{"id":29222,"date":"2023-01-12T18:09:34","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T23:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=29222"},"modified":"2023-01-14T20:38:59","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T01:38:59","slug":"thoughts-large-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2023\/01\/thoughts-large-81\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts @ Large: 81"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2022\u00a0 If you want to insult someone who has done a lousy job, give them an attoboy<\/em>.\u00a0 Note the subtle difference between this and an attaboy.<\/em>\u00a0 An atta<\/em>boy<\/em> indicates approval, but attoboy<\/em> is formed from the metric prefix atto<\/em>, which means 10<\/span>-18<\/sup> (one-quintillionth) of an attaboy. The smallest of small praise.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Well, perhaps not the very<\/em> smallest.\u00a0 Unbeknownst to most of us this past November, the “powers” that be (specifically, the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures<\/a>) adopted four new metric system prefixes to describe the most perversely large and small.\u00a0 You can now award someone a quectoboy<\/em>, 10<\/span>-30<\/sup> of an attaboy<\/em>, one-trillionth of an attoboy. <\/em>After giving you the scowly-eyes, the recipient of your quectoboy at the drive-thru is sure to appreciate your metric awareness by spitting in your liter of Diet Coke.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Ban-Lon proved to be a waist of time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 A recent New York Times article discussed an infamously low bridge in Cambridgeshire, England, which was struck by vehicles over 30 times last year<\/a>.\u00a0 The bridge (the underpass on the left in the image below) has less than 7 feet of clearance:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Photo Credit: New York Times<\/span><\/p>\n

The authorities seem clueless how to keep taller vehicles from crashing into this bridge. \u00a0 The damages and delays have cost the government-owned rail system millions of pounds. Might I suggest a couple of fixes?\u00a0 First, install a 15 mph speed hump in the side road, followed by a plastic “limbo stick” warning barrier, the kind you often see at the entrances of car washes and parking garages.\u00a0 If that’s not enough to get people’s attention, then put an electric eye at the top of the ramp, mounted at the same height as the underpass, and have it trigger flashing red lights on the bridge.\u00a0 This has got to cost less than repeatedly fixing stupid.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 The older I get, the less interested I have been and the less energy I have spent judging how other people live.\u00a0 In the end, we all get by.\u00a0 Just be kind.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 I was mildly pleased, when I bought a car in 2021, that the first three letters on my new license plate were JBK, for Just Be Kind.\u00a0 The numbers, however, didn’t mean squat.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 In their self-interested defense of unfettered U.S. capitalism, CEO’s have often claimed that “billionaires create jobs.”\u00a0 But do they?\u00a0 In December 2022, our unemployment rate<\/a> declined to 3.5 percent, thanks to gains in leisure\/hospitality, health care, construction, and social assistance<\/a>.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Facebook has decided to lay off 11,ooo of its workers, while Amazon is about to lay off 6% (18,000<\/a>) of its workforce.\u00a0 Billionaires, you be you.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 I have a “Shark Tank” idea.\u00a0 I call it ACU-TENDER\u2122.\u00a0 My product consists of a set of acupuncture needles along with recipes and instructions on how to acupuncture the pack of ingredients I send you each month, so you can ACU-TENDERIZE them.\u00a0 Let’s say you want to cook chicken breasts tonight.\u00a0 You lay out the chicken breasts on your bamboo (important!) cutting board, and then you twist\/spin your ACU-TENDER\u2122 needles int0 the chicken breast to give it that magical flavor and mouth-watering texture that Western cooking methods cannot replicate.\u00a0 Sharks, aren’t you sold already?<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 A wise man once said… nothing at all.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 I don’t believe I have mentioned this, but if I did, please excuse.\u00a0 I finally found a local eyecare\/eyeware outfit (here<\/a>!) that does not try to upsell you on useless (but profitable) coatings and lens treatments.\u00a0 The add-on that most optometrists try to push nowadays are blue-blocking lenses for outdoors and\/or electronics.\u00a0 One optometrist even had me watch, ironically enough, a video on the dangers of blue light before doing my eye exam.\u00a0 But Harvard Medical School insists<\/a> there is NO EVIDENCE<\/span> to support this, and that there are far better ways to care for your eyes.\u00a0 So, before you make your next eye appointment, mention blue light to the staff and see if they trot out the scare tactics.\u00a0 If so, remember what you read here.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 I assume we all have personal calming sounds.\u00a0 Mine include seagulls and ocean waves.\u00a0 I had never heard this soundscape in person until my late-30s, but when I did, it was as if the waves reached inside me somewhere and unlocked a lock.\u00a0 It seems that this particular outerscape magically and gently allows stress in my innerscape to escape.<\/p>\n

Your calming sounds are no doubt different.\u00a0 They may be the whirs of a sewing machine; the cadence of chatter in a family-member’s home; the echo of footsteps and whispers in a stone-walled cathedral; the lone honks of late-night taxis; the songbirds welcoming dawn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2022\u00a0 If you want to insult someone who has done a lousy job, give them an attoboy.\u00a0 Note the subtle difference between this and an attaboy.\u00a0 An attaboy indicates approval, but attoboy is formed from the metric prefix atto, which … 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-29222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-at-large"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29222","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=29222"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29266,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29222\/revisions\/29266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}