Things I Don't Understand - Part 4
Cranes are tall heavy machines. Wouldn't you need a taller heavier machine to build one? How do they build cranes without bigger cranes? Have you ever seen one being built? No, they just show up overnight. Do they just plant magic beans or something?
Imagine something that is hanging off the edge of something else. Now imagine when that thing finally slips off. We've all seen that. What was holding it on before? What changed? Obviously friction was holding it on, but why is there enough friction one second, and then not enough the next?
In art, there is an axiom that there are no original thoughts and if you actually come up with something truly novel, the audience won't understand and won't like it. However, sometime, each of the recognizable conventions had to be a new idea. Somebody had to do it first. So how did those ideas get accepted? Is it just insane persistence with no consideration of audience response? Does the act of introducing a truly novel idea, come down to, no matter how much everyone hates it and hates you for doing it, just keeping it up? That goes against every artistic instinct I have. If your audience doesn't like it, you stop doing it, or the audience will disappear. Right?
The act of snoring is counter to both survival and propagation of the species. It makes you unpleasant to sleep with and therefore less likely to breed and in a primitive setting lets every nocturnal predator know exactly where a defenseless human is sleeping. So why haven't we evolved away from it? I'm pretty sure it's even a dominant trait. What's that about? What's the survival advantage of making horrible throat noises when you sleep?
Is anybody actually good at telling someone else that someone they love is dead?
This may sound like I'm picking on Spanish speakers, but I'm not; I'm sure this occurs in other languages too including English. I'm just exposed to this end of it. In my day job I work in phone customer service. On our phone menu, there is an option to speak to someone in Spanish. However, somehow, I still get people asking "Habla espanol?". If you called a phone line and the recording said "Gorble stang mooky hurlb gorfer tangord spume. For English press 2.", what would you do? You'd press 2, right? So how is it that I still get people asking for Spanish?
While I'm talking shop, what possesses someone to call someone and ask for a phone number without something in hand to write it on and with?
As I understand it, the holiday season lasts from Thanksgiving to New Years. Even if you completely ignore the non-Christian holidays (Hanuka, Kwanzaa, Solstice etc.) that still leaves you Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Feast of St. Nicholas (for the Catholics), and New Years. That's four holidays. So why are the Christian fundamentalists and blowhard republicans claiming that we dirty secularists are waging war on Christmas by saying "happy holidays"? There's more than one holiday. Kindergartners can count to five. Why can't the fundies and rushies count to four? Oh, right, they're stupid.
Imagine something that is hanging off the edge of something else. Now imagine when that thing finally slips off. We've all seen that. What was holding it on before? What changed? Obviously friction was holding it on, but why is there enough friction one second, and then not enough the next?
In art, there is an axiom that there are no original thoughts and if you actually come up with something truly novel, the audience won't understand and won't like it. However, sometime, each of the recognizable conventions had to be a new idea. Somebody had to do it first. So how did those ideas get accepted? Is it just insane persistence with no consideration of audience response? Does the act of introducing a truly novel idea, come down to, no matter how much everyone hates it and hates you for doing it, just keeping it up? That goes against every artistic instinct I have. If your audience doesn't like it, you stop doing it, or the audience will disappear. Right?
The act of snoring is counter to both survival and propagation of the species. It makes you unpleasant to sleep with and therefore less likely to breed and in a primitive setting lets every nocturnal predator know exactly where a defenseless human is sleeping. So why haven't we evolved away from it? I'm pretty sure it's even a dominant trait. What's that about? What's the survival advantage of making horrible throat noises when you sleep?
Is anybody actually good at telling someone else that someone they love is dead?
This may sound like I'm picking on Spanish speakers, but I'm not; I'm sure this occurs in other languages too including English. I'm just exposed to this end of it. In my day job I work in phone customer service. On our phone menu, there is an option to speak to someone in Spanish. However, somehow, I still get people asking "Habla espanol?". If you called a phone line and the recording said "Gorble stang mooky hurlb gorfer tangord spume. For English press 2.", what would you do? You'd press 2, right? So how is it that I still get people asking for Spanish?
While I'm talking shop, what possesses someone to call someone and ask for a phone number without something in hand to write it on and with?
As I understand it, the holiday season lasts from Thanksgiving to New Years. Even if you completely ignore the non-Christian holidays (Hanuka, Kwanzaa, Solstice etc.) that still leaves you Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Feast of St. Nicholas (for the Catholics), and New Years. That's four holidays. So why are the Christian fundamentalists and blowhard republicans claiming that we dirty secularists are waging war on Christmas by saying "happy holidays"? There's more than one holiday. Kindergartners can count to five. Why can't the fundies and rushies count to four? Oh, right, they're stupid.
posted by John McKenna at 4:01 PM
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