Eurovision 2026: "I Can't Get You Out of My System"

Before Eurovision, Sweden's singer Felicia said she didn't think Israel should be allowed to participate and that she would "make sure they don't win."

She finished 20th.

Israel finished 2nd.

Perhaps she should have spent less time trying to get Israel out of her system and more time finding a native English speaker to proofread her lyrics: 

You're in my head, my heart, my body part.
No, I can't get you out of my system.

Premium Drugs, Discount Packaging

You can pay a small fortune for a prescription. But someone opens a giant stock bottle, counts out your pills by hand, pours them into another bottle, slaps on a label, and hopes they counted correctly.

Next month, your morning pills come in exactly the same bottle as your evening pills did last month. Good luck if you're elderly, sleep-deprived, or simply distracted.

Why aren't most prescriptions packaged by the manufacturer? A clearly labeled box and blister packs would make it obvious whether you're taking the right medication and whether you've already taken today's dose.

We pay premium prices for the drugs but apparently discount prices for the packaging.

And then there's the pharmacy symbol. Is it the Rod of Asclepius, the single serpent of healing? Or the Caduceus, the twin serpents of Hermes, the god of merchants?

American medicine seems unable to decide.



Moses and the bronze serpent, Numbers 21:8-9

Kids are being robbed!

Kids are being robbed. They don't learn cursive handwriting OR, even more importantly, touch typing!

I, too, have been robbed! By Apple.

I assume I’ll eventually figure out what Apple has done to its cursor pad… right now, it has me cursing quite a bit!

In any case, I am writing to express my disappointment that Apple no longer designs keyboards with adult human beings in mind. Instead, they seem to be catering to the exclusive needs of two-finger typists who thrive on inefficiency and chaos.

For instance, instead of a left shift key where it belongs, there’s a renegade apostrophe key (`) loitering there. If I actually want to capitalize something, I have to look down, relocate my entire hand, and then press shift as if it’s some kind of side quest.

The return key? Oh, don’t worry, that’s been thoughtfully replaced with a reverse slash (\) because obviously, what I really needed in my life was more accidental backslashes. To hit the actual return key, I have to look down (again), make a minor pilgrimage across the keyboard, and rehome my hand.

`i `hope That If `i `keep Practicing, I Will Learn To Find The Shift `key Without Looking.

But\\
the
\return
key
is
too
far
away
to\
reach\
without moving my hand and looking at the keyboard

I am also praying that I will find a way to switch from British spell-check to American soon!

NOTE: For a while, it appeared that Apple had also done away with click-and-drag; but that function can be restored in the System Settings -> Trackpad -> Force Click and Haptic Feedback.

My tongue is bleeding from too frequent biting

The purpose of language is communication. Picking on someone for minor errors impedes communication.

And yet... all of these are very annoying: 

• You meant to say succession, not secession.
• An herbalist puts her remedy in a vial. The remedy may taste vile, but she still puts it in a vial.
• Altar is a noun. Alter is a verb.
• A part and apart don't mean the same thing.
• Use myself only reflexively or for emphasis. Don't write, "Feel free to call myself if you have any questions."
• I is the subject of a sentence and me is the object. If you wouldn't say, "Jaime called I," then don't say, "Jaime called Sam and I." The correct thing to say is: "Jaime called Sam and me."
• Please say wolf, not woof. And library, not liberry.
• Typos do happen, let's give this guy the benefit of the doubt: "I'm new hear.")
• Mispercepted is not a word. Try misperceived.
• If you lose your pants because they're too loose, you've used both words correctly. 

I didn't realize I was such a snob. But since I've started this snotty post, I might as well finish it: 

• If you're unsure about grammar or spelling, Google is your friend.
• There are also sites that show you how to conjugate verbs in English, and other sites where you can hear the correct pronunciation of words in both British and American English.
• Look up words in an online dictionary if you have any doubt about their meaning; I do it all the time, just to be certain.

Back atcha'

I've never understood why introverts are maligned and completely misunderstood.

What if we misrepresented who extroverts are? It would be easy enough to assert the following things about extroverts:

• Extroverts crave attention and only shout, "I love you all" when they enter a room because they want to be the center of attention. 
• Extroverts prefer flitting around a large group of people because in those situations they can avoid meaningful interactions that might require giving another human being a little of their time. 
• Extroverts force their opinions on others, and won't explore ideas with anyone else.
• Extroverts resent introverts when we won't submit to having the life sucked out of us. 
• Extroverts are shallow and insincere. And loud.

Now that my petty desire to turn the tables on extroverts has been satisfied, here's what introversion and extroversion are really about. Apparently, humanity needs both types. (Sigh)

"There is zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas." 

- Susan Cain, The Power of Introverts

Saving for a Rainy Day?

If you happen to live in an area that does not observe DST, you may have wondered why people in other areas change their clocks. A quick perusal of Wikipedia will show you that there is no good reason.

Have you also wondered when people in those crazy places change their clocks? The mnemonic is, "Spring forward, fall back." However, this year, they did not adjust their clocks when spring began in early February. They waited until the end of March, after the equinox, the middle of spring. So remember, clocks are changed... sometime during spring and fall.

No matter when people futz with their clocks, the procedure is absurd. It is true that there is more sunlight in the summer than in winter, but no one gets to save it for a rainy day.

