Only two hermits remain. The ninth hermit has been joined by a tenth. They live on a small ranch in Central Texas with The Dogs of Hermits’ Rest. He does not hang out in bars anywhere near as much as when he was trying to be Li Po.
Other than family and music and song writing, his interests include writing. He has authored many technical tomes, several short stories, and a novel. He does have a day job or two, and he re-publishes some of his writings for those here.
For more information, see the complete profile.
I am posting this much later than it is dated while going through some old journals. I list the souces as a dream about one of my least favorite parts of the corporate world. Apparently, it left lasting scars.
SELF
I’m going down to the crapateria to grab a bite.
OTHER
That won’t…
SELF
Kill me?
OTHER
No, but it will make you suffer.
SELF
That will have to do.
Happy birthday to you. You live in a zoo.You look like a monkey and smell like one, too.—Childhood parody
Yesterday we celebrated Ralph’s 61st birthday, which actually occurs sometime around Tuesday. When it actually happens depends on how you look at it. Since he was born in Tasmania, he could celebrate more than 12 hours ahead of when he would here in the US, starting the day before. In fact, he says he has a 44 hour birthday.
As usual, he seems to of spent most of the day cooking in preparation for the party. He made what he calls a sweet and sour dish, but you can’t really tell. It didn’t taste like any sweet and sour I’ve ever had, but it was good. Also made curry dish which everyone that we would eat it said was good. While I find his crew dishes more edible than most, I avoid them when possible.
Sue Ann and Canova brought dessert, all of which got eaten.
Also in attendance were Duffy, one of his friends whose name I don’t remember, and Robert Palmer—not the singer; he’s dead, and we don’t really care for zombies showing up at our celebrations.
After dinner, Duffy regaled us with funny stories about the time he owned a rhesus monkey. We drink a lot of wine and went home.
It’s been spitting rain off-and-on for a couple of days now—never raining, never being dry. We’ve had fog almost all day today. We could actually use a little rain.
January has been really dry. We’ve only had about 1.3 inches, and that follows a fairly dry December. The average for January is just over three inches. I hope we’re not seeing the start of another drought.
As Dad would say, “We’ll see….”
It’s easier to overcome a lack of information than misinformation or disinformation.—CNN Pundit
Unfortunately, the claim of “Fake News” resonates on both the left and the right. Trump called CNN “The Clinton News Network” during in the election, falsely claiming that the network only carried negative stories about him. For decades, my more liberal friends have referred to Fox News as “Faux News.”
I’m not citing the two claims as equivalent. In a sample of one, I once got a Republican friend of mine to reluctantly agree when I called the Republican Party “the political arm of Fox News” because it certainly seemed that the network established the Republican talking points on a daily basis. At the same time a study found that people who scored worst on a questionnaire about current events listed Fox News as their primary news source while those who scored best said their primary news source was … Comedy Central.
On the other hand, CNN at least tries to rely on factual reporting. They don’t always succeed. And I don’t believe the Democratic Party is organized enough to be the political arm of anything.
Finally, this whole problem with confidence in the media derives from laziness.
When I was a child, Walter Cronkite was the voice of reason and truth. We believed him because he did his homework.
Today, the media seems much more focused on conflict than truth. Reporting is considered unbiased when they bring two talking heads together to argue without fact checking either side of the argument. Arguments are drama, the verbal equivalent of a bloody lead. Facts are boring.
Politicians are eager to exploit this laziness, which enables them to spout whatever truthiness their base wants to believe. This laziness, along with the ever increasing political siloization, brought us to the current government shutdown, at least partially because Senate leaders Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer “are not in the habit of talking to each other,” according to one Senate aide.
We need to hold our leaders accountable for the mess in Washington. That means notfollowing the party line of either major party. It means looking beyond the distraction of the 24-hour news cycle and the endless parade of forgettable pundits. It means doing the work of fact checking with reliable sources.
Here’s a hint: If you agree with most of what you hear on your primary news source, it’s probably not factually reliable. If it relies on attacking the character of its opponents, it’s definitely unreliable.
Truthiness is the enemy of democracy and the tool of authoritarianism.
Why would I lie when there are so many ways to tell the truth?
—Unknown
When I studied communication in college, I had to take a course called Rhetoric and Communication. There I learned a simple trick to understand the truth of what people say in political discourse. It is a simple adage, “Good rhetoric denies itself.” It means we are more likely to believe a persuasive argument if the speaker says he is not trying to persuade us or, as is more common in today’s propagandized sound bytes, states a blatant untruth that feels right. To use a term Stephen Colbert coined, this last bit is called “truthiness.”
Here are a few examples of good rhetoric denying itself. Forgive me if I use Shakes twice from the same speech. It’s just that the Forum Speech uses almost every rhetorical device known to man.
Last year, I fell ill just after Thanksgiving. I was sicker than I remember being in years. Then I fell ill again on a return from a Christmas vacation in Ruidoso. All of this illness has me feeling my mortality, but since I am a big fan of Dad Jokes—and being a dad who is approaching his sixtieth birthday—a couple of them came to my mind during recovery. I can’t help it. I come from a long line of folks who tell jokes on their death beds.
The first of these jokes has to do with my eventual reaction to cold medicines. Over the years I have noticed a fairly standard progression as the disease works its way through my body and eventually out of it.
Q: What is the scariest thing about being sick?A: Realizing you have to sneeze and the drugs you’re on give you the runs.
The second Dad Joke comes from a much more humiliating realization.
Q: What is the saddest thing about getting older?A: Realizing that you now consider coffee a recreational drug.
That last one would make Charley Davidson, who once referred to coffee as “the nectar of the gods,” very sad.
