More things to do with hot weather….

“On the Sunny Side of the Street (southern version)”

If you take life at a run,
You’ll have trouble catching your breath.
Who can take the heat
On the sunny side of the street?

Even sedentary fun
Makes you sweat through every pore–Death
Valley can’t compete
With the sunny side of the street.

Some people lie in the blaze
Of the sun catching rays;
That’s fine; let them braise!
In cover I’ll hover.

Stay inside or hug the shade
With some icy lemonade; that’s
How to beat the heat
On the sunny side,
Not the funny side
But the sunny side of the street!

Copyright 2023

Red 40 Strikes Back

At the intersection of Star Wars nerd-dom and food safety science, there’s this….

Copyright 2022

News Flash: UFO Sightings Tied to Gassy Deer

La Satira News Service

As if overpopulation, shrinking habitat, and a rise in chronic wasting disease weren’t enough to deal with, the local wild deer population has another fight on its hooves.

This time, the problem is a fast-growing fungus, which infests the plants on which deer prefer to feed. The fungus, when ingested, catalyzes the creation of an unusual amount of biological methane, causing the deer to become unnaturally bloated. This bloating may reach the point that the deer becomes buoyant with respect to the surrounding air.

“Me and my friends were out on a fishing trip a few weeks back,” recounts local outdoorsman Henry “Buck” Schott. “We saw one of them deer rising over the horizon one evening. It looked like the moon had grown antlers!”

Scientists at the University of Pomme de Terre believe the phenomenon may explain a recent uptick in the number of UFO sightings.

“Well, it’s not the sort of thing you expect to look up and see, is it?” said Dr. Rudolf Hirsch, Dean of the University of Pomme de Terre’s College of Folklore and Veterinary Sciences. “So, if you can’t figure out what it is at first, by definition it’s an unidentified flying object.”

While the fungus is new to veterinary epidemiology, Dr. Hirsch believes it has made its presence known before, leaving an indelible mark on childhood literature. “Many of the old–and seemingly absurd–stories may have a grain of truth to them,” Dr. Hirsch pointed out. “Who knows? Maybe this helps explain the story of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer. Granted, the victims of the current disease aren’t exactly moving quickly enough to pull a sleigh. In fact most of ’em just kind of hover or drift in the breeze until the gas works its way out of their systems. But it may have introduced the idea of floating fauna.”

Dr. Hirsch believes a similar fungus was behind the story of the cow jumping over the moon.

Scientists are studying whether the problem can be treated by leaving bait corn laced with simethicone at known feeding spots.

“Things could be worse,” said Dr. Hirsch. “The effect generally isn’t fatal; meanwhile, I expect it’s a new and interesting experience for otherwise earthbound creatures. And if all else fails, the oncoming winter should reduce the fungal activity and give us a chance to find a solution before the next outbreak.

Meanwhile, scientists from Europe have arrived at the university to explore whether the fungus can be applied to help alleviate that continent’s ongoing natural gas shortage.

Residents fret that, if the problem persists into the scheduled deer-hunting season, it could result in economic losses to the hunting industry. It is illegal to hunt the deer in their expanded state, due to the danger of being crushed by a rapidly-descending deer carcass and concerns about the effects of eating meat from affected deer. Local hunters are trying to be philosophical about the situation.

“The economists warned us we might be in for a period of stagflation,” said Mr. Schott, “but I never dreamed this was the form it would take.”

Copyright 2022

News Flash: Cooler Temperatures Prompt Power Outages

La Satira News Service

Tens of thousands of metropolitan households are without power this afternoon as cooler temperatures prompted a surprising–and surprisingly widespread–outage.

The outage occurred after three straight weeks of above-normal temperatures in the area, with afternoon highs frequently hitting the century mark. The persistent high temperatures led the local power regulator, ERB, to call for customer conservation.

“It’s true, we did encourage conservation,” said Meg A. Watts, spokesperson for the Local Electric Reliability Company (LERC). “And for the most part customers complied. We encouraged them to put off major electricity-consuming activities until demand lowered, usually after 8pm. The grid was reasonably stable, despite the precarious supply issues.”

The delicate balance was upset, however, when a freak storm moved through the area, rapidly cooling temperatures and providing much-longed for moisture and relief from the heat.

“There was only a 50% chance of showers at most,” said Claudio Verhead, a meteorologist for a local television station. “The forecast for the next week–and probably for the next couple of months–is for continued heat, continued dryness–and probably continued calls to conserve energy.”

While the storm did very little in the way of damage, the cooler temperatures prompted a spike in electricity consumption that the grid did not anticipate and could not keep up with.

