{"id":11344,"date":"2015-10-11T16:07:03","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T20:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=11344"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:03","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:03","slug":"thoughts-at-large-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2015\/10\/thoughts-at-large-28\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts at Large: 28"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2022 What is energy<\/em>?\u00a0 I picture it as the distinction between existence and non-existence.\u00a0 The dissipation of energy is the ongoing process of reconciling these states.<\/p>\n

\u2022 When my mother made bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches, she always cut the bread on the diagonal.\u00a0 She didn’t do this for baloney sandwiches or chipped ham sandwiches or any other type of sandwich except BLTs.\u00a0 Naturally, I believe that the lunch world should do exactly what my mom did, and I am disappointed when I am served a BLT (or any other bacon-based sandwich) cut into rectangles.\u00a0 It represents a lost opportunity in eating.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Last week,\"Why I updated my article Why Frames Tilt Forward<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 I had received comments on the original post as to how helpful it was, which got me to thinking: if people are actually reading this and relying on it, how sure am I that my math was right?\u00a0 My doubts led me to tackle the problem all over again.\u00a0 Luckily, I obtained the same answer as before but in a cleaner, more straightforward fashion, so I decided to edit the post and draw new charts.\u00a0 And this time, I added a link to the solution so I would not forget it myself.<\/p>\n

\u2022 I am pleased that Why Frames Tilt Forward<\/em> is the first entry<\/a> you will see if you search for why frames tilt<\/em> and the third entry under frames tilt.<\/em>\u00a0 But you will not find it under tilt<\/em> and please don’t ask why<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 I am liberal but not all liberals speak for me.\u00a0 There exists a subset of liberals (as there are conservatives) who seem to be willing to parlay any promising but fragmentary set of facts into a narrative that advances their worldview.\u00a0 Here I refer to the “clock invention<\/a>” that 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed brought to his Irving, Texas, high school last month.\u00a0 President Obama tweeted “Cool clock, Ahmed.”\u00a0 Hillary Clinton weighed in with “Ahmed, stay curious and keep building.”\u00a0 But when it was shown that Ahmed had simply stuffed the innards of a vintage clock radio into a pencil case<\/a>, what did we hear from Obama, Clinton and the news media?\u00a0 Tick tock.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Some products do get better over time.\u00a0 My new paper shredder did not cost a lot but it can shred credit cards.\u00a0 I just did one.\u00a0 I watched it get chewed up and I was fascinated.<\/p>\n

\u2022 On the other hand, it is incomprehensible why Google Mail does not allow people to share and synchronize contacts unless you are business clients.\u00a0 My wife and I have separate Gmail accounts but wish to share an address book.\u00a0 I’ve found that the only way to sync contacts between two accounts is to make all the edits on the primary account (an inconvenience for both parties), then delete the contacts on the secondary account and import the list from the primary.\u00a0 In the process, the secondary account loses all its speed-dial icons, since images are not exported with the rest of the data.\u00a0 And this software is from the same company that wants you to ride in driverless cars.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Network news \"The<\/a>is one product that has not improved with time.\u00a0 You have a choice of CBS Evening Drama with Scott Pelley<\/em>, NBC Nightly Drama with Lester Holt<\/em>, or ABC World Drama Tonight with David Muir.<\/em>\u00a0 What these three shows have in common, besides the drama, is how deftly they move on to the next story just before the viewer is about to learn something.<\/p>\n

\u2022 If you don’t have a good time at an amusement park, they should give you a refun.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Pope of the Roman Catholic Church visits the United States for several days and is treated like the hottest celebrity on the planet.\u00a0 It is too bad that we elevate individuals to act as our moral exemplars without leaving it at that — no, we also insist that moral<\/em> people buy into the belief-in-invisible-beings thing and some arbitrary set of superstition-based rules and practices that were enshrined centuries ago.\u00a0 Why must our culture weigh down good behavior with bad dogma?<\/code><\/p>\n

\u2022 I have not watched Trevor Noah on the Daily Show<\/em> yet.\u00a0 Nothing against him, but I have been more interested in Stephen Colbert’s new show.\u00a0 Speaking of which, I am still waiting for Colbert to drop the “character” he said he would retire at the end of The Colbert Report.<\/em>\u00a0 Seems to me that the same high-strung, high-ego persona has simply switched jobs, from conservative pundit to late-night talk show host.\u00a0 I’m ready for Colbert to get more real and play it down.\u00a0 And one audience chant of Ste-phen Ste-phen<\/em> per show is enough, please.<\/p>\n

\u2022 On that note, I end with a Fresh Market grocery ad that would have made Jay Leno proud:<\/p>\n

\"Fresh<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2022 What is energy?\u00a0 I picture it as the distinction between existence and non-existence.\u00a0 The dissipation of energy is the ongoing process of reconciling these states. \u2022 When my mother made bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches, she always cut the bread on the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-at-large"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11344"}],"version-history":[{"count":52,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28289,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344\/revisions\/28289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}