There are, it seems, only three "benefits" to Daylight Savings Time:

• stores make more money if the sky is light after people finish work each day 
• people watch less prime time television during Daylight Savings Time 
• there's an "extra" hour in the fall

Here are just a few of the problems caused by changing the clocks:

Health

• changing the clocks disrupts circadian rhythms; the effects on a number of biological systems can be severe and last for weeks 
• it disrupts sleep and reduces the quality of sleep 
• it increases the incidence of heart attacks by 10% (studies in several countries support this) 
• for several weeks after changing the clocks in the spring, the number of male suicides increases (however, male suicides are at their lowest rate in the summer, which, some argue, is a benefit of changing the clocks)

Environment

• in the summer, energy use increases in the morning, but there is no corresponding decrease in the evening; no power is saved during DST

Work

• DST causes problems for farmers and other people whose work depends on the sun (e.g., grain can only be harvested after dew evaporates, so the work day "officially" starts before work can be done and ends when work could continue) 
• cows need to be milked at the same time every day; their systems are disrupted when dairy farmers need to make milk deliveries earlier than usual

Safety

• major industrial accidents have occurred because of DST (molten steel should be cooled for all the time it needs, not one hour less) 
• when the clocks are changed, medical devices can "generate adverse events" (I don't want to know what that means)

Economy

• changing the clocks makes a mess of meetings, travel, billing systems, and record keeping, resulting in much unnecessary expense 
• different regions have different DST rules; this adds more complications to an already confused system 
• work efficiency decreases, leading to financial losses 
• U.S. stock markets experience a significant one-day loss each time the clocks change

Ruining Our Fun 

• Fourth of July fireworks occur long after the kids' usual bedtimes 
• because some people announce the times of teleconferences as PT, MT, and ET rather than the accurate PST or PDT, MST or MDT, and EST or EDT, other people may miss a teleconference. People who don't change their clocks have no reason to be aware that Daylight Savings Time has started or ended. For them, it's always Standard Time.

In conclusion, changing the clocks has no benefits. More importantly annoys those of us in numerous saner regions where we do not change our clocks—

so just stop it!

"Symbology"

Thank you, Agent Smecker!   

[Additional link to same scene]

Vindicated at Last!

No one believed me...

For years, people insisted I was mispronouncing the word 'primer, ' but actually:

The word 'primer' is pronounced the obvious way, pry-mer, when it refers to paint, explosives, or DNA research. However, in the United States, an elementary or introductory text book is correctly pronounced prim-er even though there's only one 'm.' This is probably a survival of the pronunciation prior to the standardization of British spelling by Samuel Johnson in the 1750s.

Go here if you doubt me! Click on the speaker icon.

Freedom & Footnotes

When we prepared our papers using typewriters, we were required to include footnotes. (If you never used a typewriter, stop and think about how difficult that must have been.)

Now that computers have simplified printing footnotes, footnotes are no longer de rigueur. Today, all notes are consigned to the end of the book and printed in the smallest font size available.

I keep a second bookmark in the back of the book I'm reading to keep track of what footnote I'm on, but in this age of making everything easy, shouldn't the notes be on the same page as the text?

Why have we stopped using footnotes? 

The answer may be in this TedTalks video in which historian Ray Raphael addresses the importance of footnotes. "If you believe whatever they say, you are not free and they are your masters. First rule of freedom: don't trust 'em. Second rule of freedom: find out for yourself." 

While writers are informing us, they're also hiding information from us.

So, when you are reading, read the footnotes and look up the sources. And if you're publishing a book, show a little respect for your readers by using footnotes rather than end notes.

Immaculate Conception and Anti-Semitism

It seems that many people, even some scholars, do not know what the term "Immaculate Conception" means. It does not refer to Mary's supposed virginity.

You may think this is an odd pet peeve for a Jew to have, but stay with me.

The Christian belief that Mary was still a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus is called virgin birth.  Immaculate conception is an entirely different concept, one that is a necessary result of another Christian belief: original sin.

Early Christian theologians invented the doctrine of Original Sin and based it on a Jewish story to explain why it was necessary to worship Jesus rather than practice Judaism, a temptation apparently still faced by some Christians in the early Church. The doctrine asserted that, before Jesus, no one was "saved."

Christians invented the idea that the disobedience of Adam and Eve had caused all successive generations to be born with an ailment called Original Sin. They claimed that worshiping Jesus was necessary for one to be worthy of heaven. According to them, the Hebrew prophets, patriarchs, and matriarchs were dwelling in hell. Only people living after Jesus could have this original sin washed away. It required baptism... by a Christian priest, of course.

This new idea, Original Sin, created a problem in the minds of some Christians. Since Mary must necessarily have been infected with Original Sin, how could she have given birth to the son of god?

Christian theologians solved this problem with another new idea called Immaculate Conception. When Mary was conceived, god made sure she didn't catch the disease from her parents. Why god couldn't have done this for all people remains unexplained.

All these ideas were sufficiently convoluted to prevent most theologians from asserting their absolute truth. It wasn't until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the near-divinity of Mary was widely accepted by Catholics, that a papal bull commanded "all the faithful" to believe that Mary was conceived "without the stain of Original Sin."

So, the term Immaculate Conception does not refer Mary's chastity. It is the end result of one more idea that was invented to invalidate Judaism.

_______

As an aside, I must admit that I rather like statues of Mary and appreciate the inclusion of feminine imagery in religion.

So for a more complete and more sympathetic explanation of the concepts of "virgin birth" and "immaculate conception," as well as an appreciation of the divine feminine in Christianity, I'd like to point you to this article.