Relative Trouble

I have an uncle in the hospital who could use some prayer. The doctors "can't find" where he's bleeding internally. He wasn't expected to make it through the night two nights ago.

I can't help but wonder why they "can't find" the bleeding. "Computer, activate the emergency medical holographic program." "Please, state the nature of the medical emergency." "Doctor, this man is bleeding internally, but we 'can't find' it. What do you think?" "Hmm, it's right here. A Starfleet Academy, first-year medical student would have been able to see that instantly. I don't understand why you couldn't. And you call yourself a doctor?" 

Life would be so much better if we had Starfleet medical technology. Medicine is so primitive during this time period. Having my uncle in the hands of people who "can't find" the problem reminds me of my other relatives who have died at the hands of doctors. I had a first cousin who died after a doctor cut her internally and didn't fix it. I had another first cousin who died after a nurse started screaming at him and caused him to have a stroke. And, of course, my dad was euthanized when his insurance company no longer wanted to pay for his suddenly-expensive, medical care. After the murder and malpractice, I'm automatically suspicious about what's going on with my uncle, but I know I need to get a grip on feelings like that. Conspiracy theoryitis is a symptom of a culture on the verge of collapse.

When it comes to conspiracies, I have a little wisdom to impart. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Most conspiracies have no foundation. People in authority sometimes just do dumb things because they're incompetent. Never forget that people in authority are no different than the people you went to high school with. Frightening, isn't it, to think that the world is run by people like that.

Something else to consider is that Congress is composed of mostly lawyers. That's a degree that takes a lot of time and effort. At the end of the journey, law students know a lot about the law but not so much about life or other subjects. For instance, Congress is passing laws about areas of science, technology, etc., about which they have no understanding. While they were in law school, life passed them by. It wasn't long ago that a member of Congress was quoted in the press as saying the internet was a "series of tubes". He's not the only one who knows legal matters but has a profound lack of understanding of other areas. Frightening, isn't it, that the country is run by people like that.

Have a great weekend.

Let's Clean It Up

So, I avoid books with profanity. It would be better if authors put the extra minute into finding the right word or phrase instead of reverting to easy clichés, which is what profanity is. Kindle doesn't have a filter to clean that up. Is anyone thinking of the children? I started looking for a profanity filter after coming across a series that looked extremely interesting. I began reading the sample. At first it was little things like a d*mn or a h*ll, which in my opinion are so prevalent that they're becoming like darn and heck. By the end of Chapter 1, though, it got into offensive words. There's no ereader that I could find that filters offensive language. Long story short, if I want to read that series, I'll have to break the DRM and edit the book myself. Huh.

During my search for a filtering ereader or app, I ran across some people who were violently opposed to filtering anything. Some were calling it the author's moral right to use profanity. That makes no sense. Consider this. Imagine you're black, and the book you're reading keeps using the n word. Other than that it's a great book. I think you should be able to filter it. A lot of books are really good except for some bad language. Imagine you have children, and they want to read things that are okay except for the profanity. I think parents should be able to fix that problem. I should be able to fix this, too, especially when it's so over the top and amateur.

I ran into a discouraging video on the French front. It was teenagers. Their slang was largely incomprehensible. Other videos are like that, too. There might be one word in a sentence that changes the meaning of it. I was thinking about taking the B2 exam in the summer instead of autumn, but every time I hit something like the teenagers video, it feels like hitting a wall.

On the other hand my reading is getting better, although that YA book I mentioned the other day was a lot to chew on. I struggled with far too many words. However, it turns out it's harder to read than Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The problem was the YA translator was using his thesaurus in ways I'd not seen before along with archaic words. The publisher put a stop to that in book 2 of that series. 

A while back I was going through 20,000 Leagues, when Amazon did a software update on my Kindle. When it restarted, it had wiped out my place in the book. I searched but couldn't find it. I put it on the back burner, and every once in a while I'll read a few screens to try to find the last page I read. I did that during the hard YA book and found it so much easier. Jules Verne is pretty straightforward in comparison. I find that encouraging. It used to be harder to read. I've been reading more of it on the side. The difficulty now is all the fish and plant names he uses. I usually ignore them and keep going. Lists of out of an encyclopedia add nothing.

Have a great weekend.

Being Prepared

I felt a bit of dread at coming upon this article, which warns of product shortages. Because of the giant container ship that was trapped in the Suez Canal and a shortage of containers themselves, shipping will be disrupted again. The warning that affected me the most was toilet paper. Well, suffice it to say I'm not going through that again. I never ran out last year, but it was a stressful time indeed. To prevent a recurrence of such an ordeal, my order of a 32-pack of Charmin is scheduled to arrive today. Combined with what I already have on hand, I should be well set for the rest of the calendar year. Take that, Forces of Darkness!

On the French front, I've been doing reading, listening and a reading/listening combo with testing. I think I have a handle on it as far as my new routine goes. It interferes with writing, but if I can get the right French certification, I could do translation work. I have to go with what pays. Nevertheless, I've been getting a little done on the writing front and expect to increase the amount I'm doing, which has been nothing to brag about.

Part of what I'm working on will be a project with more of a commercial appeal. Most of what I've done until now has fit into a certain niche. I need something that the wider market will embrace. At the same time I need to get the rest of Messengers out the door, including the space novel set in the time period when Kayley went into the future to save the miners. The goal now is to figure out how to get a writing routine that juggles both the commercial project and Messengers. And maybe juggles Avatars, too. There's never enough time for everything.

Have a great weekend.

Tired

I'm a little too worn out to do a blog post today. In fact, I'm taking the rest of the month off.

Have a great weekend.

