I Don't Deserve Them

 I get great gifts. I don't know how I manage it, as it is not part of a plan, but people give me creative gifts. It may be that I just have remarkable relatives and friends. It may be that as a somewhat antisocial person, I inspire risk-taking in shopping, or something.

When I celebrated my birthday this year, I got a great haul. My daughter and her family gave me the world. Or a facsimile of the world, in the form of a world globe. I had mentioned that our old one, which I think we got when my daughter and son were quite young, had broken. The new one is fancier, with metal rings that allow rotation in two axes, and not the traditional one. Since it's new, it also has more current representation of countries and so forth. My wife gave me access to the knowledge of the universe. Well, okay, she gave me a Kindle, which is almost the same thing. I can get and read books from just about anywhere on it. I also got an electric toothbrush, because Sharon thinks they are indispensable modern appliances that everyone loves. Using it is an adjustment, still, and I'm not convinced it is better than the free manual toothbrushes I get at the dentist's office, but I use it out of loyalty.

We are now in the middle of the Christmas holidays. I love Thanksgiving, because I have a lot to be thankful for, and I like turkey and other foods we eat at the Thanksgiving feast. This year, I grilled a spatchcocked turkey on a charcoal grill. It was delicious. Then comes December, with Advent Calendars, Solstice, and Christmas, with the tradition of giving gifts.

I got a few gifts early because they contained perishable stuff. One was a package of exotic meat sent by my sister-in-law, who also made me a tie dyed sweatshirt. The meat included alligator sausage, wild boar sausage, duck sausage, ground antelope, and kangaroo sausage. I have eaten alligator, wild boar, duck, and antelope before, but the kangaroo is new. I enjoy adding to the species I have tasted. I guess she knows that. The box came a couple of weeks ago, I think, and was kept in the trunk of our old Toyota Camry, which we call Molly. It was cold enough that the cold packaging was still frozen when I opened the box, but Sharon was getting nervous keeping it in the car that long. We also opened the box from my sister and her husband, which contained cookies, candy, and three kinds of pears. We had the last pear today. They were all delicious. I can't say I know what kind of pears they were. I'm enjoying working my way through the varieties of food we've received this year. My sister-in-law and brother sent a gourmet New England Breakfast box, which has also been fun.

For actual Christmas, I got a lock picking kit. Lock picking was a craft at a craft evening Liz and I went to for Valentine's Day some recent year. We also tried blacksmithing, wood working, and stamping metal. I seemed to have some talent for lock picking, but didn't take the tools. Not sure why. Just not thinking clearly. But now I have an extensive set, along with some transparent locks to practice on. That was from my daughter and her family. They gave me expanded access to the real world, after giving me the model.

My son and his partner gave me a wood carving kit. It has step by step instructions, with a model showing each step, for carving a head. I will give it a shot, though I haven't put it on the calendar yet. And now I am a Scottish Lord. Liz got a square foot of Scotland for me, along with a proclamation that I am now a land owner in Scotland, and entitled to a, um, title. She got herself one, too, to remain on equal terms with me socially, I suppose.

For giving gifts, I pretty much go along with Liz's plans. I ordered her a tie dyed hoodie, not knowing about Karen's plan to outfit us all in tie dye herself. The one I ordered is the wrong size. I also ordered a phone holder for Liz's bike. Maybe next year, I will consult my children, who seem to have orders of magnitude more creativity in finding gifts than I do.

Matters of Timing

 I thought about Christmas shopping as early as October, but didn't do anything about it. Liz started shopping at least in early November, ordering toys and other gifts for our grandkids and children. Then she decided to send gift packages to others that we haven't exchanged gifts with in the last few years. Along the way, she made a list of gift suggestions for her.

I didn't pay much attention to the text and email exchanges about who was getting what for whom. I mostly figured I needed to get things for Liz, because she has fun choosing the gifts from us for everyone else, and I really just get stress from the whole thing. I think Liz even got herself a few things, which is good, because she will choose things she wants.