“It was like a tidal wave of consumption,” said Ms. Watts. “It’s like everyone had been conserving all this time, and when the temperatures cooled off, everybody ran out and started their big appliances. All the things they’d been putting off doing to avoid heating their homes or consuming energy, they decided to do three weeks’ worth of it all in one afternoon.”

The resulting surge prompted failures and brownouts throughout the grid area, causing damage that local maintenance crews are racing to repair before the return of triple-digit heat.

“We are of course doing our best to resolve the issue and better predict such situations,” Ms. Watts added. “Meanwhile, beware of the power of large numbers of people… or, for that matter, beware of large numbers of people without power.”

Copyright 2022

News Flash: Elderly Man Found Dead Near Favorite Tree Stump

‘comeuppance,’ say locals

La Satira News Service–The body of an elderly man was found yesterday in Givingwood Forest after a brief missing-persons search instigated by the man’s family.

The search for the man, known as Boyd “Boy” B. Boyd, was facilitated by family members, who speculated that he might have visited the stump of an old tree in the vicinity. The tree had been a favorite of Mr. Boyd in his childhood but had since been cut down for lumber by him for various projects.

Mr. Boyd’s body was found with a broken neck at the bottom of a rocky slope near the tree stump. Authorities believe he was taking advantage of the view and succumbed either to dizziness or a fright before tumbling to his death.

“It seems fairly straightforward,” said Lt. Wood of the local police force. “People do come to grief in the woods, especially when they aren’t really prepared for an arduous hike. The only thing that appears in the least suspicious is a contusion on his back that doesn’t appear to be associated with his fall. It looks more like he was clubbed from behind with a hefty tree branch with enough force to push him over the edge. But there aren’t any footprints, so that seems unlikely.”

Local reaction was unsympathetic to Mr. Boyd.

“It’s no great loss if you ask me,” said a nearby holly tree. “We all knew that boy was taking advantage of Givvy–that’s what we called her–in a most disgraceful way. She was absolutely devoted to him, but he barely thought of her unless he wanted something. I don’t recall him ever even saying ‘thank you.'”

“It’s true,” concurred an oak. “Humans have a penchant for selfishness, but this twerp takes the cake. It’s hard to fault Givvy for her love and generosity, but it was a pity to see it bestowed on such an ungrateful and parasitic specimen. The humans have words for that kind of relationship.”

“He was nice as a sapling,” the oak added. “Such a pity.”

“All those long years he was gone, and he never bothered to get in touch,” said a pine. “He could have at least sent a postcard… well, maybe not a postcard. But a big bag of fertilizer in the spring every year certainly wouldn’t have gone amiss. At least she might have had the strength to recover after he took her trunk.”

“That time when he was here he was complaining about being sad and wanting to go far away,” an elm commented. “He never said what happened to that family he took Givvy’s branches to build a house for. But it seems to me that if he treated them like he did Givvy, they might have decided they weren’t going to put up with it. Hence the sadness.”

“Someone should have intervened years ago,” added a hickory.

Asked about the possibility of foul play in Mr. Boyd’s death, the hickory replied, “I’m sure the geese and ducks had nothing to do with it.”

An arborist has been brought in to attempt to rehabilitate Givvy. Funeral arrangements for Mr. Boyd are pending.

Copyright 2022

News Flash: Last Five-and-Dime to Close

La Satira News Service

Seenwonseena, Wis.–In a small, nondescript building in the older part of downtown, a 140-year-old tradition is ending. This Friday, the Seenwonseena Five and Dime store, the last five-and-dime store in the country, will close its doors for the last time.

“Sure, there are some stores that still claim to be five and dimes,” said J. B. Poquelin, the 6th-generation store owner. “But we’re the only one where everything here still costs either five or ten cents.”

The store has survived financial crises before, from the Panic of 1893 and the Great Depression to the dot-com bubble and the 2008 Recession. “It’s the boom times that are the worst,” said Mr. Poquelin. “People are more likely to seek quality rather than low prices. Depressions don’t bother us so much unless they’re accompanied by severe inflation,” he added, pointing to an old dartboard adorned with a photograph of President Carter.

Indeed, after 140 years of inflation, economies have been necessary. Shelves that once held pound-containers of rice and sugar or cans of corned beef have been restocked with single lasagna noodles and twelve-packs of chocolate chips. A counter that once held spools of thread, thimbles, and buttons by the dozen now offers paper clips and thumbtacks wrapped for individual sale. An area that specialized in candy bars contains bulk gum balls, and gourmet jelly beans (5 cents each, the sign says).

A small dairy section offers milk by the tablespoon and cottage cheese by the curd.

