What Would Jimmy Do?

A few days ago, someone said they thought we were fighting two pandemics — coronavirus and stupidity. I decided that this was probably a fairly true statement. Hopefully the coronavirus will subside or go away — unfortunately, stupidity won’t.

We’ve all heard statements like, “Life is hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.” And, “you just can’t fix stupid.” Today, stupidity is on display more than ever before. To be able to deal with this dimwitted behavior, we need to better understand it. I realize there seems to be a movement against paying attention to science recently, but there are, in fact, scientific laws and theories that help us explain our world. We all studied Kepler’s Laws, and Newton’s Laws, Archimede’s principle, and we know about Murphy’s Laws, etc. Well, luckily, a professor at the University of California, Carlo M. Cupola, introduced a set of laws that address our problem — “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.”

This set of five laws is a helpful guide to understanding stupidity.
His first law states: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. The first law kind of prepares you for what’s out there — lots of people that do stupid things, many times without notice. And there are more of them than you think — a lot more.

The second law states: The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. This means that anybody can be stupid — and — the idiocy persists at roughly equal proportions at all levels of society. The implications of this law are frightening; it implies that no matter who you associate with, or where you live, you always have to face the same percentage of stupid people. And the number of them will always surpass your expectations. 

The third law: A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. Think of the idiot tailgating you, or some jerk that starts a fight in a bar or a baseball pitcher that deliberately throws at a batter’s head… these are the types of thoughtless actions that reasonable people don’t do. They’re performed by stupid people. There is no explanation as to why these people do these things — well, maybe there’s one explanation — these people are stupid. 

The fourth law: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstance to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake. The fact is that most of us know, or have a good idea, who stupid people are, and we still hang out with them. Over the years, countless people have failed to take into account the Fourth Basic Law and the failure has caused mankind incalculable losses.

The fifth law: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. In many respects, stupid people are the most dangerous — even more than criminals. At least bank robbers, while they inflict losses on others, do reap benefits for themselves (if they’re successful.) 

Stupid people drag down society as a whole — it becomes the responsibility of everyone else to keep them in check. There’s a lot of truth in these “laws.” I’d never seen stupidity summed up and analyzed so well. I’ve always believed that stupid people should have to wear a sign, so we wouldn’t have to waste our time trying to reason with them, but I suppose that wouldn’t work… they’d probably forget to wear the sign. We must just continue to try to keep stupidity in check — the great mistake made by intelligent people is to refuse to believe that the world is as stupid as it is.
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Needless to say, nothing seems the same these days. Staying at home as much as possible is easier if, like us, you’re retired. So we don’t miss the daily routine of having to get ready for work… but — we do, of course, miss the interacting with other people, going to church, out to eat, and I miss playing golf. We’ve gotten “carry out” at a couple of the local restaurants and the food is still just as good — it just seems strange eating it at home.

The trees are beginning to get their leaves, and I’ve already had to cut the grass, so things seem a little brighter when you look out the window. And a couple of days ago, I put gas in the car and only paid $1.63 a gallon — now that’s got to be good news. I guess the bad news is that now our car is “all gassed up and no place to go.” 
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This time last year, I thought things were screwy and It sort of seemed silly to celebrate April Fool’s Day — I thought every day seemed like April Fool’s Day. But I was wrong — in hindsight, last year about this time, everything seemed pretty normal. Of course, this year is a different story, but it is April Fool’s Day and tradition says that I should at least discuss it.

I apologize if I’m repeating myself, bur writing about the same day or event year after year makes it difficult t come up with new material. 

April Fool’s Day is a time for playing pranks on unsuspecting people — the victim of such a prank is called an April Fool. So how did this practice (of playing pranks come about and why was the first day of April chosen for this purpose? 

There are no (detailed) references to April Fool’s Day before sometime in the eighteenth century — sometime around then, specific references, and curiosity, about the day and its traditions began to appear. By the time these accounts started to be published, the custom was already well established throughout northern Europe. No one seems to know how the tradition had been adopted by so many different European cultures without more details and comments in newspapers, magazines and books.

