Sundial Sunday

Yesterday was what I'm calling Mess With the Sundial Sunday.  You might know it as daylight savings time.  As I get older the spring forward fall back mantra, becomes more tedious and disruptive for my sleep.  Why do we do this to ourselves?

I'm told that daylight savings time was the brain child of Benjamin Franklin.  I don't know if that is true or not, but he's dead, so it's safe to blame him.  Old Ben was one of America's founding fathers.  He is considered a renaissance man, a statesman and a scientific visionary.  He was instrumental in America's war of independence.  He is widely credited blamed for the biannual tinkering with the clocks.

As the story goes Benny thought it would be better to make the days longer in the summer and shorter in the winter.  Apparently this had been happening in the northern hemisphere since God started the world spinning, but no matter.  Ben thought it would be a good idea to switch the clocks.  Being that he was a contemporary of Washington, Jefferson, Adams and a lot of other respected American revolutionaries, people went along with it.

I'll admit that I haven't done extensive research into whether or not moving the clock forward saves energy.  I've heard folks say that in our modern industrial society that having it be lighter latter saves on electricity, makes the evening commute home from work safer and does other good stuff for our country as a whole.  This may be true.  I can't say its not.  If it is true, why not just leave the clock set forward all the time?

In the winter time it gets dark sooner.  It would seem like keeping it light latter would be more important than in the summer.  If the premise is true about saving energy etc then we should stay on day light savings time all the time.

Washington, Jefferson, Adams all were elected president, Benjamin Franklin was not.  I think this might have had something to do with his insistence we mess with the sundial.  The people of his day saw what he did and said, "there's no reason to let him tinker with anything else".  It's time to stop the madness, leave the clock set forward and forget about changing it back.

Of Boys

Boys by their nature are loud, competitive, rambunctious creatures who seem to be the arch nemesis of good "classroom management".  No wonder female school teachers don't want "boy behavior" in the classroom.  It's much easier to manage little girls who do most things quietly. 

Boys are a handful when they are allowed to be boys.  The female of the species has no instinctive skills to deal with the immature male.  In the past, females were exposed to boys being boys and did not think of it as a bad thing requiring thrice daily doses of methamphetamines.

Boy (10) hailed as hero after saving sister from convicted sex offender

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The criminal, who was on bail for robbery, attempted to abduct the girl (12) on the side of a country road near the village of Cullahill in Laois.

She was playing with her two brothers near their home when the man stopped and asked for directions to the local priest's house.

He then jumped from the stolen vehicle and grabbed the girl.

But her younger brother lunged through the driver's window at the would-be kidnapper punching him as the jeep began to drive away.

The brave boy distracted the driver long enough so that his sister could jump from the moving vehicle.

The story doesn't tell us the young man's name.  I'm calling him a man.  He deserves recognition for what he is, a man in progress.  Good progress he's making too.

Soulless creatures who slump quietly in desks, meekly marking on their lessons, and who never give the teacher a reason to be cross, don't do other things either.  They don't jump thru windows of moving cars.  They don't punch hardened criminals  twice their size.  They don't make it possible for their 12 year old sister to escape the clutches of a pedophile kidnapper.

Thank God, boys will be boys.  How else will they learn to men of action?  How else will they learn to react with violence?  How else will they learn to do, without thinking of their own safety?

Let every boy nearly give his mother and schoolmarm a heart attack with his exuberance and testosterone intoxicated brain.  Perhaps the lad will break a leg.  He will survive.  Perhaps he will get, or give a black eye, or a fat lip.  He will tear his trousers and muss his hair.  He will make fart noises and laugh at the worst time.  Let him.  He is a boy.

I hear a lot about "men going their own way" and shirking the responsibilities of manhood.  Men don't spring up fully developed with a good paying job and a desire to lavish a women with financial security and a domestic servitude.  Men grow up.  Men start out as boys, doing boy stuff.  You don't get a man by training them like a girl.  Little boys aren't simply girls with penises.

Let boys be boys.  Let them learn to be men.  Good men, yes.  Men of character, certainly.  Men aren't ordered off a website, they are grown and trained and taught.  Teach boys to harness their abilities and instincts.  Don't suppress them.

Without the curse of Ritalin and feminized schooling, the boy will become a man and do manly stuff.  Like jumping into moving cars, punching bad guys, and saving a little girl from being raped.

GFF High School Basketball Edition

Winning

Blegg

I'm reaching out on behalf of an old golf buddy of mine who needs some help. 

His wife told him to go out and get some of those pills that would help him get an erection. When he came back, he handed her some diet pills. Anyway, he's looking for a place to live. Let me know if you can help.

