Of course, it’s quite possible to take this idea to the extreme. Many moons ago at a previous job, there was an individual who worked there that was not the sharpest crayon in the box. We’ll call this individual “Slowbe”, and we will assume for this story that Slowbe was a man.

Slowbe was well known for his occasional mental lapses, and I remember hearing a story about him sitting in a meeting with several others, going over various numbers in a spreadsheet. This was a spreadsheet that Slowbe had created himself. As the group was looking at the numbers, Slowbe decided that he wanted to add up several numbers in the spreadsheet. So he left the conference room, walked around 300 meters round trip to his desk, and returned with a pocket calculator.

Now, I’m not sure if you, the reader, are familar with Excel. But when you have a spreadsheet open, and there are several numbers within this spreadsheet which you’d like to add up, doing this requires about 0.4 seconds worth of work. In essence, Excel can act quite easily as a really stinkin’ powerful calculator. Everyone in the meeting (most of whom were IT people), sort of looked at one another with “What just happened?” kind of faces.

This, my friends, is overkill.

Picture by draggin of a Little Professor Calculator created by Texas Instruments in 1976.

From the official Greenwich Mean Time website, “Every day starts precisely at midnight and A.M. starts immediately after that point in time e.g. 00:00:01 A.M.” This may seem to be obvious, but there’s a remarkable amount of confusion over the issue. Professors who understand this call for due dates of 11:59:59 PM on a particular day. The airline industry always rounds similarly so as to not confuse customers. So if you ever have an assignment due at midnight, it may be in your best interest to check with your professor about what she or he really means!

Here are a few links other than the official one above that will give you more information about noon and midnight:

• NIST
• Wikipedia
• CoolQuiz

Does anyone else out there have a similar experience? I’m sure that this phenomenon is fairly universal. Science is teaching us some amazing and unexpected stuff about how the mind works, and so I suppose that it’s not surprising that sometimes “easy” facts escape us.

Part of what I like about this writing is its focus on the impact on humanity. Oftentimes these types of stories are sad stories only from the perspective of the animal (which is still true), but doesn’t measure the ways that businesses like Smithfield Foods are adversely influencing human lives. Tietz focuses on the ways that pollution generated on the farms sickens people and keeps them from leading normal lives. Fish who used to live in the areas waterways are now dead, ending the employment of countless local fishermen. Workers in the hog plants die while becoming overwhelmed with the toxic fumes they breathe. People living in the area have contaminated drinking and bath water. The list goes on.

I’ve never been the type of vegetarian who gets angry with omnivores. But articles like this one give me reason to keep up my chosen eating habits. Our current methods of food production are not sustainable. When millions of gallons of pig shit per year are dumped into our rivers, that is NOT sustainable. When pigs are pumped full of drugs that breed antibiotic resistant germs that make people sick, that is NOT sustainable. And on and on. Okay, my rant is over. Read the article, it’s full of information that people should know.

I don’t want to spoil anything with this post, but I will say that Nikola Tesla plays an important role in the story. When I got home I immediately turned to Tesla’s Wikipedia entry where I learned that three pieces of information played up in the movie were at least partially true:

1. There was some bad blood between Edison and Tesla, not least of which because Edison seems to have screwed Tesla out of a large chunk of change for some brilliant work he did for Edison.

2. Tesla did move his base of operations for a time to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he did some work on “wireless telegraphy”.

3. Especially later in life Tesla held some fantastic theories regarding subjects such as UFOs and the like. It seems to be the case that some of these beliefs came out of an untreated psychiatric disorder (probably OCD).

Interesting. Feel free to read more about Tesla at the link above. And I’d highly recommend seeing the movie. It’s one of the best I’ve seen this year.

The whole event, though noble in intent, was lacking in several ways. First, Emily and I were immediately split up. Though we came to the event to experience and brainstorm ideas together the staff separated parties that came together. Though I could understand the intent of this procedure there was no advance warning that such a split would occur. This was surprise one of the day.

Though I was really hoping to engage personally with individuals there wasn’t much time for such interactions. The whole event was extremely structured, and we were meant to keep a stringent schedule. In that sense the event felt extremely inorganic. While there was a large contingent of people who knew one another (the “in” crowd), I was not one of these people. It seemed that both the staff and “in” individuals weren’t interested in getting to know me. I was saddened by this reality. But toward the end of the day I did get to interact with a few people a bit more fully, so I wouldn’t call the day a relational waste.

I commend The Sprout Fund for their initiative on this event, but I thought that the details could’ve been carried out in a friendlier and more efficient manner. As a silly example, though there was a lunch provided only about 25% of them were vegetarian. But this was an event for the GRANOLA crowd of Pittsburgh. I’m being a bit facetious but you get my point. By the time Emily and I got there the vegetarian option had vanished. And I know that a lot of other folks experienced the same problem.

I’m hoping that the event actually advances change in the city. I’m weary that there was a lot energy generated that will vanish into the ether. Hopefully I’ll be proved wrong on that point.

Also, I’ve added a Contact Me page so that you’re able to get in touch with me easily if interested. If you have any news/questions that you’d like for me to address on this site please shoot me a message.

1. On a church marquee I saw the following: “Roadmap to heaven: turn right and go straight.” There are so many ways to disagree with this assertion that I don’t even know where to start. So I won’t. I relate it merely for your possible amusement.

2. I saw a PA license plate with the specialized message “GCC GRAD”, which I’m assuming stood for “Grove City College Graduate”. Grove City College, my undergraduate alma mater, is a fairly right-wing Christian school. The car which the license plate was attached to was a large SUV. Inconsistent? Sheesh…