Oh, Canada

Last week I neglected to mention a video I watched on https://apprendre.tv5monde.com/. It was about secessionist sentiments and talked about some region in Italy that wanted more autonomy, etc. The woman in the video lives in Italy but was originally from Quebec, Canada. It's hard to describe, but she sounded like a country bumpkin/hillbilly/redneck. Imagine a French person speaking with a Hollywood fake Southern accent. It was a lot like that. TV5Monde's videos have speakers from various French-speaking countries. The difficulty of understanding them varies. The Canadian woman was understandable, but she sounded so weird.

Fun fact: As of the end of 2020, Canada had an estimated population of 38 million people. In comparison, California in 2020 had an estimated population of 40 million. Isn't the mind blowing? Canada is smaller than California. Canada is so big on the map, I've always assumed it had a lot of people living there. I was so wrong. Even small Mexico has about 128 million people.

I think California should secede and become its own country. If it wanted to take Oregon, Washington and Nevada with it, that would be perfectly okay. If Canada can make it in the world and stand on its own two feet, so can those western states. They should secede right now.

A few years ago, I thought of something to tell children like my niece and perhaps certain adults about Canada. It goes like this. Canada is so far north and is so close to the North Pole that the cities there are actually under ice that's a kilometer thick. (You have to say kilometer.) The ice slowly melts on the underside of what are essentially giant domes and drips down to form the rivers there, but the continual snowfall keeps the ice layer above the cities from ever melting. It's so dense that the bubbles that normally make ice cloudy get forced out. That's why pictures from Canadian cities have the sun in them. It's shining through the clear ice. After every snow the Canadian Department of Transportation sends out Zambonis to melt/refreeze the top layer to keep the ice clear enough for the sun to be seen. Airports have special corridors in the ice that planes have to fly through to get in and out. A lot of highways run through huge ice tunnels. The ice layer in Canada is so clear that you don't notice it in pictures, but once you're there in person, it's obvious that the pictures rely on an optical illusion.

Have a great weekend.

Homework

Instead of a blog this week, I want you to imagine a topic you really enjoy reading about. If I had blogged about that, what would I have said? Reach deep inside yourself and create a first, second and third paragraph. Include juicy tidbits and interesting facts. Think of a web site you would want to link to that topic. What draws you to that topic? Include little details that would make the blog fascinating and really hold your interest.

As part of my quest for a B2 or C1 certificate in French, I've been doing B2 French exercises on https://apprendre.tv5monde.com/. You watch a video and then do exercises. At first it was a chore, but as I got used to it, it became okay. I'm learning stuff American news doesn't cover. Last night I watched two videos in particular that I completely bombed the test on. Instead of answers, the answers were questions. It felt so abstract, especially the one for which I didn't know the topic. Sometimes, it doesn't matter how well I understand the video. The test part can be tricky with its synonyms and cultural obscurities.

Last night I also started a new book in French after finishing the absolutely dismal John Grisham book that made me quit John Grisham novels. It was The Chamber. The French title would be translated as Death Row. It was a piece of crap. At one point I set it aside and read an Isaac Asimov novel then later started it up again. It was about a lawyer trying to save a man on death row. He engages in unethical behavior, etc. At the end the man dies anyway. The whole thing was an ultra-liberal, bleeding heart liberal attack on the death penalty while almost completely ignoring the victims. As I read it, I kept asking, What about the victims?! The murderer was portrayed as noble, heroic and courageous. The attitude was that it's a darn shame about those victims, but the death penalty is the "real crime". Uh, no. We actually need to expand the death penalty to include child molesters. Well, that's it. I'm done with Grisham. I never read him back in the day anyway. The Firm and the Pelican Brief weren't bad, but I want politics out of my educational entertainment. I tried Grisham because I've been trying to read things I don't normally read. Maybe my horizons are broad enough already.

The new book I started is much better. Except for the onslaught of vocabulary and unusual expressions, that is. I'm having to constantly look things up and puzzle out the meanings of odd expressions. Combine that with the two failed video exercises, and it was almost a double whammy last night. But every new author brings a new set of vocabulary. If I can get up to speed on that, it should be much smoother sailing. The expressions I'm not sure about. I may have to learn to live with those. Maybe that's okay. It's enough of a page-turner to keep going to find out what happens next. One thing that disturbed me was having to look up a word that wasn't in my French dictionary or translatable by Google. https://www.le-dictionnaire.com/ told me it was a rare word. In YA? No, don't do that to me.

Have a great weekend.

Another Longevity Article

I posted an article the other day titled Human ageing process biologically reversed in world first. The treatment, which was putting a person in a hyperbaric chamber for 90 minutes a day for five days a week for three months while breathing 100% oxygen, increased telomere length and decreased senescent cell count. I was recommended another article called End of Ageing and Cancer? Scientists Unveil Structure of the 'Immortality' Enzyme Telomerase. Though the recommendation was new, this one dates to 2018 and relates how scientists were able to image telomerase as it was working. It was a breakthrough that should lead to more anti-ageing treatments. The article is a bit sciencey but not overwhelmingly so. The final paragraph is an important one to read.

The challenge today is to live long enough to live forever. But hang on. We see the word immortality thrown around a lot. My opinion is that that's nonsense. It's not just possible but inevitable that, short of divine intervention, we're going to cure ageing and all diseases. I concede that willingly. However, just because people won't die of old age or disease does not mean we'll be immortal. Healthy people will still die from accidents, murder, etc. We'll even be able to change our bodies to be highly resistant to injuries. Fall off a five-story building? No problem. Breathe underwater? No problem. Etc. That's still not immortality. No matter what we do, people will still be able to die.

Here's my test of immortality. If a person's body cannot survive being thrown into the sun, that person is not immortal. No matter how many times people use the word immortal, if it doesn't pass the sun test, it's not immorality.

Still. The possibility of being able to live indefinitely is awesome. Indefinitely is a long, long time.

Have a great weekend.