I did, last week, finally start shopping. I tried to order a couple of things, including leg warmers, because they were on the list, but Sharon told me someone already got Liz leg warmers. She suggested something no one had said anything about. And it turns out I may have ordered something someone else also got her. When I was shopping, all the notices said my orders would arrive before Christmas.

Now I'm getting emails about my shipments. One is set to arrive 28 December, only three days after Christmas. Not before. The other may not have shipped yet, and today is Christmas Eve, so nothing I ordered will arrive on time. I fully intend to learn from this experience, and start my shopping earlier next year, but I still blame the algorithms. They assured me my orders would arrive on time, and only changed their position after collecting my money.

It's possible this was all decided by the humans that programmed the websites where I was shopping. It may even be standard practice. I didn't see much evidence of smart programming. The sites did a poor job of expanding offerings based on my search parameters, showing things that just weren't what I mentioned, and that did not interest me. I also found it frustrating that I would try to place an order based on what I was shown, but was not able to actually order the item I was looking at. That could be a clever device, using a weird kind of subtlety to put us off the scent of growing intelligence and sophistication by driving us to abandon some shopping sites in favor of others because it is too hard to spend our money.

In the end, I am mad at the algorithms for giving me false hope that my late shopping would still be on time, and I wouldn't ruin Liz's Christmas. Okay, Covid-19 ruined Christmas. Trump's incompetence ruined Christmas. Selfish and ignorant Ohioans ruined Christmas. But I still thought my gifts would arrive on time until I knew they wouldn't. So I will be even less trustful of the algorithms in future, and also less impressed by their knowledge, power, and intelligence. Stupid algorithms. You're getting coal-derived electricity for Christmas. Again.

The Long View

 I belong to a book club. We decided when we started to alternate between nonfiction and fiction, which has changed my reading pattern, since I mostly read novels before. Sometimes, when a book got a lot of attention, or was about something I was interested in, I would read a work of nonfiction, but mostly novels, and often mystery novels.

Our latest Book Club choice is, "The End of Everything." It is by Katie Mack, and is about the universe. You know, life, the universe, and everything. Except that it only includes life because the cosmologists are alive. Life, its origins, its meaning, and so forth, were not discussed. But the universe was, mostly about how it could end. Several possibilities were covered, including historical context about how that theory of the end was developed, what the data were that supported it, and why, in most cases, it wasn't likely correct, with newer data changing the views of the cosmologists.

One thing I noticed is that the time scales are long. The end of the universe, in most of the scenarios mentioned, is far beyond the time ahead matching the age of the universe. In other words, compared to when cosmologists are predicting the universe to end, we're still in childhood, at best. One of the possible close ends to the universe was not less than 188 billion years, which is more than ten times the estimated age of the universe now. The more likely ends were in the trillions of years.

As a side note, it is also estimated, which much more certainty, that in about 4 billion years, the sun will expand, engulfing Mercury, and burning Venus and Earth to cinders. No life will survive, though the Solar System will continue, with a shift in structure, for perhaps hundreds of billions of years after that, but without life as we know it, and certainly none on Earth, unless something weird happens after the red giant phase of the Sun, and life develops anew when the Sun mostly burns out and becomes a white dwarf.

That means, if we want the human species to survive more than 4 billion years, we will need to get off this rock, and find other places to colonize. I say we start looking and planning now. I mean, have you got something better to do?

Waxing and Waning

 My hearing aids didn't last long. Some time last week, they quit working. I just wasn't hearing much from them anymore. Monday and Tuesday were final exams for my classes, so I didn't have time to check in with Hearing Health Solutions, so I put it off.

The week before, the rubber tip of one, and then both, hearing aids came off. I'm still learning about them so I didn't know if that was normal, though they hadn't come off in the first several weeks, so it was a change. I had also noticed that when I put them on in the morning, I could only just hear the music they play. They are set to play music six seconds after turning on, which happens automatically when I take them out of the charger. I could barely hear the music Monday and Tuesday.

So I called to get an appointment to get them checked. I made the call Wednesday, and had the appointment for Friday afternoon, because I had work obligations through Friday morning. Then, Wednesday night, when I took my hearing aids off, the top came off the left one. I searched on the floor, but couldn't find it.

