I WONDER

Is it just me or is this hilarious?

I saw this ad and apparently it’s for real.

Instantly go from chrome dome to hairy Larry - it's as easy as putting on a hat! Imagine the looks on people's faces when you show up wearing this Fun Hair Visor! Serious fun for all ages. That's what's in store every time you don this hilarious spiked-hair visor. It has a comfortable black fabric design plus thick, lush cotton/poly/acrylic hair with highlighted tips for that added touch of style. Adjusts to fit medium and large heads. Gray hair, black visor.

Wow! It’s real thick, lush cotton/poly/acrylic hair!

I wonder.

It's only $19.99

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
February 27, 2010

CONGRATULATIONS TO ME

The California Department of Motor Vehicles requires that anyone driving in California must possess a valid Driver’s License. A new one is issued every five years and my number was up this year.

This meant I needed to go to the DMV Office and take a written test and have my vision checked. So I studied the manual of regulations and found much valuable information such as, the limit for blood alcohol and still be able to drive legally is .08%. This was the first question on my copy of the test. I also learned the closest distance from a fire hydrant one is allowed to park is 15 feet and you must be within 18 inches of a curb, if there is a curb. All of these are obviously very important if one is to be allowed to drive an automobile in California.

I took the written test and aced it – meaning I scored 100 percent.

The vision test called for me to read some letters from a chart some 10 feet away which I managed to do though I did make a mental note to first clean my glasses next time.

So I had my new picture taken and now await delivery of my driver’s license by mail. I will be 93 years old before I need to take another test and that’s scary. I don’t mean taking the test is scary. The thought of being 93 years old is scary.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
February 26, 2010

WHAT'S WITH TOYOTA?

I think people all over the world know that, Toyota, the Japanese car manufacturer, has been having problems. A couple of weeks ago they were the one of the largest car manufactures in the world and had an excellent reputation. (Personally, we are on our third Toyota Prius and never had the slightest complaint.)

But lately there have been several accidents that seemed to be blamed on some kind of a Toyota vehicle malfunction. This instituted several recalls and even brought the President of the company to America to appear before several governmental representatives and answer questions.

Speaking mostly through an interpreter he apologized for Toyota’s performance flaws as well as apologizing for his own personal inadequacy in allowing this to happen.

He then appeared on several television programs where he apologized some more.

I don’t get it.

Isn’t he supposed to fall on his sword or yell, "Banzai!"and crash his Lexus into an aircraft carrier or something like that? Maybe he tried and, because of faulty steering linkage, missed.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
February 25, 2010

I HEAR WEIRD STUFF

I heard this on television the other day but it was in the background and I just assumed, as any normal person would, that I had heard it wrong because it was too weird to have actually happened. (My using the term “normal person” is a guess. I have no idea how normal people think. Never have. )

But yesterday I heard it again and this time the television program was being recorded. So I played it back and even though it sounded odd, I was right. I had heard it previously.

It was advertising for some kind of psychological clinic. I suppose it was poor advertising because I don’t recall the name of the clinic, but the announcer was asking for people who were suffering from depression to get in touch. The exact quote was, “If you have ever contemplated or committed suicide, contact this number immediately.”

I wonder how any people who had actually committed suicide called in. If I were answering the phones and someone who had committed suicide called in, I’d be frightened.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
February 22, 2010

OLYMPIC GAMES MAKE ME WONDER

As I get older I notice that I catch myself wondering more. Perhaps it's that there are more things to wonder about but I'm inclined to think that it's merely the fact that I have more time to wonder.

Right now the Winter Olympics are being held in Canada. I watched some of the events on television but actually spent more time wondering then enjoying. For example, there is the sport of curling. From what I can see the object of his sport is to slide a large stone along the ice attempting to make it stop at some predetermined point. So, I wonder how this sport started. I understand it began in Scotland many years ago and perhaps that has something to do with it. Scotland is where the sport of golf was born. Perhaps one day, in the middle of winter, one Scotsman said to another, "Let's have a round of golf."
His friend might have replied, "Are you daft, mon? It's the middle of winter and the holes are frozen over."
The reply to that might have been, "Well, I could take this rock and slide it down the ice and see how close I can get to a circle that we will draw down there. That will be like golf and we can do it all winter."

