DIARY
Scrapping with Albert Einstein
by Robert LaFrance
Do you ever get
the impression that a lot of people spend a lot of time talking about a lot of
things that don’t make a lot of difference to a lot of other people – like me
and you?
Of course we
agree that the things I write about in this column are pretty much
world-shaking, but I am referring to things that we aren’t interested in – like
coffee.
Two days ago I
sat quietly on someone’s couch and listened to three people discuss the merits
of 455 different kinds of coffee. “Medium blend mixed with Colombian gives a
distinct flavour ‘reminiscent of pine woods without a distinct pine flavour’,”
was one thing I heard. The first thing I thought of was that the whole subject
was ‘reminiscent of a pasture where many male cows had been grazing’.
There was a ‘dark
roast’, a blend of Brazilian and Mexican (one assumes coffee) beans and a dozen more combinations
including those from Arabia. The ones discussing this seemed to know what they
were talking about and maybe they did, but I always remember the evening many
years ago when several ‘experts’ did a blind taste test on three kinds of wine.
They argued away
and finally agreed on which high-end (expensive) wine was which. Then the woman
who was conducting the test revealed that all three were homemade plonk from the bottle in her
fridge.
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Flug and I were
at a memorial service on Monday morning. The Old Perfessor had it at his home
even though he wasn’t dead and in fact not even sick. He wanted to see what it
was like to have people say a bunch of nice things about him, for a change.
Nobody was mad –
most of us were in on it – when he emerged from his shed where he had been
listening via what he called ‘a satellite feed’ and which I called a microphone
and a wire between his living room and his shed.
Nobody was mad
because the Perfessor is rich and we’re all hoping to be mentioned in his will
when he does decide to take a leg-swing at the bucket, cross over to the next
world, buy the farm, give up the ghost, snuff it, or pass on to Nirvana. How do
we know he’s rich even though he drives a 1985 Gremlin and re-uses paper
towels? Because one day Flug and I were at his house and he, the Perfessor, was
putting a new handle in his pole-axe. For a wedge he was using a Toonie. That
pretty much proves it.
Speaking of
satellite feeds and other high-tech devices, I have been wondering lately what
kind of people (I use the word loosely) deliberately send viruses, phishes,
Spam, etc. around the world to annoy and cause serious damage to governments,
banks, police, and even me.
Last year someone
sent me a Facebook ‘friend request’ and it ended up being anything but
friendly. Bright lights and funny sounds came from my computer which never did
anyone any harm – unless you want to mention some of my columns. (Two years ago
a woman in Minto was laughing so hard while reading my column that she fell
downstairs and broke her dipsy-doodle.)
Seriously though,
some people spend their days trying to spam the world and I’m thinking it’s
time the punishment fit the crime. If the libel or slander came via text
message, then the culprit should have his or her thumbs broken. No more texting
for a while – or hitch-hiking either. Anyone who spreads a computer virus
should be injected with mumps or bird flu viruses. As we know, antibiotics
don’t work well on that stuff, but at least they could still hitch-hike,
preferably to Borneo.
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I just read
something in Encyclopedia Brittanica that bothered me a great deal. Now if I
could just remember what it was.
Got it! That
venerable reference book told me that, after the age of 20, everyone loses
about 50,000 brain cells every day. I am 67 years old. I have lost 2.35 million
brain cells since 1968.
What was I
talking about? Oh yes, brain cells. The worst part is that those lost cells
never come back, more’s the pity. However, there is one piece of information I
have that indicates EB is wrong. If a certain 103-year-old lady in a certain
local nursing home has lost 4.15 million brain cells, she should be stunned as
a stump, but she’s as sharp as a tack. Therefore Encyclopedia Brittanica is
wrong because if it were right, that lady, when she was 20 and still had those
missing 4.15 million brain cells, would have been scrapping with Albert
Einstein about the Theory of Relativity and she wasn’t.
-end-
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