I was in the restaurant yesterday when I suddenly realized I desperately
needed to pass gas. The music was really, really loud, so I timed my
gas with the beat of the music.

After a couple of songs, I started to feel better. I finished my coffee,
and noticed that everybody was staring at me....

Then I suddenly remembered that I was listening to my iPod.

Health Advice

Mrs. Ipsa sent me a link to a dietician's blog.  I've got to admit that this is the most comprehensive and enlightening information I've seen about the role of diet and nutrition in health care.

The 2015 Dietary Advisory Committee Report: A Summary

Last week, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee released the report containing its recommendations for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.   The report is 572 pages long, more than 100 pages longer than the last report, released 5 years ago.  Longer than one of my blog posts, even. Despite its length, and the tortured governmentalese in which it is written, its message is pretty clear and simple. So for those of you who would like to know what the report says, but don’t want to read the whole damn thing, I present, below, its essence:

Dear America,

You are sick–and fat.  And it’s all your fault. 

Face it.  You screwed up.  Somewhere in the past few decades, you started eating too much food. Too much BAD food.  We don’t know why.  We think it is because you are stupid.

In 1977, a bunch of us got together to figure out how to make sure you would not get fat and sick.  You weren’t fat and sick at the time, so we knew you needed our help.

We told you to eat more carbohydrates–a.k.a., sugars and starches–and less sugar.  How simple is that?  But could you follow this advice?  Nooooooo.  You’re too stupid.

We told you to eat food with less fat. We meant for you to buy a copy of the Moosewood Cookbook and eat kale and lentils and quinoa.  But no, you were too stupid for that too.  Instead, you started eating PRODUCTS  that said “low-fat” and “fat-free.”  What were you thinking?

After more than three decades of us telling you how to eat, it is obvious you are too stupid to figure out how to eat.  So we are here to make it perfectly clear, once and for all.

 So, to spell it all out for you once and for all:

DO NOT EAT food that has salt or sugar in it, i.e. food that tastes good.  Also don’t eat animals.

DO EAT kale from your local farmers’ market, lentils and quinoa from your local food co-op,  plus salmon. Drink water.  That’s it. 

But rest assured, America.

No matter what the evidence says, we are never ever going to tell you it’s okay to eat salt, sugar, or animals.  And, no matter what the evidence says, we are never ever going to tell you that it’s not okay to eat grains, cereals, or vegetable oils.  And you can take that to the bank.  We did.

Love and kisses,

Committee for Government Approved Information on Nutrition (Code name: G.A.I.N.)

I only gave a short excerpt.  Go check it out.  It's good. 

Incompatible

From the "I can't believe we don't have grownups in charge" file:

The IRS is defending its decision to let illegal immigrants claim up to three years’ refunds on income even if they never paid income taxes, telling Congress in a new letter last week that agency lawyers have concluded getting a Social Security number triggers the ability to go back and ask for previous refunds.

President Obama’s new deportation amnesty could grant Social Security numbers to as many as 4 million illegal immigrants, making many of them eligible for tax refunds under the Earned Income Tax Credit even for years when they cheated on their taxes, working off the books and refusing to file tax returns.

You can not have social welfare benefits and an open boarder.  The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a form of tax code welfare that allows a degree of wealth transfer.  FWIW I take it too.  Then again I actually PAY taxes and report all forms of income, wages, DIV, and INT etc.  So in my case it reduces what I pay into the system.

One of the most abused (by Hispanics) tax code item is the EITC.  The normal way to cheat the system is to get a number (sometimes a very large number) of family members SSN #'s and claim they live with you.  This happens even if the person in question has never left Mexico.  It doesn't matter if you live in a 2 bedroom single wide, you claim that you have 10 or 12 or 20 kids with Hispanic names dependent on your income and living in your house.  Everyone knows that Mexicans have lots of kids and whole generations of people are happy living in a house no bigger than a refrigerator box, so the IRS isn't going to come around asking silly questions.  Then you put those SSN #'s down on your tax return and shazam! Uncle Sam sends you a big check.  Ain't America great?

That was how the scam worked before amnesty.  Now the IRS isn't even going to pretend that someone, some how, at some point, paid taxes.  Now all you have to do is show up and fill out the paperwork.  Instant check.  You can do that not just for this year, they're going to let you do it for past years, even if you didn't pay, even if you can't prove you lived in the US.  Ain't America Great?

This is just one scam.  It doesn't include WIC, SSI, free health care, Section 8, etc. etc. etc.  Come to America, get a job paying 500% of what you'd make in Mexico.  Pay no taxes.  Get free food, housing, health care and then fill out some forms and get free money.

The question isn't why they do it.  The question is why don't more of them do it.