References to April Fool’s Day can be found as early as the 1500s, but these early references were infrequent and tended to be rather vague. Many theories have surfaced about how the tradition began, but none of them are very compelling or convincing. The most popular theory about the origin of April Fool’s Day involves the French calendar reform of the sixteenth century. I discussed this theory a bit last year — if you didn’t read it, and are interested, you can check last year’s April 1 entry.

The French have another theory that traces the origin of April Fool’s Day back to the abundance of fish to be found in French streams and rivers during early April — when the young fish had just hatched. These young fish were easy to fool with a hook and lure. Therefore, the French called them “Poisson d’Avril” or “April Fish.” Soon it became customary, at least according to this theory, to fool people people on April 1, as a way of celebrating the abundance of foolish fish. The French still use the term “Poisson d/Avri” to describe April Fool’s Day pranks. Another ‘French thing’ is the custom of giving each other chocolate fish on April 1.

Over the years, there have been millions of April Fool jokes played on people. Some fall into the “classic” category, like this one….
On April 1, 1957, the BBC TV show “Panorama” ran a segment about the Swiss spaghetti harvest enjoying a “bumper year” thanks to mild weather and the elimination of the spaghetti weevil. Many credulous Britons were taken in, and why not? the story was on television — then a relatively new invention —and Auntie Beeb would never lie, would it? The story was ranked the No. 1 April Fool’s hoax of all time by the Museum of Hoaxes website.
Happy April Fool’s Day.
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Today, March 31 is World Backup Day. Last year at this time, you’ll remember that I was kind of excited about the day — until — I learned that backup day didn’t have anything to do with going backwards. I’m still of the opinion that backup day should be about — backing up.

But this is just another example of how our world is changing. Not that many years ago, if you heard or used “ back up,”  it meant that you were giving support to someone, or that you were providing information to prove that something was correct, or there may have been an accident or roadwork that caused a traffic back up. You might have been telling someone standing too close to you, or maybe too close to something dangerous to back up, or when maneuvering your car you may have needed to back up, or you might even have asked someone to repeat or clarify something by asking them to back up.
But today, back up, to many/most people means to copy computer information, or more specifically, backup your data. 

And that’s what today is about — It’s a day when all the technology folks remind you how important it is to back up your data. Important, but not very exciting. The day actually began as World Backup Month and was started by a company that made hard drives for computers. The name of the company was Maxtor — that company has been acquired by Seagate Technology.

Today is also Eiffel Tower Day and National Crayon Day, but the day is really about reminding you to make backup copies of your important digital files. And tell your friends — friends don’t let friends go without a backup.
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Spending more time at home recently, I’ve increased my reading, although a lot of it has been via the Internet. For some reason, I’ve recently been drawn to several writings about, and by, Theodore Roosevelt. I’m becoming more and more convinced that he may have been one of the better leaders to hold the office of President. Apparently he was a master orator and he certainly was a prolific writer. Here’s a couple of his quotes that I thought might be worth reading today. They say a lot….

“The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.
Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”
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Well, if you’ve been keeping up the last few days, you know that (most) wine bottles have a deep, concave indention on their bottoms. You also know that that indention is called a punt. Now that we’re all aware that it’s there and what it’s called — is there a good reason for it?

Yes. Yes, there is — in fact, there are multiple good reasons, or at least some people think so.
Like most everything, there are different opinions as to what the “real” reason is…
So, since I’m home with no place to go, let’s explore some of the reasons. Here we go, in no particular order….

• The glass of the dimple (punt) part of the bottle is very thick and the shape helps provide strength to the bottom of the bottle. (The theory here is that since wine bottles are stored on their sides, a regular, thin-walled bottom could easily break should the bottle be tapped. Another fairly weak argument is that the extra weight at the bottom of the bottle gives it more stability, so it doesn’t fall over as easily.)
• Punts create an optical illusion that a wine bottle is bigger than it actually is. (I suppose your eyes can sometimes deceive your logic.)
• A punt at the bottom of a bottle increases the surface area, allowing more ice to come into contact with it and therefore chilling the liquid inside quicker.
• The angle of a punt lets sediment collect in a tight area near the base, stopping the sediment from blending back into the wine as it’s being poured.
• It’s often difficult to clean a tall glass evenly — when you shoot water into a wine bottle that has a punt, the water is spread more evenly throughout the bottom of the bottle.
• Punts allow for more ease when it come to stacking wine.
• The punt makes a good place for waiters, or anyone else, to place their thumbs while pouring the wine.

