I wrote this many years ago when I was young and callow. Unearthed in a recent files cleanup, I read it to someone who thought it still humorous. So, as Valentine's Day brings love messages to the fore once more, I decided to let you judge whether it is too curmudgeonly or merely truth-telling.
A man is like a lamp wick -trimmed many times before he finds the right flame!
I remember the first time I was trimmed. It was my mistake to think grass widows are green. This one knew all the answers, because she had had a chance to answer all the questions.
Things happened so fast I still don't know how they happened. We were out in the moonlight. I couldn't help thinking that this same moonlight made me think of a third degree, because it made me want to say things I was sure I would regret. And she led me on, into the parlor, being so confident of herself that she ensconced herself on the daveno, with one of the cushions on the floor at her feet.
Catching my breath, I asked her, "You mean you want me to abrogate all I have learned, ignore the power of analysis, eschew reason, deny my psychology training and tell you that I love you?"
She answered that all men were like corks, especially when it came to proposing to a lady. Some pop the question with just a little prying while others have to be drawn out. And her method of drawing out wasn't unique, but was effective. The sound of a kiss, I found, while not nearly as loud as a cannon report, still echoed a great deal longer.
I don't know how the talk got around to the topic of diamonds. She thought diamonds with facets brought out a lady's assets and were perfectly beautiful, if only she didn't have to make such a silly promise to get one. She didn't want to appear over-anxious though, I guess, so she added, "If I say 'no' now, you won't get angry with me and never ask me again, will you?"
She said it with a kiss, so I never really got to answer. But I knew an ending line when l heard it... and I've lived happily ever after.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
A DOZEN BOLD PREDICTIONS
Fast Company Magazine, only a recent discovery of mine, in its February issue, produced an intriguing article titled "World Changing Ideas", which foretells how a number of companies will impact on our lives in the near future. I bring them to you in synthesized form.
This year the first vaccine for malaria (known as RTS,S by the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative & Glaxo-SmithKline) could come up for regulatory approval - a real lifesaver in Angola and Uganda. This would show it is biologically possible to make a vaccine for not just malaria.
Drones, often thought of only as killing machines, are now being used by NASA to get more accurate hurricane warnings, by the Chinese to survey an earthquake region, and by RP SearchServices to help law enforcement agencies for jobs like finding lost persons by their infrared signatures.
Idaho and Tennessee passed legislation approving computer science to fill math or science graduation requirements. Code.org and Association of Computing Machinery are working to spread this idea nationwide as a fundamental new literacy for all.
Expect Labs will release an app that listens to your phone conversations and then serves up information needed before you even ask for it.
O3b Networks is working to expand the Internet into developing countries via eight satellites delivering 3G networks to isolated areas. They foresee eight billion new users.
The biometrics industry, with new hand-held scanners and automated sensors that can read eyes from 30 feet away, is expected to reach $14 billion a year as iris recognition systems aid or replace fingerprint scanners with ten times more efficiency.
Desktop 3-D printers, like MakerBots Replicator 2, are becoming accessible for home and school use. As many as 5,000 could be in schoolrooms by the end of the school year. This three-dimensional imaging will allow us to take irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind artifacts heretofore seen only in museums and, in a sense, put them into the hands of learners around the world. A mask of Abraham Lincoln is one of 20-plus objects from the Smithsonian collection that its digitization office has placed online as a demonstration of the potential of 3-D scanning, along with the Wright Flyer, a woolly mammoth skeleton, a supernova, a bee, and a sixth century Chinese statue known as the Cosmic Buddha.
A growing number of states now allow benefit-corporation status, helping protect social-minded companies from "stock-price-is-everything" investor lawsuits. Next milestone: a public company adopting the status.
Big medical centers will have to pull data from myriad wearable health-tracking tools, like Jawbone Up, the Fitbit Force and the AliveCor Health Monitor, into electronic health records, remove identifying information, and make it public.Cloud-based data is becoming an increasingly important medical tool.
D-Central, a non-WiFi router used to create private NSA-proof networks, and Android apps, like Wickr, are proffering self-destructing texts with sophisticated encryption.
Biotech company Proteus Digital Health plans to produce a "smart pill" with a pin-head sized sensor that will monitor the medications a patient takes, then deliver it to a smart phone.
Google Fiber, technology that brings unheard-of speed levels to Internet service, could reach 7.5 million homes by 2022.
Not on such an international interest level, but mind-blowing for internet game fanciers is Oculis Rift, which allows game players to step nside their favorite games for the very first time.
This year the first vaccine for malaria (known as RTS,S by the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative & Glaxo-SmithKline) could come up for regulatory approval - a real lifesaver in Angola and Uganda. This would show it is biologically possible to make a vaccine for not just malaria.
