Big Stick Physics

Author: Richard Nestoff (Page 120 of 142)

What Annual Salary is Necessary to be Happy?

November 29, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Can money buy happiness

This website posts the results of an interesting poll conducted by Harris of 2000 adults.

It’s interesting that the generations agree on the required annual salary to be happy, with the exception of the Millennials.  Boomers (1946 to 1964) are at or nearing retirement, so may be making that much or stable in retirement.  Gen Z (1996 to 2012) are very early in their careers, so may be in college or unsure about careers.  The survey was only people over 18, so kids in school didn’t count.  Gen Z has an amazingly realistic annual salary requirement for people who may still be on their parent’s health insurance and cell phone plan.

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NYT: When They Means One

November 28, 2023 / / 0 Comments

NYT: When They Means One

I have often been asked by people over 35 or so, “Are we supposed to say ‘they want’ or ‘they wants’?” I always answer that the proper form is “they want,” but must it be? Instead, we could say this, which would make perfect and intuitive grammatical sense:
Singular: I want, you want, he/she/they wants
Plural: we want, you want, they want

My proposal is that we agree that male, man and boy refers to a person born with a penis, and that female, woman and girl refers to a person born with a vagina.  For the exceedingly rare people born with neither or both, they can choose.  My proposal has the advantage of being consistent across cultures for thousands of years.

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Judd Apatow documentary about Bob Newhart and Don Rickles

November 28, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Judd Apatow made a short documentary of the friendship between Bob Newhart and Don Rickles.  It doesn’t seem like they’d be friends, but seeing them together, it obviously works.

NewYorker: Bob Newhart and Don Rickles

NewYorker: Bob Newhart and Don Rickles

“I love that they became friends because they both played Vegas and neither wanted to cheat on their wives,” Apatow said.

Scavenger’s Reign is an amazing series. 9/10

November 26, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Scavenger’s Reign is a lovely animated series.  The animation is visually stunning.  The music is creative, soothing and creepy, all at the same time.  The plants and animals are completely alien.  Nothing looks like anything on Earth, but it all looks like it could exist.

The plot is simple.  People get stranded on an alien planet.  Each person gets into some trouble while trying to get to the main spaceship.  The series is more about an alien planet than it is about the characters.  I found it very engaging.

WaPo: What Scientists Know About Aliens.

November 26, 2023 / / 0 Comments

WaPo: What We Know About Aliens

It came from space, hurtling at tremendous speed: a mystery object, reddish, rocky, shaped like a cigar. Its velocity was so extreme it had to have come from somewhere far away, in the interstellar realm. The astronomers in Hawaii who spotted it in 2017 named it ‘Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.”

Don’t forget the unexplainable Wow! signal detected by Ohio State in 1977.

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Sparky Escapes from his Sweater

November 26, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Like a magician, Sparky never reveals how he does his tricks.

The fire had burned down in the wood stove, so this morning it was 65o .  I put a sweater on him until the fire could be stoked back up.  By the time I’d taken my shower, he was out of it. 

Getting him into the sweater was like stuffing a sausage, I can’t imagine how he managed to take it off.

David Sedaris: Children now are like animals who have no natural predators left.

November 24, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Free Press: David Sedaris Punching Down

Words, we are now regularly reminded, are violence. So too is silence. I read not long ago that capitalism is violence, as is misgendering someone. Ignoring someone is violence, but so too is paying them attention.

Sedaris is a cosmopolitan humorist, so he is describing coastal people and what is written by influencers on social media, but many young people don’t seem very resilient.

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WSJ: Ohio State is Corrupted with DEI.

November 22, 2023 / / 0 Comments

WSJ: DEI at Ohio State

WSJ: DEI at Ohio State

In February 2021, then-president Kristina Johnson launched an initiative to hire 50 professors whose work focused on race and “social equity” and “100 underrepresented and BIPOC hires” (the acronym stands for black, indigenous and people of color). These reports show what higher education’s outsize investment in “diversity, equity and inclusion” looks like in practice. Ohio State sacrificed both academic freedom and scholarly excellence for the sake of a narrowly construed vision of diversity.

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