I ran across one story that indicated taverns at one time had a vertical steel pin in their bars. When a bottle of wine was consumed, the bottom of it would be punctured with the pins, ensuring that the bottle would not be refilled. This is kind of interesting, but I’m not sure why a bottle would have to have a punt in order to be punctured.

It appears that wine bottle manufacturing is steeped in tradition, and it isn’t clear whether any of the purposes listed above were specifically designed into the bottle for that purpose, or they were just part of the manufacturing process, or maybe just for esthetics. 

So there is no consensus explanation for the purpose of the punt. My opinion — for what that’s worth — is that originally punts were used by glassblowers to make sure the bottles would stand upright. Today almost all bottles are machine-made. Most /many winemakers choose bottles with a punt to continue “tradition.” So whether your wine bottle has a large, small, or no punt — it’s the contents that count. Louis Pasteur said that a bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.
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One of my recent entries, about nostalgia, mentioned gold stars that were placed in the windows of families that had lost someone during World War II. I got to thinking about that and thought the subject was worth another visit.

During the last presidential campaign, the phrase “Gold Star family” gained some notoriety. Khizr and Ghazala Khan lost a son (Capt. Human Khan) to a suicide bomb in Iraq in 2004. At the Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan challenged candidate Trump’s policies, saying, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” Naturally, Trump lashed out at the Khans and the controversy was on. Trump was criticized for attacking a “Gold Star family.” The Veterans of Foreign Wars was among the many who came to the Khans defense. VFW President Brian Duffy said, “Election or not, the VFW will not tolerate anyone berating a Gold Star family member for exercising his or her right of speech or expression.”

If you’re part of the younger generation, you may or may not be aware of the Gold Stars. You don’t see them displayed in windows very often… those families that have them usually display them somewhere inside their houses. Here’s some of the “background” of why we should all have more appreciation for those stars.

During World War I it became a popular practice for families to display flags featuring a blue star — a sign that a family member was fighting in the war. Some flags displayed more than one star — each star representing a family member that was serving. Soon after those blue stars began appearing, another tradition was born. When a soldier died, the blue star was replaced (or covered by) a gold one. 

In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson approved a recommendation by the Women’s Committee of National Defenses to wear a black armband with a gold star — an update to one of the traditional signs of mourning, the wearing of the black armband. Wilson is given credit for coining the term “Gold Star Mother.” In 1928, 25 mothers met in Washington, D.C., to establish a national organization called American Gold Star Mothers, Inc. — that organization still exists today.

This led to the creation of the Service Flag. It was designed and patented by World War I Captain Robert L. Queissner of the 5th Ohio Infantry. The flag was designed to be displayed in the front window of peoples’ homes, to indicate the number of family members serving the war effort as members of the Armed Services.

Over time, two types of service flags were created. One flag or banner had a white background, red border and a blue star. The other had a white background, blue border and a gold star.

During World War II, the star flags were common sights across the country, often or usually displayed in windows because families took great pride that a member, or members, of their family was serving in the war.

The attitude (and the practice) changed during the Vietnam War. During that unpopular war, many Americans associated soldiers with government policies. The “pride” families had in family members serving in World War II was missing and many saw little value in displaying a blue or gold star flag. The American public was disillusioned with the military during and after Vietnam. Restoring the military’s reputation has been a slow process — the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 helped some, but regaining respect has been a slow process for the military.

Between WWII and today, the practice of displaying service flags or gold stars is not as prominent as it once was, but the symbols are just as significant as they were more than 100 years ago….
— 30 —

We got some wine the other day and for some reason I mentioned the punt on one of the bottles being exceptionally large. Claire said she didn’t know the indention on the bottom of the bottle had a name. Well, it does — it’s called a “punt.” I’ve also heard it called a kick-up, push-up and dimple.

So it does have a name and it does have a purpose — we’ll talk about the purpose another time. Today, let’s talk about why it’s called a punt. I’ll tell you right up front, that I don’t know — and — I’m not sure anyone really knows…. but let’s talk about it.

