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Making Assumptions

Lemony Snicket

Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make — bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake — if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you’d made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning.—Lemony Snicket, The Austere Academy

Give a Man a Rope …

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Will Roberts: Political Comedy and Rope Tricks

It was almost as if Will Rogers were still alive. In a way, he was—because over a hundred people were there to celebrate his 133rd birthday. The sponsoring Will Rogers Ranch Foundation brought in a man, who, like Rogers, could do rope tricks and sophisticated (yet gentle) political comedy at the same time. He goes by the name Will Roberts.

Formerly with Cirque de Soleil in Las Vegas, where he did a stint in a show called Viva Elvis, which closed on August 31 of this year. In the show, he did rope tricks while perched on a Cadillac.

Today, he reminded Martine and me how much we wished that Will Rogers were still alive today. His gentle humor made Republicans and Democrats laugh together, rather than at one another’s pain and outrage. Although, in the early 1930s, he was one of the richest men in America, he was also one of the busiest and one of the best. He gave freely of his time and money to help people who were suffering, such as when an earthquake struck Managua, Nicaragua, in 1931. Will showed up and proceeded to help out the victims with money and other aid paid for from his own pocket.

We sat through two shows that Will Roberts gave and enjoyed his rope tricks and humor, which are by no means easy to combine. Yet everyone in the audience has received hundreds of robocalls during this political campaign and was in the mood to put the whole election behind them with a good laugh, whether they were for Obama, Romney, Ron Paul, or Donald Trump.

Just as the original Will was a syndicated columnist (see his Daily Telegrams), Will Roberts has just come out with a book entitled A Crackpot’s Potshot at American Politics (Mustang, Oklahoma: Tate Publishing, 1912) which is pretty much in the same vein. Witness this selection about George W. Bush’s Mideast war budget:

Today President Bush is supposed to give his shopping list for the war. If all goes the way the Democrats want, our President will join the more than 100 million a year that bounce checks.

Republicans have been winning the coin toss for a few years now. Some Democrats think it might be due to the fact that it is a double-headed quarter. Now the Democrats have a home field advantage and are hoping for a strong first quarter. Go team!!!

Some folks are most likely thinking, “Will must be a Democrat.” But folks, I am like all the others in the middle, and I am just for the right answer or left answer … OK, the correct answer.

Even Rush Limbaugh or Roger Ailes couldn’t cavil at that. Well, maybe they could.

If you want to read more about Will Roberts, I suggest you check out two websites: Will Roberts, Speaker, Humorist, and Trick Roper as well as Will Roberts Modern Day Will Rogers. The latter contains some of his political humor in blog format. If you have an Amazon Kindle, you could also buy A Crackpot’s Potshot at American Politics for only 99 cents.

It is so rare to find political humor any more that doesn’t leave a bad taste in one’s mouth….

 

Mitt on Superstorm Sandy

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I Think Now the Race Is Romney’s To Lose

I am beginning to feel better about the Presidential race. The thought of a President Mitt Romney is sufficient to cause my insides to curdle. But now, with Superstorm Sandy and Barack Obama showing just how presidential he could be, Romney might just be stranded in left field sucking on a mop.

Do you recall the race between Daddy Bush and Bill Clinton in 1992? George H. W. was accused of being too patrician for the White House. If he was too patrician, what about Mitt?

The following tweets from #MittStormTips #Sandy show more about Romney than he would like to have the public see. Read ’em and laugh:

  • If you haven’t already, move money from Cayman Islands to Swiss account.
  • People, this is why we only build houses on top of cliffs.
  • No generators at Home Depot. I have ordered Paul Ryan off the campaign trail to power my home with a stationary bike.
  • This is a time for bipartisanship, despite the President’s bungling of this preventable natural disaster.
  • Hurricanes are best spent overseas, visiting your money.
  • President Obama has not once referred to this storm as a hurricane. (This one is a bit more subtle: Think Libya and the Second Debate.)
  • Remember, the most important threat facing the east coast is and always will be Russia.
  • My thoughts and prayers go out to 53% of you.
  • What are you people complaining about? This wind is no stronger than one of my medium sized helicopter rotors!
  • Shucks, I hope FEMA isn’t the third agency Perry is getting rid of. (Think back to the GOP Primary debates.)

For more of the same, click here

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Is That How He Prefers Them?

