Mysterical-E

The Hell You Say

“What if Peter had
not caught the wolf?
What then?”

Those musically inclined may recognize the subtitle of today’s discussion as the last line in at least one translation of the words accompanying Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” They are uttered by Peter’s grandfather, who, earlier, warned the kid not to fool around outside the gate because a wolf might show up any time. (In Europe, back when that music was written, it was still taken for granted that wolves delighted in attacking humans as well as other prey.)

Well, I’m feeling a bit grandfatherly today, but not having warned anybody about anything worse than Republicans, I have to fall back on criticizing some of the wonderful “progress” we have made in the world of electronic communications.

Let me say, for a start, that I have already--not just once, but several times--seen automobiles driven by people who were not talking on cell phones. This by no means implies that I think the dangers of simultaneous driving and telephoning have been exaggerated. It just means that some very rare phenomena are perfectly real. I haven’t yet seen anybody who was texting while driving an automobile, which may suggest that Americans (in Montana; perhaps not where you live) are smarter than they look. I have seen people on bicycles texting while riding, but not in heavy traffic, which last I attribute not to the bike riders’ wisdom in restricting their texting, but to their avoidance of heavy traffic whether they’re texting or not.
Today a friend sent me an e-mail with a URL to click on. (For the curious, it was http://cdn.videosift.com/static/Miss-USA-2011-Should-Math-Be-Taught-In-Schools/index.html?1315892583 but if it isn’t there when you finally get around to clicking on it, don’t blame me; blame the uncontrolled perishability (and sometimes uncontrolled imperishability) of stuff on the web.) I clicked, despite the danger of downloading malware, and up came a lovely series of very brief interviews with moderately attractive young ladies whom I took to be candidates for Miss America answering the question “Should math be taught in schools?” The answers varied, from “By no means” to “Yes, but alternatives should be taught as well,” usually including a comment that the students should be able to choose whether to believe in it or not. One “candidate” went so far as to state that she personally does not believe in math.

Well, one, naturally, smells if not a rat then at least a put-on. And one quickly learns, by reading the comments viewers have appended below the video, that it was, indeed a put-on, based on a real question-to-the-candidates, “Should evolution be taught in schools?” I’d enjoyed the dumb answers (most of us get some enjoyment out of dumb answers not made by ourselves), so I forwarded it to several friends. Not to anybody who wouldn’t get the point, because I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t get the point, though I know of some folks like that.

By the way, about those comments made by viewers: most consist of foolish crap (remember I’m in my grandfatherly mode today), but a gem shows up on rare occasions. People who regularly read them all had better either be too old to find work or otherwise persons of great leisure. And patience.
Oh, another subject to digress to: patience. I figured out early that the reason Windows (maybe other stuff, too, but at least Windows) included time-consuming games like solitaire, free-cell, etc. in software was that just assuming we would quickly learn patience wasn’t working. That we be patient during the enormous amount of time even simple word-processing on the home computer took us. As downloads got longer and longer, things got worse, so they gave us games to fritter the waiting time away with. We still needed lots of patience, but it was a wee bit less aggravating if we were playing something fun. (I only ever won one game of four-suit Spider Solitaire, having used up all the “games patience” I could muster.)

Alongside most of the videos reachable from things friends send me (lying in systems like Facebook, for one example) there are opportunities to see “related” videos. This time I tried a few. And discovered a face I hadn’t met before of the notorious, insidious insult to humanity known as “blogs.” These were people who blogged by posting videos of themselves talking about themselves. I watched several. They were as boring as most blogs are, and waiting for them to come to the point is as tedious as trying to find something worthwhile in mere “text” blogs. It’s been a while since I bothered with a blog, because I’d been to quite a few that came in two kinds (and for some reason, only two kinds). Either they were inane stuff nobody with anything to do but smirk could extract a kernel of interest from, or they were masterful collections of so much stuff one could hardly expect to plow down to the important parts.

Worse, these video thingies take forever to download--on my computer anyhow. No way, given the present financial situation in the USA can I be expected to collect technological improvements as fast as they roll out of the factories and into the hands of the teenagers who seem to dominate the consumer end of the electronic industry. Not only do the devices cost too much, but people not attending high school don’t even find out they exist until they’re already obsolete. Besides, I’m saving my money for my old age, which looms ever closer, and could be really expensive, now that we have a “Tea Party” trying to wipe out all the medical programs that could help--as well as all of what they call “entitlements.” Except their own.

Well, maybe Grandpapa was just jealous of Peter because he hadn’t, himself, thought of roping the wolf. (The tale doesn’t reveal--unless maybe in a Disney version--whether the “duck in the wolf” emerged alive or not. Which could be very relevant.)