MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 12 – Hunting?

Posted on by Posted in My take on...
…raises SO many questions.

This week there was a news story about a woman who “hunted”, killed, and posed with a dead rare black giraffe. Obviously, people all over the world were quite shocked and upset about this report. This story raises so many questions.

  1. The continuous never-ending controversy around Conservation and Rare animals with Legal Hunting came up. Again. How can hunting a rare black Giraffe even be legal?
  2. The correct spelling of the word G-I-R-A-F-F-E? I mean let’s be honest, it doesn’t really make its way into a person’s spellcheck engine very often.
  3. How difficult is it to actually HUNT a giraffe?
  4. Is there tracking involved? It seems like they might be somewhat easy to locate.
  5. How does one hunt a giraffe? Look up? You don’t have to search under things, or be in a tree stand do you? Yeah, I’m struggling to find the “sport” in this one. Now, if it was done using anything other than a high-powered rifle like say, a person’s hands or a club then maybe a sport, it could be called.
  6. Seems they would be fairly easy to find, follow, and shoot or am I missing something here?
  7. Do they crouch when they see a gun yards across the savannah?
  8. Do they duck?

Yeah, I don’t know man, maybe it’s just me but I am failing to see the “sport” or any real difficulty with this target.

I wouldn’t feel real proud about being in that pic, nor would I if I was the shooter either.

MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 11 – Being old

Posted on by Posted in Life of Dad
…quicker all the time .

It’s entertaining to look back at the way things used to be when we were younger. Well, at least it’s an entertaining exercise for “olds” such as myself.

Technology progresses so quickly today that this process replicates itself quicker all the time. It was just a few decades ago, that we’d all laugh amongst each other about “rotary” phones. Then about 10 years ago the chuckle would be about “dial-up” internet. It goes on and on, and the one constant is that you end up feeling, old.

Still, one of my favorite “check yourself” activities is to consider what used to be commonly considered, “acceptable”. For example given all we now know about smoking these days, does anyone remember the days when Candy Cigarettes were a thing?

Now, this candy was the real-deal when it came to imitating cigs. They came in the exact cigarette pack size, featured artwork that looked like what was on cigarette packs, and even had the cellophane wrapper on them to boot! Kids would even wrap them up in their T-shirt sleeves like Schneider from ‘One Day at a Time’. Yeah, those were NOT the days.

Moreover, I wonder if tobacco companies had any ownership in the companies producing them? Seems like it’d been a no brainer at the time.

MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 10 – The machines are here.

Posted on by Posted in Contraptions
…we humans are all scared.

Look, here’s the deal. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming and in many cases is already here. I get it. It’s a big part of autonomous cars which every technology company is now diving into along with every automaker. Again, I get this as well for the most part.

AI, and its capabilities are mind-blowing. Scientists have shown that after some quick training, AI can dominate in many previously human only tasks such as games like Checkers, Chess, Go, Jeopardy, and activities such as driving cars or repetitive jobs, etc.

But, what I don’t quite “get” is the early AI / Autonomous Cars entre into the Pizza Delivery business? Really? Look, we humans are all scared. We know the computers are coming for our jobs, but even ones that don’t provide retirements, 401(k)s, or health insurance? Cabs and pizza delivery drivers. Who knew these were the pillars of a declining capitalist society?

All of the science & technology will save the day from the wrath of pizza delivery drivers, taxis, Ubers, Lyfts, Buses, and any other form of simple employment for humans. I’m not a Luddite, in fact I am a fan of technology, but I guess I just didn’t wish for the machines to wipe us out so quickly.

Furthermore, with autonomous cars coming in the next 5-10 years full-bore, what is NASCAR’s position on all of this? Fans won’t be able to relate to the thrill of “Driving” as we do today. Are we going to cheer robot racing cars? I’m serious!

MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 9 – Ice, Ice, Baby

Posted on by Posted in Contraptions
…make ice for years !

Maybe, just maybe we’ve been going about this whole climate change / global warming issue the wrong way. Stay with me here. Society has tried pulling back on carbon emissions by the complete elimination of the incandescent light bulb, speeding up electric car adoption, even looking into the running of vehicles on everything from grease, to garbage, to sewage, and still the planet keeps warming.

Just this week there was new report about the melting Ice Caps and the fact that they are melting far faster than previously thought. The report stated that by the year 2100, the oceans will rise by 6 inches worldwide due to the amount that will be lost from the Ice Caps by that time.

So, what if we turned our best technological minds to re-creating the ice we are losing? I mean we already create snow for the olympics all the time! We have people working full-time on ways to desalinate ocean water. AirBNB and other time-sharing services are hurting the hotel industry. Let’s put a whole bunch of out of work motel commercial ice makers on the receiving end of the output of those water producers and make ice for years!

Ok, sure there won’t be anyone around to scoop and throw the ice about the Ice Caps, but this is just a rough idea-prototype mind you. The real idiot-idea circles back to the snow/ice makers throwing newly made ice/snow into new mountains of water turned to snow/ice! WAH-LAH!

No? Maybe? Not?

MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 8 – Rain-X = Savant

Posted on by Posted in Contraptions
Am I missing something here?

For me, it really takes a bad movie to outwardly criticize it. Even then, I reserve the right to recognize that other people could definitely feel otherwise and that’s great. However, I suffered through, for me, the WORST pile of movie garbage I have forcibly pushed myself through in a LONG, LONG time this past week and a 1/2. No, it wasn’t last night, or Thursday, it took almost a week to plow through this epic pile of crap.

I hate doing negative reviews but here goes. l love apocalyptic movies. I have my reasons. Anyway, this was a long-awaited follow-up to a movie from years ago starring Harrison Ford. Those of you who liked the original already know of what I speak. For the record, I never saw the original “Bladerunner” and based on “Bladerunner 2049” I never will. Harrison was in this one as was one of “The Ryan’s” as I like to call Ryan Gosling who I really like and loved in “The Place Beyond the Pines”.

I’ll save you any plot details or spoilers and just say that SURPRISE, it takes place in the year 2049 and the movie is, wait for it, 2 hours and 45 minutes long!

Being that far into the future, there is a great deal of futuristic technology such as really cool flying cars. They zip around like it’s nothing. Seemed pretty acceptable. However, as I was suffering through mid-hour 2, I noticed it was raining as Ryan Gosling’s character was driving his flying car and it was using regular old 20th century WINDSHIELD WIPERS.

Wait, what? Flying cars, the year 2049, and they are still using windshield wipers? Come on! At least put some Rain-X wipers on that bad-boy and you’d never even have to turn the wipers on let alone have wipers!

Am I missing something here? I’m not a futuristic movie maker, but PUL-LEASE! Even I use Rain-X on my jalopy of a used truck and feel like a savant. DUH!

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