Showing posts with label intellect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intellect. Show all posts

Friday, June 28, 2013

I've Heard That Writers Write

     

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I was recently asked if it bothers me when readers of my blog have commented about its sparseness, its mediocre, pedestrian, and mostly uninteresting content, and its apparent lack of even a shred of recognizable intellectualism. I didn't bother to provide an intelligent answer to this query. Mainly because I did not (and still do not) have one.

My blog, to me, is a means of ensuring that I will write, and by that I mean that having this venue demands that I write something every day.

A long time ago I decided to include in the blog whatever struck my fancy at the time of writing, no matter how inane, simple-minded, or meaningless it might appear to be to its few readers. Most of the entries are just that... off the top of my head jottings, barely edited first drafts, sometimes nothing more than unequivocal spouting of nose-wrinkling drivel.

Well, so what?

I write. I write almost every day.

Do you?


A thought occurred to me while I was watching the TV new. What I was viewing was a bit about the construction of field after field of giant wind-driven devices. And I asked myself, "Will this massive proliferation of wind-driven power generators (windmills) someday affect regional climate? Become a cause of unrecognizable future climate change?"

In other words, does the same amount of air in the wind reach the same areas it would have reached if there had been no windmills to impede its progress?

Yes, I realize that on the surface those questions appear to be ludicrous, possibly being the product of a warped or at least naive mind. But it's been said that the fluttering of a butterfly's wings in one location can affect the course of a tornado or the force of a hurricane hundreds of miles away. And no one seems able to scientifically prove that this theory is false.

Here is another related thought that just struck me. It's a sudden flash of memory. It's one of the phrases I remember my dad saying, over and over and over again when I was a sub-teen and then when I was a rowdy teenager. It was this: "That's just another one of your hare-brained ideas."

So . . . Has this proposition ever been studied -- this effect on climate change arising from the blocking effect and other types of interference of these seemingly benign modern windmills?

No, I don't think so.

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TRIVIA

A shrimp's heart is in its head.
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HISTORICAL EVENT

On June 28, 1997, Mike Tyson bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s right ear and then spit it onto the canvas in the third round of their heavyweight rematch. The attack led to his disqualification from the match and suspension from boxing, and was the strangest chapter yet in the champion’s roller-coaster career.

Tyson was accused of rape by Desiree Washington, a contestant in a beauty pageant he was judging in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was convicted on February 10, 1992, and served three years and one month in a federal penitentiary.

Events in Tyson’s life took repeated turns for the worse in the aftermath of the fight, and culminated in his declaring bankruptcy--in part due to $400,000 a year spent on maintaining a flock of pet pigeons--and an arrest for cocaine possession. In 2006, Tyson agreed to join Heidi Fleiss’ legal brothel in Nevada as a prostitute.
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WORD FOR TODAY

aeolist [ee-OH-luhst]
noun
a pompous person, pretending to have inspiration or spiritual insight.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS


(born June 28, 1926)
Mel Brooks (born Melvin James Kaminsky) is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He became well known as part of the comedy duo with Carl Reiner, The 2000 Year Old Man. 

In middle age he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s. His most well known films include The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World, Part I, Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. More recently he has had a smash hit on Broadway with the musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers.



(born June 28, 1948)
Kathy Bates is an American actress and film director. Bates rose to prominence with her performance in Misery (1990), for which she won both the Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe. She followed this with major roles in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and Dolores Claiborne (1995), before playing a featured role as Molly Brown in Titanic (1997).

She won a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance in Primary Colors (1998), and she was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for About Schmidt (2002). Her television work has resulted in eleven Emmy Award nominations, two of which were for her starring role on the television series Harry's Law and most recently, a win for her acclaimed guest appearance on the CBS sitcom, Two and a Half Men as the ghost of Charlie Harper, a role formerly portrayed by Charlie Sheen. It was confirmed in March 2013 that she would co-star in the third season of the FX television series American Horror Story.




(born June 28, 1966)
John Cusack is an American actor, producer, and screenwriter. He has appeared in films such as Say Anything..., Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, Con Air, Being John Malkovich. He also played in Must Love Dogs, Martian Child and Americas Sweethearts.



(June 28, 1946 - May 20, 1989)
Gilda Radner was an American comedienne and actress. She was best known as one of the original cast members of the hit NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, for which she won an Emmy Award in 1978. She and Gene Wilder were married on September 18, 1984

Gilda died from ovarian cancer at 6:20 a.m. on May 20, 1989

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Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
--Aldous Huxley

NASA TV
   

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

My Weight Today Is 157.4 Pounds . . .


Two months ago I weighed 160 pounds. This means that I have lost 2.6 pounds. That's an average of 1.3 pounds per month. And I am eating just as much as I had been eating before I started keeping a record. The only difference is that I have stopped adding sugar to anything... completely. And I have been eating fewer bread and cheese sandwiches, replacing them with mixed salad greens (including baby spinach) and sprinkled with raisins, nuts, blueberries -- topped with a strawberry.

(Ken's Ranch Dressing was dribbled on after taking the picture)

By the way . . . I am weighing myself using the new digital scale that I bought a while back through Amazon.com and that is how I am able to announce my weight with such accuracy. One thing I have discovered, though, is that one must position the scale on a hard, flat surface to get a consistently accurate readout, no carpets nor slightly rounded tile floors.

When I reach 145 pounds, I will add additional calories to my daily intake, enough to maintain that weight level.
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Some of the Robert Lowell poems seem to say so much more than I (in my obtuseness) take away with me after reading them.

obtuse
adjective
1. not quick or alert in perception, feeling, or intellect; not sensitive or observant; dull.
2. not sharp, acute, or pointed; blunt in form.
3. (of a leaf, petal, etc.) rounded at the extremity.
4. indistinctly felt or perceived, as pain or sound.

At times I find myself wishing that I was smarter than I know I am. But most of the time, aware of the socially conditioned behavior of those assorted intellectual giants known to me, I am so glad that such a foul and hateful fate, such a stifled and savorless state has happily not yet befallen me.


After a hearty New England breakfast,
I weigh two hundred pounds
this morning. Cock of the walk,
I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey
before the metal shaving mirrors,
and see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.

From Walking in the Blue
by Robert Lowell
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Theodor Seuss Geisel -- writing as Dr. Seuss, spent nine months writing what would become The Cat in the Hat (1957). That book is 1,702 words long, but it uses only 220 different words.

The Cat In The Hat


Note: The above fact was taken from The Writer's Almanac and (respectfully) reproduced here.

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The Washington Post has an archive containing Five Myths About various subjects. The subjects are: Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, The Super Bowl, George W. Bush, and there is even one titled Five Myths About Facebook. And there are many other subjects.

This archive could conceivably transform some of those individuals who 'believe' themselves to be highly educated into 'truly' educated persons.

Hm. I wonder how many people will actually take the time to read those archives.

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The New York Review Of Books has a short piece written by Larry McMurtry about Marilyn Monroe. I found it interesting.

Marilyn Monroe

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