To be the Dogman
06 February 2025 • by Bob • Humor, Music
My granddaughter is obsessed with the children's superhero "Dog Man" these days, but I have to admit - every time she mentions him, I can't help but think of this song:
That's pretty much the same thing, isn't it?
The Glamour and Romance of Travel
28 January 2025 • by Bob • Travel, Humor
I believe I've stayed at this hotel on more than one occasion:
Stupid People Do Not Understand Genetics
10 January 2025 • by Bob • Humor, Science
A friend of mine posted the following image from Twitter (with the actual names removed to protect the innocent):
I responded that I like to mess with people who are that scientifically illiterate by saying things like, "You realize that when you compare a woman's XX chromosomes to a man's XY chromosomes, there are 8 branches in a woman's DNA and only 7 for a man, which means that women have 12.5% more DNA than men, and that extra branch is where DNA stores all the building blocks for intelligence and logic, which is why most women are smarter than you."
Yeah, sure - that statement about DNA isn't scientifically accurate, but it doesn't matter - because whoever the illiterate idiot is, they've already proven that they're too dumb to know better.
A Few Thoughts on My 40th Wedding Anniversary
29 December 2024 • by Bob • Marriage
Today my wife and I celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, which is no small feat by any stretch of the imagination. Together she and I have faced more than our share of triumphs and tragedies, prosperity and poverty, happiness and heartbreak. This year we joyfully greeted our fourth grandchild, while bidding a tearful goodbye to my wife's brother and aunt and my father. When my wife and I both said "I do" all those years ago, we were mere children ourselves, blissfully blinded by the stars in our eyes from the realities that lay before us. Side by side we survived eight years of Cold War deprivations during my time in uniform, followed by almost 30 years of my wife's career as a nurse and my never-ending adventures and misadventures with Microsoft. Through it all, however, she and I have trod the path before us hand-in-hand, and words cannot do justice to how much my wife makes everything better in life.
Perhaps the great Irish poet, Thomas Moore, expressed it best when he penned the following verses:
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts fading away,-
Thou wouldst still be ador'd as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will;
And, around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still!
It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofan'd by a tear,
That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear!
Oh! the heart, that has truly lov'd, never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close;
As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turn'd when he rose!
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Professor on the Drum Kit
13 December 2024 • by Bob • Music, Humor
I saw this image and it reminded me of an actual advertisement that I saw on a bulletin board back in the early 1980s in Tucson's Guitars Etc:
"Drummer wanted for band.
NO RUSH TYPES!!!
Drummer must be able to keep a straight beat."
IYKYK
Election Day 2024
05 November 2024 • by Bob • Politics
Remember: if you don't vote, then you don't get to complain for the next four years.
Louis McMurray (1940 - 2024)
12 October 2024 • by Bob • Family
My heart has been shattered into a million tiny pieces, and I have wept more tears than I thought I could carry; my keeper, my mentor, my father, and my friend has left this life, and the world is a profoundly poorer place in his absence. 
Please forgive my brief rambling... I'm just a fatherless son who's aimlessly adrift between the "bargaining" and "depression" stages of grief.
Oh, and f*ck cancer.
Electric Vehicles are Not Evil
26 August 2024 • by Bob • Technology
I've noticed that people who hate Electric Vehicles (EVs) absolutely love to share videos of EVs that have caught fire. For example:
While this video certainly illustrates an EV fire, it is also overshared by people who selfishly want to promote a story that EVs are more dangerous than gasoline powered vehicles, even though the actual data tells the opposite. Many articles have been written and several studies have been conducted about this subject, but most of these articles and studies are ignored by people who want to "do their own research," which is really just a sad excuse for looking for something that supports their preconceived biases.
So if you have an open mind, I'd suggest reading the following articles:
- MotorTrend: You're Wrong About EV Fires
- Popular Science: A new study has some surprising findings on car fires
- CleanTechnica: Actually, EVs Don't Catch On Fire As Frequently As Gas-Powered Cars Do
In the end, most people want to paint a picture that EVs are unsafe because they're angry about the government trying to force EVs on the general public when EVs still do not have feature parity with gasoline cars, and I get that. But sharing false or misrepresentative data isn't the answer.
Although having said that, I thought the following video was hilarious.
Ninety Percent of Food and Diseases
12 August 2024 • by Bob • Science
I stumbled across the following post from an antivaxxer on social media, which I thought warranted a response:
"90% of the 'food' in grocery stores today didn't exist 90 years ago. Guess what else? 90% of the diseases we face today didn't either. Think about that."
If this antivaxxer was only referring to food allergies, then I think - in a few situations - that they might have have a point. However, with regard to diseases, those numbers aren't just wrong, and they're not just dishonest, they're a complete fabrication.
Over the past century the combined scientific efforts from every corner of the globe have managed to completely eradicate or significantly reduce the impact of Smallpox, Measles, Polio, Rinderpest, Dracunculiasis, Tetanus, Yellow Fever, Helminthiasis, Schistosomiasis, Malaria, Hookworm, Rubella, Onchocerciasis, Typhoid Fever, Trypanosomiasis, Leprosy, Lymphatic Filariasis, Chagas Disease, Chicken Pox, Diphtheria, Haemophilus Influenza, Whooping Cough (Pertussis), Pneumococcal Disease (Streptococcus Pneumoniae), Yaws, etc.
Look, I get it - some people distrust science because they don't bother to learn about it. For most antivaxxers, "science" is what goes on behind closed doors and makes billionaires out of some truly awful people. But the majority of virologists, immunologists, and biologists are obsessed with making the world a better place, and as a result less babies are dying in infancy, more children are living to adulthood, and more people are living longer lives than at any point in human history. To infer otherwise does a tremendous injustice to the thousands of people in the scientific community who sacrificed their lives and talents to ensure that humanity is alive and well today so that antivaxxers can berate and belittle science from their ivory towers of unearned and undeserved health.
UPDATE: This post is one of several that I had written that I later discovered had never been set to "public."