WHO WAS FIRST?

 

WHO WAS FIRST?

Necessity is said to be the mother of invention.

But I do not think that invention is the same as discovery.

Obviously, things were invented due to Someone figuring out that something needed to be improved on or changed to make it better. For example, Eli Whitney discovered a better way to gin cotton than the manual way which had been done for hundreds of years. Obviously, that's an invention. The same as the electric light bulb was an improvement over oil filled lamps and candles.

But what gets me is how people discovered certain things over the course of history that had to be thought out before implementation. For example, let's look at sheep, here we have a shepherd out in the field with his herd of sheep. Was he the first shepherd that looked at all of the wool growing on the sheep and decided...” hey I can do something with that” and then sheared it off and converted it into sheep's wool for clothing? The same thing has to be said for the guy that tested out shark repellent. I mean who was dumb enough to actually jump in the water with man eating sharks and spread some repellent around to get rid of them?  Was this experiment #1 or experiment #10 and what happened to the first person?.

Old commercials used to use a young child by the name of Mikey and when kids didn't want to try something new, they would just say “let's give it to Mikey”.  So, I am wondering if the same thing happened, for example with oysters. Did someone open an oyster and decide to give it to Bruno or Zog and say “hey how about trying this and see how it tastes”?

Obviously, bread was made once wheat was ground up and mixed with water and then heated.  But who was the first person then came up with the idea of grinding wheat mixing it with water and trying to make bread with it? History doesn't tell us these facts, do they?

In addition, we have inventions which have been made by accident. For example the microwave. The story goes that an engineer was working on a microwave type device with a bar of chocolate in his pocket and he found that the waves from the microwave caused the chocolate to melt. Consequently, he carried the idea further and ultimately, we have the everyday appliance we use today in our kitchens. Same thing happened with the pressure cooker.  Somebody had to decide that it would be a good idea to make a steel pot and put items in it and then heat it up without it exploding. I wonder how many people were injured or were killed before this became perfected?

 The last item that I think confuses me as to who decided this was a good idea is the test for men for prostate cancer. Think about it, somebody had to be the first person to go to the doctor and have the doctor say “we've developed a new test” just bend over the table while I get my glove on. Who was the first doctor that decided to do this and who was the 1st person that accepted the doctor's opinion?

Men need to get start getting regular PSA checks at about 40. Prostate cancer is no joke; it is the 2^nd leading cause of cancer in men. Go get tested at least once a year.

These are the kinds of questions that I continue to research and hopefully we'll find the answers for you in the coming days.

As always have a good week and I'll see you next week. Peary Perry

 

 

PLANT PORN!

 

PLANT PORN!!!

Napoleon once said…’Rest is Rust.’ He never shut it down until they put him on the island of St. Helena. Well, neither have I. Since I retired a couple of years ago, I find I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to find things to keep myself occupied. I cannot sit in a chair all day and stay glued to the television. I read 3 to 4 books at a time but even that gets old after a while.

I have made cheese, pickles, jam, and bread. Lots of bread. It has taken me about 15 recipes to finally find a bread recipe that I like and that turns out worth the effort. The bad thing about cooking, baking etc. is that you tend to eat stuff which you do not need.

When I was a kid I made model ships, airplanes of all sorts and sizes. I love glue. We had no place to keep them in our house, and my grandmother let me use a big glass cabinet of hers to display them. That was about my only hobby as I recall.

I don’t want to do those again, so I embarked upon an entirely new adventure.

I bought a greenhouse.

This venture has taken me into a completely new world. First off, I know nothing about growing anything, but I am fairly certain my success will be better than it was with an old jeep. What could go wrong?

I can’t make up my mind to grow flowers or vegetables. We buy lots of flowers and they are expensive, but carrots and celery are cheap. I have gotten comments about the fact that any vegetables I grow will be free of chemicals and pesticides. I suppose that’s true, but I am at a loss to think about how you grow only a small amount of peppers or squash? So, I am mulling these things over in my mind as I peruse various seed and gardening catalogs. So much to see and so little time.

Greenhouse gardening has many points to be considered that I had never thought of before. For example, I find that I am notoriously guilty of over-seeding! I never gave it a thought until now. If I must take an aspirin, I take two to make sure they work. Same with seed planting. The more the better. But now I find that is over-seeding and can lead to unnecessary plant bunching. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?

I find myself sitting in my chair at night drooling over new seed and tool products in very expensive catalogs. A month ago, I had no idea you needed different sized seed bottles to be accurate with your planting. What exactly is a seed bottle anyway? The internet picks up on what you are searching for and now I am besieged with web sites wanting to sell me something that has to do with things growing in the ground.

You’d be amazed at all the stuff they have for sale to plant. Who knew there were ten pages of tomato seeds or fifty kinds of chili peppers?

Well, at least it keeps me out of the bars and keeps me busy doing something useful.

And I don’t gain weight growing flowers…

See you next week….Peary Perry

 

SEND IN THE CLOWNS....

SEND IN THE CLOWNS….

I don’t consider myself to be a Republican or a Democrat, I am an Independent.

So, today’s rant is not directed to any particular political party but to the institution of politics and government in general.  When I see or read about various politicians of both parties getting indicted for various criminal acts but there isn’t any closure to the issue and it just seems to fall though the cracks, it hacks me off.

Those of you reading this would all be tried, convicted and put in prison if we committed these sorts of crimes. No questions asked, just do not pass go, just go to jail.

How many of us have received calls from folks pretending to be IRS agents or some law enforcement officer who has a warrant for our arrest unless we send them money or gift cards? Most of us, I would assume. How many elderly people lose their savings and endure grief over these frauds with very few of the total being arrested for their acts?

In 2024 there were over 850,000 reports of imposter fraud and scams reported to the government. There were 24 arrests made as a result. They could have gotten that many from just the calls made to my cell phone. Those ‘piracy’ notices you see in from of movies you watch at home? All those fake Gucci bags you see at the flea market? Resulted in 80 total arrests nationwide. 80?

In 2020 there were 1,571 arrests for IRS tax fraud in the whole country. They could have gotten more than that from our congress and government members.

Everyone knows it’s a federal crime to impersonate an FBI agent, but there isn’t any record of anybody getting convicted of doing this. They don’t post anything with their numbers.

Last year I was almost scammed by a guy in Chicago trying to buy a jeep I had for sale. He sent me a cashier’s check for the money but the whole deal looked and smelled suspicious. By the time I got through with it I found the check was a forgery and I would have lost the jeep. I took all of the information to the FBI in Fort Worth. Needless to say, I was not well received and did not feel as if they had time for an interstate auto scam. The FBI agent took all of my evidence (about 25 pages) supposedly to make a copy. I had paper-clipped all of these together and they were returned to me with the paper clip  in exactly the same position, obviously they had not been copied. I asked him for his name so I could send him any later evidence. He said he was forbidden to give it out. I never heard from them again.

On several of these issues I have taken the time to write to my congressional representatives. Their letters in return are totally useless and say nothing. I assume some clerk mails these out daily with the content being so bland and vague as to cover every possibility you can name. I doubt any of you have ever received a letter from anyone in the government with any real answers to your inquiry.

My point is this, we elected them and we must deal with the results. These are our clowns, we did it to ourselves.

See you next week…Peary Perry