The Weather is Broken

Synetech Leave a comment

The weather is broken. This year we did not have winter properly. It did get cold and it did snow, but it was not really winter. Every other day it snows and every other, other day the snow melts and the green grass shows. In fact, yesterday is was lightly rainy and nearly warm, with green grass everywhere. Then, late last night and early this morning it snowed and covered the ground in white. Just a few hours later, it rained ever so briefly (perhaps one or two minutes) causing all the snow to melt and the ground to be green again. The opposite has also happened this “winter”, where it was cold an snowy, but then it got warm very quickly, the grass came out, then went back to being snowy again within a day.

The weather is broken.

That’s Not a Sacrifice

Synetech Leave a comment

It drives me crazy when people think that they can sacrifice the life of another person or animal. By definition that is not a sacrifice.

A sacrifice is when you give up something of your own. If you kill a person or animal, then it is that person or animal who is losing their life and thus their sacrifice, not your’s. Further, unless that person is willing to give up their life (eg, for the rest of the village), then it is not a sacrifice; it is murder. (While animals have been shown to exhibit altruistic behavior, animals cannot consent to giving up their lives, and therefore any killing of an animal is murder.)

You can however sacrifice your inanimate objects like a television, car, etc. In cases like that, you are giving something up (the definition of “sacrifice”), but those items are not lives that are being lost. To be accurate, the items must be inanimate in that they were never alive. For example, you cannot sacrifice your stuffed moose head because that animal was killed for your trophy in the first place.

The only thing(s) that a person can sacrifice are their own inanimate objects, or their own life. That’s it!

(I have never used so many inflections and emphases before, but this is just such an annoying topic that actually called for this many to really drive the point home and absolutely clarify the details.)

When is a cup not a cup?

Synetech Leave a comment

When did a cup become only three-quarters of a cup?

When recipes say to use a cup of this or that, they mean a cup of this or that. That is, they mean 250ml, which is the definition of one cup.

So why is it that food stuffs like cup-of-soups, hot-chocolate mixes, powdered punches, and the like always say to add ¾cup of water to the mix for each cup? (No, they do not provide ¼cup of mix per cup.)

It seems that in ready-made food math, 3=4!

Not Liking Something Doesn’t Mean Being Afraid Of It.

Synetech Leave a comment

Why is it that people are constantly calling anybody who doesn’t like homosexuals homophobes? Are they illiterate? Do they not understand that -phobia means fear of from the Greek? Are they just trying to be douche-bags and hypocritically trying to belittle people? Just because a person says or does something that someone considers to not be pro-gay, does not mean that the person is afraid of gays, let alone having a full-on phobia of them. Sheesh; come up with a more appropriate term.

Google Sidebar Not Popular

Synetech Leave a comment

Google recently added the Everything Sidebar to (the left of) its search results page, causing the actual results to shift to nearly the middle of the screen. It seems that most people agree that it is not very useful and is very distracting and design-wise, is quite a failure. Google doesn’t seem fazed by the negative response and left it in anyway.

At least they are honest in their searches. When you type in google everything sidebar, Google Suggest offers a bunch of related searches, all of which involve getting rid of the sidebar. Here’s a screencap (the bold items were added by Google Suggest, almost as though they expect you to want to get rid of the sidebar).

Screencap of Google search suggestions showing most searches for “Google Everything Sidebar” results in questions on getting rid of it.

Ignoring the suggestions and performing a search on the basic query returns honest results. Every single one of the results on the first page (and likely the next several pages) is about getting rid of the sidebar. Here’s a screencap (the highlighted terms were added afterwards to quickly show that every single result is about removal of the sidebar).

Screencap of Google search suggestions showing most searches for “Google Everything Sidebar” results in questions on getting rid of it.

I’d say that Google should take a hint from their users and get rid of the sidebar since that is clearly what everybody wants, but it seems that they already know it; they just don’t care.

Don’t Make Stupid Children Stupider

Synetech Leave a comment

(Stupider really is a word? Go figure.)

Two shows have recently had episodes that really annoyed me.

