Category: Life

A True American Hero

Neil Armstrong, R.I.P.

A statement from the Armstrong family:

We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures. Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend.

Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. He also found success back home in his native Ohio in business and academia, and became a community leader in Cincinnati. He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits.

As much as Neil cherished his privacy, he always appreciated the expressions of good will from people around the world and from all walks of life. While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.

For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.

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The Great Metaphor – by Jack W.

Fall has always been my favorite time of the year.  Growing up in the Midwest, the first hint of cool, damp air during a late August evening would send my heart a flutter with memories and expectations.  The most cherished bloom in this bouquet of lifelong flashbacks is FOOTBALL!

Now, no reasonable human being could begin to dispute that football has clearly supplanted baseball as our national past time.  Over the generations much weight has been given to the life lessons taught by the playing of the game.  While being part of a team and bonding through adversity benefit even the most casual participant, the reason for it isn’t often articulated.  I’ll take a stab at it.  Football is our culture’s greatest metaphor for life.

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An Open Letter to the Johnson & Johnson Company

Dear Sirs:

What evil, heartless, mindless, sadistic bastard at your company is responsible for the design of the Band-Aid®? I’m sorry if that was a little harsh. Let me try again. Did it ever occur to you imbeciles, that when you’re bleeding like you just walked off the set of a Quentin Tarantino movie, it’s next to impossible to apply a @#$%& Band-Aid to the wound!

Please understand gentlemen that I do not write to carp and whine, but rather to dialog with you in a spirit of constructive criticism; to provide useful feedback from consumer to manufacturer. Therefore, in that same spirit, let me enumerate all the ways your product sucks: First, we have the design of the miserable, little paper wrapper that only a neurosurgeon with microscopic instruments could successfully open, but only with much difficulty. Someone who, with their one good hand, is grappling with a towel in order to stem the flow of blood on the wounded hand, cannot easily grasp the teeny, tiny little flaps of paper you supply to pull the package apart. I’m sorry, I must apologize again: did I say, “Cannot easily?” I meant, “Can’t at all you stupid jerks!”

Next, we have the waxy, white strips of paper that keep the adhesive from sticking to the paper package. Congratulations gentlemen, this is the one facet of your product that works as designed! The adhesive does not stick to the paper wrapper. It will only stick to itself, or to the finger that isn’t gushing blood, or to the towel, your pant leg, the dog. What it also doesn’t stick to is the wounded finger. Blood completely foils the adhesive properties of this clever product, thereby necessitating another fruitless struggle to open yet another bandage.

Now, if by some miracle you survive the drop in blood pressure long enough to fumble this most basic of ligatures onto your hemorrhaging extremity, you’re then faced with having to apply six or seven more because, lastly, the sterile pad which is supposed to dress the wound is about as absorbent as glass. But this is all nitpicking. At least there will be a bloody pile of ripped and mangled Band-Aid wrappers lying on the floor for you to land on as you collapse in shock from blood loss.

In fairness, I confess that it may be possible that I have not fully divined the nature of your business model. It could be that my comments are way off base. I naturally assumed you were engaged in the manufacture and marketing of health products. It just occurred to me that your plan is really to slowly kill off the majority of mankind by supplying inferior first-aid products thereby leaving the remaining cowed population so addled and debilitated that they actually prefer Splenda® to sugar. Hmmm…in that case, I must say you’re succeeding brilliantly!

Watch Me Commit Professional Suicide

I tried real hard to just shut up and look away, but I can’t—some of you will not be surprised. I am about to tick off a whole bunch of family, friends, neighbors, and fellow Roman Catholics.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal,

…a group of fellow Catholics from his home state of Wisconsin, including some Franciscan Friars are calling for the vice presidential hopeful’s “conversion.” The group launched a website, PrayforPaulsChangeofHeart.org, that asks visitors to

“Please pray for Paul Ryan, a devout Catholic, to have a change of heart on the federal budget.” It includes a special Rosary prayer to St. Paul, “the great convert,” to bring about a transformation in the anti-deficit Republican.

For the record, I am a parishioner of SS Peter & Paul Catholic Church in Naperville, Illinois, a Benedictine Oblate, and a Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, so you could say I am also a practicing Roman Catholic. With all due respect to my brothers and sisters in Christ, you are dead wrong.

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The Horror!

OMG! Look at those drapes!

Yeah, I’m linking another video. Get over it. In this particularly ghastly piece, we see a popular celebrity–so I’m told–carving up some books to make…a box.

At least the Nazi’s threw ’em on a bonfire. But this isn’t about a hatred of the ideas found in books, this is about the complete and utter apathy toward the ideas found in books.

And before you say it, yes I know, books are just things. You own a book, you can read it, use it to prop up a table leg, make a box, or fry it up with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Whatever you do, remember that book represents someone’s work. Good book, bad book, it doesn’t matter, someone labored over that manuscript to give it what life it has. But it seems that in our day and age, people would rather watch than read. Ideas are too much trouble. They might change me. Best not to care.

I don’t think that bodes well for civilization.

Here’s the link to BuzzFeed

Warning: this video contains disturbing images of vacuous people.

Back to School

“Join us”

When we were kids, most of us used to dread this time of year. I remember well, it was the late summer of ’75. Steve, Cheese, and I were sitting around bemoaning the impending return to school. We had recently seen that summer’s blockbuster, Jaws. I think it was Steve who said, “It’s just like when Quint slips down the deck into the shark’s mouth. School’s coming and there’s nothing you can do about it. It just sucks you in and bites you in half!”

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AUNTM

I used to have many magazine subscriptions, but since traditional print media is inexorably migrating content to the web, I now only keep one: Car & Driver. I have subscribed uninterruptedly to CD since I was a kid. Why? Because I’m a car nut and of all the auto mags, CD is in my opinion the best of the bunch. However, this isn’t an advertisement for CD, I actually have a point.

In the September ‘12 issue, Technical Editor Aaron Robinson decries the idea of the autonomous (read self-driving) automobile in his column “Google is my co-pilot. What can go wrong?” It seems Google has teamed with scientists at Stanford University to conduct research into the concept and have actually created self-driving test vehicles. Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford, wrote in a blog post on Google’s website back in 2010 that autonomous vehicles would cut road fatalities and reduce traffic congestion while freeing the driver for other activities. Like what? Like maybe crochet or Sudoku?

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