Maybe you’ve been in a cafeteria and seen those spring-loaded plate dispensers. It’s a big stack of plates in a tube with a spring. As plates are removed, the lower ones are pushed up into sight. Pez dispensers and most gun magazines operate with a similar principle.
Sometimes someone comes along and dumps a new bunch of plates on top of whatever is in the stack at the time. One thing about a stack like this: if you do keep putting new on top of old, the old is never used. In some cafeterias, there might be a plate on the bottom of some stack that’s been there since the place opened in 1958!
One formal term for such a dispenser is a Push Down Stack.
Perhaps it is a personal penchant for irony-leavened paradox that has me pen a post titled 2014 that turns out to be more a look backwards. The dash of irony comes from the explicit mention of not being one who spends much time looking back!
But, also as mentioned, there is a time and place for most things, and January is a more ideal place for that than you may realize. The month is named after the roman god, Janus, god of beginnings and transitions, who has both a backward- and forward-looking face. The turning of the year is the time and place for both.
So here is a bit more looking back and looking forward.
What a thing to behold: 2014! I found it a bit startling to reach 2010; by now these high numbers seem almost normal. Some born in this millennium are already teenagers and aren’t far from voting age. For those of us born back in the fitties, it can be a little eerie.
When Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in April 1968, I was in seventh grade and already a hard-core science fiction fan. Back then, 2001 seemed so far off that anything was possible. We first walked on the moon just over a year later in July. (My beloved Star Trek had been on the air since September 1966!)
Of twelve. It’s hard not to notice how Christmas peeks out from under the covers earlier and earlier every year. One of my more recent seasonal traditions is noting how soon the first signs appear. The commercial opportunities of Halloween run interference in the fall; this year I found Christmas spoor on November 1st.
How Thanksgiving managed to escape heavy commercialization escapes me. Maybe people are spent out due to those two spendiest of holidays bracketing either side. Attics now store as many boxes of Halloween decorations as they do Christmas ones!
I guess the long foreplay is a good thing considering the instant exit once the deed is done.
May you — and all those you love — have a Merry, Happy, Joyous, Delightful, Wonderful, Warm, Delicious, Safe, Fun (yet Solemn), Sugar-Cinnamon Hot Cookie-Scented [insert appropriate holiday here].
My favorite part of the season just occurred! Over an hour ago the Earth swung past the winter-most spot in its orbit. That was at 17:11 UTC, 12:11 PM on the east coast of the USA, 9:11 AM on the west coast, and the rest of you will just have to do the math.
We’re headed back towards summer! (Ironically, today is also the first official day of winter.) It’ll take a few days before we can notice the growing daylight — it’s somewhat similar to how you pause for a moment when you turn and reverse direction. If the snow ever melts off my skylight, I’ll be able to start watching the patch of sunlight start working its way down again.
Is it just me or are the first four paragraphs of Dickens‘ A Christmas Carol both brilliant and hysterically funny? There seems a significant mood change beginning in the fifth graph, but the first four always crack me up. Combined with his preface, he opens with a joke (a few, really) and has me at hello.
In just a bit over 300 words, Dickens does riffs on the deadness of doornails, the ancestral wisdom in simile, and the ghost of Hamlet’s father that are practically stand-up comedy (mentioning a ghost foreshadows his own tale). We learn that Marley is (definitely!) dead and that he and Scrooge were partners. We learn a bit about their character, particularly Scrooge’s.
One could write an article about those four paragraphs (but I didn’t)!
The last time Shark Week passed I found myself musing over the things people find fascinating enough to turn into week-long events or — in at least one case — the actual unnamed theme of an entire cable channel. Let me be clear that I do not intend at all to diminish most such interests. Glass houses! I devote a good chunk of the six months of summer to baseball, so I can’t fling stones (or baseballs).
It’s not the sharks, actually. There’s nothing wrong with sharks. In fact, they’re really tasty, especially grilled. They’re sort of like grilled swordfish, which is also delicious. It’s just that Shark Week got me thinking about fads and fascinations.
Brain Bubble posts are supposed to be short side thoughts, but the one just posted is another example of my inability to be brief. What can I say; I love words and the ideas we can express with them. To me, there are very few topics that don’t deserve a detailed discussion (you should see how much I cut out before I post)!
This post began as a comment — a reply to Lila on her recent post, Affluence, Toxic Parenting Buy Lenience for Horrific Teen DUI. It ran long, which you all know isn’t unusual and never stops me, but it concerned a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I’ve always planned to write about driving and drivers, but there are so many other topics I just hadn’t gotten to it, yet.
Here’s what I hope is a short(-ish) intro to my views on driving…
Many offices feature “casual Friday” in acknowledgement that today our attention begins to shift towards the weekend. (When I started with TC in 1980, ties were required. When I retired this year, “business casual” was the norm. I wore jeans and polo shirts the last half-dozen years or so.)
In the same way, today the focus here shifts from the tough and chewy Sideband material to something softer and easier to digest. I have what amounts to a bit of a rant, but a mild-mannered one of minor import. It’s just one of those little things that’s annoyed me in a small way for a long time. (But it turns out that it’s one of those things that actually have good reason!)
Maybe you’ve been in a cafeteria and seen those spring-loaded plate dispensers. It’s a big stack of plates in a tube with a spring. As plates are removed, the lower ones are pushed up into sight. Pez dispensers and most gun magazines operate with a similar principle.
Perhaps it is a personal penchant for irony-leavened paradox that has me pen a post titled 
What a thing to behold: 2014! I found it a bit startling to reach 2010; by now these high numbers seem almost normal. Some born in this millennium are already teenagers and aren’t far from voting age. For those of us born back in the fitties, it can be a little eerie.
Of twelve. It’s hard not to notice how Christmas peeks out from under the covers earlier and earlier every year. One of my more recent seasonal traditions is noting how soon the first signs appear. The commercial opportunities of Halloween run interference in the fall; this year I found Christmas spoor on November 1st.
My favorite part of the season just occurred! Over an hour ago the Earth swung past the winter-most spot in its orbit. That was at 17:11 
Is it just me or are the first four paragraphs of 
The last time Shark Week passed I found myself musing over the things people find fascinating enough to turn into week-long events or — in at least one case — the actual unnamed theme of an entire cable channel. Let me be clear that I do not intend at all to diminish most such interests. Glass houses! I devote a good chunk of the six months of summer to baseball, so I can’t fling stones (or baseballs).
Many offices feature “casual Friday” in acknowledgement that today our attention begins to shift towards the weekend. (When I started with TC in 1980, ties were required. When I retired this year, “business casual” was the norm. I wore jeans and polo shirts the last half-dozen years or so.)
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