Seize the Day! Put no trust in the morrow! — Horace
Today was the last day of the Mid-State Fair here in Paso Robles, California. The country fair is one of the last surviving remnants of Americana. We have everything in our fair from Monster Truck bashes to Country Singers to food vendors everywhere to rodeo activities. the Jumbo corn dogs are particularly delicious!
Not too many quiche, soy or veggie munchers at these festivities!Good times and Good fun. Continue reading “the Mid-State Fair … a little bit of Americana”
If you haven’t seen “Failure to Launch”, you must see it.
Now, it’s not likely to win any Academy Awards – but then – who really wants those anyway? An Academy Award is given to folks so that they don’t feel like real losers even though their movie was a snoozer at the box office. I mean, when did a popular movie win ‘Best picture’? Hey, they’re bundling “Brokeback Mountain” with more popular movies at Best Buy hoping to move the crap.
Sorry, I digressed, back to “Failure to Launch”. This movie is about a young man (age 35) who is still living at home! Obviously, his folks want him to go and grow up … so they go through all kinds of stuff to get him move out. This is hilarious. They end up hiring a ‘professional interventionist’ to try to woo him out of the parent’s home, but it doesn’t work. As he says,” it’ll take a stick of dynamite to move me out of my parent’s home!”I won’t give it all away, but for many parents this is way too close to home. We know folks who sold their big home and moved into a small one-bedroom apartment to escape the upcoming challenge! Some parents have even threatened to move without a forwarding address. And there are a few adult age children who even marry and have kids but never move away… but I think they are hanging around for the ‘old folks’ to ‘kick it’ as they also say in the movie. Also included — if you buy the DVD — are some minor ‘documentaries’ on the subject. The adult children — they interviewed — seem… troubled. Continue reading ““Failure to Launch” is Funny, True and Preventable”
What is really fun in all the nature vs. nurture debate going on is how recent discoveries in biology are causing… well… some academics to run naked into the woods screaming! I have to tell you that I just love it!
“It’s just a little pill how could there be an adverse reaction?”
Well, that does seem to be the normal reaction from a disbelieving professional. However, the question remains: how good is the advice we are getting these days? Unfortunately, most people think that doctors are closer to god and wouldn’t give them a bum steer, unfortunately, some of them think they are too! Endulge me for a moment as I present an analogy from another profession.
Years ago, I held seminars entitled “How to become your own financial planner and save!”. As the theme suggests, I had a few suggestions as to how investors could evaluate their resources and — hopefully — find better ways to put their money. The key to the seminar was not a detailed look into stock charts or tea leafs… what I asked people to do was to look at the potential motivations of the people who were offering their products. Continue reading “Your medical condition — be part of the solution!”
Aaaaahhh, I love research that confirms that I am a ‘beautiful’ person! Is it self serving to publish only those things that make you look wonderful? Nah!
Anyway, some musty old scientists have discovered that a beautiful couple will on the average produce daughters!
Every ‘beautiful’ athlete I ever met had quite a grouping of children. In fact , for a very long time, I actually wondered if old shotputters ever produced anything but daughters? I have 3 and they are wonderful.
Back to the story. In an article in the British Times by Steve Moxon , he quotes the scientists thus:
“We have shown two things,” said Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, who led the research. “Beautiful parents have more daughters than ugly parents, because physical attractiveness is heritable and because daughters benefit from attractiveness more than sons. ” Moxon quoted research as showing: “According to research, attractive parents are 26% more likely to have a daughter than a son as their first child. It is an inexorable process that has resulted in women becoming increasingly more attractive than men”.Dr. Kanazawa also added,“We have also shown that women on average are more attractive than men, because over evolutionary history the slight bias of beautiful parents to have more daughters has accumulated, so that girls have become more and more attractive than boys.” ow! Soooo, guys are getting uglier and uglier and girls are getting prettier and prettier. Yep, seems like that to me, too!
I know I made out well on that deal.
Roger Freberg