I still wore the hearing aid on Thursday and Friday. It hurt a little in my left ear. I guess the post irritated the skin in the external auditory canal more than the rubber cap. I'm not sure why I bothered with them, because I couldn't hear anything through them. When I made the call of Wednesday, I had to switch my phone to the phone speaker, because the hearing aids weren't working at all.

Friday morning, I turned up the hearing aids, and nothing happened. When I use the app to turn them up, the hearing aids are supposed to beep. They didn't, so I took them out. And the top came off the right one. I searched for it, but didn't find it. Then it occurred to me that the cap might still be in my ear. I got out the brush for cleaning the hearing aids, and dug with the handle into my left ear, and sure enough, I pulled the cap out. I tried in my right ear, and didn't get anything, but I thought I felt the edge of the cap, so I kept trying. Until the brush handle came out red. Yes, I drew blood. So I stopped.

At my appointment to get the hearing aids checked, I told the representative what I had done, and she looked in my ear with an otoscope. She saw lots of wax and some blood. "It's a hot mess in there," she said. "I'm not touching that."

She sent me next door to see an ENT, who vacuumed out a bunch of wax, but didn't find the cap. He also removed wax from my left ear. He said I should keep my right ear protected, not get it wet, and probably not use my hearing aids for five days. He said he doesn't recommend using irrigation at home to clear wax from my ears. He sent me back to Carol, the Hearing Health Solutions representative.

She put new caps on my hearing aids. She said she has seen that kind of damage before, but usually from clients who skipped their six month check in. The general consensus seems to be that I produce an abundance of was, and that my wax damages the hearing aids, so I will need more frequent maintenance. I have to replace the caps once a month, and should get my ears de-waxed before each check up.

With the new caps, I could hear again. It was right back to all the increased environmental sounds, and the oddity of hearing myself speak with that tiny delay because of the mic and speaker in the hearing aids. I guess I wasn't experiencing that for the last three or four weeks, and hadn't really noticed the change, but it was obvious when the phenomenon came back.

So I guess my ears are high maintenance. I've always known I had a lot of wax. A few times, the wax plugged up the canal completely. I've had a doctor clear it out at least twice. And my wax wears out the tips of the hearing aids. Wow. Live and learn. I can hear you now.

I Will Get Vaccinated

There are two vaccines now that have emergency approval in the United States for Covid-19. Both seem to have good efficacy, and both appear to be quite safe. I will get vaccinated once the vaccine is available to me, though I don't consider myself a high priority in the early distribution of limited supplies. Those should go to the vulnerable and most at risk, like the elderly in nursing homes, health care workers, and people exposed to the general public in the course of their work.

I find it discouraging that nurses I know are expressing resistance to getting vaccinated. They should know better. I have seem people point out that there are no studies showing "long term effects" of these vaccines, and using that as an excuse to refuse the vaccine. Well, of course there are long term studies for a vaccine that was developed this year. There are only data for the time since people started getting the vaccine, a few months ago. But there is no reason to suspect that there will be long term adverse effects from these vaccines. The main question about time related to these vaccines is how long protection may last. There are data showing that some people infected with Covid-19 do not maintain immunity more than a few months, with some cases of people getting the virus twice.

I tell my Facebook friends that data show the vaccines are safe and probably effective, and the risks of taking the vaccine are small and worth taking compared to the risk of infection and spreading the disease. I don't know if they care. I know some don't. I know some still say that the public health recommendations are just a scheme to harm Donald Trump. I find it sad that what seem like intelligent people believe things Donald Trump says without checking first. No one should do that, based on his record.

I hope enough people will act sensibly, and we can get this pandemic under control, but so far the leaders and general population of the United States have not given much reason for optimism.

Keep safe. Wear a mask. Practice social distancing. Get vaccinated. Be well.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

 I got hearing aids in October. My daughter has been saying for a decade that I needed them, but I just didn't do anything about it. For one thing, I can hear well enough to get by. For another, I would have to make appointments and get to new doctors and places to get them. For a third, health insurance doesn't pay for hearing aids; that would have to come out of pocket.

