THE HUMAN BODY

These days I've been more or less forced into thinking a lot about the structure of the human body. Whoever or whatever designed this piece of equipment did a marvelous job considering it was probably designed without the use of computers as it would be had it been done today.

I’ve read that there are more than 200 different bones in the human body and they work together using what seems to me a very complex system of levers, cables, hinges, pulleys and various other devices. At first glance it would seem amazing if it worked at all.

I wonder how many models were tested and failed before one worked successfully. I’ve read the Wright Brothers failed over and over before they made a machine that actually flew. It now seems fairly simple to make something fly and compared to making the human body work, flying would seem to be child’s play. Yet there seems to be little information available about how many failures the designer had before a human body was made to work in an acceptable fashion.

All in all, most human bodies seem to work fairly well though I question the designers choice of material for the framework. Perhaps at that time some sort of calcified mineral was the only material available to use for bones. Probably things like titanium hadn’t been discovered yet. That’s too bad because a human body with a skeleton made of titanium bones would be both light weight and strong so if a body happened to trip over something in a parking lot there would probably be no harm done at all.

Still, all in all, I tip my hat to the designer. After all, how many other things do we know where the original design is still being produced using the original equipment and methods?

The OldProfessor

Carmel, CA

June 30, 2010

MEMORIES OF MY VACATION

Many people take pictures of their adventures in order to be able to recall pleasant memories. Well, my memories aren't all that pleasant but I do have an image to refresh my memory of my recent hip adventure. (If you don't know what that means please see previous blog.)

Below is the x-ray showing the hunk of stainless steel that was inserted into my right leg. As I understand it, the surgeon cut off the end of the existing (and broken) hip bone and replaced it with this steel device. This picture was taken as I was on my back and the repair job was to my right hip but as you see it, it's on the left. The white color is the stainless steel.

I questioned the surgeon as to how they aligned it accurately and he told me they have jigs that take care of the alignment and so forth. He also told me another interesting thing. The steel insert is porous so as the bone grows it becomes part of the insert.

So, this is my memory of my vacation and even though it may not be for everyone, I'm happy to share it with you.

The OldProfessor

Carmel, CA

June 27, 2010

THAT WAS FUN -- NOT!!

It seems like eons ago but on May 26th I tripped over something in a store parking lot and broke my right hip. Surgery followed the next day after which I moved into a Rehab House and spent almost 4 weeks there relearning to stand up, walk and other exotic things of that ilk.

On June 22, just four days short of a month, I arrived back home using a 4-wheel walker to get around. With a bunch of determination and a whole lot of pain I am now walking relying heavily on a cane. Walking normally and without pain seems a long way down the road but I am promised it is on the horizon if I work at it, which I will certainly do. I don't want to spend the second half of my life limping around.

Several of you have written sort of suggesting that I was missed and that feels good. Though I am a long way from being 100%, I am working at it and soon will be back at this place with my usual opinionated -- whatever.

Though it is difficult, I do see one bight side to this. I now have a bunch of new adventures to share with you. Hopefully some of them may discourage someone from trying to emulate the swan dive I took.

So, as another old timer once said, "I shall return." To which I add, "And soon." Thanks for waiting.

The Old Professor

Carmel, CA

June 24, 2010

OUR NEW CAR, KIND OF

A couple of months ago we bought a new automobile. Well, it’s like a real automobile only smaller. It’s a Prius, manufactured by Toyota.

We found this car to have all kinds of extra things available and, partly because I am addicted to gadgets, we bought most of them at added cost.

So now when I get in my car it automatically detects my cell phone and connects to it. If I get a call while I’m driving, it answers for me and I merely talk to whoever called.

I also can talk to the car as I might do using the navigation system. I can suggest an address to go to and the navigation system guides me there by telling me where and when to turn. It even has a kind voice when I make a mistake. I hear sometimes hear a kindly lady say, “Continue straight one quarter of a mile where you are able to make a legal U-turn.”

I can also speak back and say something like, “Take me home.” and she will guide me safely there.

When we were offered a satellite radio channel of course we needed it. We are told this will allow me to drive across the country and never lose my radio signal. That’s impressive even though I rarely drive more than 35 miles and never have lost my radio signal. But if I do decided to take off one day, I’ll be able to listen to the same station day after day after day. Oh joy!

Then there is the backup camera which shows up on a screen whenever I start to go in reverse. This is quite handy in seeing what I am going to run over in case I might want to stop.

