Some Blog Site

It’s interesting how much difference context makes. For example, consider these slogans:

• Keep your laws off my body
• My body my choice
• Politicians make bad doctors

What does that make you think of?

What if I said the context is Covid-19 and government-mandated wearing of masks?

The interesting part to me is that the two sides of those slogans flip if you change the context from abortion to quarantine.

Talk about public health and social distance and masks and shutting down gatherings, and all of a sudden the conservatives are the ones saying

• Keep your laws off my body
• My body my choice
• Politicians make bad doctors

and the liberals are welcoming laws and executive orders that limit what they can do with their bodies and they are trusting politicians to make good medical decisions.

Of course that’s a generalization and there are exceptions, but in general that’s how it appears these days.

So it seems to me those slogans are not true because people don’t believe them across the board. Also, “if you don’t like masks then don’t get one.”

P.S. I was going to submit this as an idea to the Babylon Bee, but I couldn’t find anywhere to send it. Their contact form has a dropdown list of reasons to contact them but the glaring omission of “article ideas” made me think they did that on purpose.

I would have reformatted it first – something like “Conservatives and liberals are engaged in negotiations for who gets to use which slogans. The initial proposal was to have the conservatives return ‘My body my choice’ on June 1 and retain ‘Politicians make bad doctors’ throughout the summer, but talks have stalled over ‘Keep your laws off my body’.”

I didn’t fully write the article, as you can see, but it’s mostly there.

I noticed some people were trying to use the German accenterator to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. The problem is that Arnold is not German, and he doesn’t sound like the stereotypical German.

So I went ahead and created an accenterator page for everyone’s favorite Austrian farmer. Go visit the Austrian accent page to try the accent.

One thing I noticed is there are many similarities between The Ahnold and a Boston accent. Try each of them with a phrase like ‘smart park your car in Harvard yard’ and see how close they are.

So why doesn’t Arnold sound like he’s from Boston? I think it’s mostly the tone of voice. That’s one of the drawbacks of written English – no tones. Say that phrase with a lower, more even tone and it’s Arnold. Say that same phrase with a higher, brighter tone and it’s Bostonian.

For those of you keeping track, you were expecting this week’s post to discuss the most popular baby names of 2019. I know I certainly was.

But, alas, that is yet another effect of the coronavirus – no more baby name lists until further notice. Don’t blame me – that was the decision of the Social Security Administration.

Here is their reason for not fulfilling their annual tradition: “Out of respect and honor for all people and families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the announcement of the 2019 most popular baby names is being rescheduled to a to-be-determined date. ”

Now there are several reasons that would have made sense to me – reduced staff, higher priorities at this time, etc. – but “out of respect and honor”? That does not make sense to me. How are people honored by not being able to see what names are popular? Maybe some medical workers are pregnant and want to check their possible names against the list – how are they respected by withholding the list?

I just don’t get it. Why that reason? Did they not want to tell us the real reason they don’t have the list?

Anyway, my annual post of the real most popular baby names is postponed until the SSA agrees to release their list.

I was inspired by this FoxTrot comic strip

to figure out exactly how many horsepower would be the equivalent of 350 elephantpower.

My answer: 2800 hp.

But then I got to thinking “What other animal-power could there be?” So I came up with a list. And made it into a web page, so that you could find the equivalent of the power of various animals. For example, a 2009 VW Rabbit actually has about 71,000 rabbitpower.

Anyway, head on over to Some Fun Site and try the Animal Power Converter to figure out how other animals compare to horses.

I will note that Bill Amend must have done his research, because as far as I can tell, the elephant is the most powerful land animal. A blue whale would theoretically dwarf the elephant in terms of horsepower, but I kept the list to land animals.

When comparing animals, remember that power is a function of force and distance and time. So an ox might be able to generate a lot of force, but it is not very speedy so it has a low power rating. And a cheetah is very fast, but it can’t move a lot of weight at that speed so it also has a low power number. A transmission could help in each case – give the ox some higher gears and give the cheetah some lower gear.

And if there’s an animal you want added to the list, please leave a comment here.

A while back I posted some information about Tree Climbers Guild, although they might not appreciate that I capitalized their band name here.

I’m taking this opportunity to point out that their songs are now on YouTube. Feel free to enjoy some of the sounds of my college days.

Tree Climbers Guild album

I know people have already done all the coronavirus comparisons to Disney’s Tangled, but I think our governor is filling her role too well. She compares quite easily to Mother Gothel.

And for those of you who aren’t familiar with Tangled, how about Stockholm syndrome? Think about it – a captor (Whitmer) keeps innocent people captive (Michiganders who aren’t sick) and tells them it’s for their own good and they believe her.

We are supposed to help this COVID-19 die down so we don’t get a second wave? That’s vague enough that it is always true. A second wave inevitable no matter how long you postpone, so give us information about how we’ll know it’s safe enough. Something more concrete than “trust me”.

Similarly, how flat a curve is flat enough? The growth rate has tapered off, the daily new cases have been on the decline for some time now. We were supposed to stay home to flatten the curve. Without a clear definition of when the curve is flat enough, I say it is. If you disagree, please let me know why Michigan hospitals are closing and laying off their workers.

Finally, why not let people work, who can work by themselves? Like lawn services, surveyors, some contractors, etc. “But science says social distancing works…” Sure, and if the point is to prevent person-to-person interaction, why did the governor ban surveyors from working? They walk in fields and forests alone, taking measurements. The same could be said about the guy who mows our neighbor’s lawn by himself, or at least he would if he could.

Anyway, here are some images that illustrate our dear leader’s decisions.

Some of our kids’ teachers sent out a link to a site that we could use to keep up on grammar lessons while schools are prohibited from meeting. It is called No Red Ink. It appears they are thorough in that their website promos display good grammar.

I half expected the marketing copy to have the common error of matching the verb with the nearest text rather than the actual subject – but it didn’t so I’m impressed. In case you’re wondering, the subject is one school district so the correct verb is uses to match the singular subject. The common mistake is to take the closest noun (2 school districts) and match the verb to that.

I also noticed they use the Oxford comma, so that makes me happy. I haven’t seen one of their actual lessons, so I can’t vouch for the completely, but their first impression was a good one.