“Of course we’ve had to change with the times,” Mr. Poquelin said, sipping from a one-fluid-ounce bottle of seltzer water. “But if we raised the prices to accommodate more realistic quantities, we couldn’t very well call ourselves a five and dime anymore, could we?”

The shop has struggled to retain its customer base over the years, losing many to the major discount retailers as well as the regional Seenwonseena Mall. In recent years, the shop has mainly catered to two sets of customers: those who have invested in the “tiny home” movement and find storage to be a major issue and those who accumulate change in other retail transactions and can’t think of anywhere better to spend coins with ever-decreasing purchasing power. However, between the pandemic-era coin shortages and the national transition into what appears to be a long-term inflationary cycle, Mr. Poquelin has decided that the time has come to call it quits.

“It’s a shame, but what else can we do?” asked Mr. Poquelin rhetorically. “We long ago passed the point where the packaging cost more than the products. But our customers will miss us. I mean, where else can you go and buy individual sheets of printer paper?”

Copyright 2022

Thanks to the following site for historical pricing information: https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/pricesandwages/1870-1879

News Flash: Study Proves Most People Don’t Read Beyond News Headlines

News Story Text Doesn’t Matter Anymore, Researchers Say

Researchers at the University of Punxsutawney’s College of Media Research and Mythological Studies have published a new study suggesting that most consumers of online written content have stopped reading whole articles and are absorbing only the headlines before moving on to something else.

“It’s easy to blame it on intellectual laziness,” said Professor Aldous Palimpsest, the lead author of the study, “but it may be a coping mechanism to help deal with the sheer quantity of news articles–and opinion pieces pretending to be news articles–that people are likely to be exposed to online.”

The desire to avoid relentlessly intrusive advertising was also cited as a contributor to the trend.

The study suggests that relatively few people read past the headline or the first sentence or two.  “The space occupied by the actual article is just there to give credibility to the headline,” Professor Palimpsest explained.  “It could be filler text, and most people wouldn’t even notice.”

Asked about the potential for this research to undermine journalistic integrity further, Professor Palimpsest replied, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Lorem sed risus ultricies tristique nulla aliquet enim tortor. Faucibus scelerisque eleifend donec pretium vulputate sapien nec sagittis. Faucibus in ornare quam viverra orci. Pretium viverra suspendisse potenti nullam ac. Viverra aliquet eget sit amet tellus cras adipiscing enim. Nulla facilisi nullam vehicula ipsum a arcu cursus vitae. Posuere sollicitudin aliquam ultrices sagittis orci a scelerisque purus. Lacus sed viverra tellus in. Quisque sagittis purus sit amet. Posuere lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit duis. Vulputate dignissim suspendisse in est ante in nibh. Eget egestas purus viverra accumsan. Laoreet suspendisse interdum consectetur libero id faucibus nisl. Amet consectetur adipiscing elit ut aliquam purus sit amet luctus. Neque laoreet suspendisse interdum consectetur libero id. Ridiculus mus mauris vitae ultricies. Purus ut faucibus pulvinar elementum integer enim neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames. Neque convallis a cras semper auctor.

Sit amet porttitor eget dolor morbi non arcu. Arcu non sodales neque sodales ut. Ut morbi tincidunt augue interdum velit euismod. Ac placerat vestibulum lectus mauris. Turpis egestas integer eget aliquet nibh. Vitae sapien pellentesque habitant morbi. Maecenas ultricies mi eget mauris pharetra. Sapien et ligula ullamcorper malesuada proin libero nunc consequat interdum. Condimentum vitae sapien pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus. Neque viverra justo nec ultrices dui sapien eget mi.

Pretium vulputate sapien nec sagittis aliquam malesuada. Vulputate dignissim suspendisse in est ante in nibh mauris. Magna eget est lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lacus sed viverra tellus in. Felis bibendum ut tristique et egestas quis ipsum. Et tortor consequat id porta nibh venenatis cras sed. Aliquam sem fringilla ut morbi. Tortor posuere ac ut consequat semper viverra nam libero. Cursus metus aliquam eleifend mi in nulla posuere sollicitudin aliquam. Sed pulvinar proin gravida hendrerit. Pharetra diam sit amet nisl suscipit. Vitae semper quis lectus nulla.

Filler text by Loremipsum.io.  The rest of it is Copyright 2020.

Return of the Antique Lamp with the Messy Legacy

Yes, that’s right:  one of my oldest blog entries (and a personal favorite of mine) is back, this time in the form of a video!

Check it out below…

 

News Flash: Debate Committee Adds Bursting Into Tears as Legitimate Line of Reasoning

Debaters needing to add that extra little oomph to their presentations now have an additional tool at their disposal, thanks to a decision by the International Committee on Rhetorical Standards.  They can always burst into tears.

