Nicknames

There was an obituary in today's paper for "Baldy" McGrane. He was 85. There was a picture of Baldy and it looked like he had a pretty good head of hair.
I didn't know Baldy, but the obituary got me thinking about nicknames. Growing up, many of the adult males I encountered had nicknames. My dad, who had a most unfortunate birthname, Ladislaus, became known early on as "Fatty", a name he carried for the rest of his life. I was always a little uncomfortable about all my little cousins calling my dad "Uncle Fatty", but he didn't seem to mind.
I had to call a lot of my Dad's friends by their nicknames - Chi-Chi, Did I, Rossi, Pepsi and FuFu - because for the longest time, those were the only names I knew them by.
Three of my Dad's brothers had nicknames, Husk, Ferk and Jay; three did not. His two sisters didn't have nicknames, but they married good names - Tarzan and Prof. (I was the only kid I knew who had an Uncle Tarzan.)
My Mom's family wasn't much into nicknames, except for brother Jay, but they made up for it through marriage. One sister married into a Croatian-Amererican family. Her husband was known to his family and friends as "Sheiky", although we didn't call him that. We did get to know his brothers as Duke and Footsie. He had an uncle who I thought had the coolest nickname "Bronco". It turns out his name was really "Branco" an honest-to-God Croatian name.
My mom's youngest brother may have hit the jackpot. When he married, he acquired brothers-in-law with a most wonderful collection of nicknames: Big Feet, Little Feet, Halfie and Pickles.
Today, it seems that the only people with nicknames are gangsters and musicians. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) none of my relatives and friends are on either of those career paths.

Ears

I was about eight or nine when I first noticed that old people had big ears - maybe not so much big, as in sticking out from their head, but really, really long. And the older they were, the bigger their ears. I'd notice it especially at church, when the sermon was long and boring, or when I'd have to go to a wake where there were a lot of old people and I was supposed to behave, but I had nothing to do but look around while my parents gabbed endlessly with other mourners. I thought at the time that I could be a pretty good predictor of who would live to reach a ripe old age - just look for people with big ears.
It was much later that I heard or read that ears continue to grow as a person gets older. So, rather than being a predictor of longevity, they are merely a record of it.
I never thought much about my own ears. They seemed to be pretty normal. Recently, I've started to notice that they're getting pretty big.

Where does the money go?

Several months ago, Pittsburgh's Port Authority and Philadelphia'a SEPTA were in crisis. Fare increases and service cutbacks were imminent. Consumers of public transportation stormed to Harrisburg (on busses, of course), to demand dedicated funding for the embattled transit agencies. Then, at the last minute, Governor Rendell found $35 million sitting in some highway trust fund that he was able to divert. This may have been the right thing to do, but it does make one wonder about how many other pots of money there are out there, and whether or not our government can be trusted to spend that money for its intended uses.
Now Pennsylvania voters are being asked to approve a $650 million bond issue to fund unspecified environmental needs. Hmmmmmm.

Ruminations on God and Religion

If you have any questions about the existence of God, just go outside on a clear night and look at the sky. But I do have some questions.

1. Why does the God created the universe have a "Chosen People"?
2. Why does this God give his Chosen People a piece of land - and if he did, couldn't he have picked a better spot? (If God were to promise me some land, I'd request Augusta National Golf Club - my idea of what heaven looks like.)
3. I know some people say God talks to us all the time, but why did He stop writing to us 1900 years ago?
4. If God already has a plan for the future, don't we risk throwing off the whole thing by praying for the Steelers to win the Super Bowl?

Mathemeticians may come the closest to knowing the mind of God. None of us may ever know the "Why", but mathemetics gives us the opportunity to understand the "How".

What ever happened to "facts"?

In Robert Heinlein's classic science fiction novel, "Stranger in a Strange Land", he introduced a class of public servants called "Fair Witnesses." Like a kind of priesthood, set apart from the general public and immune from outside influences, their job was to verify the truth of something they observed. Boy, could we use a few of them.
Our representational form of government was supposed to work for the public good by bringing together the diverse voices from the electorate, but it seems like the only voices that get heard are those of ideologues who can deliver armies of voters and the contributors who fund political campaigns. Is it true that all of our research scientists have either sold out to industry or are in the clutches of anti-capitalist whackos? Organizations like the NRA and the Sierra Club desparately fight every battle in their area of interest, because giving an inch will lead down some "slippery slope."
So, what are the facts? Do silicone breast implants cause cancer? Is global warming caused by burning fossil fuel? Is Michael Jackson guilty? Does masturbation cause blindness? Can I get a witness?