just Breathe, Dad.  Just Breathe.  My Dad, disinclined toward Yoga or any other New Age nonsense, would answer, I am breathing.  Sometimes, I am breathing, dammit. Interestingly, though he never followed my sister’s suggestion, his annoyance would distract him enough from whatever was bothering him and he would indeed end up less agitated.

Earth? Flat.

I was a bit astounded, even in this age of alternate facts and pseudo-science, to hear Kyrie Irving express his belief that the earth is flat.  My first reaction was what my Dad used to say when someone said or did something that was ridiculous …. What and idiot!   But of course, I know Irving isn’t an idiot or is he dumb.  He attended Duke University, for Pete’s sake, even if it was to play basketball.  I wondered if he was joking or trying to make a subtle point about fake news, but given a chance to retreat, he stood by his assertion.  Several other players, including LeBron James, defended his right to believe that the earth is flat.   It is certainly his right but why would he … or his friends … want him to look incredibly uninformed in front of the world, especially when there are so many simple ways to see that the earth is indeed round?

Safe or Sorry

About a week ago, I discovered that our Siamese cat, Mr. P, had fleas.   Because our cats are indoor cats, it’s easy forget about fleas.  However, they do have access to the roof via my office window.  At any rate, if Mr. P has fleas, then Elvis, our Burmese, probably does, too, and there’s a good chance some of the nasty little buggies are in the carpets.  I drove to Target and picked up some Hartz flea treatment under the assumption that all flea treatments are created equal.  I applied a little bottle of liquid to the back of each feline’s neck and assumed I was done.   An hour or so later, I was on Amazon.com buying something and thought I’d see what the flea treatment cost there.  To my surprise, the user reviews for the product I’d chosen were all one star, each accompanied by horror stories of sick or dead cats resulting from its use.  I admit, I panicked.  I drove to the local vet and asked what I should do.  She told me that most cats don’t suffer any harmful effects and offered a suggestion of two similar products that they feel is safer (and also kill fleas more effectively).  I felt better but still went home and bathed the cats.  Did you know,  by the way, that soapy water kills fleas if you leave it on for five minutes?  A week later, I treated them both with Bayer Advantage II.  Fleas, dead and dying, began falling off them almost immediately.  End of story.  Almost.

Conspiracy

I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago about a friend who is struggling with cancer, whose body is so damaged by cancer treatments that it is having trouble healing from a recent surgery.  The someone I was talking to, to my surprise, insisted that the cure for cancer already exists but the parmaceutical companies are just hiding them so they can sell other drugs that just treat the symptoms.   I was astonished and said so.  He told me he could give me the references where I could find the evidence that had convinced him, along with articles about pools of thermite found in the World Trade Center ruins, indicating that our government was somehow complicit in 9-11.  He wasn’t happy when I called him a conspiracy theorist and he insisted that he just does more and  better research than most people.  He was absolutely sure that if I looked at his sources, I’d believe his theories and was insulted when I called them crackpot sources without looking at them.   Even though I hadn’t seen his exact sources, I’d seen plenty of similar rubbish in the quagmire of information and misinformation that the internet and social media has created.  My someone is not alone.