There was one option we decided to pass on. We could have had leather covered seats but decided we had no real use for them and did not order that option. For this, I feel the salesman acted irresponsibly. Probably legally so. When we were discussing this option he never once mentioned that spilling some kind of chocolate drink on the front seat would leave a stain that apparently will remain there for life, while leather upholstery would have made it a simple job to clean up. He never said anything like that. I had to discover that myself.

I may sue that salesman for something. I haven’t decided what yet.

The OldProfessor

Carmel, CA

May 17, 2010

CONVERGANCE

It’s seems strange to me how often I seem to have the word “converge” apply to something in my life. I mean "converge" where it means, “To come together from different directions so as to eventually meet.” It happened again yesterday, Mother’s Day.

Though my mother has long ago gone on to her reward I still often think fondly of her in spite of some of her very odd idiosyncrasies. Whenever I think of some of the odd, as in different, things about her I recall the time I called her to let her know I had remarried after a disastrous first attempt at marriage.

My mother and I lived 3,000 miles apart so she had never met, or even heard of, the lady I had just recently married. So, soon after we returned from our honeymoon I picked up the phone and called my mother.

“Hi, Mom. I have some great news. You now have a brand new daughter in law.”
There was a rather lengthy silence.
Then my mother casually asked, “What color is she?”

I was so startled I didn’t know what to say and it was many years later I learned the root of her question. It seemed that she still remembered a day when I was about 19 years old and came home from seeing a movie. I told my mother I had seen Lena Horne and further said something like -- well, not something like -- exactly, “She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I would marry her if she were purple.”

Thirty years later my mother remembered that and I suppose she worried that I might actually marry a purple lady.

I thought of that story again yesterday, Mother’s Day. That evening I heard that Lena Horne had died at the age of 92.

Convergence again.



Rest in Peace, Lovely Lady

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
May 10, 2010

OIL IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

So here we have yet another problem and no one seems to have an answer. Currently there are several million gallons of oil floating around in the Gulf of Mexico and the prospects of doing anything about it grow more dim daily.

Some have suggested sweeping it up and taking it some other place until a solution can be found. Other have suggested burning it which seems like a massive undertaking to say nothing about the damage to our atmosphere.

Various groups are building all sorts of devices to at least keep the oil at sea where, presumably it can’t do as much harm and maybe, just maybe, it might disappear someday. Good luck with that.

I think I have a solution and, as usual, I wonder why someone didn’t think of it. Of course, everyone doesn’t have my background of experiences which enables me to solve a variety of problems. This particular experience goes back to when I was in college in the mid 1940s. I bought my first car and I’ll never forget it. It was a 1937 Buick.
This was a great car and also had some unusual capabilities. For one thing it had an insatiable appetite for oil. It seems to me that I used to put almost as much oil in this car as gasoline. Yet it never seemed to leak any that was visible and it didn’t leave big clouds of exhaust smoke. It just quietly consumed oil at a prestigious rate.

Now almost anyone should be able to see how this could solve the current crisis. If it were possible to obtain about half a dozen of these old Buicks, they could make that 50 million gallon oil spill disappear in matter of weeks, or months at the very most.

I’m not sure what I might will say if when I get called to Washington to testify about how I managed to cleanup the Gulf catastrophe so quickly.

I’ll probably just say, “You’re welcome.”

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
May 5, 2010

AN ADDENDUM TO YESTERDAY'S BLOG

Today I was thinking about the blog I posted yesterday regarding words that were hidden in order to shield them from children’s eyes and ears and also to maintain the level of morality we have today. I left out one important method of doing this. That is the famous “expletive deleted” which is a great improvement over using the first and last letters and allows the reader to use his or her imagination to fill in the missing letters.

If that famous line from the 1939 movie, Gone with the Wind where Clark Gable as Rhett Butler said to Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara was, “Frankly Scarlett, I don’t give a d--n.” the reader would be severely limited in trying to decipher what Rhett actually said. It might have been, “I don’t give a dawn.” or maybe “I don’t give a Dean.” In other words, one is considerably hampered in finding a word when limited to 4-letter words that begin with “d” and end with “n”.

If, on the other hand, one were to read, “Frankly Scarlet, I don’t give a (expletive deleted)” the field would be wide open. The dictionary says an expletive is a “curse or swear word” and everyone concedes the English language is very adequately supplied with those.

