Random Ideas, Comments & Thoughts, Sometimes Political, Sometimes Adult… Hope you don't choke.
A Friend sent me a list of these. I thought it would be fun to share them.
Paraprosdokians are phrases or sentences that lead us down the garden path to an unexpected ending.
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit… the target.
I read this article this morning and darn near blew coffee out my nose.
The gist of the piece is that a programmer decided to outsource then manage the outsourcing of his own job to China.
He went to work every day, surfed the net, updated his Facebook, watched cat videos and wrote a daily progress report for his boss.
All the while the actual programming was being done by a Chinese programer for 1/5 the salary the programmer was making.
This programmer even managed to take on programming jobs at other companies and was making a ton of money.
He was ultimately fired from his position but only because a network audit uncovered his “misuse” of the corporate network. (Facebook, twitter, cat videos)
The funny thing is that the guy was apparently considered one of the better employees and programmers at his company.
The article mentions that had this guys job title been different he’d have probably gotten a bonus.
I think the guy was creative and clever, but he missed his calling.
He should open a consulting firm specializing in offshore project management. I’ll bet he could make a fortune.
A Friend sent me a list of these. I thought it would be fun to share them.
Paraprosdokians are phrases or sentences that lead us down the garden path to an unexpected ending.
When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.
That I report when EDD actually does something correctly.
I spoke with an EDD representative yesterday who actually asked reasonable questions.
This was a first!
This lady asked what I’d done as a career.
I told her that I’d been a software Quality Assurance person for about 30 years.
She asked me why I’d taken a Bartending class.
I told her because I couldn’t get the time of day in my previous career and that It seemed a way to get immediate employment. After all good times and bad… people drink!
She noted that this was quite a departure but she saw my point.
She didn’t comment on my statement that High technology businesses were offshoring or leaving California at an alarming rate.
She did that pause thing that you hear when people are censoring themselves. I don’t know if that was agreement or not but it was interesting.
This lady was a real person. She wasn’t one of those creepy automatons who barely speak English and strain my universal translator to the breaking point.
She was actually a nice person.
It was kind of funny, because she told me that this class didnt’ qualify for California Training reimbursement.
I told her I wasn’t trying for any reimbursement, I was simply reporting that since I was sitting in class 10 hours a day I obviously wasn’t out interviewing. I’d answered the question on the EDD forms honestly.
She paused again… Then chuckled and said, “I see.”
She asked, “If you’d been offered a job during that week would you have dropped the class?”
I said I’d have accepted the job as a priority. But, I’d have gone to the folks running the school and asked if I could attend nights and finished the class.
She chuckles again and says “I’m clearing this, we’re going to get you caught up.”
I was shocked. I thought there were no EDD benefits left so now I’m curious about what the they’re doing. We’ll see when the next batch of paperwork comes through. Heck if all I have to do is fill out paper work and they’ll keep me in the system I’ll fill out the paperwork.
It was nice to deal with a real person at the EDD at least once.
#EDDNOTFAIL
Which is boring… ON the up side I can still use the system while it’s fixing one of the drives.
Which means that I can blog, and I can watch the crazy shit on YouTube.
Let me make a couple of things clear.
I absolutely believe in the Drake Equation. More information about the Drake equation can be found here.
The short explanation is that a guy by the name of Frank Drake attempted to calculate the potential number of civilizations that might be in our galaxy.
The equation itself is
where:
- N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);
and
- R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
- fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
- ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
- fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
- fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
- fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
- L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space[5]
My belief in the math, doesn’t automatically mean that I think there are aliens around every corner.
On the other hand I do think that certain anomalous structures on this planet and on our near neighbors deserve investigation.
I’m talking about real science. Not some preconceived beliefs where a scientist is trying to make the evidence fit what they want to believe. I’m talking about an objective dispassionate analysis of the quantifiable facts.
A couple of Earthbound examples would be the Sphinx and the pyramid complex at Giza.
No I’m not suggesting by default that these sites were built by Aliens. I’m suggesting that there is considerable evidence to suggest that the Sphinx is far older than the current accepted age. But that evidence and the theories surrounding it are being ignored or in some cases suppressed.
In the case of the pyramids I’ve just wondered why the Great pyramid is so light on the writing. I mean practically every monument from ancient Egypt is covered with drawings, art, and hieroglyphs why is the Great pyramid so … bare? Just one of those questions I’ve always been curious about.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to discover that the grandeur of Egypt actually went back further than the accepted timeline? Imagine discovering that civilizations in what is now known as Egypt went back 10, 15, or 20 thousand years. Talk about rewriting world history… The Sphinx enclosure seems to point that direction.
