Upstream of the Herd

I went to a convenience store. I bought gas at the pump and got a receipt. I then went into the store.  They had sodas on sale 2 for 2 dollars. I stood in line with the two sodas. There were two customers in front of me and while I was in line, two customers got in line behind me. While waiting I thought "The tax rate is 8.25% per dollar. The tax on this 2 dollar purchase is 16.5%. Rounding up, the tax should be 17 cents. The total should be $2.17. I'm going to pay with a 20 dollar bill. My change should be $17.83." The cashier rang up my two sodas and said "Two twenty." I handed him a 20 dollar bill and said "From Twenty." While he was making my change, I thought "Wait a minute. The tax rate is 8.25%. The tax should be 16.5%. Rounding up, the tax should be 17 cents. The total should be $2.17. My change should be $17.83." I said "The tax rate is 8.25% here isn't it?" He just looked at me. I said ...

Posted by (Pseudonym deleted), 12/29/2016: “I was recently at a nursing seminar, where we had a great nurse practitioner lecturing us. Within her lecture she spoke about the ineffectiveness and the uselessness of acetaminophen, which came as a bit of surprise due to it's over use and prescription by so many GPs on a regular basis. Apparently recent research and papers show that acetaminophen, commonly known as Tylenol in North America, which has been the go to for acute and chronic pain, is actually completely useless for such. The only thing that acetaminophen is helpful for is as an anti-pyretic. With the marketing and the push behind Tylenol the layman continues to use and abuse acetaminophen, when the only thing it’s really doing is ruining their liver. Not to mention a study showed that acetaminophen had about the same effective as a placebo. I wish it was more common knowledge, we're already doing enough to ruin our livers, we need not take acetaminophen to help the v...

I love so many versions of this piece, but I think this is my favorite right now because I really like the full orchestra presentation (and the artwork) :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM Here are my thoughts:  Danse Macabre by Charles-Camille Saint-Saens (1875) is one of my favorite pieces of classical music and one that is especially appropriate to Halloween. It's a great example of Romance-era classical music- it is dynamic in volume and emotion, and it is also a 'tone poem' or 'symphonic poem' that tells a story. It actually once contained a real poem too, and was presented as an 'art song' since it contained spoken word as part of its composition, which was very 'edgy' for the day.  The words of poem were about how death eventually comes for us all, peasant or King, and we should dance while we can., The poem was also loosely based on an old French superstition that once a year the dead were allowed out of their graves f...

My first Blogpost! And it is a "guest column". " Them Damn Kids Eatin' Tide Pods - A Cautionary Tale It breaks this old man's heart to drive by a laundromat and see all those kooky teens hanging around,  foaming at the mouth, camera-phones streaming live as they gnaw on Tide Pods. Oh sure, they're havin' fun now, and it's a new experience, but it only leads to trouble. I know. Believe you me…..It's too damn easy to succumb to peer pressure, and end up with a bad habit. You see, I was a dumb kid once, and I too experimented with 'Liquid Soap'. I started out innocently  “Sippin' The Snug” with my buds in a friend's mom's laundry room every now an' then, but things got outa hand,  and quickly spiraled out of control….before I realized it, ~I~ was a stone-cold Snuggle Addict.  A Snug Hugging 'beast of the bear'…. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS-t3qGE8_o5zglbj7Uw4uKd6yt...