Editorial Glance
The story of our combative, snake-oiled times: There are antidotes, and there are antidotes.
Well, we also have vaccines to help us skirt -- or brace for -- the worst of what the world can chuck at us. There are all sorts of ways to avoid focus on one thing and pull attention onto another, as flashy magicians, petty pick-pockets, and pokerfaced charlatans all know.
But there are always ingenious methods to pull us back from permanently swallowing The Really Big Lies, too: truth serum, hypnotic therapy, anti-psychotic medications, cult deprogramming methodologies, and so on. Sometimes, even logic comes bubbling up to the surface in the drowning and airless front lines of public thought and reason, but not often.
Alex Baer: Doubt Remover
Bob Alexander: Welcome to “The Other Side”
A note to Mike Malloy at MikeMalloy.com:
I noticed during the 2015/2016 television season that characters could say … shit, along with the shit-esque variations: Bull and horse. Oh … and asshole. You can say those on TV now. But I'll be dead and stuffed into an urn on the mantle long before anyone can say fuck on AM radio.
I've sent you about 180 “moments” over the last ten years and not once have I been able to write precisely what I meant to say. But you know exactly what I'm talking about. You've spent your entire career skating along the edge of what the Federal Communications Commission will allow on the air.
Alex Baer: Troll Models
It may be the early Egyptians built the pyramids not with blocks, tackles, or roller logs, or even long-speculated minerals with anti-gravity properties. They could have been hupped together by really, really strong coffee.
Although I admit the anti-gravity thing would be a nice touch, and would also help keep this season's ant parade from finding my triple-espresso mocha-supremo extra-grande within six seconds of touchdown of my free, attached, limited-edition, celebrity-signature model hand-truck-beverage-holder, up to the computer station, where it gets strapped in like tanks of liquid oxygen near the thruster ports.
Alex Baer: Another Fine Week
It's been a heckuva week or so for Science lately: Watching as black holes merged, observing gravitational ripples and waves, proving correct more of Einstein's theories...
That was just for openers. We also learned that electrons in the metal graphene can behave like a liquid -- a real first -- and that the explanation for the Yellowstone supervolcano may need to be revised.
Plus, it also looks like Earth might have been formed by the collision of two early bodies -- and, for good measure, hundreds more galaxies have been discovered playing peekaboo behind our own Milky Way.
There have been major scientific downsides recently as well:
An Indian man is believed to be the first person killed by a meteorite;
The European Space Agency says after 60 hours of operation after a jarring landing, it's now bidding farewell to its Philae comet lander after no response; and
An Alaska woman says her 6-year-old Happy Meal refuses to decompose.
There have also been developments somewhere in the middle:
Scratch-and-sniff posters have been hung in NY subway cars, to give riders an olfactory break from the environs;
LA's mayor has recorded an R&B video to alert residents of a road closure; and
A city in Switzerland has cancelled plans to allow a silent disco to carry on all night long.
Alex Baer: Snuffed 'n' Stuffed
On our deregulated, tea-bagged, and GOP-sandbagged beaches, there are seldom enough lifeguards handy, especially when you really need one -- like when your muscles tense up, you feel the undertow pulling you down, and panic sets in, just from a fleeting second's accidental consideration of "Trump" and "launch codes" in the same thought.
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Alex Baer: Of Beasts & Burdens
"It's not every day that you see a nation's leader not only fall on his sword, but, then, take the time to pick up a pike, mount it securely to the wall, back up, and then charge into the tip of that sharpened spear as well, and at full speed" said a well-known and respected host during an equally recognizable organization's news discussion program.
And this was only the beginning of the program. Even more ladles of steaming, chunky, even luxurious, honesty were being promised, in the run-down of guests and topics for discussion. The tape was never aired, of course, for a host of obvious reasons, and some oblique ones, too.
Alex Baer: Apps, Ops, Oopses
Today, we'll take a rest break from the Sham- (I mean) CAMpaign Trail of Shame, Pain, and Champagne, where psychotic breaks from traditional Reality are the unexceptional rule.
It's difficult to believe, all right -- here we are, standing around, and we're NOT talking about the latest app to put everything Candidate Braindrool says on your Facebook's speed-dial-Insta-Twitter-Text-Mail-Fax-Forwarding option!
So, it's Trump and Bernie in New Hampshire. Sure thing. How's the family? Looks like snow...
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