Not Drinking Dinosaur Piss

I was told, as a child, that no new water has been created since the Earth was formed. As the Firesign boys used to say, “Everything you know is wrong.” The Earth is a closed system, so we breathe the oxygen the dinosaurs did.

The water on the Earth today is conserved via the water cycle; additionally, hydrogen and oxygen are constantly recombining to create new water. Most scientists believe that water was brought to the Earth by the massive swarms of comets which hit the planet in its first billion years.

Tom Rush Observes Time

“It occurred to me in the middle of the night last night that, pretty much every time I opened an eye to look at my watch, the hands were overlapping. I then spent too much time trying to figure out just when that would happen. It was exhausting, and I gave up and went back to sleep. But this morning I went to my old friend, the Interwebs, and asked. (Now I see why it was exhausting!)  

“The hour and minute hands of an analog clock overlap exactly 22 times in a 24-hour day. While they seem to overlap at every hour interval, the minute hand moves faster than the hour hand, causing the overlaps to occur roughly every 65 minutes and 27 seconds, rather than every 60 minutes.”  

That works out to 12:00:00 Midnight, 1:05:27,  2:10:55, 3:16:22, 4:21:49, 5:27:16, 6:32:44, 7:38:11, 8:43:38, 9:49:05, 10:54:33. The 11 AM overlap happens at noon.”

I’m Chevy Chase And You’re Not

CNN showed a documentary about the famously testy comedian, including a present-day interview. This is a clear example of the TV version of a “hold for release obituary” (I have already written mine). It will take 10 minutes and a $5 pair of scissors (metaphorically) to cut this into a television obit. Certainly every news outlet that hasn’t refreshed their Chase obit will be dusting them off and borrowing footage.

My favorite Chase quote appeared in the late, lamented Premiere Magazine, which had a pull quote of Chase, reacting to a script: “Fuck it. I’m too old and too rich to be bothered.” And that was 40 years ago.

I have updated my First Amendment Doomsday Clock to 20 seconds before midnight. https://psacot.com/ddc/ Send your family out of town if you don’t want them to see you dragged from your home at 3 a.m., cuffed and barefoot in your pajamas¹, and taken to a secret detention site where you will be held without bail or due process until they are certain your spirit is crushed. They can’t imprison all of us… or can they? Once they cut off my medications, I won’t last long. I hope you are healthier and can live until the midterms–if they are held.

1. Whatever you do, don’t sleep in the nude, since you will not allowed to get dressed. ↩︎

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LLMs Earn Praise When Not Used Stupidly

Produced under the supervision of the American Society for the Protection Of Human Writers. No LLMS/Not AI were used, abused or injured in the production of this column.

A tip of the PSACOT hat to Clark Smith, who pointed out that, while CMP was the center of my professional universe for 22 years (1989-2001), most readers of this column have absolutely no idea what CMP was. It was a business-to-business publishing company, which meant it gave away newspapers and magazines free to “qualified” subscribers—people in the industry—or people who claimed to be in the industry. Checking was not rigorous.

CMP was supposed to Creative Media Publications. That name was already taken. Gerry and Lilo Leeds just went with the initials: CMP. Like the S in Harry S Truman, it is just a letter (which is why, if you use Truman’s full name, there is no period after the s.

https://psacot.com/878-2/

It was founded in 1971 by Gerry and Lilo Leeds in the kitchen of their home, with the help of my ex-editor Jim Moran, employee #1. The company  grew, was profitable and treated its employees well and with respect from 1971 to 1997, when it went public. Two years later, it was taken over by United Business Media. The CMP identity staggered on for a few years, then disappeared. Pretty much everything I have written about CMP over the years.

If I had you with the title, click here for the essay. TL;dr: it is nearly as long as a whole column and will take you four minutes to read. I don’t know where you should go of you want that four minutes of your life back.

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LLMs Earn Praise When Not Used Stupidly

Produced under the supervision of the American Society for the Protection Of Human Writers. No LLMS/Not AI were used, abused or injured in the production of this column.

I don’t think Carl Sagan imagined a time when this quotation would apply both to a money-losing nascent technology and current American politics.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”