I love factoids. One of my favorites is this: A disproportionate number of times the person performing the National Anthem at a National Hockey League game takes longer than a minute to do so, the home team loses. Does it actually mean anything? Nah. Is it true? Yep. Either that or the guy that told me that just thought I should pay more attention to the National Anthem. Either way, you'll figure out how the stopwatch on your phone works and you'll never watch a hockey game the same way again. Let's see what else I can ruin.
I covered the "eyeball drying out, going blind, dream thing", right? Have I said Ambrose Bierce called true love a mental disorder usually cured by marriage? Didn't I just cover staring at car wrecks and the wonder of birth? I trashed westerns and the Indians in general. Did I mention spouses? If you don't hate your significant other after a few years you're just not doing it right. Familiarity is supposed to breed contempt. It's actually a healthy but completely unpleasant component of any long-term relationship. Sorry. Ahh well, whatever doesn't kill ya gives you a hell of a limp. Here's to limping to the finish line with your true love. Spending 30-40 years with the same spouse gives you a whole new appreciation of the idea of a participation trophy. So much for that "trophy wife" thing. Trophies collect dust and the good ones tarnish. Again. Sorry.
Here's an interesting factoid. Nearly 50% of those who marry, in defiance of popular wisdom and social norms stay that way for life. That seems like a remarkable lack of imagination to me. It must be confusing to the children. Stephanie has two dads. Of course, she does. Doesn't everyone? Oh, you mean....never mind.
I like this factoid, it explains so much. The average American lives and dies within twelve miles of where they were born. Oh, we travel probably more than most but for permanent living we tend to stay home. That's been true thru out history. Sure, the hunter-gatherers just kept walking but that's pre-history. Once they developed agriculture they pretty much settled in and wrote histories among other things sedentary people do. You could say parochialism replaced tribalism if you were bored.
Up until about 300 years ago Europeans stayed put. You can actually gauge the amount of isolationism and lack of travel over even relatively short distances by the development of the vernacular languages. Gawd, now I'm boring myself. My point is: It takes a certain kind of inner aggression to pack up and move thousands of miles away and make a totally new life. Think of crossing the North Atlantic in a boat like the Mayflower. That's some balls! I wouldn't cross Boston Harbor in the damn thing and it's doubtful if you could get a permit anyway.
That inner aggression explains the difference in the development of Western Europe and the United States over the last centuries. I think it's why we lead the way in any real metric. If you factor in the death toll from a couple devastating wars they pretty much managed to kill off the aggressive people who were left in Europe, you can understand why the place wants paint. We can also see the effects of that aggression here. So many of the Sunbelt cities are made up of economic refugees from the Northeast and the Upper Mid West. Everyone is from somewhere else. Now we're getting into the second generation in those places. You can see it in the courts and the entertainments and in the way people drive. Geez. Ya take your life in your hands. I was a cab driver for 10 years in the Sun Belt. Definitely part of the problem. Sorry. I always was a little aggressive. They made me drive a bright yellow car. That wasn't by accident.
Nightlife is different. If you're in the town where you grew up and everyone knows you, you tend to behave. If you're somewhere that no one knows your Mom or your cousins you tend to act up. Women certainly do. Men seem to be pigs no matter where they happen to be.
So, those are some of my favorite factoids. Here's another: All instruments searching for intelligent life are pointed away from Earth. Even the reasonable, adult explanations for that factoid amount to the same thing. Think about it. But not too much.
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