Don't Blink!

DISCLAIMER: If flashing lights aren’t your thing, perhaps you should pass on the contents of this space. That’s how it is these days. Menus tell you what has gluten; videos tell you what has strobe.

That said, here's the entire history of information in under sixty seconds.

-bill kenny

Winners and Losers

I am very s-l-o-w-l-y starting to watch television news again and tuning in (for now) to PBS, though the announced dissolution of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting may impact my future choices. I guess I am exceptionally obtuse, as I really never noticed the 'woke' agenda and leftist bias of The Newshour and/or All Things Considered, but then again, I don't get out much anymore.

And it's that (overt) assumed pre-defined bias one way or the other that I'm confronted by with commercial over-the-air/cable news providers. Maybe it's the devolution, started in the Seventies, when news divisions went from being a public service in the public interest, per the Federal Communications Commission, to today's yet another profit center for a corporate conglomerate whose core business more than likely has nothing to do with news or public affairs

Now, when I watch, the part that most bothers me is how seemingly every story is reduced to a 'Who won? Who lost?' aspect of the coverage of whatever the story actually is. For every word offered as an attempted explanation of intent and impact, I'm getting hundreds of words on how one side is such and such, and the other is so and so.

Don't Touch that Dial!

I thought we were in this together. 
We weren't? I missed that memo.

So the guys with the button-down shirts got the better of those with the Oxford collars? And all this time, I thought we were trying to clothe everyone. How can we have an outside when there's no inside, or insight, come to think of it? The reports from Dodge City Deliberations and Machinations most nights look more like Seuss' Star-Bellied Sneetches than reasoned discussion and debate for the good of the republic and those who live in it.

And instead of explaining what is going on and why, we get treated to hours of handicapping a horse race that doesn't actually have horses (okay, maybe the rear ends of horses). We have to be content with the politics of posturing and pandering that leave us all just a little unclean and in need of a shower. Pass the soap, but don't dare drop it.

Makes me wonder what we'd look like as a country if the same 'for me to look good, you need to look bad' mindset had made the trip to Philadelphia for that weekend in July of 1776. Who wants to tell Washington we can't pay for that boat across the Delaware, and what was Franklin thinking of? Jefferson said he can go fly a kite.
Speaking of which, there's video of that right after the break, so don't go anywhere.
-bill kenny

News from the Newsroom Floor

Stop the presses! Turns out this is the Epstein that the Department of Justice has no files or lists about. 

Just kidding (as the shuttle bus to Alligator Alkatraz pulls up in front of the house). But not about having to stop the presses (or at least slow them down), for news you could possibly use. Scientists in Barbados overturn hundreds of rocks to rediscover world’s smallest-known snake.

There's no mention in the article as to why the scientists were looking, and I'm not going to ask.
-bill kenny

Not Quite a World Without End

As a child learning American history (I think it's something called 'civics' now for reasons surpassing my understanding) I was always struck by how World War II began for America with airplanes. Actually, with swarms of planes, low over the horizon, out of the sun over Pearl Harbor Naval Station in Hawaii.  

Today, eighty years ago, from the belly of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Super-Fortress, the US Army Air Corps dropped the world's first atomic weapon on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and while a second bomb was dropped a matter of days later on Nagasaki to 'seal the deal' the harnessing of the atom into such a terrible weapon of destruction delivered by an airplane effectively ended the second World War. 

As a fan of symmetry, even as a wee slip of a lad, I was struck by the bookend effect of beginnings and endings.

I've read accounts that some of those who worked on the devices were relieved that the first actual use did not trigger, as they had feared, an unfettered chain reaction they could not stop, destroying the planet. 

Except, as I look around a somewhat beaten and battered world that's lived in the Atomic Age (and in dread of its consequences) even longer than I have been on earth, I wonder about that road to perdition, the slippery slope, and the law of unintended consequences. 
-bill kenny

In Search of Warm Coats

I'm not trying to steal a march on autumn with today's title. 

It's a line from one of my favorite Paul Williams' songs, "That's What Friends Are For." (You might know BJ Thomas' version better, but I prefer the original. I'm keenly aware I'm showing my age. Mox nix).

To me, the greatest thing about the Internet is how swiftly, almost relentlessly, you can find information, or what passes for information. A week or so ago, I had a thought pop into my head, and acting quickly before it died of loneliness, I typed it into a search bar.