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A New Romney Meme Is Born

From Debate #2 between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The circumstances, according to CNN:

When asked about what he’d do to improve income equality for women, Romney cited his efforts as governor of Massachusetts to include women on a state economic panel, efforts that apparently included poring through “binders full of women” in search of qualified candidates. And with that, a meme was born.

I wonder how the women felt….

Poking Fun At Apple

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MAD Magazine Parody of Famous New Yorker Cover

Over the years, I have tended to regard Apple Computer fanboys as members of some sort of odd cult. Since Steve Jobs’s demise, the world’s largest computer company has run into some (relatively) hard times. Most recently, its release of Apple Maps has caused just derision in the marketplace. But when MAD magazine parodied the famous Manhattan-centric Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover, I could barely keep from guffawing.

The closer you look at it, the more it resembles something some hapless grade schooler would devise—one who had no knowledge of U.S. or world geography.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

Vicc

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And look where it got him!

Vicc is the Hungarian word for joke, pronounced VEETZ with the vowel sound slightly shorter. I don’t have much time today to write something serious, but I thought I would aim for a snicker or two.

Just to show what kind of snicker I am looking for, here is a short video:

* * * * *

That reminds me of my favorite story regarding Zimbabwe:

After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus-stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.

Well, that’s all for now, folks!

More on the Higgs Boson

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Higgs Boson Particle Encounter

A few weeks ago, I posted this humorous piece on the Higgs Boson on my blog site at Multiply.Com. I will repeat the text here because, on December 1 of this year, Multiply will delete all my postings and retreat to Southeast Asia. Not being a Filipino, I just decided not to Tagalog:

It’s not every day that physicists around the world can celebrate the discovery of a particle such as the Pigg’s Boatswain, the so-called Dog Particle. Emerging accidentally from the Somewhat Large Hadron Collider (SLHC) at BERN in Switzerland, the Pigg’s Boatswain lurched into existence for several Gilliganseconds when a technician accidentally tossed a soft drink cup into the Collider. At once several subatomic particles generally referred to as ø-cokes and µ-pepsis attained a measurable mass (and vastly increased calorie content).

Swedish physicist Bjorn Oswald Pigg had actually speculated on the existence of the PB in 1961, when he backed his Saab over a dumpster. The so-called resulting Piggs Field was identified as a promising area for future research, but it was not until three weeks ago when the SLHC made it all possible.

When asked about the implications of the discovery, B. O. Pigg, now 92 years old, admitted, “Well, probably nothing, but for dang sure it’ll get me a Nobel—if I should live so long!”

As to whether there were any practical applications, Pigg shrugged. “At present, the immediate result of the PB transformation is a microscopic, but still pungent pile of dog puckie, which requires a sophisticated cleanup that my colleagues claim that there are not sufficient euros minted to accomplish. Maybe in a few more years….”

In the meantime, Ixtaccihuatl joins the scientific community in hailing another great discovery. All the greater because of the humor involved watching journalists trying to wrap their minds around the story.

It was my mistake to call the particle the Pigg’s Boatswain, but then I’m not much of a physicist. I guess it’s just a character quark on my part.

This afternoon, I just finished reading Lisa Randall’s Kindle book entitled Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space. Now I can claim to know even less than I did when I wrote the above. You see, in addition to Higgs Bosons, there are Higgs Fields, the Higgs Mechanism, and Higgs “I’m With Stupid→” T-Shirts (Sizes S, M, L, XL, and LHC).

The Higgs Field is not much like a field at all. Perhaps the best comparison would be a overfilled cat litter box. Imagine what happens when a Spin-0 particle hits it at the speed of light, causing a quality that advanced physicists refer to as Pungency. You might say it really hits the fan, and the resulting Higgs Boson particles shoot in every direction and make a big mess.

Many of the latest discoveries are the result of the RLHC (Ridiculously Large Hadron Collider) in what used to be Greece before Angela Merkel decided to use the real estate for a more useful purpose that cost fewer Euros than housing a bunch of defaulting Greeks. At a power level approaching 3.1416³ TeraGilligans, the number of collisions in the Higgs Field grows to the point that subatomic physicists refer to it officially as a Sh*tload.

The whole point of the RLHC collisions is twofold:

  1. They do not appear to be insured, and
  2. They add mass to particles which previously had none.

There is some question as to what the purpose of this added mass is, but some scientists speculate that’s how all mass in the universe was created, including all the plants and animals to which you are allergic and which sneak up and bite you while you are sleeping. Nice going, guys!