Category: The Voices in My Head

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Spreading Disinformation?

Some folks are touting the virucidal action of plain old soap and water, “Soap and water kills viruses!” Yeh, but not unless agitated for up to SIX MINUTES (OK, depending on variables in the environment where they are found, from two to six minutes). (Yeh, the much ballyhooed paper on soap and water killing HIV doesn’t see that lil factoid make the press. Yeh, I read the paper.) Count on the finger of one hand how many folks you know who are going to spend two minutes, let alone six, vigorously washing their hands with soap and water. Is it less than one? (The key is the physical action slowly working to help the soap break down a secondary, minor component–lipids–of virus capsids, since virus capsids are primarily protein, unlike bacteria cell walls, which are heavily linked with lipids enabling killing of some bacteria easier by similar vigorous and time-consuming application of soap and water).

This is why THE key benefit of proper hand washing is washing microbial materials OFF and rinsing them away.

(BTW, that infamous paper demonstrating that HIV can be “inactivated” by soap and water showed even longer times to effectiveness when some variables were changed, and agitating the solutions was still key. That’s because physics and chemistry–fill in the blank. Go ahead. Look it up. *heh*)

Oh, BTW, I use the term “kill” above referring to viruses, but of course I do not mean “kill” since one either “deactivates” or “destroys” viruses, because (OK, admittedly some controversy/gray area) viruses are not really alive to begin with. so cannot be “killed.”

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It Is Neither Pretty Nor Is It Art.

I have (more frequently than I care to think) heard folks argue that Psalm 100:1-2 (“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing.”) is a perfectly good excuse for execrable congregational singing: off-pitch, raucous, muddied rhythms and lyrics, and worse. Betcha most of those who use it as their excuse for their laziness and lack of care in approaching their worship expressions don’t use the KJV (the “noise” translation in Psalm 100:1) for other things. Other translations focus on joyful shouts and joyful songs. Painfully raucous croaks ain’t what springs readily to mind when I think of “joyful.” Maybe it’s just me, but off-key, or even atonal, grating, muddled, and altogether ugly sounds just do not comprise “singing,” IMO. (And no, “Their heart is in the right place” just doesn’t cut it. If their heart were “in the right place” they’d not submit “sacrifice[s] of praise” that were crap. Just sayin’.)

Of course, much of the problem may be simply because something approaching 90% of people nowadays apparently cannot hear and reproduce pitches with any degree of accuracy. Not my fault: theirs, for playing crap into their ears and pretending it is music, corrupting any possible embryonic musical ability they might have.

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I Sometimes Wonder. . .

Whatever became of the lame man who was healed as recorded in Acts 3? He was 40 years old, and his entire livelihood had consisted of begging daily. Once his lameness was healed, what did he do for income?

Ah, he probably got a job with the First Church of Jerusalem. 🙂

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Ah! The Old Made New

Some 40 years ago, when we were “young marrieds,” before our first child, we purchased a nice set of “waterless” cookware. And it was nice, with but one flaw that made itself known over the next 20+ years: the pseudo-bakelite handles were not really all that durable, and as the less-than-durable handles (including the pot lids) failed, replacements. . . weren’t. Available, that is. Still, some components remain useful.

Fast forward to today when I was looking for a way to “fry” eggs in my air pressure/fryer/sous vide/slow cooker (love these combo appliances, when they work). Ah! The lil cups for the steamer/egg poacher add-on to the waterless cookware set! Yep. All six of them fit very nicely in the cooker. I love it when past and present come together to make things work well.

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Filed Under “Things I Do NOT Want to Do”

I don’t like to travel out of the county, much. Oh, if “out of the county” is no more than 30 miles or so (INCLUDING miles in-county), I can manage it, and have as chauffeur for Son&Heir’s recent back injury (compression fracture of T-12 vertebra), but I do not like it. I consider an arduous trek to WallyWorld (15 miles away from TWC Central) to be far enough, most times, now.

Some of the places I like to visit are as far away as the mid-20s in miles from TWC Central (A.K.A. “Ye Olde Homestead”), so there’s that. But. *profound sigh* My sisters are trying to promote a family get-together next fall in Branson for a “gospel music extravaganza” type thing. *sigh*

#1 I HUGELY dislike Branson, “The Vegas of the Ozarks.” Even w/o the gambling and the other “Sin City” activities (at least in the open; there’s plenty of sin anywhere one goes, even if it’s just to the kitchen and back *heh*), Branson is just. . . tacky, IMO.

#2. Crowds. For me a crowd is more than somewhere between 2-5 people (and my sisters and their spouses, let alone brother and his spouse, not to mention children and grandchildren) exceed my capacity by themselves, and that’s before Branson-level crowds. (Didn’t use to be like this; being in/performing for large crowds used to be enjoyable. Touchy old bear, now.)

