I think that we all know someone, maybe several someones, that fall into the incompetent category than we want to admit. In fact, one might say that it seems the numbers are increasing every day.
Incompetent people are often so incompetent, they don’t even realize their own incompetence. According to the Dunning-Kruger effect, people who are ignorant or unskilled in any area are too inept to notice, so they end up thinking they’re far more competent than they actually are.
Nice to know that there is actually a name for it.
Coffee inside again this morning!
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
You Want Pink Or Blue...?
It's sad to say that most everything in today's world is pretty much gender specific. It hasn't always been that way, but now it seems that nearly everything is, especially toys! From Listverse again, here is the article I found about that.
Pink is for girls and blue is for boys, right?
Wrong! In fact, gender-specific toys largely only date back to the 1980s. Throughout most of human history, children played with the same general toys and no one gave it much thought.
Then in the mid-1980s, toy catalogs started separating children’s playthings into categories and the divide began. This created the blue and pink toy aisles we know today (or knew until Toys “R” Us closed).
Actually, not everything is as divided by gender today as it once was. Back in the mid-1990s, a lot more products were split into gender-specific advertising campaigns than today. Even the first home computers came out as toys for men. Luckily, things are not that extreme anymore, but we have now created a society where everything from dolls to LEGO bricks to colors has a gender.
Way back in my early years, my sisters and I pretty much played with the same stuff and payed no attention. I mean, it's hard to make mud pies, sticks, and empty cardboard boxes gender specific...know what I mean?
Coffee in the kitchen again this morning!
Gender-Specific Toys
Pink is for girls and blue is for boys, right?
Wrong! In fact, gender-specific toys largely only date back to the 1980s. Throughout most of human history, children played with the same general toys and no one gave it much thought.
Then in the mid-1980s, toy catalogs started separating children’s playthings into categories and the divide began. This created the blue and pink toy aisles we know today (or knew until Toys “R” Us closed).
Actually, not everything is as divided by gender today as it once was. Back in the mid-1990s, a lot more products were split into gender-specific advertising campaigns than today. Even the first home computers came out as toys for men. Luckily, things are not that extreme anymore, but we have now created a society where everything from dolls to LEGO bricks to colors has a gender.
Way back in my early years, my sisters and I pretty much played with the same stuff and payed no attention. I mean, it's hard to make mud pies, sticks, and empty cardboard boxes gender specific...know what I mean?
Coffee in the kitchen again this morning!
Monday, November 12, 2018
The Disappearing Wife Mystery...!
Here is something that some of us may wish would happen. I wouldn't know because I'm single, ya understand. I can remember that there were times though...
In 1975, a man named Jackson Wright was driving with his wife from New Jersey to New York City. This required them to travel through the Lincoln Tunnel. According to Wright, who was driving, once through the tunnel he pulled the car over to wipe the windshield of condensation. His wife Martha volunteered to clean off the back window so they could more readily resume their trip. When Wright turned around, his wife was gone. He neither heard nor saw anything unusual take place, and a subsequent investigation could find no evidence of foul play. Martha Wright had just disappeared.
Now I'm certainly not insinuating that the husband did anything wrong, but this story just sounds a bit strange to me. Guess I'm just the suspicious type. BTW, this story came from Listverse.
Coffee in the kitchen this morning. A tad chilly outside.
Time Tunnel
In 1975, a man named Jackson Wright was driving with his wife from New Jersey to New York City. This required them to travel through the Lincoln Tunnel. According to Wright, who was driving, once through the tunnel he pulled the car over to wipe the windshield of condensation. His wife Martha volunteered to clean off the back window so they could more readily resume their trip. When Wright turned around, his wife was gone. He neither heard nor saw anything unusual take place, and a subsequent investigation could find no evidence of foul play. Martha Wright had just disappeared.
Now I'm certainly not insinuating that the husband did anything wrong, but this story just sounds a bit strange to me. Guess I'm just the suspicious type. BTW, this story came from Listverse.
Coffee in the kitchen this morning. A tad chilly outside.
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Another Sunday Off...!
I know this is going to come as a shock, but I am taking another day off today. In fact, I think that I will start taking Sundays off for a while. No particular reason, just wanted to try and cut back a little bit, ya know?
If nothing else this will give you some extra time to spend reading the funny papers, or the Sunday news. I'll be back on Monday, but starting today I'm going to be off on Sunday...OK? OK!
If nothing else this will give you some extra time to spend reading the funny papers, or the Sunday news. I'll be back on Monday, but starting today I'm going to be off on Sunday...OK? OK!
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Murder By Monkey...!
While a lot of folks think that monkeys are cute and funny, be aware that some of them can be very harmful to your health.
