Some Blog Site

Certain words have a connotation of a level or degree of the idea. For example: worthless is worth-less, the quality is “worth” and the level or degree is low. Another example: eventful is event-full, the action is “event” and the level is high.

I like to take words at face value. And the same with suffixes. The suffix -less should mean less or lower, -some should be medium, and -ful (or -full) should mean more or higher.

And then, because English is so convoluted, a lot of words use those suffixes in the wrong way.

“Awesome” is the one I like for an example of how wrong it is. For this set of words, the quality of awe can have three modifiers to indicate little awe (unimpressive), much awe (impressive), or a moderate amount of awe (umm, pressive). In my world, these would be aweless, aweful, and awesome. But for some reason, “awesome” means full of awe, and “awful” does not mean full of awe, and no one uses “aweless”.

Other candidate: “ruthless” which means lacking ruth. If we take “ruth” to mean “pity”, then someone who is very compassionate should be called “ruthful”. And an average person could be ruthsome.

Another one: “winsome” which means a high level of attractive appearance. It should be “winful”, and someone ugly or mean could be called “winless”.

There are other words with the wrong suffix, but I’ll leave the rest of those as an exercise for the reader.

Except this last one, which doesn’t fix the category because it’s a prefix.

“Extraordinary” – technically, “extra” means outside of, like extraterrestrial. But my first thought is usually that it should mean “more ordinary”, like an extra helping of ordinariness. What I’d like to see is the use of its opposite “intraordinary”. And while we’re at it, how about some extramural sports in college?

I was inspired to write this after reading a column in World magazine. That column had referenced the quote “It takes a village to raise a child.” and what stuck with me from the column is what it takes to make a village.

What does it take to make a village? It takes families.

For a healthy village – one that would do a good job in helping to raise a child – you need healthy families. “Healthy” as in emotional and social health, not physical health. What happens if your village is full of dysfunctional families? You wouldn’t want your child raised by that village.

I connect this to the concept of herd immunity. “Herd immunity” in the realm of diseases and vaccinations has to do with if a large enough percentage of a population is immune to a disease then the disease won’t spread throughout the population.

If you replace “disease” with “dysfunction” and “physical health” with “societal health” then that’s the picture I was getting in my mind of what I wanted to convey. If most of the families in the village are traditional families then the children will be “immune” to a lot of problems that befall society (plenty of citations out there, here’s one).

People want to live in a good neighborhood, but if they’re not trying to be a good family and also good neighbors, then it’s not going to stay a good neighborhood. It’s like the saying about traffic: you’re not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic.

You could keep going with this concept: what does it take to make a good family? and then what does it take to make a good whatever that answer was? Etc.

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2019 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2019 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

Normally the baby names are released for Mother’s Day, but this year they blamed COVID-19 for a delay. They just published the 2019 names at the end of September, so now they are here on my site. Last year’s champion, Jackson is again the most popular boy’s name in the US but losing ground to Liam and Noah. Aiden is still losing popularity.
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again. It’s holding strong, but last year’s 3rd place winner – Emma – took a nosedive this year.

Some Stats

• The top 4 names for the boys are the same, spot #5 last year William dropped way down, allowing Lucas to move up.
• The top 6 names for the girls are the same as 2018, it’s just that Emma and Amelia switched spots, as did Ava and Isabella.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 2.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, but at number 4.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (269/1000 vs. 180/1000 alternates)
• Kayson once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 8.
• For the girls, Adaline, Madalyn and Layla are tied at 6 variations, and Amaya at lost one and is now at 5.
• Sophia is still the favorite for the girls, but the gap is closing. Spots 2 and 3 increased their count last year, so Sophia’s run at the top may have an end in sight. There’s still a lot of room between 1 and 2, so that end may be farther rather than closer.

2019 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Up until now, most of my YouTube watching has been things like car repair examples. And then my kids would borrow my phone and my YouTube recommendations switched over to Dude Perfect. That wave ended and now my phone and laptop recommend Minecraft videos to me.

But I’ve discovered a part of YouTube that I like watching for myself – Dry Bar Comedy.

Apparently they have an app too, as their videos all end with a plug for that. But I’m holding to my philosophy of not downloading any apps to my phone, so they’ll have to be content with my watching their videos on a website.

Side note: YouTube did something recently so that now I can watch videos only with my phone in landscape mode. YouTube never had a problem with portrait before, but something changed on their end because I know nothing changed on my end. At least there’s still a way for me to watch YouTube. Other sites, such as Vimeo, do not work at all on a stock iPhone 5s.

Back to Dry Bar Comedy: I appreciate their mission to provide clean comedy. They want it to be family friendly. But that doesn’t mean all the acts are good. I do believe all the comedians comply with the letter of the law – no profanity. But in my book there’s more to family-friendly content than avoiding certain words – there are certain topics as well. And most of the people on Dry Bar Comedy seem to fulfill the letter and the spirit of the law. To me, the spirit avoids things like potty humor.

There are some acts that cover some marital topics and are done well (funny and not vulgar) but may be a gray area. For example, those would be fine for a 40-year-old married guy to watch, but would he want to watch it with his kids? That’s a judgment call for each family. But at least with Dry Bar you have a much higher chance of finding something to watch with the family.