That's a plausible explanation for how curling began but how do you explain ski jumping? I picture two young men who were probably teenagers who should have been in school. While skiing they might have paused at the top of a steep hill observing a cliff dropping off at the bottom of the hill. One skier might say to the other, "Hey Dude, I'm going to ski down there and jump off the edge of that cliff to see how far I will go before I land. Then you come after me and see if you can jump farther. Okay?"

It’s doubtful that there would be two men who would think this was a good idea so the second man probably didn’t understand but being a teenager he nodded his head anyway and thus the sport of ski jumping was born.
It's possible.
In fact, it’s quite plausible especially if they really were teenagers.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
February 21, 2010

I PONDER THERFORE I AM

This morning I woke up and as usual I began to ponder. Pondering is something that isn't done often enough these days. I suppose people who need to go to work every day and then also take care of things around the house don't have much time for pondering. Therefore, it seems only natural that most of the pondering should be done by retired people.

Today as I was getting dressed I was pondering why one particular dark blue sweater that I wear seems to be in the expert class when it comes to gathering lint balls. This particular sweater seems to make up for the lackadaisical attitude my other sweaters have towards lint balls. It collects every one in sight and I suspect it secretly goes about the neighborhood collecting lint balls from other clothes dryers.

As I was doing this I began to feel a slight embarrassment. I began to think of the many other really important events going on in the world and felt my lint ball problem was hardly worth pondering.

On the other hand, there were so many other things to ponder I wasn't sure where to start pondering. We have the situation in Haiti were hundreds of thousands of people are suffering. They certainly could use my pondering.

Then I could ponder as to why there is so much snow in Washington DC, where they need none, and none in Vancouver British Columbia, where they need snow for some Olympic events. I could ponder that.

Or, I could spend some time pondering the predicament that Tiger Woods is currently in with his de facto harem. Probably one of the most ponderable aspects of this would be a comment I heard one of his lady friends (alleged) make on television last night. I think it was Lady Number Four. She said, "The sex was marvelous. Not the ordinary, married type sex but exciting."

Now there is something worth pondering. I think I'll make that my Ponder of the Day.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
February 15, 2010

ANOTHER ONE OF LIFE'S MYSTERIES

These days there is much discussion about evolution. Some people think, as Darwin did, that human ancestors were lower forms of life evolving to what we are today. Others disagree and attribute our current state of evolution of some higher intelligence. However, most agree that not too long ago, maybe a billion or so years ago, humans lived in caves which today we would consider a very crude style of living.

I never hear anyone talk about the furniture in the caves and how it has evolved. Surely when we lived in caves we didn’t have things like dressers with drawers. Probably, well, possibly, some of the more organized humans of that era had a special rock where they stacked different pieces of apparel but I’m sure they weren’t as well organized as some people are today. I doubt if they had a special rock for underwear and another for socks. And I’d be willing to wager they did not require that each piece of underwear be folded neatly before it was placed on this special rock.

But along the evolutionary road something happened. It would have been somewhere around the time drawers were invented. It was about then that women decided everything in a drawer must be neatly folded and stacked in some order. It didn’t seem to make any difference that the article of clothing was soon to be taken out of the drawer and placed on a person’s body in a completely haphazard way. No, they must always be neatly folded when in the drawer.

Sociologists at several major Think Tanks have studied this while trying to discover why this compulsion only exists in the females of the human race. Apparently this is one of those mysteries of life which have no real explanation. Maybe the next generation will figure it out.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
February 3, 2010

NO MORE MOON TRAVEL AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE

There are several adjectives some people use to express their opinion that the statement just heard was nonsense. Many of these colloquialisms seem to refer to the elimination processes used by farm animals, say, horses or bulls and these, while most descriptive, are not usually accepted in polite society and are barely recognized in some dictionaries. One of the ways of circumventing this is to use the word, “Hogwash” which is accepted in most dictionaries though not recommended. It says, “(informal) nonsense; ludicrously false statements”. Good enough.

