Random Notes from a Crank

Here's some interesting factoids from the two most recent Harper's Indexes:

• Percentage by which women are more likely than men to be interrupted in Senate committee hearings: 10
• By which such interruptions are more likely when they are discussing women's issues: 15
• Percentage change since 2010 in the average cost of an electric vehicle battery: -89
• In the average price of an electric vehicle: +80
• Average salary U.S. college students expect to make in their first job after graduation: $103,880
• Average starting salary for a U.S. college graduate: $55,260
• Percentage by which Americans drink alcohol less often than the average person worldwide: 18
• By which they get drunk more often: 58
• Percentage of Democrat-voting college students who would not go on a date with a Trump voter: 71
• Of Trump-voting college students who would not go on a date with a Democrat: 31
• Portion of U.S. pools that will be closed at some point this summer due to a lifeguard shortages: 1/3

I know if I were single I would screen potential dates on whether they support Moscow Don or not. That issue shows one's character. And if someone supports that criminal clown, they probably have all kinds of other issues, like mental illness and STIs. 

As much as I'm happy that the recent bill that was passed will give all kinds of incentives for people to buy electric vehicles, I'm worried that it is going to make crooked car dealers jack up the prices of EVs. 

One of the survey questions for a recent YouGov survey was this one: "Would you support or oppose a ban on single-use plastic water bottles?" I'm solidly in the support category in response to that question. Plastic water bottles are a menace, and bottled water is stupid. What a monumental scam that is destroying the environment with its terrible plastic waste. 

Christian Pulisic needs the get the hell out of Chelsea. I'm sure Spurs or Leeds United would take him off Chelsea's hands.

Music Friday: "Downtown Girls"

I finally got around to the buying the new album by American Aquarium, but after I listened to it the first time, iTunes proceeded to play Dances for the Lonely because it was next in the album queue as I was doing work this morning. 

I was reminded of how much I like this song. 

Fumbling Toward Culinary Talent: Shrimp and Squash Rice Bowl

The person who has the office next to me gave me some zucchini and yellow crookneck squash the other day. She offered me some tomatoes and cucumbers, but I have plenty of those this summer from my own garden. 

I usually don't have luck making squash, but I tried something yesterday that worked. 

Now I don't remember any Chinese-inspired dishes that use zucchini or yellow squash, but I used some soy sauce and leftover rice to make it Chinese-like. 

Ingredients

• 1 small onion, chopped roughly
• 1 medium size zucchini, cut into thin half moons
• 1 yellow crookneck squash, cut into thin half moons
• 2-3 TBs of rosemary-infused olive oil
• Healthy smattering of Penzey's Mural of Flavor seasoning
• 2 handfuls of thawed and already cooked shrimp
• Salt and pepper
• Soy sauce to taste
• White or brown rice

Process

Put the olive oil in cast iron skillet (or wok I guess) on medium-high heat and dump in the onions. Sweat them for approximately ten minutes and then put in the squash. Move the heat down to medium. 

Add salt and pepper and Mural of Flavor seasoning and move the squash around so the sides don't get burnt. After the squash are relatively soft, add in the shrimp, and add the soy sauce. Turn off the heat and let the residual heat warm up the shrimp but not overcook them. 

Put newly cooked or leftover rice in a bowl and ladle the shrimp-squash-onion concoction over it. 

Music Friday: "Master of Puppets"

I've noticed that Metallica has become trendy because of the latest season of Stranger Things using one of its songs. 

If I remember right, I'm still stalled in season 3 in that series, so I haven't gotten to the season that made Metallica and Kate Bush popular among the youths. 

Regardless of popularity, when I think of Metallica, here's one of a handful of songs that immediately comes to mind.

Random Notes from a Crank

I'd venture to guess that the people who say "America is the greatest country in the world" haven't been to many other countries. And if they've been to other countries, it's not been for a long while, possibly only on a vacation. 

I know of family who has had to have fundraisers to help pay off their debts because their father, who died recently, had cancer. The US has to be one of the few, if not the only, first-world industrialized countries in the world that doesn't have universal health care.  

We don't have one of the best health care systems in the world, but it's certainly one of the most expensive. 

I think there needs to be a Karen/Karin support group out there. Being a "Karen" has been a negative epithet for a few years now. I've never thought of the name Karen in a negative light. 

One of my former girlfriends in high school was named Karen. And she provided fabulous hand jobs. So when I hear something along the lines of "you're being a Karen," all I have is fond memories. I smile and have an overwhelming feeling of good. 

