Drinking Games
Mrs. Fawkes and I have been experimenting with a couple of new drinking games. You know the kind, where you pick a stimulus or action and when it happens you take a drink. The debates have gotten us pretty snockered. But there are others.
Simon Says Dodge the Deck Light. We have a motion detector light on the back porch. It flashes on for about two seconds when it detects, well, motion. It’s very good at its job. We were sitting on the porch steps the other night, in the dark, just enjoying a fall evening and staring into the dark woods. Every time we moved, the light came on, including when we brought a glass to our lips to enjoy our evening wine. So, the game became to surreptitiously drink without tripping the light. If you fail, you drink. We like this game.
Find the Tilt. The challenge here is to find the slanted content in supposed news stories. For example, an article in the WSJ about “Extraordinary demand for Trump-related books…” ahead of the election. The author (I’m not calling these people reporters anymore. A small victory.) cites three examples right up front: The hit job by his Angry Bird niece, Bolton’s critical memoir, and the “expose’” by Bob Woodward. Only in the last paragraph of ten does he mention a Trump-friendly book that also topped the charts this year: Hannity’s “Live Free or Die.” In newspaper world, the last graph is the first cut when space gets squeezed, so I think we’re just plain lucky to get that late sop. We sipped in sorrow at the state of reporting.
Speaking of games, I’m sure you’ve heard about the new diversion of Flights to Nowhere - airline flights that take you up for the fun of flying, but bring you right back to where you started from. Thirty-some years ago I took one from Norfolk, over Baltimore, and back again, and it was a hoot. Nice food. Cocktails. Plenty of space. And all for charity. A novel idea. The new version, given the way air travel had deteriorated even before the covid made it worse, doesn’t make sense to me. But now there’s a video game called Airplane Mode that let’s you experience that unique brand of hell from the comfort of your own computer. Why?
And can I have an aisle seat, please?
Let’s talk about Settled Science. Sister Sara taught us in high school: Science is never settled. It is the nature of science to always be inquisitive, challenging, threatening any premise and, in turn, to be inquired, challenged, and threatened by new ideas and data. The new Religion of Science is just as false as the religion that fueled the Inquisition or the witch trials. We must accept as guiding facts all pronouncements by the medical scientists and the climate scientists and the demographic scientists and any skeptical eye will be poked out.
To be fair, some things are pretty settled. The earth is probably round-ish. Evolution better be true or somebody just spent $32 million on a fake T. Rex. But the nature of the universe is still being challenged by almost daily discoveries involving tiny particles and massive holes, by movements large, small, and in-between. As for climate change (nee global cooling, nee global warming): every ten years or so somebody pronounces that, based on science, we only have about 10 more years until the planet is either a burning cinder or a flooded Waterworld (God, I hope not - awful movie.) And each of those dire predictions is apparently based on science. Trial by fire or by water. Trip to Salem, anyone?
The scientific method is hypothesis, testing and evidence, refinement, and theory or thesis based on repeated verification of the hypothesis. It has guided quality science for centuries. How is this being thrown aside in the name of absolute control? The answer is not that Sister Sara is no longer with us. It’s another scene from 1984, and the Ministry of Love is coming for the dissidents, the deniers, and the thinkers.
Fauci was on 60 Minutes last weekend, not being challenged, just being given a friendly platform. He’s not the enemy, but many of us who live in the world he has created don’t think he’s really doing us any favors. What has happened to that show is so sad. It provided such good reporting in the old days. Sigh.
Alas, I feel like this week’s edition has just been an old guy ranting. Not that there’s nothing to rant about.
Keep smiling, but cast your vote.
- Guy