It's Coming From Inside the House


The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799), Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

I was about three years old when this happened. I woke up during the night, and I could hear some kind of wild animal snarling, growling, and snuffling in the darkness. Frightened, I called out for my mother. She sat on the edge of the bed and asked me what was wrong.

"There's a bear in the house!" I told her. "I can hear it."

"That's not a bear," she said. "It's just your father, snoring."

I learned to sleep with the bedroom door closed.

It has always mystified me that people are usually not awakened by their own snoring. All that noise is right there, inside their heads, and they sleep right through it. In Dad's case, it seemed particularly ironic, in that he was very bothered by noise of any kind. Loud conversations, popular music, distant train whistles -- any sound the world produced set his nerves on edge, especially at night. In his youth, the sound of crickets chirping became so maddening that one night he went outside with a hammer in his hand, determined to smash them, one by one. It was a hopeless quest.

To preserve his sanity and get some rest, Dad wore earplugs to bed. Decades later, Mom, airing yet another grievance, said that she thought he did it on purpose so that he wouldn't have to get up and take care of a crying baby (or, perhaps, a toddler who heard bears).

I once asked Mom how she could possibly sleep next to someone who made that much noise. "It's easy," she told me. "I just fall asleep before he does." Mom was a deep sleeper.

 
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Captain Vancouver


George Vancouver was a British naval officer who spent many years exploring and surveying the northwestern Pacific coast of North America, as well as the Hawaiian Islands and the southwest coast of Australia. He had trained under the premier English navigator of the time, James Cook. In 1795, he completed a circumnavigation of South America. His name was given to two cities, one in British Columbia, Canada, and one in the U.S state of Washington. Additionally, two mountains, one in North America and one in New Zealand, were named after him, as were Vancouver Island and the Vancouver River, both in British Columbia.

Vancouver did his share of naming things, replacing the names used by local people for various landmarks, often with the names of his friends, colleagues, and his ship. These include Mount Hood, Puget Sound, Mount St. Helen's, Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, Port Gardner, Port Susan, Whidbey Island, Discovery Passage, Discovery Island, Discovery Bay, Port Discovery and Discovery Park, Orford Reef, and several others.

Vancouver got along well with the indigenous people in the areas he visited, and also had cordial relations with the Spanish explorers of the time. He seems to have bypassed the Columbia and Fraser rivers, but his charts and maps were generally excellent, although his longitudinal readings were often wrong.

After his return to England, Vancouver faced controversies and public humiliation. Prominent people who had disputes with him harassed him and attacked him in the press. One disagreement led to a street fight.

In poor health after his years at sea, Vancouver apparently could not withstand the stress of his damaged reputation and seemingly endless controversies. He died at age 40.


 
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Random Thoughts

Charles Babbage's Brain (1909), V. Horsley


Law enforcement should not be afraid to pursue a case against criminals, out of fear that political hacks who don't like the outcome will punish them for enforcing the law.


Sometimes I feel an urge to water the artificial plants. I resist it.


Whether a person is making sandwiches, putting electrical wiring in your home, or investigating crime, it's better to have someone who knows what to do and does it well, without worrying about being fired for political reasons.


I'm baffled and annoyed by the vast numbers of people who write "pun intended" or "no pun intended" when there truly is no pun (or joke of any kind).


If you have to use lies to promote your cause, your cause isn't worth promoting.


It is painful to admit that you were deceived and betrayed, that your loyalty was misplaced. A common reaction is denial - you just don't want to believe it. You look for other explanations for the things that have happened. You feel anxious, wary, confused. When you finally have to face the truth, you may feel incapacitated by depression. You may react with rage. You feel that you can't trust anyone at all, ever again.

 
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Would You Let This Guy Hold Your Lunch Money?


In 2022, Elon Musk paid 44 billion dollars for the social media platform Twitter. Under Musk's management (or, some would say, mismanagement), the company, inexplicably renamed "X", lost nearly 80% of its value within two years.

At the start of 2024, Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle business, was valued at $58.3 billion. By the end of the year, its value was estimated at $43 billion, a drop of nearly 26%. Although Tesla's decline may have been partly fueled by Musk's reputation as a bullying goon involved in right-wing extremist politics, the ugliness of the Cybertruck, along with a series of vehicles fires and explosions, didn't help.

Musk also owns the Boring Company, a tunnel construction service notable for impractical proposals and failed or abandoned projects.

SpaceX is another Musk business, a space exploration technology company. Although the company's failed launches and rocket explosions have attracted attention, it has also succeeded in many of its ventures, which include cargo delivery to the International Space Station. SpaceX's rapid success was built on financial support from the U.S. government, in the form of lucrative federal contracts and grants.

Another Musk venture is Starlink, an Internet satellite service, hated by many astronomers for blocking our view of the stars. Starlink has had many satellite malfunctions and failures. As an Internet service, it is expensive, and has a reputation for poor customer support. Musk has also been accused of using Starlink in attempts to manipulate global politics by making it either available or unavailable in different areas. As a proponent of vicious and disproportionate revenge, Musk used his influence with America's Republican administration to terminate funding for USAID, an independent agency of the United States government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance, thus cutting off food, medicine, and shelter for millions of needy people, apparently as punishment for the agency's questioning its relationship with Starlink.

Neuralink is a company attempting to build implantable brain-computer interface systems. The company has been criticized for the deaths of primates used in its experiments. Following false statements about the deaths, a national physicians group asked the SEC to investigate Musk for possible securities fraud.

Musk formed a supposedly temporary organization known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which masquerades as a U.S. government department. The formation of new departments requires the approval of Congress, which DOGE did not receive. Although its stated purpose is to find and eliminate government waste, DOGE's most visible activity has been the infiltration of government agencies and departments for the purpose of gaining access to computer systems and allegedly harvesting cititzens' financial and medical data. Despite consensus that DOGE's activities have been illegal, there has been no intervention by law enforcement. Musk has been accused of staging a coup and attempting to completely destroy the U.S. government.

Elon Musk was born to a wealthy family in South Africa in 1971. In 1989, he emigrated to Canada, where he became a citizen. In 1995, he and his brother Kimball moved to California. Kimball has publically admitted that they were illegal immigrants. Somehow, Elon acquired U.S. citizenship in 2002.



 
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