The past month or so when I wake up in the morning I have found one of my bird feeders and the hummingbird feeder knocked down. My bird feeders are "squirrel-proof" because they have a mechanism on them that shuts the feed holes if a rodent weighs down on the feeder. So I was nonplussed about how a squirrel cracked the code. 

I pulled into the drive the other night and discovered the perp who has been knocking down my feeders. It's a raccoon. 

When my son was young, I remember watching a PBS nature documentary on raccoons. The scientists were tracking their movements in the city of Toronto. It was amazing how active they are and how many they are. They're everywhere. 

Music Friday: "A Night in Tunisia"

As I was walking the dog tonight, I got this song in my head because my daughter wants me to make her lablabi before she goes off to college.

This version features the percussive talents of the indomitable Art Blakey. 

Musing of the Moment: Thirty Years Too Late & EV Rebates

As much as I'm happy the "Inflation Reduction Act" is getting passed and finally addresses the need for action on climate change, a bill such as this should have thirty years ago. 

The planet is not waiting around with its negative feedback loops happening at the poles as recounted in The Washington Post: "Climate Change's Impact Intensifies as U.S. Prepares to Take Action."  

The best takeaway from the research is what the lead author of the study, Peter Reicher, has to say: "Reich called the Inflation Reduction Act a 'good first step' but added that 'even in the most optimistic scenario, there’s going to be a lot of pain and suffering. It’s going to take an economic toll on poor and rich alike in the future,' he said. 'We shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back and say, ‘Mission accomplished.’"

I like the bill's incentives for people to purchase electric vehicles, but analysis shows that the point-of-sail rebates won't take effect until next year. 

I worry that these rebates are going to provide incentives for dealers to jack up prices (they're car salesmen, after all), but $7,500 off when you buy one is nice. 

The bill has made me take a look at some EVs such as the Nissan Leaf and the Ford F-150 Lightning. People with more spending power than me might makes some changes, I hope, in 2023.

Music Friday: "Shed a Little Light"

James Taylor sat in with Stay Human at the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this week, and I was reminded of how much I like him.

And here's one of my favorite songs of his. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I get annoyed about how some people complain about having to ask for straws or having to use non-plastic straws because of environmental concerns. 

When I'm at an eating establishment that provides water or whatever non-alcoholic beverage in an open container, I don't need a straw. I'm a big boy. I'm not some child who needs a straw to drink my beverage. Using a straw in an open container is like an adult drinking out of a sippy cup. 

I've been watching the only season of Alone that's on Netflix. Of the reality programs out there, this is one that intrigues me because of the ingenuity of the participants. 

The fact that so many of these contestants go days without eating is remarkable, but the show also makes me think about how early hunter-gatherers had to be fanatical meat eaters once they got their hands on some wild game. 

From a pure caloric standpoint, fish or game provides a ton more calories than a plant-based diet based on foraging. Also, from an evolutionary standpoint, the Homo sapiens eating meat helped grow their brains and made them stronger. 

While I get being a vegetarian from an environmental standpoint, I would have a hard time being one. I'm not a fervent meat eater, but I'd like to be more intentional about the meat I eat. 

In a positive political story, Kansas voters rejected changing the state's constitution to support an abortion ban: "Kansas Abortion Vote Shows Forced-Birth Zealots Should Be Very Afraid." 

My hope is that access to abortion will be a major issue in the mid-terms that will help pro-choice candidates on the ballot. 

Music Friday: Talkin' Loud But Sayin' Nothing

I referenced this song in my previous post about bullshit receptivity. 

Here's a cover of Brown's song by Living Colour. 

Musing of the Moment: Bullshit Receptivity

One of the books I'm currently reading is Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein. 

I've probably prattled on about how much I think Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow is a great book on this blog before, so I was automatically drawn to any new publication with Kahneman's name on it. 

On the books chapter titled "Occasion Noise," I was intellectually smitten by these paragraphs:

"Other studies tested the effect of mood on gullibility. Gordon Pennycock and colleagues have conducted many studies of people's reactions to meaningless, pseudo-profound statements generated by assembling randomly selected nouns and verbs from the sayings of popular gurus into grammatically correct sentences such as 'Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena' or 'Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.' The propensity to agree with such statements is a trait know as bullshit receptivity....

"Sure enough, some people are more receptive than others to bullshit. They can be impressed by 'seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous.'"

