Shake That Tree A Little Harder

Charles Darwin

You may remember, if you have been following this blog for that long, that in an unidentified (because I can’t find it) post I alluded to that great Darwinian event when our ancestors split the sheets with our non-homo sapiens forbearers and climbed out of the arboreal-sphere (I love to make up new words) and began the arduous journey to the top of the food chain.  If you do, great.  If you don’t, good luck trying to find it because I can’t.  But I digress.

For a long time, but to no avail, I have been expounding the theory that man (you know, us) did not generate from a single common ancestor.  I offer proof: Have you been to the zoo?  Did you visit the primate exhibits?  Did it dawn on you (as it did me) that aside from age related differences in size and hair color that all the members of a single species looked pretty much the same?  Oh sure, there are some distinguishing features if you care to spend the time and effort to discover them.  But not to the extent that we humans seem to offer.  Think about it.  When was the last time you attended a social function populated mostly by persons unknown to you?  The second thing you did was start a mental catalogue of those around you based on differences in physical attractiveness.  The very first thing you did was head to the bar to start the process of peeling back the social inhibitions.  Am I right?

Oh you may challenge my hypothesis by returning, “Dale, all species engage it a mating selection criteria process.”  And they do: Chiefly, if the female is in season, the alpha male will render her the lucky girl of the day.   But I digress.  To the observant, people have wide and varied physical characteristics, so varied that it seems we are not of one species, but several.  After years of being viewed askance when I offer my theory, sometimes shunned, I now have some support for my intellectual meanderings.  On March 18, 2016 (hot off the presses, boys), William Dunham of Reuters News Service writes:

Our species, Homo sapiens, has a more adventurous sexual history than previously realized, and all that bed hopping long ago has left an indelible mark on the human genome.

Scientists said on Friday an analysis of genetic information on 1,500 people from locations around the world indicated at least four interbreeding episodes tens of thousands of years ago, three with our closes cousins the Neanderthals and one with the mysterious extinct human species known as Denisovans.

Neanderthal

I will not go into the depth of the article, but the crux is that about 100,000 years ago, our supposed ancestors were playing fast and loose with the old DNA swap with at least three other species that now are part of our genetic makeup; Neanderthal, Denisovans and one yet unidentified.  What I find interesting is that neither Neanderthals or Denisovans genetic identifiers occur in African peoples.  That’s because neither species ever made a presence there.  So then, where did they come from?  Well, Denisovans discovered in just the past decade are known from only a pinky finger bone and two teeth from a northern Siberian cave.  You think about the implications for Afro-centrism.

It seems to me there are some big holes in the anthropological record… and I’m just the armchair explorer to guess what they might reveal until some bona fide scientist proves me wrong.  Next week, the future of sex, I hope.  More about that later. 

No Thank You, Please!

I know I shouldn’t do it but I guess I’ll never learn.  Today, I was scanning the internet news headlines and I came across this:  Nike Unveils Its First Self-Lacing Sneaker.  It was bad enough when they introduced the pump so you could tighten your shoes’ fit, but now they are putting sensors and adjustment mechanisms in the shoe to ensure the proper of fit.  And soon, they will release a shoe that makes the adjustment by itself.

Now I am no luddite.  I embrace useful technological advances with good humor (notice I wrote, “useful” ‘cause let’s face it, some technology is just there for the bragging rights).   But it seems to me that we are on the path to a skill-set free existence.  Soon, no one will have to do anything, it will all be done for us.  One of my toughest childhood challenges was learning to lace and tie my shoes.  When I mastered that, I had booked a huge win in the self-confidence column of life’s register.  And it was no easy feat.  I remember, my dad announced, “This is the day you learn to tie your shoes!”  I have to admit that I was wearing my little red cowboy boots daily not to make a fashion statement, but because it was required we take off our shoes for kindergarten nap time… and the teacher forbade my little girl-friends from tying my shoes for me (you may remember Donna and Rose Marie from a previous post).

