The Blog I'm Not Writing

Department Of Last Week’s Leftover Primal Scream:

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
NNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Re: Patrick Stewart’s death.  I know, he was 86, but moiself  thought he’d live forever.

But – not to get too sappy about it,    [1]  in the hearts of those who loved and admired his work, he will.

 

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Department Of While We’re On The Subject Of Star Trek And Poker….

Specifically, Star Trek: The Next Generation.  That quote below Stewart (as Captain Jean Luc Picard) was Picard’s last line, from the ST:TNG Finale, All Good Things, Part II.  The context is that for many years the senior officers of the Enterprise have met on a weekly basis to play poker.  As the captain realizes how much each individual officer means to him – they are essentially the family he will never have.  Picard, for the first time, joins in the game.  As he expresses regret that he has not done so before, his crew reminds him that he was always welcome.

This sweet and touching scene was an emotionally powerful and fitting way to end the series.  Even so, though the context – the officers playing poker – always drove moiself nuts, for three reasons:

* Reason 1:  Why would ship’s counselor Lt. Commander Deanna Troi, a Betazoid with psionic abilities, be allowed to play poker with non-telepathic beings?  She’d be able to sense who in the game is bluffing, or has a winning hand, etc. Theoretically, she should never lose a hand….unless she agrees to and in fact can just turn off or block that ability of hers – an ability that has been portrayed in the series as another sense, like that of hearing/sight/smell/touch, that she and other Betazoids are not “in charge” of.

* Reason 2: Lt. Commander Data is an android, who can instantantly memorize visual information.  Thus, he can count cards and memorize what cards have been played, and also keep all possible combinations and probabilities in mind.  Theoretically, he also should never (or rarely) lose a hand.

* Reason 3: there is no Reason 3; the preceeding two reasons are sufficient. 

 

Pix: poker

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Department Of Belated Halloween Memories

 

….as in, a dozen years ago.  I got moiself  an alligator bodysuit, which I combined with a Darth Vader helmet to be “Darth Gator” for my Halloween costume.  On that auspicious October 31, daughter Belle, who was in her senior year of high school, was working at her afterschool job at the local Noodles & Company.   Moiself  decided to visit her in full Darth Gator regalia.  When I walked up to the restaurant’s order counter, I didn’t see Belle (she had temporarily stepped back into the kitchen).  Her coworker at the counter took one look at me and didn’t skip a beat – before I could ask him where Belle was he turned around and called back to the kitchen, “Belle, your mom is here.”

 

 

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Department Of By The Fucking Way…

It doesn’t matter.

 

 

Repeat after moiself:  It doesn’t matter.

It, as in, whether the former CEO of Theranos is lying or not, to herself or others; *it* as in, the point of You Can See Everything, the Canadian filmmaker Nathan Fielder’s documentary which explores whether Elizabeth Holmes deceived herself as well as she deceived others who invested in and/or worked for her ground-breaking (read: smoke and mirrors scam) health technology company.

It doesn’t matter who lied/nobody lied/everybody lied.  Everyone connected with the supposed breakthrough technology had an ethical responsibility to find out if it actually worked.

 

 

As of this writing I’ve yet to see the movie (which I fully intend to do),   [2] but moiself knows the basic story.  When I read activist and blogger Greta Christina’s post on this, I screamed aloud in grateful recognition   [3]  that, finally, someone else was addressing, even in just/almost as an afterthought, a concern I’d had ever since I’d first read about Theranos’s Big Idea®

In this age where people are being marketed “breakthrough” devices for home medical testing of everything from arterial functioning to toenail fungus to colon cancer, there is another factor being forgotten or even ignored.  The factor which seems to have gotten lost in all the Theranos, did-she-or-didn’t-she  hoopla, is simply and profoundly about this:  the efficacy and even the mere desirability of such medical tests in the first place.

“…the basic idea of Theranos was not actually a good one.

It takes *years* for health care professionals to learn how to order and *interpret* blood tests. Drawing your own blood and running it through a machine once a week to get hundreds or thousands of test results would be a health care nightmare, involving *false positives, inaccurate pattern recognition, and a whole host of other bad outcomes.*

( excerpts, *my emphases*, You can see everything, and moral responsibility,
Greta Christina’s blog, 10-25-26 )

 

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Department Of At Long Last….

What would ushering in the holiday season be without The Dropkick Murphys?

 

 

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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [4]

 

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May you never play poker with a Betazoid or an android;
May you have fond memories of a Halloween costume
which embarrassed a member of your family;
May you discern which great ideas are actually good ideas;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

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[1] Too late

[2] MH and I tried to get tickets but it was sold out in nearby theaters, good news for them!

[3] Yeah, I was in my home office, by moiself,  but I still startled moiself.

[4] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org