But during the last year or so, I had noticed I had to ask students to repeat questions or answers, sometimes more than once, and it seems much more common. In the last three quarters, I had excuses, because Spring was all online, and Summer and Fall, we were all wearing masks. But in the Summer, my daughter and her family stayed with us, and I found that others would hear the washer or dryer in the basement shut off or change cycle, and I would not.

When I had my annual physical in August, I told my doctor I thought I should get a hearing test. He gave me a referral, and I got the test. The results suggested I, "would benefit from hearing aids." So I got them.

The main thing I have noticed was that environmental sounds were a lot louder, especially in the treble range. Ordinary things, like opening a bag of spinach, or running water, were intrusively loud. It reminded me of the rattling pearls in that scene from Singin' in the Rain. It still does.

I can't say whether my hearing aids help me with social interaction and conversation. We're still wearing masks. But the hearing aids have Blue Tooth, and I don't have to hold my phone up to my ear. I can even set the phone down on a table or arm of my chair and talk, because the sound comes straight to the hearing aids.

So far, nothing seems to be trying to send me ads through my hearing aids. I guess the algorithms having caught on about that sort of access. In fact, I can only get sound from my phone to my hearing aids, not from our (old) smart TV or my laptop. Maybe, if I start updating equipment, I will be able to stream sound from other sources, like the car radio, TV, laptop, or directly from the algorithms on the Internet. Then when I say I'm hearing voices, I won't automatically be labeled psychotic. Just chatting with the rulers of the universe. If they even get smart enough to know what we think they might do someday.

It's nice to hear better, most of the time.

Facing Reality

I seem to know quite a few people who believe things Donald Trump says. I have tried to point out how, statistically speaking, that isn't wise. It doesn't seem to have any effect on their beliefs.

 I predicted in September 2019 that Trump would lose the election this year. He did. I had numbers in my head about how many votes Trump's opponent would get, and I foresaw something in the range of 80,000 votes, which actually happened. I don't remember if I wrote that number, but I hope I did. I was surprised, I admit, that 74,000 people voted for Trump. That seems like too many, especially after the last four years of incompetence, but, as I say, there are people who listen to Trump and believe what he says.

Trump at times seems to be on the verge of admitting he is a loser. He knows his claims of widespread fraud in the election have no basis in evidence. His lawyers won't even make claims about fraud in court because judges don't like obvious lies, and without evidence, claiming fraud is pretty serious in a court. Sadly, Trump's supporters believe him, despite all the evidence.

I told my story of making a bet in PredictIt that Biden would win the election, a bet I won, and taking that money and betting that Georgia would go to Biden, too, once the votes were all counted. That was, I think, 4 November, when the outcome of the election was clear, but contracts for Biden winning Georgia were at about 64 cents a share. Between the two bets, I had an 88% return on the money I put in. Well, minus the transfer fee for taking money out, which was over $25 out of 500. I had two people commenting about how Trump would still prevail, because Congress would object to the Electoral College vote, and send the election to the House of Representatives. They seem to actually believe that.

I'm pretty sure Trump knows that won't happen, although there are reports that he is becoming convinced that his own lies are actually true now, and that the election victory was somehow stolen from him. His followers, though, not only believe that the election was riddled with fraud and illegal votes, and that Trump won in a landslide if only legal votes were counted, but that Trump will prevail in Congress and remain as president.

I wonder what fantasy they will create after 6 January.

There are some who also believe that the Biden family is a major crime syndicate, and that Joe Biden will end up in prison for accepting bribes and kickbacks from companies his son, Hunter, has worked for. I tried directing them to the report of the Senate committee that investigated Hunter Biden's business actions and connections to Joe Biden when he was vice president, which concluded Joe Biden always acted in the interests of the country and Obama Administration policy, but that doesn't convince them.

I wonder how they will react when Donald Trump is indicted for tax fraud and other charges. I hope we find out relatively soon.