Drones, often thought of only as killing machines, are now being used by NASA to get more accurate hurricane warnings, by the Chinese to survey an earthquake region, and by RP SearchServices to help law enforcement agencies for jobs like finding lost persons by their infrared signatures.
Idaho and Tennessee passed legislation approving computer science to fill math or science graduation requirements. Code.org and Association of Computing Machinery are working to spread this idea nationwide as a fundamental new literacy for all.
Expect Labs will release an app that listens to your phone conversations and then serves up information needed before you even ask for it.
O3b Networks is working to expand the Internet into developing countries via eight satellites delivering 3G networks to isolated areas. They foresee eight billion new users.
The biometrics industry, with new hand-held scanners and automated sensors that can read eyes from 30 feet away, is expected to reach $14 billion a year as iris recognition systems aid or replace fingerprint scanners with ten times more efficiency.
Desktop 3-D printers, like MakerBots Replicator 2, are becoming accessible for home and school use. As many as 5,000 could be in schoolrooms by the end of the school year. This three-dimensional imaging will allow us to take irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind artifacts heretofore seen only in museums and, in a sense, put them into the hands of learners around the world. A mask of Abraham Lincoln is one of 20-plus objects from the Smithsonian collection that its digitization office has placed online as a demonstration of the potential of 3-D scanning, along with the Wright Flyer, a woolly mammoth skeleton, a supernova, a bee, and a sixth century Chinese statue known as the Cosmic Buddha.
A growing number of states now allow benefit-corporation status, helping protect social-minded companies from "stock-price-is-everything" investor lawsuits. Next milestone: a public company adopting the status.
Big medical centers will have to pull data from myriad wearable health-tracking tools, like Jawbone Up, the Fitbit Force and the AliveCor Health Monitor, into electronic health records, remove identifying information, and make it public.Cloud-based data is becoming an increasingly important medical tool.
D-Central, a non-WiFi router used to create private NSA-proof networks, and Android apps, like Wickr, are proffering self-destructing texts with sophisticated encryption.
Biotech company Proteus Digital Health plans to produce a "smart pill" with a pin-head sized sensor that will monitor the medications a patient takes, then deliver it to a smart phone.
Google Fiber, technology that brings unheard-of speed levels to Internet service, could reach 7.5 million homes by 2022.
Not on such an international interest level, but mind-blowing for internet game fanciers is Oculis Rift, which allows game players to step nside their favorite games for the very first time.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Valentine's Day: Cupid's Annual Carnival
The birds and bees started all this folderall way back in 1476, research reports. The fable goes that on St. Valentine’s Day the birds and bees are supposed to mate.
But such reports leave me wondering. Valentine’s Day hadn’t yet been calendarized at that time and, though birds and bees are wondrously astute in birthing progeny every Spring, I have yet to see either a bird or a bee perusing a calendar to find out when it is time to mate.
Nonetheless we sheep-like homo sapiens thought this Valentines’ Day idea a good one, so have slavishly followed it since it was made into an international celebratory occasion. Being civilized, however, we made it into a festival. Womenkind wrote their names on slips of paper and the menkind drew lots to find their potential loves-of-the-moment. The men then pinned these temporary lovers’ licenses on their lapels, sort of like today’s fraternity sweetheart pins, and proceeded to treat their new-found valentine misses to gifts. Gifts of what, historians remain vague about.
In that early time, this festival lasted several days. Thus it was that the misses had a fair opportunity to work their womanly wiles, because stories have been handed down that this haphazard sporting genre actually on occasion resulted in love matches leading to marriage. Probably had something to do with the power of suggestion.
If the festival didn’t work out, the ladies still had other methods of foretelling their future mates. One of the more popular superstitions was the belief that the first man a girl glimpsed on St. Valentine’s Day was destined to be her intended. Thus, many were the misses who locked themselves in their rooms until notified by a trusted family member that the correct young man was either in her house or passing by. They didn’t even want to leave superstition to chance.
St. Val’s Day has progressed to become the third most gift-giving occasion of the year, next only to Christmas and birthdays. But on that day, a word to the wise bachelor may be sufficient. Don’t say “yes” to anything your female giftee/s may say or ask - before you analyze it. Ladies have ways of phrasing things so they sound soft and safe, like whipped cream on jello.
If you do get caught making promises you never intended, don’t worry unnecessarily. Valentines, so far, won’t hold up in court. And there are still ships sailing to the South Seas where Polynesian custom requires the woman to always take the initiative in matters of the heart.
Imagine a place where the men have to fight for a Leap Year in order to get a say in such matters -- just women fighting over you all the time!
What a way to die--not being able to satisfy them all. Right?
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