Out of the Mouths of Babes...

     Out of the mouths of youngsters come some of the most embarrassing remarks their parents ever made.
     Youngsterisms can also be surprisingly logical with their answers. Like the six-year old, lost in a supermarket and hollering "Martha! Martha!" at top lung power. He was chided by his mother, after they were reunited, that he shouldn't call her Martha, but Mother." His reply, "I know, but this store is FULLA mothers!"
     Or the moppet lunching off a place mat featuring the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle, where he gazed with solemn eyes at the Mother Goose scene of the cow jumping over the moon. Pretty soon he turned to his mother and said, "Isn't that silly? It would take at least a three-stage rocket to reach the moon."
     Or the little girl in the toy shop when a clerk showed her an elaborate doll. "Now this model walks, talks, cries and drinks," rhapsodied the clerk. "Oh, I have a baby sister who does all that," the tot replied scornfully, "I just want a doll."
     Another little girl, attending her first auto show with her dad, watched in wonder as a new Pontiac revolved slowly under very bright spotlights. "Daddy, LOOK! They're barbecuing a car."
     I reminded a young neighbor boy he had forgotten his sweater, laying on a porch swing, when he started to leave after visiting with me. "Yeah," he answered, "that's just something I have to put on when my mom gets chilly."
     That's the same kid who explained the age of a new neighbor to me this way, "He's so little he isn't even a number yet." And, in arguing with his little sister, ended that tiff with, "Your brain is just like a Teflon frying pan. Nothing will stick to it."
     Just as bright was the comment of a four-year-old upon arising shortly before dawn with his mother, who was tending her new baby. "Mommy, Jesus has turned on the lights."
     Then there was the family that lent its pet hamster to a neighbor to mate with his female, with the result being seven new hamsters. The neighbor thought this a good time to acquaint his nine-year-old son with the tale of the birds and bees. "Son, you probably have some questions about the hamsters and their new babies," he said as introduction. "Yes, I do," the boy replied. "Can I charge a stud fee?"
     Even five-year-olds can be practical like that. Overheard in a department store was this moppet studying the escalator. "What do they do when the basement gets full of steps?" she asked.
     Which puts an exclamation point on Herbert V. Prochnow's statement, "If children didn't ask questions, how could they find out that we know so little?"
 
(Credit, in order, La Vida Witkowski, The United Mine Workers Journal, Mrs. L. Binder in the Catholic Digest, San Diego Union, Mary L. Cotton of Memphis, TN, Minneapolis Tribune Almanac, Unkn own,

THINGS I WOULDN'T KNOW IF I DIDN'T READ

     I've always had a curious bent of mind, so I've always read voraciously. I subscribe to six magazines and receive three university alumni magazines and read them all. This, in itself, is not an education. I got that first via several colleges, earning two BA degrees, an MA and nearly through a PhD (before finding out I was no longer interested in the field the PhD encompassed). Therein lies the problem with college educations - mind and interest changes, which can't easily be re-channeled.. But I don't begrudge the time in school. It taught me there are myriad other less stereotypical ways to learn whatever it is one wants to learn. And reading is high on the list.
     This column, in fact, will be comprised of items of interest I wouldn't have known if I didn't read.
     The most fascinating thing I've been reading about is the 3-Dimensional printer, in the December 2014 issue of National Geographic. Also called "additive manufacturing", it has actually been around for about 30 years. The quick pace of advances is why it is such current news.
     It works pretty much the same way a desktop printer does. Instead of using ink, though, it "prints" in plastic,wax, resin, wood, concrete, gold, titanium, carbon fiber, chocolate, and even living tissue. It builds an object a bit at a time, placing material only where it needs to be. Thus, it can make geometrically complex objects that can't be made by injecting material into molds, often at considerable savings in weight with no loss in strength.
     Thousands of digital designs are already available on Thingiverse.com where anyone can download the blueprint to "print" out objects from chess pieces to napkin rings to World of Warcraft characters. Rapidly evolving technology has already seen printed rocket engine parts, chocolate figurines, replica pistols, a Dutch canal house, designer sunglasses, pizzas, a two-seater car, a rowboat and a prototype bionic human ear. The world's smallest lithium battery, just a millimeter wide, has been made to power medical implants. Harvard researchers have printed living tissue interlaced with blood vessels. The blocks needed to build a 13-room house will be printed with a specially developed bioplastic compound that is 80% vegetable oil.
     So it is easy to see why this has intrigued me.
     Next, computer technology! Within a single generation it has developed exponentially. A computer can now be snapped together from a kit - by Kano, $99 - and it can help users learn code and build games!
     Because easily accessible drinking water is scarce in Peru, a tech college there, with the aid of local scientists and advertising firm FCB Mayo, developed a billboard for the school that draws moisture from the air, purifies it, then sends the water to a reservoir where locals can fill up tanks to take home.
        Fastcompany.com followed up this story with one from Mexico City's Manuel Gea Gonzalez Hospital, which last year unveiled a "smog-eating" facade covered with titanium dioxide, a catalyst that breaks down pollutants from a thousand cars per day into less harmful compounds, then neutralizes them. Next year Milan will open Palazzo Italia, a six-story pavilion with "air-cleaning cement" exterior.
     A new 2014 company named VMatter sells knives harder than steel with a glass-like finish that maintain sharpness and resist bacteria and rust. Injection molded, rather than cast and polished, they can be manufactured with less waste. An immediate fan of the $150 to $400 costing knives was co-host Geoffrey Zakarian of Food Network's The Kitchen program.
     The new (in 2014) DC59 Motorhead vacuum claims to have out-cleaned the top five best selling full-size vacuums across both carpets and hard floors in independent floor care tests. And the user doesn't have to wrestle a cord around with it!
     Cycling's not-for-profit Oregon Manifest challenged five designers to create bicycles for better ways of conquering their own cities' terrains (Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Portland, Oregon) in 2014. The winner was Sizemore Bicycle of Seattle, Washington. To be sold in 2015, their bike will encompass removable handle bars that form a sturdy U-lock so other security is unnecessary, lights that illuminate when the bike starts to move and brighten as the sky darkens, a cleaner belt drive instead of an oiled chain, rubber-bristled fender brushes that sweep water off the tires, and an electric-powered pedal assist that turns on automatically to tackle Seattle's notoriously steep hills.
     Fastcoexist.com reports that a former New York City firefighter has done a drastic redesign of the old fire hydrant, which has been notorious for breaking, leaking and freezing. The new model is also tamper-proof.
     As a lifetime writer, the dictionary has been my constant companion and it never ceases to amaze me how it keeps growing. Just recently I've come across words in print that are not yet in it. First noted was "dataclysm", found in an article about Christian Rudder's new book titled "Who We Are (When We Think No One Is Looking). The term is used to describe dating data collected by his OK Cupid dating site.
   Another made-up word is "staycation". It refers to vacationing comfortably and inexpensively by staying home. Don't remember where I read it. Still another is "dogoir", which describes a memoir about a pet dog, from "Our Dog Years" by David Dudley in Jan 2015 AARP, The Magazine. "Thinspire" is also new, used as the title of a book by a lady who was inspired to lose a large amount of weight. "Mansplaining" is from another book, "Men Explain Things to Me" by Rebecca Solnit. It's "an essay collection about the ways women's voices get silenced in a world of tired rhetoric and the same faux-feminist solutions to gender inequality", according to the Fast Company Magazine reviewer.
    Another book you might find interesting is :"Don't Put That In There" by Aaron Carroll and Rachel Vreerman. They debunk myths about sex that everyone thinks are true, like having sex will help one lose weight. Actually, they report,  "one would need to have sex 35 times, for 30 minutes at a time, to lose a pound". Our comment: What a wonderful way to commit suicide!
   