I was seated in the family folding chair (why we had one folding chair was a mystery I never solved, even to the day I sold the damn thing at my parents’ estate sale) facing a blank wall, no TV, until I successfully followed the rabbit through the hole three times.  But by the end of those tortuous hours (well it seemed like hours to me) I was equipped with a skill that precluded my wearing penny loafers… ever!

And speaking of the family folding chair, it was deeply involved in my training reference: getting cracker crumbs on my Sunday suit while dining at the Chief’s Club (NCO Club to non-sailors); talking while in church; overfilling the bathroom sink while reenacting the Battle of Okinawa with my fleet of toy ships; letting the dog and/or cat into the house (spaying/neutering was not so widely practiced in the days of my youth; if you don’t understand you’ve never owned a tom cat).

But back to the point of waning skill sets.  We have so little to do concerning our day-to-day existence that is not done for us automatically by a machine or for a fee by some entrepreneur that we are dumfounded when something doesn’t perform as per our expectations and we are forced to buy a replacement rather than fix it, or worse yet, do without!

 

Mastery of problem solving skills, even simple ones like tying one’s shoes, are essential to our continued existence as a biological entity.  Yet more and more of our skills are being eroded because it’s all done for us.  See how many of the questions you regarding simple tasks you can answer:

• How do you make a shovel more effective (if you are stumped by the term “shovel”, just quit now)?
• What is the proper gap for your sparkplugs (if you don’t know where your sparkplugs are, meet your new robot overlords)?
• Does water boil at a higher or lower temperature at higher elevations, and what effect does that have on cooking times (or you could just eat trail mix, right)?
• Do you know how to change a flat tire (do you even know where your spare is, or if you have one)?
• If your car gets stuck in the mud, should you add air or decrease air in your tires (if you don’t know, why did you leave the pavement in the first place)?

If you desperately need the answer to any of these questions, call the people at Nike who invented the self-lacing shoe.

Too Tightly Wound

So, you’re happy It’s almost Daylight Saving Time.  Are you one of those creatures who like to frolic on the lawn at dusk after a hard day’s work, but wouldn’t be caught outside after dark?  Yeah, I know who you are... and I hate each and every one of you!  “Why,” you ask, “would you hate us for practicing a tradition honored through time en memorium?”  Because “so called” Daylight Saving Time is a sham, a ruse perpetrated on the gullible by maleficent forces seeking to control the behavior of man for nefarious motive.  More on that later, but first, what you do not know about Daylight Saving Time.

The great myth:  Daylight Saving Time was invented by that beloved American philosopher, inventor and national patriarch, Ben Franklin.  This is patently untrue.  The origin of Ben’s association with Daylight Saving Time stems from a 1784 essay he wrote for the Journal of Paris titled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” in which he jokingly suggested that Parisians could economize candle usage by getting people out of bed earlier in the morning, making use of the natural morning light instead.  He made no mention of resetting time pieces to take advantage of seasonal variances in sunlight.

The first recorded modern use of Daylight Saving Time occurred in Thunder Bay, Ontario (that’s in Canada, dearies… up, look up on the map) in 1908.  Other Canadian communities implemented the practice including Regina, Saskatchewan in 1914 and Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1916.  The first nationwide incorporation of Daylight Saving Time was in 1916 by Germany and its ally Austria-Hungry when clocks were turned ahead on April 30, 1916 to minimize the use of artificial lighting and save fuel for the war effort during World War I.  The idea was quickly adopted by the United Kingdom, France and many other countries.  After all, who would want to fight an enemy that was an hour ahead of you? And the French are sticklers for knowing when it’s time to surrender: “Mon Dieu! It is three o’clock, we must surrender before the British break for tea!” The countries reverted to standard time after the war ended and Daylight Saving Time would not return to Europe until world War II.

Daylight Saving Time was adopted into law as “Fast Time” in the United States (no… of America) in 1918 to support the war effort during World War I.  The initiative was led by Robert Garland, a Pittsburgh industrialist who had encountered the idea in the UK.  Today he is often called the “Father of Daylight Saving”. Yeah, I’ve never heard of him either but that’s what is says in the source I plagiarized for this blog post.  Frankly, I think he should be investigated for child abuse. Only seven months later, the seasonal time change was repealed.

