Well, Same To You, Chicken!

What did they ever do to be called “Jerk Spices”?

I guess they were mean to their Cardamom.   

That makes sense.   It just seems a little mean that a mixture of mostly allspice and scotch bonnet peppers would be so nonchalantly referred to as "Jerk."  We live in an era where saying mean things and bullying are considered bad, and yet, we allow this type of spice discrimination to occur.  

Also, am I the only one who, when saying the word "Spice" thinks I'm actually saying "Space" with a lousy English accent? 

It Was Baroque, And He Fixed It

In a bit of Revisionist History, Leopold Mozart wanted his son to become a nice, quiet lawyer

Well, at least this time, all the people involved in your Revisionist History are dead, so we won't get sued.  

Long ago, in a quiet little town in Austria...

Salzberg was a pretty large city, and was part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, but go on.

A father was hard at work quietly preparing lesson plans for his position as a teacher.  This man's name was Leopold Mozart, whose son Wolfgang, had shown a particular affinity for music.  Like all parents, Leopold disapproved of young Wolfgang's musical choices, having been known to shout "Wolfgang, will you turn down that blasted orchestra?" at all hours of the night.  Little did he know that what he was listening to, the "noise" of its day, would be later known as "Symphony No 1 in E Flat Major," the first symphonic composition in Wolfgang's long career as a classical composer.  This near-constant battle began when the younger Mozart was a mere 8 years old. 

Over the next 7 years, Wolfgang would compose 12 more symphonies, each drawing more and more ire from his father, who promised to take his son's clavier away, later proved to be an idle threat.  Leopold would often try to draw young Wolfgang's attention away from music towards what he claimed to be a more noble pursuit, the rule of law.  His motives were misguided, of course, merely trying to have a quiet night at home without, what he called, "all that racket" coming from the child's room. 

Fortunately for us all, Leopold's methods were for naught, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart went on to become one of the greatest classical composers of all time.  Sadly, Wolfgang never did gain the respect of his father, who for years to come, would occasionally bring a handful of Baroque musicians to the house to play Bach compositions for his son, claiming "See, son...now THAT'S what real music sounds like." 

       

I Don't Want This By My Food

Those crazy “Kidz” and their compost…

Yeah, they're always out there with their...wait, what?

I'm not entirely sure what it was I was looking at in the grocery store not long ago, but there it was, big as life.  Sitting in the middle of the produce section was a stack of bags with the label "Kidz Compost."  As much as I know kids love a good compost pile, and learning about the joys of worm crap, this just didn't seem like the greatest product idea.  

Also factor in that I'm copying the "Kidz" part verbatim, and you can see that some stuffed suit at the company decided to add an edgy youthful flair by spelling "Kids" with a "Z."  Because you know, those nutty kids these days, they're either spelling things with Zs so they look cool, or else they're too dumb or preoccupied to care about spelling things properly.  Neither Would Surprise Me.

While I'm at it, I may as well tell you another story from that same shopping trip.  I noticed a bunch of signs posted around the meat section advertising the "Manager's Specials" of the day.  Every last one of them ended with the phrase "WHILE SUPLY'S LAST.[sic]"  For those of you who don't know what that little [sic] thing means, you probably also don't see anything wrong with the rest of the sign, so you are not my target audience.  Go read something. 

Going Out Of Words

Whenever an audio book gets to Chapter 11, I’m surprised that it keeps going

But then the rest of the book is read with the oversight of a judge?  

So today's Sametime Status continues my foray into Literature Made Easy, with an amusing comment on narration.  Most books are broken into chapters, though I'm not always sure why.  Different authors define their chapters differently, so books like "At Swim - Two Birds" has only one chapter (Still called "Chapter 1" while "Under The Dome" has chapters that are only a couple sentences long which is at least part of the reason the book is over 1000 pages.  (28 Hours in Audio Book Form, in case you were wondering)  

When reading the book aloud for an audio book, the narrator will generally quote everything verbatim, including reading off the chapter numbers.  It's a bit of a distraction, I'll admit, but a necessary evil for the convenience of not having to actually read the thing myself.  