This might easily be the most serious case on the list. It involves a monkey kidnapping and later murdering a child in India. Reportedly, it has been fairly common for local monkeys to steal food and cause problems, but this was the first time that they took someone.
According to the child’s mother, the newborn was sleeping when the monkey grabbed and carried the boy away. Sadly, the monkey was too fast for the mother to catch. Later, the child was found dead behind the home where the monkey must have dropped him
Sort of takes the cute out of the equation, doesn't it? Monkeys are too much like evil little humans for my liking.
Coffee in the kitchen this morning. I'll share my bacon with ya'll!
The Monkey Who Kidnapped And Murdered A Child
Photo credit: The Independent
This might easily be the most serious case on the list. It involves a monkey kidnapping and later murdering a child in India. Reportedly, it has been fairly common for local monkeys to steal food and cause problems, but this was the first time that they took someone.
According to the child’s mother, the newborn was sleeping when the monkey grabbed and carried the boy away. Sadly, the monkey was too fast for the mother to catch. Later, the child was found dead behind the home where the monkey must have dropped him
Sort of takes the cute out of the equation, doesn't it? Monkeys are too much like evil little humans for my liking.
Coffee in the kitchen this morning. I'll share my bacon with ya'll!
Friday, November 9, 2018
Human Skin Book Binding...!
For today's topic of Freaky Friday, I have just the thing for ya...Anthropodermic bibliopegy. That actually means using human skin to bind books. Yes, it was a real thing and it's true that it seems a bit gruesome, at least to me.
The most famous example of Anthropodermic bibliopegy comes in the form of three books. These books belonged to Dr. John Stockton Hugh, who collected the skin from the thigh of a single female patient. Mary Lynch died under horrible parasitic conditions in 1869, a full 20 years before her skin made it on the binding of these three books. The books are about female health and reproductive systems. Although the books clearly state that the binding is made from human skin, historians are unsure why the doctor, at 23 years of age, decided to keep her skin and tan it. A popular theory is that doctors bound their books in the skin of their patients to immortalize them. The 19th-century doctors were surrounded by a mess of pain, confusion, and gore. In the book “The Birth of the Clinic”, the concept of a clinical gaze was first developed. A well-known phenomenon today, doctors became disassociated with the humanity of their patients. It is theorized that this led to a skew in ethics that resulted in the human skin being a revered binding instead of a perverse indulgence.
On the other side of the spectrum, the practice was seen as a punishment for criminals. During 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland, William Burke killed over 16 people to sell to doctors as cadavers. Burke was sentenced to death, hanged and dissected publically. His skin was used to bind the dissecting doctor’s pocketbook which is now stored in the Surgeons Hall Museum in Edinburgh. There are some books that historians can’t explain. ‘The Dance of Death’ was bound in human leather at the turn of the 19th century and contains stories and meditations on the subject of death. A book of French Erotica is bound with the skin of a woman’s breast and indeed, has a nipple on the cover.
Testing for these books for validity has only been possible in recent years. Out of 46 rumored books, a mere 18 have proven to be valid. DNA testing is impossible, but scientists can deduce if the books are made from homo sapiens by testing (among other things) collagen levels. The law on these books is simple. As long as they are not displayed as points of human interest, keeping them for private museum collections and study is acceptable. These books come from all over the world, but seem to be predominantly European.
I'm not sure I would want to have a book bound with the skin of a human. I think I'll stick with my Kindle books for now.
Coffee out on the patio, but if it starts to rain, we will move to the kitchen...OK?
The most famous example of Anthropodermic bibliopegy comes in the form of three books. These books belonged to Dr. John Stockton Hugh, who collected the skin from the thigh of a single female patient. Mary Lynch died under horrible parasitic conditions in 1869, a full 20 years before her skin made it on the binding of these three books. The books are about female health and reproductive systems. Although the books clearly state that the binding is made from human skin, historians are unsure why the doctor, at 23 years of age, decided to keep her skin and tan it. A popular theory is that doctors bound their books in the skin of their patients to immortalize them. The 19th-century doctors were surrounded by a mess of pain, confusion, and gore. In the book “The Birth of the Clinic”, the concept of a clinical gaze was first developed. A well-known phenomenon today, doctors became disassociated with the humanity of their patients. It is theorized that this led to a skew in ethics that resulted in the human skin being a revered binding instead of a perverse indulgence.
On the other side of the spectrum, the practice was seen as a punishment for criminals. During 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland, William Burke killed over 16 people to sell to doctors as cadavers. Burke was sentenced to death, hanged and dissected publically. His skin was used to bind the dissecting doctor’s pocketbook which is now stored in the Surgeons Hall Museum in Edinburgh. There are some books that historians can’t explain. ‘The Dance of Death’ was bound in human leather at the turn of the 19th century and contains stories and meditations on the subject of death. A book of French Erotica is bound with the skin of a woman’s breast and indeed, has a nipple on the cover.