We as human beings deserve to know if our history is richer than previously thought. If our ancestors moved from a hunter gatherer existence to an agricultural civilization earlier than previously imagined then those chapters of our history need to be told and explored.
None of which implies that Aliens were here then or are here now.
Our species is amazingly clever and resourceful. It’s a pity that all too often we choose to use our cleverness to kill each other over some of the stupidest things.
It’s not any more outlandish to say some of our ancestors advanced 5000 years earlier than we thought they did than it is to say Aliens showed up 4000 years ago and taught us farming and building techniques.
All that being said, I’d love to actually meet a benign Alien. I specify because the thought of meeting an Alien that was anything but benign is terrifying. I’m not entirely sure that I’m ready to be someones dinner.
I’d really like to see serious investigation into some of the strange pictures the alien conspiracy people use as their proof of civilizations on Mars or the Moon.
I’m not talking about the guy who magnifies Nasa photos to the point that they begin to pixelate and then does a color shift to enhance & show “buildings”. Although his photo montages with the spooky music are good for a laugh.
Come on, I can take a picture of my dick, and magnify it to the point of pixelation, do a little color shifting and “prove” that aliens have a civilization on the head of my penis. Hummm probably not the best example…
That sounds more like a commercial for the latest product in body lice removal. (Note to the lice shampoo manufacturers, If you use this idea as a marketing campaign I’m going to want my cut.)
“Don’t let invaders build a civilization in your nether regions. Get a bottle of alien kill and wash those itchy devils down the drain. Only 9.95 at your local drug store.
Caution: Alien kill may cause flushing, irritation, skin sloughing, uncontrollable erections, premature ejaculation, impotence, and tenderness in the breasts.”
There are interesting anomalies in some of the Nasa photos that sure as heck look like regular structures. They could just as easily be lava tubes but I’d like to know.
The bottom line is that I’d like to believe we’ve been visited, I’d like to know for sure one way or the other.
I’m not so gullible as to watch these YouTube videos with anything but the utmost skepticism.
One video that really cracked me up today was where this guy is in all seriousness talking about a “UFO crash site” in Antarctica.
He sees four “Tanks” and a trench gouged in the snow by the “Crash”.
I see four tents.
He sees the gun barrels of the tanks.
I see the shadows cast by heater/stove vents sticking up through the top of the tents.
I see what looks like a camp.
This “proof” is from Google Earth for goodness sake.
Looking at the shadows, these are not four tanks, their shadows are different indicating to me that the structures casting those shadows have differing shapes which tanks don’t. It looks like the sun is kind of low on the horizon so the object at the top of the frame has something large and boxlike sticking up that’s casting a square shadow.
Whatever these are, they’ve been there long enough to have created snow drifts from the wind blowing. I doubt seriously that a military recovery of a crashed UFO would have taken that long.
The gouge and the mysterious pile at the end of it, look like a trench dug with a bulldozer. I’m thinking the trench and tents are some kind of research. Maybe some scientists wanted to look at snow / ice deposition with a wider view than is possible with Ice cores. Maybe they’re trying to get an idea of how fast meteor crater impacts would be covered over in Antarctica. It could be a poop trench for all we know.
But unlike the spooky music folks, I see nothing conspiratorial in this photo.
I really have to ask this… Since Google is an American company. Don’t you think that the NSA, CIA, and FBI would have the ability to censor images?
If indeed there is a conspiracy do you think these organizations would leave a UFO crash available to be seen by the general public?
I kind of doubt it.
The thing our government is good at, is cover-ups.
There are a couple of things that these YouTube UFO conspiracy videos prove.
Humans are immensely imaginative. We see exactly what we want, need, or expect to see. Often what we see is in direct contradiction with reality.
When early man looked up into the void is it any wonder they saw powerful beings in the patterns of the sky and stars? Their brains were wired to see familiar patterns.
For all our sophistication and technology it’s amusing for me to discover that we’re not much different from our early superstitious ancestors.
The only thing that has changed is how we’re getting the patterns to look at.
Be cynical, question the “truth” of what you see and hear. It’s the only way to be sure you really know what you think you know.
I’m going back to the Nasa is lying to us thread on YouTube.
This shit cracks me up!