While some municipal jurisdictions continued to practice Daylight Saving Time (e.g., the demographically insignificant cities of Pittsburgh, Boston and New York), a national Daylight Saving Time was not reinstated until February 1942 for World War II.  It was left in place year round until the war ended, reverting back to standard time September 30, 1945.  From 1945 to 1966 there were no uniform rules in the U.S. resulting in widespread confusion, especially for trains, buses, broadcasting and happy hour scheduling.  To smooth the seas for wide spread afternoon drunkenness, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was enacted into law. This established the familiar April to October adoption of Daylight Saving Time schedule.  However, as with all uniform laws resting on solid foundational logic, states were allowed to exempt themselves.

Due to the overflowing love for America residing in the bosom of the Arab peoples, Congress extended the Daylight Saving Time period to ten months in 1974 and eight months in 1975 in response to the 1973 oil embargo.  The trial period showed a savings of 10,000 barrels each day.  But the extension of Daylight Saving Time was controversial as many complained that dark winter mornings endangered the lives of children traveling to school.  C’mon people, get on board!  It’s easy to make new kids.  But until we discovered fracking, oil was a scarce resource.

The explosion of this myth will really blow your understanding of Daylight Saving Time:  Farmers lobby for Daylight Saving Time as it allows for more time in the fields.  False!  The agriculture industry was deeply opposed to the practice when implemented in 1918.  The farmers performed their tasks based on the sun and natural cycles.  Observing Daylight Saving Time meant the farmers had to wait an extra hour in the morning for dew to evaporate before they could harvest hay.  Hired hands worked less since they left the fields for dinner at the same time.  And cows needed to be milked on their own schedule, regardless of the time indicated on a watch.  Moo!

“But what about all those energy savings?” you ask.  From the very start of the debate, Daylight Saving Time advocates have touted energy conservation as an economic benefit. A U.S. Department of Transportation study in the 1970s concluded that total electricity savings associated with daylight saving time amounted to about one percent (1%) in the spring and fall months.  However, with the ubiquity of air conditioning, more recent studies have found that cost savings on lighting are more than offset by greater cooling costs.

So in light of all of the information indicating that there is no demonstrable economic benefit to Daylight Saving Time, why do we persist in this anachronistic practice?  All you have to do is follow the money.  When we look into the financial records related to lobbying activity in favor of Daylight Saving Time, who is it that sits at the top of the list?  (Insert dramatic ta-da here.) Manufacturers of patio furniture and outdoor grills.  Yes, people, we are being controlled by Big Bar-B-Q!  We’ve been Webber-ed!

The Milky Way

Ha! Ha! Fooled ya: You thought this was going to be about space again.  But it is not.  This offering is a nostalgic meander through the confectionary memories of my childhood.

Ah, Milky Way… it’s a candy bar and a galaxy.  Okay now?  Are you up to speed?  Can we move along?  You’ll have a chance to ask questions later.

I do not remember a life before candy.  I have a sweet tooth.  I would rather quaff an A&W than a Heineken.  Actually, I would rather quaff anything than a beer, no matter its pedigree.  But if you know me, you’d be aware of that.  If you don’t know me, well stick around anyway to keep the “click” count up.   You might want to go back and read some of my old stuff from when I was funny.  Now back to our scheduled program, always in progress.

I have memories from when I was a tyke (is four years old a tyke?) of my father bringing home a selection of candy bars as a special treat (which means they were on sale at five for a dime or something like that) and since there were only the three of us in the household (me, mom, dad… in that order of importance… I mean after all; mom was the one who prepared my Franco-American spaghetti while I was watching Romper Room every day… yes, I was a Do Bee… stop snickering, you are only demonstrating your cultural ignorance) there was quite a variety to choose from: Snickers (no pun, ref. the Do Bee phrase), Mars, Milky Way and Three Musketeers.