Testing for these books for validity has only been possible in recent years. Out of 46 rumored books, a mere 18 have proven to be valid. DNA testing is impossible, but scientists can deduce if the books are made from homo sapiens by testing (among other things) collagen levels. The law on these books is simple. As long as they are not displayed as points of human interest, keeping them for private museum collections and study is acceptable. These books come from all over the world, but seem to be predominantly European.
I'm not sure I would want to have a book bound with the skin of a human. I think I'll stick with my Kindle books for now.
Coffee out on the patio, but if it starts to rain, we will move to the kitchen...OK?
Thursday, November 8, 2018
The Unlikely Spies...!
Ever since mankind has felt the need to separate into separate tribes or countries, there has been the almost compelling need to spy on one another. Why...who knows. I think you will agree, though, that these spies are questionable, at best.
Mossad is one of the most feared intelligence agencies on Earth, a sophisticated Israeli spy network that’s light-years ahead of its Middle Eastern counterparts—counterparts, incidentally, who believe Mossad is capable of controlling animals. Over the last decade, countries from Iran to Saudi Arabia have taken to arresting squirrels, pigeons, and even kestrels they believe are Mossad spies.
In 2007, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched an intense sting operation on the streets of Tehran that netted 14 enemy spies. It was the moment the belligerent Islamic republic had been waiting for: a brilliant PR coup against their enemy neighbors. Unfortunately, the international community’s newly acquired respect only lasted until they saw the captive “spies.” It turned out Iran had done nothing more than round up a group of squirrels.
With such a daft story, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a one-off—something to while away a slow news day. But animals being detained, imprisoned, and even tortured as spies is a bizarrely common occurrence in the modern Middle East. A year after the squirrel debacle, Iran managed to top itself by detaining and presumably executing two pigeons it accused of working for Israel. Perhaps sensibly, Israel declined to comment.
And it’s not just Ahmadinejad-era Iran that gets amusingly jumpy around animals. Over the years, both Sudan and Saudi Arabia have arrested vultures on espionage charges, while Egypt has previously insisted a killer shark found off its coast was a Mossad plant. Even normally sensible Turkey recently arrested a kestrel, although in this case the bird was later released back into the wild.
In short, Mossad’s enemies apparently fear them so much that they think they can control animals. However, before us Westerners start to feel too pleased with ourselves, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that our security services have been monitoring China’s scientific advances in controlling birds for a couple of years now. You know, just in case.
I picked up this article from a site called Knowledgenuts. The one thing I'm not surprised at is the fact that the U.S. has actually fallen into this mindtrap way of thinking, ya know?
Coffee out on the patio this morning, until the rain starts.
In A Nutshell
Mossad is one of the most feared intelligence agencies on Earth, a sophisticated Israeli spy network that’s light-years ahead of its Middle Eastern counterparts—counterparts, incidentally, who believe Mossad is capable of controlling animals. Over the last decade, countries from Iran to Saudi Arabia have taken to arresting squirrels, pigeons, and even kestrels they believe are Mossad spies.
The Whole Bushel
In 2007, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched an intense sting operation on the streets of Tehran that netted 14 enemy spies. It was the moment the belligerent Islamic republic had been waiting for: a brilliant PR coup against their enemy neighbors. Unfortunately, the international community’s newly acquired respect only lasted until they saw the captive “spies.” It turned out Iran had done nothing more than round up a group of squirrels.
With such a daft story, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a one-off—something to while away a slow news day. But animals being detained, imprisoned, and even tortured as spies is a bizarrely common occurrence in the modern Middle East. A year after the squirrel debacle, Iran managed to top itself by detaining and presumably executing two pigeons it accused of working for Israel. Perhaps sensibly, Israel declined to comment.
And it’s not just Ahmadinejad-era Iran that gets amusingly jumpy around animals. Over the years, both Sudan and Saudi Arabia have arrested vultures on espionage charges, while Egypt has previously insisted a killer shark found off its coast was a Mossad plant. Even normally sensible Turkey recently arrested a kestrel, although in this case the bird was later released back into the wild.
In short, Mossad’s enemies apparently fear them so much that they think they can control animals. However, before us Westerners start to feel too pleased with ourselves, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that our security services have been monitoring China’s scientific advances in controlling birds for a couple of years now. You know, just in case.
I picked up this article from a site called Knowledgenuts. The one thing I'm not surprised at is the fact that the U.S. has actually fallen into this mindtrap way of thinking, ya know?
Coffee out on the patio this morning, until the rain starts.
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