On an episode of Hannah Montana, Miley fails her driving test and can’t take it again for a while, so she decides to go back and take it again as Hannah. Did it not occur to her that even if she manages to pass it this time—assuming that the instructor that caused her to fail just hours earlier would suddenly not be there to fail her again—that she would be getting a Hannah Montana license? Did it not occur to her that she would not be able to use it as Miley, and that she could not show it off at school as she was so anxious to do (remember the whole premise of the show is that she keeps her identity as Hannah a secret, even at school). Duh! (Of course her logical failure bit her in the butt that night when a cop pulled her over for forgetting to turn off her turn signal and requested to see her license.)

Soon after, Secret Life of the American Teenager did an episode where Amy and Ben decided to elope, but being minors, had to get fake IDs to do so. Did it not occur to them that their so-called marriage is nothing more than a frace, amounting to no more than a school play? The marriage is not legal in any way since 16-year-old Amy and Ben did not get married, but rather the 40+ year-old people named in their fake IDs did (why didn’t they at least use their own names when they had the IDs created?)

Yes, you can write these episodes because most younger kids are probably not going to realize how dumb it is, but that just makes it worse. By providing little kids with these sorts of scenarios, their logic and reasoning abilities will develop badly.

Don’t make dumb kids dumber.

Why Would You Brag About Being the Worst?

Synetech Leave a comment

As if reality shows weren’t bad enough, there’s a couple of Canadian ones called Canada’s Worst Handy Man and Canada’s Worst Driver.

Why on Earth would they make a show to brag about the stupidest people? They are glorifying idiocy—then again, it’s not exactly a new practice: witness all the air-head starlets.

Worse than that they are making being stupid look like a good thing is that the show is based on a faulty premise. It’s illegal for competitors to throw matches and competitions for a reason: because the outcome is not dependent on skill and it is completely predictable. These shows are the same as throwing a game; they have people do bad jobs. It’s pretty much always easier to be bad at something than to be good at it, so how can the viewers have any confidence in the shows at all? How do you know that they really are that bad and not just pretending (which would make the show pretty lame)?

I can suck at carpentry and driving too. Oops, I didn’t mean to saw your arm off or run that kid over, I just suck at it a lot and therefore am the best… so as Stephen Colbert would say, fame and fortune please!

Flip-Flop This!

Synetech Leave a comment

It aggrivates me to no end when the media rags on a politician (or candidate) for “flip-flopping”. That term is ridiculous and should stop being used altogether.

When a politician (or anyone really) is accused of flip-flopping, it is always in a derogatory way, implying that they are merely kowtowing to popular belief instead of standing by their own convictions and thus are not acceptable candidates.

The problem is that this absurd practice of accusing people of flip-flopping forces them to choose a side on an issue and lock into it come Hell or high water. Nevermind if new information comes to light that shows that your side is no longer correct, you must stick with it lest you be called a flip-flopper. It does not matter if new research shows that the opposite side is better, you must stick with the lesser choice or else you will be tagged as a flip-flopper. (Of course the side-effect is that if you don’t “flip-flop”, you are now endorsing the side that has been proven to be bad; damned if you do, damned if you don’t.)

Stop it! People can change their minds if they want to. Things change and a good candidate is one that can keep up and adapt as necessary. In fact most candidates run on platforms of change! Stop using that pathetic term and allow candidates to change as the world does, or else you are only doing yourself harm by tying their hands and making them afraid to adapt to new developments.

Horrible Children’s Songs

Synetech Leave a comment

What the Hell is wrong with people?! Why do they teach children such horrible songs?

Alouette is a French (Canadian) song about torturing a skylark to death. Its verses detail how the singer rips off the bird’s wings, plucks out its eyes, breaks off its beak, back, legs, tail, neck, head, etc. WTF?! (We didn’t realize the grotesque nature of this song back in 4th grade because we were just learning French, were more concerned about getting a good mark, and were young and didn’t understand animal cruelty, but now…)

Baby Bumblebee is a song about bringing up a baby bumblebee, but when it stings the person (what do you expect bees to do?) the person lashes out and squishes it. Then they get upset about the poor dead thing’s guts being on them, then shrug off this act of abusive violence (“it’s not my fault, it made me do it”) and wipe off the viscera like nothing happened. WTF?! (This song seems to prepare children to be abusive in their relationships.)

There are plenty of others as well. I’ll list them when I remember them.

And adults wonder why children are so bad.