So we’re having our first snow for Winter 2018 – 2019. Not too much; the snow just lightly blankets the grass and covers the roofs. But schools are all closed, roads are snarled, and normally-bustling offices are half-empty. All for a little snow.
And now, just like that, the snow stopped. Life goes on.
So the other day a ceiling fell on me. It wasn’t much of a ceiling, as ceilings go. Only about a four-foot by five foot section of wet drywall and sixty year-old very wet rock-wool insulation. And the ceiling didn’t fall very far before it hit me as I was already standing on a chair, using both hands to hold it up while desperately looking for something else for support instead of me on a chair. But it did fall on me and now I understand “sky-is-falling” from a very personal experience.
It gave me a different perspective on life in general though. I discovered than once you’ve had a ceiling fall on you, the rest of the week is a lot better.
Winnie and I have worked home improvement projects since we moved to our home in Northern Virginia. At this point, over the eleven-plus years we’ve lived here we’ve remodeled every room in the house except for the bonus room over the garage, which we’re presently working. Although we’ve already remodeled all three baths the one thing we didn’t do was replace toilets, on the basis that the toilets were mostly doing what they were designed to do so leave them alone.
This changed on Saturday.
So this is a thing. There’s apparently a device, called the Pink Luminous Breast, which is like a high-tech flashlight used as a medical device. When a woman presses it against her skin, a red LED light illuminates the inside of her breast tissue and provides a warning of possible breast cancer. However, a Chinese woman inventor who’s apparently into the “Cyberpunk” scene has re-engineered this do-it-yourself medical device into a wearable cyberpunk-styled transillumination strobe gadget that allows her to walk around in public with glowing red breasts.
I can’t believe this story hasn’t already made headline news in papers all around the world.
My regular readers (at least three) may have noticed some changes to this humble piece of cyberspace over the past few months. Well, that would be because I have tinkered around making, what are hopefully, improvements to this site.
So today the wind is blowing hard. Hard enough to shut down governments and schools and force people inside their homes. Power lines are tumbling and trees are dropping. The airports are closed and railroad trains are stopped. All because of wind. Strong winds changed the daily life-plans of millions of people. Maybe strong enough winds blowing long enough can change the direction of history?
Just a little light comedy to post on yet another cold and wet Sunday morning.
This past Friday I was caught up in an “active shooter” alert inside my ten-story office building. The alert turned out to be a false alarm, triggered in error during a building drill, but for about five minutes I, and everyone who received the alert, were thinking about the real possibility of being shot and killed inside our office.
Today is the Chinese New Year and start of the Year of the Dog. Chinese people around the world celebrate today as one their most significant holidays of the year. In the Chinese calendar, today marks the start of year 4716, based upon a calendar first developed by the Emperor Huangdi, starting in 2637 B.C.E. (Before Common Era).
The Death of Compassion
I make no secret of my opinion that our country, as a cohesive culture, is in trouble. I see near-daily mass shootings, the rise of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis, and the rapid degradation of public institutions such as schools, matched by the rise of for-profit institutions such as prisons, as part of a cohesive pattern of cultural disintegration. But I also see this pattern to have a deeper cause – the loss of compassion.
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compassion culture Gun VIolence