I always picked the Mars bar.  Why?  Well because it was the biggest.  Okay, I have no idea if it was the biggest because I couldn’t read the labels.  But to my untrained eye, the shape made it look larger even if it was the same net weight as the others.  And when you are four years old, size matters (see my blogpost Size Matters, 7/18/13).   As my taste matured during the years of elementary education I found my preference for its multi-faceted ingredients and chewy composition led me to the Snickers bar; nougat and caramel in the same confection, and peanuts just to add personality.  Sorry Mars, the days of simplicity were over, the self-aware man needs context and subtlety.

  In 2008, while I was on a road trip with Frank to Wyoming, M&M Mars (the maker of Snickers and other candy bars) introduced a limited run of their most popular brands made with… wait for it… Dark Chocolate.  Every time I saw a convenience store on the horizon, I would start talking about waterfalls and ocean tides; next thing you know Frank would ask that we stop to let him evacuate his bladder.  As it is common courtesy on the part of the highway traveler who does not need gas to purchase something from the convenience store in gratitude for, well the convenience, while I was waiting I would buy a dark chocolate Snickers bar.  More about dark chocolate later… easy girls, we’ll get there.

As I entered by preteen years, I discovered a world of offerings made by confectioners other than M&M, Mars.  One of my favorites was Big Hunk.  I found that the nougat and peanut slab offered something of a challenge.  As an adult, there is no way I would attempt to ingest a whole Big Hunk.  The effort involved and the wear and tear on one’s jaws is just too great.  But during the summers of my preteen years, it was an oft granted treat that one of the neighborhood moms would pile all of us into their station wagon and drop us off at the La Mesa community pool for an afternoon of unsupervised frolic and frivolity.  I guess they figured the teen-aged life guards would keep us alive, “Good luck boys, I’ll be back for the survivors.”  Each would enter the facility with two dimes.  One for the admission fee and one for the snack bar to buy a treat as we laid out in the sun drying our trunks (nobody had a “swimsuit”, we were manly suburbanites).  It was my wont to select a Big Hunk, because I figured the effort applied to eating a sugary treat was somehow proportional to the level of perceived satisfaction.  I also remember not being able to eat the evening’s dinner fare as my jaws were locked tight by cramping muscles. Then, I discovered the Look bar.  All the sticky nougat goodness of the Big Hunk, covered in chocolate!  It was impossible to consume one of these masterpieces of child-targeted marketing without getting saliva dissolved chocolate on every square inch of one’s body. I am surprised the neighborhood moms didn’t strap me to the hood of the car for the drive home.

Chocolate, of course, is the rose in the bouquet of candies.  Anybody who does not like chocolate should have their name added to a subversives list.  It’s just unnatural.  But chocolate and its effects are something of an enigma.  It comes in three colors!  Milk chocolate seems where we all start the romance.  And it suffices well as an introductory experience.  But one is going to have to make a choice eventually; the light or the dark.  I remember my introduction to white chocolate. It was my paternal grandmother who brought along a box on one of here frequent visits.  It was sweet, too sweet.  I was flying around the house fueled by concentrated sugar.  My mother rightly rationed my intake for the duration of my grandmother’s stay and insisted she take the uneaten squares home when she departed.  I’m not sure how many days passed before my metabolism stabilized.

I do not remember my introduction to dark chocolate. But it was probably Hershey’s Special Dark from the miniatures assortment bag.  I can assure you, dark chocolate was created in hell by Satan to tempt the faithful to their eternal damnation.  I think that puts the punctuation on where I stand on the dark chocolate issue.  And as proof of the downfall of human society, we now publish the strength (% cocoa solids content listed on the package) to assure we get the proper fix dosage. For my particular taste, 60% is about the highest I can go.  But I know some women who derive such a deep pleasure response that they regularly eat chocolate with a cocoa solids content as high as 80%.  Men, I think were falling short somewhere (could it be another “size matters” indicator?).

If I were to limit myself to one source for my chocolate, it would be See’s Extra Dark Chocolate.  I know there are brands with more exotic names and fancier packaging, but you can’t beat See’s for consistent excellence.  My favorite is the Dark Chocolate Butter Chew.  I’m not gonna tell you what it looks like.  You will know where it was by the empty space in the box when I pass it to you.

Oh, it looks like we’ve run out of time for questions.