The prolapsis ad lacrimas maneuver permits debaters to have a deeply emotional outburst near the end of the debating period, augmenting their argument by portraying their opponents as cruel and unreasoning monsters.

Long considered as a questionable if highly effective rhetorical device rather than a line of serious philosophical inquiry, the maneuver was approved in the proceedings of the Committee’s 82nd quadrennial conference as a legitimate method of reaching truth and general understanding.

“This is genuinely exciting,” said Professor Ernst Heltvildt of the College of Experimental Epistemology, who sponsored the resolution.  “It’s the first new logical approach we’ve endorsed in decades.  It’s vital for debaters to have this important tool in the new age of Emotional Intelligence.”

In the final debate on the resolution, opponents pointed out that prolapsis ad lacrimas is a close cousin (and frequent associate) of the ad hominem fallacy, which transforms debate about an issue into a debate about the debaters.  “Surely this is just legitimizing the playing of the ‘victim’ card,” said Dr. Dee Vernunft of the University of Pomme de Terre’s Advanced Philosophy faculty in closing arguments on the matter.  “Making your opponent look bad may change the flavor of the debate, but it doesn’t change the facts presented.  Endorsing the prolapsis ad lacrimas will reduce the search for truth to a question of who can throw the biggest hissy fit.”

The record of the debate then indicates that Prof. Heltvildt, who was arguing in support of the resolution, then burst into tears, explained how close to his heart the resolution was, and accused his opponent of “heartlessly perpetuating a strictly rational outlook with an irrational hatred of emotional influences.”

The resolution then passed by a 10-to-1 margin.

The move to adopt an emotional outburst as a legitimate tool of logical analysis has attracted some comment in epistemological circles.  “The relationship between emotion and logic has always been rather tenuous,” said Professor Mitt Kopfschmerzen of the University of Punxsutawney’s College of Applied Philosophy.  “While emotion can sometimes provide important insights on issues, it has certain limits as an analytical tool.  These days we seem to be observing a growing distrust of logic as such, and a growing emphasis on ’emotional truth,’ which seems to be interpreted in different ways.  Do they mean a) facts about one’s emotional state at a particular time or b) things that one believes to be true because one feels strongly about them?

“There’s a vast difference between the statements ‘It is true that I feel very strongly about this’ and ‘This must be true because I feel it to be’–or, for that matter, ‘You should be convinced of my opinion simply because I feel so strongly about it.’  I fear adopting the prolapsis ad lacrimas will only confuse the matter further.”

In other news, shares of companies that manufacture facial tissues and eye drops surged in late trading for no obvious reason.

Copyright 2018

News Flash: Mobs Riot to Celebrate Richard III Debate Contest Result

Oxford, England–Jubilant mobs streamed out of the Sheldonian Theatre this evening following an upset victory by the Buckingham debate team over the York team in this year’s annual debate finals.

Thames Valley Police forces were called out to help quell rioting in Broad Street and looting in the historic Covered Market as supporters of Team Buckingham celebrated this important win.

“This hooliganism is absolutely unwarranted,” police spokesman Inspector Robert Fuzz told the local newspaper.  “I don’t care if their team proved conclusively that the Princes in the Tower were murdered by the Duke of Buckingham; that doesn’t give them the right to go around smashing property.”

Team York, which in past years has often successfully argued for the guilt of Richard III in connection with the disappearance of the Princes, was widely considered the favorite in this contest, having easily knocked out Team Tyrrell in the semi-finals.   The Buckingham team only reached the finals after narrowly defeating Team Tudor in double overtime.

The finals match included a number of  tense moments.  At one point a member of Team Buckingham was ejected over a vicious ad hominem argument against the leader of Team York.  Then, in the final moments of the game, Team York failed to intercept a desperate reductio ad absurdum argument lobbed by Team Buckingham, allowing the latter to score and win the match.

Inspector Fuzz cited the dramatic finale as a contributing factor to the rioting.  “While the spectacular ending to the game certainly left the fans in an excited state,” he said, “it is in fact possible to be excited without wreaking havoc on your host city.”

According to Inspector Fuzz, the police are deploying standard crowd-control measures, such as tear gas, water cannons, and a series of public-address systems broadcasting lengthy lectures on modern macroeconomic theory.

Estimates of the damage have yet to be compiled, pending review by insurance adjusters.

Representatives of Team Buckingham issued a statement expressing dismay over the rioting as well as a ten-minute argument for why it wasn’t their fault.

Organizers of the annual debate over the fate of the princes say that they will investigate ways of reducing potential violence ahead of next year’s contest, possibly including a moratorium on dramatic finishes.

Copyright 2018

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