There are a variety of styles also. My favorite for style and content so far is Daniel Eachus. Also very good is Jeff Allen. Bob Smiley is funny but his style is a little too hyper for my tastes. And there was one guy who had some funny stuff but his style was distracting – he kept looking down and to the side as if he was reading some notes.

There was only one guy (Andy F) so far that I just stopped the video and went on to someone else. His first bit was amusing (British and Southern accents) but then he got into potty topics (with hoarders and cats) and I started thinking “that’s gross” rather than “that’s funny” so I decided not to waste my time with him since there are plenty other things to do that I wouldn’t regret watching.

Now it is time for another PSALM.

Gamma made this one, like last time. This one was titled “Cool Guy” by him.

Now only 144 more to go.

I took the younger two kids raspberry picking, as is a somewhat tradition around here.

They actually did a good job picking berries and filling up their baskets. They each got a basket, as did I. So we ended up with 3 baskets full of raspberries.

Bonus points for noticing the golden raspberry in the basket.

The boys preferred picking the golden raspberries, so their baskets were about half golden half red. Mine was the one pictured above – only one golden berry.

The kids are old enough now so that they pick well and don’t make messes. The 3 baskets were just under $40 – that’s at $5/lb, up from $3.50 about 10 years ago. With that many berries, the boys ate a bunch for lunch and dinner that day, we made jam and canned 8 small jars of it, and froze over a quart of whole berries. Eventually our own berry patch will become larger and more productive and we’ll get our berries for free.

One fun distraction the boys had while picking was a “baby mouse”.

It said it was either a full-size mouse or baby something-else, because it was too big for a baby mouse. Gamma and I thought it was too small for a baby groundhog. I think we settled on something like a mole. He just sat there kind of shaking and not doing much else.

Now on to the pro tip promised in the headline.

A lot of times when people declare something to be a pro tip, that’s just a catchy way of saying they have a method that works well. But as a former professional raspberry picker, I can say this is an actual pro tip.

Pro Tip: Look under the branches

Here’s an example from this trip. Gamma asked me how I was able to pick so many more berries than they did. So I showed him how to find berries. Most people just walk along and look for berries and stop and pick when they see some.

Here’s a shot of what the plants look like as you walk along and look at them.

How many raspberries do you see there? One, maybe two.

What do I see there? Lots of potential. I reached down and grabbed a plant at random and lifted it up and showed Gamma.

The berries like to hide out under the leaves. It’s a pretty good camouflage.

Why don’t more people do this?

1. The plants lean over due to the weight of the berries, so you must bend down in order to reach them. A lot of adults don’t like to bother their backs, so they skip this part.
2. The raspberry plants have small thorns, so they are pokey when you grab them to lift them. A lot of people don’t like to handle minor pain, so they skip this part. My advice: don’t grab the plants roughly – a gentle lift will make it so the thorns don’t puncture your skin. Also, get a leaf in between your hand and the stalk.
3. There are lots of bees about, as most fruit-growing operations have beehives to keep the plants pollinated. Many people are afraid of bees, so they skip this part. Yes, the bees are there, but you can bump into them and they don’t mind.

On that last point: I’ve taught my kids that honeybees and bumblebees are friendly – just don’t hurt them and don’t threaten the hive and you’ll be fine. I showed them how you can pet a bumblebee when it’s on a flower – we’ve each successfully done so. Not that I want them actively seeking out bees to pet, but just trying to teach them appropriate responses. No reason to freak out if a bee flies near you. Now a hornet or yellowjacket on the other hand – look down, look up, make sure there aren’t others.

In case you were wondering about my former career picking raspberries, your wait is over. In high school, a summer job I had was at a raspberry farm that offered both you-pick and pre-picked raspberries for sale. The pre-picked berries cost a little more per pint, and that was because I (and some other local students) were paid to pick them. And our pay was by the pint, not hourly, so the incentive was there to be productive.

Maybe a better term than “pre-picked” is “already-picked”, or just “picked”. I’m not a fan of the pre- prefix being attached to things that aren’t actually before. What are the berries before they’re picked? They’re still on the plant. They weren’t selling berries on the plant – they were selling picked berries. Or maybe we-picked, because it pairs better with you-pick (or U-pick if you are frugal with the letters on your sign).

A few months ago, we had the announcement of the 2020 NFL schedule, but I forgot because I was distracted by world events. Now that we know who will play whom and when, we can start predicting wins and losses, just before the season starts.

I keep my predictions over at Some Fun Site. View results of previous football seasons.

2019 Summary

Last year, I predicted that

• Atlanta Falcons = 5-11
• Cleveland Browns = 8-8
• Denver Broncos = 3-13
• Jacksonville Jaguars = 16-0
• Philadelphia Eagles = 11-5

How they actually did was

• Atlanta Falcons = 7-9
• Cleveland Browns = 6-10
• Denver Broncos = 7-9
• Jacksonville Jaguars = 6-10
• Philadelphia Eagles = 9-7

Well, I got all the digits correct for the Jaguars, just not in the right order. For the other teams, I at least got winning season or not winning season right, for what that’s worth.

Read the rest of this entry »