And those with more sensitive souls could substitute any word they found more appealing. Some might even come up with something that would make the line equally memorable. It certainly would be different if Rhett had said, “Frankly Scarlett, I don’t give a farthing’s worth of penny candy.” I think they talked that way in those days and, if so, it would be a much different line that is quoted. today.

As if I would give a farthing’s worth of penny candy.

The Old Professor

Carmel, CA

May 1, 2010

I WONDER AGAIN

I happen to live in a situation where everyone here does not have English as an only language. We find it helps if, when we are watching television, we have the closed caption feature turned on as well as the audio. This feature is where the words scroll across the screen as they are being spoken. It’s primarily for people with hearing problems but we have discovered it helps our situation too.

Sometimes we see things that are missing in an audio only session. A good example was the recent US Senate hearing that pitted some Senators against the Goldman Sachs executives who were being investigated for a huge stock scandal. If you read about it in the newspaper you saw that a Senator asked, “Why did you sell securities that your own company called shitty?”

Now most people listening heard a Senator ask, “Why did you sell securities that your own company called bleep?” However, people who had the Closed Caption saw, “Why did you sell securities that your own company called s- - - -y?”

Now, what is that all about? Is there anyone older than 6 years old who doesn’t at least suspect what “shitty” means? Most people don’t use it but why is it “coded”? It must be to protect young ears from hearing it, as though that answers the problem.

The answer really is in having a child ask, "What does shitty mean, Daddy?" and having Daddy (or Mommy) explain it and add that it was a word that most people don't use because it makes the user sound ignorant. That's probably better than learning from friends that it's a giggle word you don't ever use in front of your parents.

But what do I know? In fact, if truth were to be told, I really don’t give a d- -n.

The Old Professor

Carmel, CA

April 30, 2010

I REALLY HEARD THIS

For the past couple of years I’ve been posting little tidbits here that I thought might interest someone. For the past few days I haven’t seen or heard anything I thought worthy of putting here for you to read. That is, until yesterday. Then I saw something on TV that startled me but I’m not sure it should appear here under my name inasmuch as it involves a couple of subjects that many people have strong feelings about.

I might as well say it, it involves God and homosexuality and I realize it might lose me a friend or two but here I go anyway.

I was half watching a television program. In the US there is an old commentator named Larry King. He interviews various people about almost any subject and he’s been doing it for years. The other evening I heard him interview two people and I don’t recall their names and that’s probably a good thing.

One was a lady who they said was a Country Western singer and, not surprisingly, I never heard of her. The other was the Parson of a church that I never heard of either. The young lady had just announced she was a lesbian. I couldn’t see why this was anything anyone should care much about but it did upset the Parson considerably because it went against God’s laws as clearly spelled out in his Bible.

Larry King, who is good at keeping the conversation from dragging, asked the Parson if it wasn’t true that the Bible prohibits Jews from eating shellfish.

The Parson allowed as how this was true but that later in the Bible it is allowed.

“How come?” asked Larry.

The Parson replied, and these were his exact words, “God changed his mind.”

I actually shouted out loud, “What?”

I still can’t believe it. Whatever happened to infallibility and stuff like that?

As I thought about it I felt better. If it is indeed possible that God can change his mind I hope He gets around to some of the indiscretions of my youth that apparently have me on the road to fire and brimstone. I could use a decision reversal or two.

The Old Professor

Carmel, CA

April 25, 2010

I HAVE AN EXCUSE

I suppose someone, somewhere is wondering what happened to the Old Professor for the last few days. At least I hope so.

I have a confession to make. Even at my advanced age I've been having an affair.

It all started innocently enough. I was at a local shopping center when I first saw her. I thought she was beautiful but it didn't dawn on me that it would go any farther than my thinking that.

But I was wrong.

I found myself going to sleep thinking about her beauty and waking up still absorbed with her. I probably should have quit then or perhaps sought help but instead I decided to go back and see if she was still there. She was and I took the first steps towards getting better aquatinted and, much to my surprise I realized the more time I spent with her, the more I was in love with her. Finally there was no way to do anything other than to take her home.

Click here for as a recent picture.

http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html

Don't you agree she is beautiful. A full 27 inch, measured diagonally, iMac computer! However, as it is with most new lovers, it takes much time to get acquainted. I need to learn her ways and many of them are much different from "the way I was brought up." However, much like any relationship, it's the challenge that makes it all worthwhile.

Eventually, all will run smooth I'm sure. Then I will be able to more adequately keep up with important things, like blogging.

The Old Professor

Carmel, CA

April 18, 2010