Recent Comments

1. about 8 hours ago on Non Sequitur

   But it really doesn’t. Many of our grade schools start at 8 am and get out a 3pm; others are actually on shifts because there are too many kids to go at the same time. And we now have lighted fields and indoor arenas for organized sports.

   Kids don’t play outside after school because they are going to babysitters/daycare/after-school activities because the parents are still at work. Maybe office workers still work “9 to 5” [although my office jobs tended to be more 8 to 5:30; but shops, factories, etc. have multiple shifts, many of which are rotating so workers work a couple of weeks on each [e.g., 8 hours 7 to 3; then 3 to 11; then 11 to 7]. And farmers and ranchers work with the sun because that is what their animals and crops do. And our circadian rhythms do as well. Circadian rhythm is our 24-hour internal clock that dictated multiple processes in the body, including alertness or sleepiness, appetite, energy level, and body temperature.

   The sun doesn’t shine for an extra hour just because we call it 8 instead of 7. But it is darker when we get up, meaning we get less light exposure in the morning and get more light exposure in the evenings. We go to bed and fall asleep later, which disrupts our typical sleep and work pattern and can lead to chronic sleep loss.

2. 1 day ago on Matt Davies

   Maybe if we had recognized the ‘dominos’ following the Russian revolution tand beyond, we wouldn’t have had the USSR, the Cold War, and the current situation.

   Maybe if we had noticed the ‘dominos’ in 1939, at least part of WWII might have been avoided.

3. 1 day ago on Non Sequitur

   That’s essentially why time zones were invented — the noon with sun directly overhead thing. People have always kept track of time by the local movement of the sun [moon and stars] and when we started moving long distances we realized that local-time “high noon” was different in different places. In 1883, there were over 144 different local times in North America.

   Sir Sanford Fleming, an engineer for Canadian railways, realized the problem when he missed a train in 1876. The expansion of rail systems meant that travelers could sometimes arrive at an earlier local time than the one they had left. There was also vast confusion involved with coordinating train schedules, leading to collisions and confusion. Fleming realized that having a standard time with hour variations would make it easier to move and transport goods by rail — and proposed a system that divided the globe into 24 time-zones, each spaced 15 degrees of longitude apart. In 1883, the major railroad companies began to operate on a coordinated system of four time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific In 1918, a 5th time zone was added: Alaskan.

   Daylight Savings Time has nothing do to with the time zones. It was used during WWI and WWII to save energy by having more [factory] work hours in daylight and was later implemented for economic reasons — to allow more shopping and leisure-entertainment time. But now that stores are open well into the night [and online shopping can be done anytime], there is really no good reason to keep flipping back and forth.

4. 2 days ago on Non Sequitur

   And look at GB today — still trying to maintain the mindset. The British/European culture of the Renaissance on was great if you were upperclass . It wasn’t so great for others. The haves [inherited wealth and titles, connections to royalty and the state religion] and the have-nots [servant class, working class, merchants] were rigidly defined. And, while it didn’t actually detail a “color” code, it was quite obvious that specific skin tones were not acceptable.

   The world has gained a lot from the scientific, philosophic, technological advances made during the last few centuries, but we sadly haven’t manage to advance much culturally.

5. 2 days ago on Non Sequitur

   And the customer can have any color he wants as long as it’s black.

6. 5 days ago on Non Sequitur

   In Vegas, you can get free drinks and cheap food [all-you-can-eat buffets] [unless you consider your table losses the cost].

7. 7 days ago on Non Sequitur

   We’ve had 50+ years of listening and watching ads to become mesmerized into believing that we HAVE to have this and that, HAVE to have the newest and the best. The home computer age just speeded up the process when Microsoft and Mac realized that new products didn’t have to work perfectly — just mostly. We wanted the newest and best and were willing to put up with a few glitches (which we and millions of other users would eventually help solve) and the ‘update’ was invented. Then, the iPhone and Androids came along and figured out how to package ‘updates’ so we had to actually buy brand new phones to get the newest and best.

   For some reason a line from an old Pete Seeger/Kingston Trio/Joan Baez/Bob Dylan/Peter, Paul, and Mary song keeps running through my head: "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn. [Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Pete Seeger, 1955]

8. 7 days ago on Non Sequitur

   It isn’t Gen Z that is complaining [many of them are still in school] or at least it isn’t the only generation with the problem. The Millennials, Gen X, even Baby Boomers recognize that there is a flaw in the system. Many of us retirees feel a bit stiffed because our promised retirement funds don’t quite live up to the promises made. Many Gen X and Millennials are working several jobs and trying to raise families — not exactly the American Dream.

   It almost seems like the new standard of work life consists of multiple part-time jobs [no benefits] instead of one full-time job [with benefits]. My exercise instructor [a Millennial] teaches exercise classes online, works part time at a supermarket, walks dogs, acts as companion for a disabled teen on weekends, grows herbs and vegetables to sell at the farmer’s market, and is a single parent with two active teenagers still at home. [Note — single parents often have to work this way because they can’t afford child care and because they want their kids to have opportunities. It is easier to get kids to music lessons and ball practice if you are cobbling together part time jobs than when you work a full-time job.] No pensions or retirement plans, no health insurance other than what she pays for herself. She’s been doing this for over 25 years and she thinks it is normal.

   And if you have been at a drive-thru recently, you may have noticed that not all those behind the counter are Gen Z’s — Gen X’s, Millennials and even Baby Boomers are back there, flipping burgers and handing out bags and drinks.

9. 7 days ago on Pluggers

   “In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. "

   “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was T. S. Eliot’s first professionally published poem. He wrote it beginning in February 1910. In 1914, when he began studies at Merton College, Oxford, he was introduced to American expatriate poet Ezra Pound, who deemed Eliot “worth watching” and aided the start of Eliot’s career. Pound was the overseas editor of “Poetry: A Magazine of Verse” and recommended the poem to the magazine’s founder, Harriet Monroe, explaining that Eliot and his work ‘embodied a new and unique phenomenon among contemporary writers’.

   Pound reportedly claimed that Eliot “has actually trained himself AND modernized himself on his own. The rest of the promising young have done one or the other, but never both.”

   The poem was published in June 1915. And published again in November 1915 in the “Catholic Anthology 1914-1915.” In June 1917, The Egoist magazine published “Prufrock and other Observations” a pamphlet of 12 Eliot poems. Also in 1917, Eliot became the assistant editor of The Egoist.

10. 8 days ago on Non Sequitur

    Possibly merely someone who has read a bit about history and government [e.g., US Constitution, Scholastic’s Guide, “How America Works,” Priestland’s “The Red Flag”] and actually follows world events and forms his/her own opinions rather than sling around pernicious, meaningless one-liners.