Having sat through a number of graduate seminars in the humanities, I think there's a lot of bullshit receptivity happening in those environs. 

I know I've sat in lectures and so-called discussions where abstruse theories having been bandied about and I've read all kinds of Theory that sounds important and "pseudo-profound" but doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Or change anything for the better. 

Like James Brown sang, these theorists are "talkin' loud and sayin' nothin.'" 

One can also apply this concept of bullshit receptivity to the mass of political ads we have to deal with if we watch any of the local TV stations. 

In sum, there's a lot hokum out there that is quite vacuous.  

Talking loud but what are they really saying? 

Random Notes from a Crank

In the print edition of The New Republic, the article is titled "Fields of Red." The online edition has an entirely different title, which begs the question, "Why?" Regardless, the article analyzes my extreme discomfort with my home state apparently turning into a red state in national politics.  

I used to be proud to be from Iowa because of its high literacy rate, but now it's state that voted twice for Moscow Don. The article makes sound suggestions that the Democrats need to do a much better job of reaching out to and persuading blue-collar voters, but as Jacobs relates, "While the party has done better with voters who are younger, more diverse, and more well-educated, Iowans are disproportionately older, whiter, and less likely to have a college degree." 

I miss how my home state was a swing state, and now it's more like Kansas or Missouri. That's sad as hell. 

If you need any further proof that Faux News is a simply a propaganda arm of the GOP and bootlickers of Moscow Don, consider the fact the channel did not broadcast the the January 6th hearings on Thursday, July 21. 

To show how out of reach the current Supreme Court is, the recent poll indicates that Americans want the ability to get an abortion to be protected at a national level. Check out the article from AP: "Majority in US Want Legal Abortion Nationally." 

One citizen featured has a smart perspective: "Blake Jones thinks six weeks 'is far too early to be able to make a decision like that,' and while he personally doesn’t approve of abortion, the 28-year-old Democrat in Athens, Georgia, said he’s pro-choice because he doesn’t believe 'that my views should affect other people.'" 

Jones said he thinks the point of viability is more appropriate for restrictions on abortion, but even then, there should be exceptions if the pregnant person’s health is at risk or the baby would be born with a severe health issue."

Music Friday: "Everybody Loves Me, Baby" & "American Pie"

I was watching TV late a night the other day, and there was a commercial advertising the a tour by Don McLean to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American Pie album. 

The title track is a classic that most people know. 

However, I'm starting with a song down the playlist and the famous title track as seen on BBC TV.

Random Notes from a Crank

As someone who cares about words and how we use them, I'm troubled by the trend of people making words shorter for no other reason than using a different term. 

For example, in certain business circles or certain people use the word, "vacay," to stand for "vacation." First off, the former bastardization sounds goofy. Just think of someone saying to someone else that they're "going on vacay." Does shortening the word by one stinking syllable really help people? I think not. 

The other one I've seen in sports media that I don't like is the term "presser" for "press conference." The two-syllable term doesn't really approximate the two-word term. I guess "er" is in the word "conference," but "er" is nowhere near anyone with a right mind would abbreviate the full word of "conference." If anything, it should be "presscon" if there really is a need for shortening the language, which there isn't. 

At the hotel we stayed at this weekend, the brand name of the toilet paper was "Comfort Bay," which is ironic. There's nothing comforting about those sandpaper-like sheets as you try to wipe your butt. 

We are in Galesburg, Illinois and had lots of time to kill, so we checked out the campus of Knox College. Since we're baseball people, we looked at the college baseball field, which has some serious dimensions with short corners and 400 feet to straight center. 

The dimensions reminded me of what I've read about Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, the home of the Cardinals and the Browns at one time. Its dimensions were quite unique with all kinds of distance markers. For example, the left field line was at 351 feet and right field line at 310. True left center was 379 with deep left center at 400. Deep left center field corner was 426 with true center at 422.

Those dimensions are nowhere as bizarre as what was going at the Polo Grounds: left-field line at 279, left-center at 450, center at 483, right-center at 449, and right-field line at 258.  

Music Friday: "Here Comes the Rain Again"

It's been one hell of a long day. I got up at 5:05 this morning because we had to drive to Galesburg for a baseball tournament with our team set to play at 11am. 

Well, that plan didn't work out at all. Rain. Lots of damn rain. 

So the game we were supposed to play today got moved to tomorrow at 1pm. 

I never bought a cassette or CD of the Eurythmics, but I always enjoyed their music. Here's a song that's appropriate.