   








       

WHAT DOES A RUSSIAN JOKE ABOUT?

     Even the Kremlin can't stop up a peoples' sense of humor!
     The common view of Communism is that there is nothing funny about it. But the average person in Russia is really not like the American-imagined stereotype, according to Gene Sosin, an expatriot Russian who does guest speaking sessions for American dollars. He says the average Russian citizen  is no more ignorant of what is going on there than the American citizen is ignorant of the ills of his society. So, what they cannot change they poke fun it, the same as American do.
     Russian jokes are their way to protest the system and the problems it has brought them, without getting them arrested. For example, Sosin says, they may define the difference between Communism and capitalism this way: In capitalism you have the exploitation of man by man; in Communism you have just the opposite!
     Sometimes the humor is in a riddle. Example: "What is the transitional stage between socialism and Communism?" Answer: "Alcoholism."
     Of course no one actually speaks out about the government, because the secret police are still everywhere. But a joke gets a point across nearly as well. Here is one Sosin tells:
     "All the great Egyptologists of the world were gathered in Egypt where a great new tomb was found and opened. Inside was a mummy, and they were all trying to decide what pharaoh it might be. Several countries' experts tried modern techniques and failed in the identification. Finally the Russians sent in their experts. After three days they came out and stated, "It is Ramses the 14th."
     "How did you find out? everyone wanted to know.
     "He confessed of his own accord," they said.
    And, just as jokes are made of the political situation in the U.S., so are they made in Russia. For example:      "Mr Putin, I have some good news and some bad news for you," the party secretary announced.
     "Tell me the bad news first then."
     "The bad news is that the Chinese have landed on the moon."
     "Oh, no! What is the good news then?"
     "ALL of them have landed on the moon!"
     One of the newer riddle-jokes Sosn reported was this:
     "What is the Russian definition of a string trio?"
     Answer: "A quartet that has just returned from a tour of western Europe."
     Even the lack of Russian freedom itself can still be joked about. Example:
     A group of Russian students were discussing how different nationalities would behave in unusual situations, like two men and a woman being shipwrecked together on a desert island.
     "If they were Italian," one student stated, "they would be very emotional about it. The two men would have a duel and the survivor would live with the woman."
     ""How would the English handle it?" another student asked the knowledgeable one.
     "They would be very sporting about it. The men would draw straws and the loser would say, 'Good show, old sport!' and walk off into the ocean."
     "What would Americans do?" another asked.
     "Easy," the self-proclaimed expert replied. "The two men would form a corporation and exploit the woman's labor."
     "And how would we Russians handle it?"
     "The Russians would run around the island waiting for a phone call from the Kremlin to give them instructions."
     With that, Sosin raised his glass for a toast. "Let us drink," he said, "to the time the Russian people do not need to wait for that phone call!"