#3. The activities they are touting are NOT my cuppa, not in any way, shape, fashion, or form. I like real gospel music well enough, but done for a performance? No. Just no.

#4. And then there’s all that travel to get there. Must be 80 miles or more! *heh* (Yeh, yeh: all of them would be coming from out of state, but they LIKE travel and do it a lot.)

*shrugs* Happy to offer a cookout for ’em on their way through, though. Limited crowd exposure (time and numbers); no glitz and faux “gospel” singing. If they wanna see me, they can look at my profile pic. Visit? Sure. Drop on by, one (or two)-on-one, or use email or phone. Mass get-togethers? Please, no. Last one was Mother’s funeral, and while the funeral service itself was a blessing (apart from being forced to lead the congregational singing–multiple reasons that was a bad idea at the time), the travel and “family meal” afterwards was not. I took my fellow travelers and di-di-maued as expeditiously as possible.

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Amusing Hook, but LOADS to Just Skip or Skim

No, I’ll not name or link to the series. I have made some comments over on Amazon, but this is a bit. . . more scathing, I suppose I should say, and so I’ll just leave that out for now.

I have now read a series of four books with an interesting sci-fi hook that speaks to me. . . and unfortunately says some things the writer probably didn’t intend to say. The hook: extraterrestrial aliens who are utterly captivated by music from Earth. Unfortunately, all the music referred to in the series is second- or third-rate pop crap. I suspect there are two reasons for this:

  • the writer’s target readership probably has no frame of reference for anything but pop crap
  • the writer probably doesn’t even have any familiarity with really good music at all

And it shows.

So, I just read the books (admission: skimming and skipping parts that seemed like utter crap) mostly just to get those moments of extraterrestrial reaction to music.

Interesting for that, but very glad I didn’t have to pay a dime for any of the books, and spent little time actually reading them.

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402 Pages of Not Quite Wasted Time

Every now and then, I pick up a John Sandford pseudo-mystery (OK, they fit the genre, but are just a bit too predictable, mmK?). Usually, it’s for a similar reason as the one I picked up yesterday. My Wonder Woman had a flat, and, to my eye, it looked like a full-on replacement, despite the massive amount of tread left on the thing (when I got there, it was sitting on the rim and looked like it had been driven on it–not something I can really fault her for, and it wasn’t but for a fairly short distance).

So, I took it on the spare to the closest place I could get a passable replacement tire. Goodyear at WallyWorld a couple of miles away. Didn’t want to drive it far on the spare, because the spare that came with the–used–car is directional, and in the position it was on the car, it was rotating backwards. Yeh, yeh, I know I could have switched it out with another tire, but no. Not a big deal for a short drive, but this is the second time it’s been used in that wheel position, and I just did not want to drive it far.

So, as I said, WallyWorld. I hadn’t prepared myself for the wait, so I picked up a book there. The absolute best on offer at WallyWorld was a John Sandford novel. OK. Read the thing (>i>read most of it while waiting). Not bad but not much of a mystery, really. A few quirky characters did liven the plot a bit, but it was still something of a slog. Just not that good, and filled with things that, had it been a Kindle ebook, I could have “report[ed] content error” on many, many occasions. Putnam really needs better quality editors, IMO. Literate ones, at the very least.

*sigh*

Oh, well, I’ll always have the quirky characters–oh, and the descriptive narrative about the geography, etc. There are those, at least.

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Sometimes, It’s Just a Matter of Living Long Enough (and not losing all memory of earlier years *heh*)

Interesting premise for a novel, and pretty well-written. Because of the premise (1930s alternate universe where magic and 1930s tech similar to our own coexist), many things are just easily taken as given, such as money values, clothing styles, etc., but when a guy uses a dime to pay for a coin-operated phone call, I was momentarily taken aback, since I can recall placing calls as a kid in the late 1950s using a nickel.

Of course, different “universe”/timeline, but still it did give me momentary pause.

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Plus ça change. . .

Strategizing my day.

Years ago, in my last 9-to-5 and spent a lot of time warming a seat in front of a computer, I used a one-cup coffee warmer because, while I needed coffee in copious amounts, I tended to be a “distracted drinker.” *heh*

Nowadays, that same effect has me drinking my last half of a mug cold. Switching to smaller mugs is fairly effective, though, and has cut down on my tendency to be distracted by computer time sinks from tasks I’ve assigned myself, since I reach the bottom of a cup more quickly and have to get up for a refill.

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I Believe This View Has Some Merit

Note again: I do not like TRump and would not invite him for dinner or even want to be invited to dinner with him. I don’t need to like him to note that he has done more good for common Americans than the last three or four presidents combined. Hate to admit it, but still, facts are facts. The post linked below was written almost nine months ago. I just saw it the other day, and I’ve taken a couple of days to digest it.

“Everyone Is Smart, Except Donald Trump:” Rabbi Dov Fischer

Read the whole thing.