If you look up the word punt, you’ll find that it relates to a flat-bottomed boat and a tactic in American football. Now what the relationship between a flat-bottomed boat, football and the dimple in the bottom of a wine bottle is, I just haven’t figured out.

One dictionary I checked actually had 5 definitions:
1. verb — delay in answering or taking action; equivocate.
2. noun — a long, narrow, flat-bottomed boat, square at both ends and propelled with a long pole, used on inland waters chiefly for recreation.
3. noun — A football kick after the ball is dropped from the hands of the player and before it reaches the ground.
4. noun — informal, a bet
5. noun — the basic monetary unit of the Republic of Ireland (until replaced by the euro,) equal to 100 Irish pence.

None of the dictionaries that I checked mentioned the word punt as related to wine bottles. But trust me, punt is the name given to the funny concave bump, or dimple at the bottom of a wine bottle. Search as I could, I couldn’t find an explanation that satisfied me. Punt as used with the flat-bottomed boat comes from Latin ponto. (That’s also where pontoon comes from.)

The closest I could come to a reasonable explanation that might explain the “hollow” in the bottom of the wine bottle comes from the French word pontil, a word for the iron rod that’s used to hold or shape soft glass. The Oxford dictionary says it means a little point. 

My research also found that glassblowers used to create these dimples, or punts to push the seam of a bottle up, allowing the bottle to stand upright and also preventing glass at the bottom of the bottle from sticking out and cutting people. 
I guess this just remains one of those things to ponder… I never questioned that it was called a punt, I just didn’t — and don’t  — know why. 
— 30 —

The other night Claire groaned and I asked what was wrong. She said she just got a charley horse. Sometimes I get those leg muscle spasms — they really hurt. 

Anyhow, I got to thinking… Who is/was this Charley? And what’s the deal with his horse? Why on earth would a leg cramp be referred to as a charley horse? I just couldn’t let this pressing question go unanswered, so my extensive research kicked in.

I found the answer — or at least one answer in an old West Virginia newspaper. The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, in 1886, published the following story:
“Base-ballists have invented a brand new disease, called ‘Charley-horse.’ It consists of a peculiar contraction and hardening of the muscles and tendons of the thigh, to which ball players are liable from the sudden starting and stopping in chasing balls…. Jack Glasscock is said to have originated the name because the way the men limped around reminded him of an old horse he once owned named Charley.”

That’s one story about how the term originated, but there were others. Another is attributed to a baseball player that played for the Chicago White Stockings, Joe Quest. Apparently, Joe and his teammates spent an off day watching horse races on the south side of Chicago. According to a tip they’d received the previous night, a horse named Charley was practically guaranteed to win. The tip was touted as a cinch — the horse simply couldn’t lose. Everyone placed bets on Charley except for Quest. The other players teased him for his choice. Although Charley had a sizable lead from the beginning, he ultimately stumbled and injured himself going around the last turn and lost. Quest allegedly told his teammates “Look at your old Charley horse now!” Joe kept up the ribbing the next day and exclaimed, “There’s your old Charley horse — he’d made it all right if it hadn’t been for that old Charley horse” when a teammate strained himself in a similar way while running to second base. 

Another account is that the name comes from an old horse named Charley that dragged equipment at the Chicago White Stockings ballpark. Apparently injured players would compare their limping to Charley’s gait and called a leg muscle injury a charley horse. 

One explanation I uncovered indicated that the name is said to owe its origin to the fact hat a player afflicted with it, when attempting to run, does so much after the fashion of a boy astride a wooden horse, sometimes called a ‘Charley horse’”

So — it appears that no really knows the true origin of the term, but all the theories and explanations seem to lead to baseball. I guess the only thing all the theories completely agree on is that they hurt like heck!!
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I was talking to someone (at a social distance) a few days ago and they believed that the government was doing an excellent job of managing the coronavirus crisis. You can count me in the group that believes it might have been possible to screw it up worse, but I’m not sure…

Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time” — I used believe that — now, I’m not so sure. It appears that in some groups of people, all the people in that group can be fooled all the time. 

This isn’t meant to be critical, only an observation on my part. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion — that’s a right guaranteed by the constitution. But everyone has an individual obligation to form that opinion by gathering the facts (from every available source) and not accepting something that someone else “tells” you.
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