When this happens, there is a pause in the narration, followed by the voice calling out "Chapter 2" or whatever the chapter number is.  I'm always amused when it gets to 11 because, in my mind at least, Chapter 11 has an entirely different meaning.  I immediately think of the bankruptcy code in which Chapter 11 refers to a type of Bankruptcy proceeding in which a business is allowed to stay in business with protection from creditors, but under court supervision.  I know this because Wikipedia knows this, not because my business is failing.  I also don't have a business. 

Trolling Is Fun!

Goal For Today:  Convince somebody that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, but only in the southern hemisphere 

I really don't think anybody would fall for this...would they?  

A wise person once said, "Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."  But then, the internet crapped all over it and attributed the same quote to many different people, including Confucius, Socrates, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and Mark Twain.  If there's one thing the Internets have done, it's to increase people's awareness of the stupidity around them.  

There are videos of people getting hurt doing stupid things, which you used to have to put up with a half hour of Bob Saget to view now available 24/7.  There are the Yahoo Answers pages which exist for trolling, pointing out bad grammar, and cheating on homework.  There's Wikipedia.  And of course, there is Social Media which allows people to display to the entire word Just How Dumb They Are.  You look at things like this on the internets and you start to realize that you've given the world FAR too much credit for actually having some awareness of the world around them.

Some People Take Advantage Of This and that's to their credit.  They've figured out a way to potentially profit from people not knowing or understanding much.  (For the record, the trick to that video is ALL in how the water is poured into the basin, it has nothing to do with the Coriolis Effect.)  Some people also just troll in order to derive only pleasure from the stupidity of others.  It can be Remarkably Effective.  

So, I propose a troll.  Everyone's task today is to go out and find a sucker and convince them that the earth rotates the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere.  It should be remarkably easy...just explain to them that since the southern hemisphere is upside down, the directions are reversed.  That's why the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.  

Please let me know how it goes. 

Matter Of Perspective

I don’t think it follows, therefore, that if there is no gain, there is no pain

 I don't know...I don't think you gain much if I punch you, but it doesn't hurt me at all. 

So today's Sametime Status is a play on the old-timey phrase "No Pain, No Gain."  Taken to its illogical conclusion, pain and gain are mutually inclusive, such that to achieve gain, you must endure pain.  

In reality, this isn't always true.  People achieve things all the time without pain involved, and there are painful things that result in no gain...falling off the roof for example. 

Please tell me this is based on a true story.

Unfortunately for the sake of entertainment, it's not based on reality.  I didn't fall off the roof.  Sorry to disappoint.

I Wanted To Listen To The Birds Anyway

Pro Tip:  Transmitters use battery power

You know...I love when you do stupid things on a Thursday.  We get to spend the entire weekend thinking about what an idiot you can be.  Refreshing. 

Today's Sametime Status is not another in the long line of "Jeremy Is A Genius" messages, but more of a cautionary tale which can be told for future generations who find themselves in a very specific set of circumstances.  

So not long ago, I purchased a speaker which can clip to the handlebars of a bicycle.  This speaker has a wireless connection to a small transmitter which plugs into the proprietary connecter found on an MP3 player made by the only company arrogant enough to put a proprietary connector on an MP3 player.  We'll go ahead and leave that company nameless, but suffice to say, if you listen to your music on this device once a day, canonically speaking, you'll never have to go to the doctor. 

The idea is, you can broadcast your MP3s to this speaker and listen to music as you ride without wearing headphones, since it's a remarkably bad idea to be riding a bike with headphones on. 

Important safety tip, thanks Jeremy.  

Well, the problem we run into with this setup is that the transmitter uses battery power from the MP3 player to transmit.  One would think this is pretty basic and self explanatory, but sometimes things fall through the cracks.  I turned off the speaker attached to the bike and turned off the MP3 player, leaving the transmitter connected.  At the time, I figured this was good enough, since it would no longer have anything to transmit.  Problem, of course is that the transmitter doesn't know or care if it's broadcasting anything...it just goes along with its signal, pulling battery power from the mp3 player.  I get to the trail yesterday and turn on the speaker, then click on the MP3 player only to have it stare at me blankly, the battery having been run dry.  I got to spend my entire quiet ride wondering what exactly made me think that the battery would still be full.