Recently the American President Obama announced budget cuts for the coming year and it appears one of the victims of the new economy will be the U.S. Space Program and its “Man On The Moon” projects. It's planned that the government will get out of the space travel business thereby saving a ton of money.

Almost immediately a Senator from the State of Florida protested saying how terrible it will be if other countries, like China and Russia – eeek! – travel to the moon and we don’t. He said, “We certainly don’t want that, do we?”

Hogwash!

Everyone knows that a good deal of the money for space travel is spent in Florida where the shuttles are launched. The Senator doesn’t care about China or Russia being on the moon! He cares about money that will no longer find its way to Florida! Then when election time rolls around people may notice they are a bit short of spending money and send a different senator to Washington to remedy that. He cares about the unemployment problem and does not want to become a statistic.

Personally, I would like to see a real analysis of where the money spent on past space launches actually ended up. There’s an old expression: “It did cost millions of dollars to put a man on the moon, but not one cent was spent on the moon.” Of course, this means it was spent on earth. Much of the costs of building and launching these devices end eventually involving someone’s wages. Even some the cost of the materials can be traced all the way back to wages paid to the titanium miners.

Maybe that’s even better than trying to devise more new programs that might create jobs that might alleviate unemployment. I’d like to know.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
February 2, 2010

I MOVE UP IN CLASS

You may have heard of "Ben" Stein.

He's an American, writer, lawyer, and a commentator on political and economic issues. He used to be a speechwriter for American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He also produced and starred in a documentary film with the title of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" . He was exploring whether "Intelligent Design" should be taught in schools or not. He explored the differing opinions as to how the world and the people in it originated. Some, like Darwin, contend it was a matter of evolving from lower forms of life while others argue there surely was some intelligent force that designed the whole thing.

I was not overly impressed with the film that had Ben Stein traveling all over the world seeking opinions from prominent scientists and philosophers. Personally, I didn't come to any conclusion but I did notice one thing which seems important to me. Most of these prominent people were interviewed at their desks. Every single one of them had one thing in common. Their desks were a mess! There were papers and books stacked upon each other so that there was no possible way they would be able to find anything in the piles.

That made me feel good because that's exactly how my desk looks all the time. It must be a sign of genius and, judging by desktops, apparently, I am one.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
January 30, 2010

ANOTHER MAJOR DISCOVERY

I’ve heard of something called “The Age of Discovery.” I never was sure what it meant but I think I have entered it. Maybe the “Age of Discovery” is 86 or thereabouts. It seems to me I’m discovering something new almost daily. I consider yesterday’s discovery to be gigantic.

Almost everyone has experienced the thrill of calling some business and having been put on hold and being forced to listen to music, interrupted with periodic announcements thanking you for your patience and informing you that someone will be with you soon.

I may have quite accidentally discovered how to avoid this. Yesterday I had occasion to call an insurance company to inquire about a bill. After pushing several numbers I was vocally escorted to the waiting area. I was using my cell phone and after some time I finally decided I might be able to do a bit of multitasking by using the bathroom facility while waiting. You can probably see what’s coming. Shortly after I entered the Little Room I heard, “Good morning. This is Muriel. How may I help you?”

I looked around and obviously there was no way Muriel could actually “help me” so I explained to her that I had been waiting and decided to go to the bathroom and I needed to get back to my desk.

She said, “That’s a little more information than I really needed.” I suppose she’s right but none the less, I think I have found out how to force these people to talk to me.

I will experiment further but if this turns out to be the momentous discovery I think it is, I may move my computer to a smaller room and bypass the waiting all together.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
January 27, 2010