What I had thought about were two friends (and a third person, the brother of one of them), whom I had known a skosh over fifty years ago. I gambled on the wisdom of the crowd and found a Facebook group from the area in Jersey where they were all from. In truth, I haven't thought of any of them in decades (many and multiple) and am not sure why I thought of them when I did.

I joined the group and asked about all three with some hope we might reconnect in some manner, and was crestfallen to learn within a day, from someone I'll never meet, that the brother of one of the friends had moved to California years ago and had since died. 

I've never had a lot of friends, either online or flesh and blood. Not searching for pity (I prefer my own company and/or that of my family), just a statement of fact. I like being alone and rarely feel lonely, but in this case, the sense of loss surprised me since the deceased was pretty much a punk whom I tolerated because he was Tom's brother. 

That led me to ponder: How Many Friends Do You Need?
Spoiler alert: two.
-bill kenny

Stupid Human Tricks

Our son is one of the millions, if not billions, of people who enjoy golf. I sort of admire the way it combines eccentric sartorial styles with exercise (not unlike bowling, especially in terms of the shoes and the chicken wings).

There isn't a weekend that goes by without a TV broadcast of a major tournament somewhere in the world for inordinate amounts of money. Heck, there's even a Golf Channel. I like the way the announcers whisper all the stroke-by-stroke action, though I suspect they are acres away from the actual playing surfaces and golfers.   

I'm not denying it's a popular sport, just NOT in my house. I agree with Mark Twain when it comes to my interest in it, but you do you. I might get excited if some slight changes to the game could be made to include croquet mallets instead of clubs, and swinging at the golf balls while driving a golf cart. Perhaps I'd consider a driver and swinger pairing as opposed to just one player; I'm trying to be flexible to grow the sport.

What I didn't know, and you'll think I'm making it up, but I'm not, was that over a century ago, there was a forerunner to my idea, auto-polo, albeit briefly. It seemed to have a whacker and a driver, but was a tad short on airbags, seatbelts, and/or safety helmets. 

Should we resurrect it and truly Make America Great Again? You better honk!
-bill kenny 

Shades of Gray

It's been sneaking up on us for weeks, technically for more than a month. The hours of daylight have already started to shrink, and we're barely into August. The little boy in me (okay, very, very deep inside of me. Happy now?) always feels sad when I realize the getting dark after dinner part is starting earlier and earlier. 

It's not like I'm hurrying to clean my plate so I can be excused to go over to Neil's house and then down the street to Bobby's and call them to come out and play catch. Heck, if those two are in half the shape I'm in, by the time we get to the sandlot, it'll be pitch black. Life called on account of darkness. There's one for the stat books.

As hot and humid as it's been here in Southeast Connecticut (I really hate when I break a sweat early in the morning not doing anything but standing in one place, inhaling and exhaling), I'll whine just as piteously (actually more so) in February when the snow's crisp and even and the temperature is hovering somewhere south of freezing. I'm the person who bitches if he's hanged with a new rope. 

However, the seasonal decline of the light saddens me, especially as I age, because I view life as a finite commodity and don't appreciate reminders that it flows within and around me, particularly the latter aspect.

An acquaintance was observing the other day how grey the skies were where they are right now-which I think is probably a kinder idea in the spring and summer than in the autumn and fall since during the latter many of us peer at the heavens warily and observe 'if it gets any colder, with this sky, it'll snow.' 

Because they are considerably younger than I am, as are most people on earth, I didn't comment on the slightly disappointed tone of unhappiness they had about the weather and its impact on their family's working vacation. You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain, but when you are, you should be kinder than when twenty isn't visible in the mirror anymore.  

I won an all-expense paid stay at Sondrestrom Air Base, Greenland, in the mid-seventies, where in addition to triple-digit below-zero (Fahrenheit) temperature and winds over seventy miles an hour coming off the Polar Cap, we had twenty-four-hour daylight that became twenty-four-hour darkness.

I remember the day in late January when the sun was first visible over Mount Ferguson (not to be confused with Lake Ferguson, or Craig Ferguson for that matter) for no more than about three minutes (maybe), but we didn't care. It was Independence Day, New Year's, and Mardi Gras all rolled into one, reminding us it's not always going to be this grey.  
-bill kenny