Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Midweek miscellany


I told you a lie. Not intentionally. But a lie, nonetheless. It turns out that Dr. John Linna of Neenah, Wisconsin, is not a 69-year-old retired Lutheran minister. Dr. John Linna of Neenah, Wisconsin, is a seventy-year-old retired Lutheran minister. So sue me.

Maybe something that isn’t true is not a lie if the person who said it thought it was true when he or she said it. (When does “intelligence” become “flawed intelligence” become “falsehood” become “lied through his teeth”? We’re still sorting that one out as a society, aren’t we? A recent U.S. president is still being vilified in many quarters because of this very question.)

Be that as it may, Dr. John Linna has posted another knee-slapper on his blog:

“I gotta tell ya them Science people got it all over us dumb flat earth lay people type guys.
Take this Global Warming stuff.
Dere was no question da earth was getting warmer.
I mean even us dummies could see that polar ice melting and feel with da poor polar bears.
But to make C02 da cause that was brilliant.
They had dis graph made by a computer and ya know it showed that correlation between the C02 and the warming. Ya it did.
Well it did for a while. But den da warming didn’t keep up with da graph.
Minor glitch they said.
Well even us dumb flat earth people know computer projections aren’t hundirt per cent.
But then C02 kept going up ( ve tried our best to stop it it) but da warming didn’t.
In fact for three years the United States got colder.
Now Europe got dat colder too.
At dis point us dumb flat earth lay people would give up . Possibly C02 isn’t the culprit.
Dumb us.
The Science is settled but the vocabulary needs dat adjustment.
So the scientists gave us Global Climate Change.
Now whatever comes ve can blame dat on C02.
If we freeze den its C02
If we cook then its c02
If there is a drought then C02
If we have a flood C02.
If we have a huricane C02.
If we don’t have many hurricanes C02.
Boy I’m sure glad that science is settled.
Otherwise us dumb flat earth lay people would be looking for other causes. Dumb us
We might think sun spots or magnetic shifts, or big cities.
But we can’t do much bout those.
We can fight dat C02.
I love dat Science.”

In case you care to have a look for yourself, Dr. John’s blog is called Fortress Linna . I warn you, though, don't go over there. You will get all caught up in a little town called Pigeon Falls that is in Dr. John’s basement and then you will have to go back and read hundreds of posts so that you can understand even half of what you are reading, and unless you understand Ukrainian you will also have to find a good language translator site. You may even begin to believe in dragons.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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All of the cold weather in recent days has reminded me of some other cold places I have experienced:

Three Nebraska winters with the U.S. Air Force;
Three Poughkeepsie, New York, winters when I worked with IBM (followed, I'm happy to report, by seven much warmer winters in Boca Raton, Florida);
The month of February in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1969;
A frigid, snowy week in Michigan in early January 1982 when the temperature in Atlanta was even lower than the temperature in Detroit;
Several weeks in and near Chicago during the winter of 1984 while working for AT&T.

Speaking of Chicago, I happened to be the only occupant in an elevator in the Sheraton Hotel on Michigan Avenue when a very blond family stepped in speaking something besides English to one another. As I had spent a month in Sweden fifteen years earlier (Feb. 1 to Mar. 1, 1969 - brrrrrr!), I knew they were Scandinavian, not because of their blondness but because of the lilt of their speech. I had managed to pick up a few Swedish phrases (Var finst der herrtoaletten?, that sort of thing), so after a few seconds of wondering whether my fellow passengers were Swedish or Norwegian or Danish, I took a chance and asked, “Har ni svensk?” (Are you Swedish?)

Their eyes lit up. “Oh, ja!” they said, and began speaking rapidly to me in their native tongue. I had no idea what they were saying. My floor had arrived, and as I left the elevator I said, “Förlåt, jag förstår inte svenska.” (Sorry, I don’t understand Swedish.)

I have always wondered what those very blond Swedes said to one another after the elevator doors closed.

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I don’t know who irritates me more, Regis Philbin or Kelly Ripa.

Hoda Kotb or Kathie Lee Gifford.

Joy Behar or Rosie O’Donnell.

Judge Judy or...well, nobody irritates me more than Judge Judy.

I probably watch too much daytime television. It’s a wonder I find time to blog.

5 comments:

  1. I thyink this is the first time I had a blog rant rerun on another blog.Thanks!
    One winter in Crystal Falls, Michigan it was twenty below a nd the dog and I went cross country skiing. I wore a face mask and icicles formed on the edge of it. That was cold.

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  2. why don/t you spend more time with wiffeee....my wife says i will listen to my bloggers and just ignore her, i don't mean to do that...exampl;e with health care and carrying more than one policy even though i get medicare coverage, she wnats a medical policy that covers her so she can choose as she says a better doctor, hospital....so why have medicare and some of those policys wait till medicare covers it all and won't pay you a cent even though you pay them premiums...i have mine my wife's and medicare....what a duplication...now she won't talk to me cause i broke my promise, will only listen to bloggers, ...hey bob, want to become a census worker, but my doctor won't let me drive over 30 miles per hr, in the daytime so how would that wor...oh oh, i'm in trouble i am way off topic and bob will be so mad

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  3. I protect myself from the foolishness of daytime TV by just not turning the TV on.

    Dr. Linna's post makes perfect sense: whatever happens to our climate, it will be blamed on CO2.

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  4. Those are some hard choices - they are all so annoying, that I never watch them, but then I don't watch t.v. hardly at all anyway. I do enjoy a well chosen Netflix at night tho! (And much more of this "global warming" and we'll all freeze to death!)

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  5. Methane has been discovered to be far far better at warming up the atmosphere than C02. Just putting that in the mix, y'all.

    I protect myself from television period by not having one. Works really well.

    I love your interaction with the Swedes. I once was asked directions by two Russian seamen and when they thanked me afterwards I said 'spasibo' (thank you) which although not really an appropriate answer, is really the only thing I can say in Russian despite my grandmother being Russian. They immediately became very animated and wouldn't stop talking in Russian. Didn't want to let me go, even though I protested for five minutes that I spoke no other words. I could have done with an elevator to escape into!

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...