podcast number 19

Podcast number 19 is here.

Podcast recoreded Friday August 19

catch our latest podcast here. my wife and I just chit chatting aout stuff including me telling my wife why no man ever uses a twist tie.

Another new podcast, Gee, these are fun.

We did another podcast number 17

New Podcast

new pod cast

For our latest podcast go here

that crazy full moon myth

Ok, this is why you should never drink coffee at nine pm. You then get inspired to write a blog entry and cannot sleep until you do it. Must be the approaching full moon. Hey why not blame the moon. It gets blamed for everything else from wacky people to increases in emergency room visits to increases in crime and traffic accidents. However science has pretty much proven this to be a myth. So why are so many people convinced the full moon has an effect on peoples moods. My wife for example who works in customer service swears up and down that the full moon makes her callers more wacky. Even though there have been several occasions on full moons as recent as the one this past June where she has said she did not have hardly any strange phone calls. Now one would imagine that if the full moon effect were true there should be no exceptions. A case of selective memory. Also when I press her for details on what makes the calls more strange she can't come up with an answer except to say she gets more of them. What is actually happening is not that she gets more strange calls she and others who work with the public my self included since I work for a group of radio stations, are paying more attention to them around the full moon giving the appearance of more strange phone calls. It is a case of if you expect it to happen then it will appear to happen. Selective memory plays a big part in why so many people believe in the full moon effect myth. Also the human mind has a defense mechanism of trying to find a pattern where none exists. For example people see strange behavior around a full moon there fore it must be the moon. This kind of defense mechanism was used by many people after the nine eleven attacks on the World trade center. People thought that it must have had something to do with the emergency phone number used here in the U S Despite there being no proof of this many people are still convinced that this has some significance. If the attacks had happened on let's say November the fifth the human mind would have come up with some pattern for that date. Also, many people do not take other factors in to consideration. Like maybe the reason there were more traffic accidents on a Friday night was not because of the full moon, it was because it was a weekend and more people would have been out regardless of the moon phase. There is also no evidence to support the claim of many in the medical or police fields that admissions and arrests increase during a full moon Also perception bias plays a big part. In other words you look for evidence to prove your belief ignoring the evidence that does not fit. Also many people make the mistake of thinking correlation means causation. Just because something happens during a full moon does not mean the moon was the cause. It would be like saying, the TV was turned on during a thunderstorm and was struck by lighting therefore the TV being on must be the reason it was stuck. So the full moon effect is mainly based on peoples selective memory, perception, and the brains ability to find a pattern where none exists.

sources for this article are linked in the text.

Can the war in Iraq be blamed for someones roof not being repaird after a hurricane that took place over a year ago.

My wife and I had an interesting discussion this morning. She was telling me about a call she received from a customer in Florida who said he had been waiting on a new roof for a year and a half because of hurricane damage and he blamed the war in Iraq for it taking so long to get a new roof. We'll first in order for it to be a year and a half the hurricane would have happened in February so I'm thinking this guy must not be good at math or he's making up because last time I checked Hurricanes did not happen in February. I can also say with pretty good certainty that the war in Iraq has not caused him to wait that long for his roof to be repaired. My wife actually said he has not had a problem in sixty seven years so why is it happening now. I'm willing to guess that it is just coincidence and I'm sure there is some selective memory involved. We all remember what happened over a life time as we want to not necessarily as it happened. Plus the human brain has a great way of finding patterns where none exist. Just because something is happening during a certain time does not mean the time is causing it. Correlation does not mean causation. He would be waiting for his roof to be fixed for a long time weather we were fighting in Iraq or not. And finally as far as I know the war and the Hurricane relief are under two separate departments. Some people just like to look for an easy explanation where none exists. I don't have the answer to why this guy has waited so long to have his roof fixed but blaming President Bush is not going to solve any roofing problems. He would be better off complaining to his insurance company or who ever is in charge of getting his money instead of sitting on his rear end and blaming something taking place over seas. I'll be the fist to say I don't think we should have gone over there and gotten involved but trying to blame a war for it taking so long to get a roof fixed is like trying to say it is raining while I'm running the dishwasher so therefore the dish washer must have made it rain. Makes on sense. Again. Correlation does not mean causation.

People do complain about some dumb things

Hello, it's me. I have not made an entry for a while but I'm back. I had to come on and talk about strange things people complain about. I remember growing up one of the biggest arguments around my parents house was not over money. It was about the toilet seat not being put down for the female members of the family. I don't know why women get so upset over this. They are perfectly capable of putting the seat down themselves. If they are afraid of falling in the bowl in the dark then do the smart thing and turn the light on or look behind you before you sit down. It is amazing the number of woman that cannot figure this simple thing out. Luckily my wife is smart enough to put the lid down her self. She does not need me to do it for her. I wonder if these same women who want their husbands to put the seat down for them also want them to wipe their butts for them too. Another thing that gets me is the people who complain about the toilet paper being on the roll the wrong direction. Again another big argument around our house while growing up. I used to tell my mother that if she was that obsessed over the direction of the toilet paper roll she had some major mental issues that needed checked out right away. She finally stopped complaining about that one thank your favorite divine being. I could also never understand why my mom would complain about the way we squeezed the tooth paste tube and about the direction in which we brushed our teeth. She would also have a fit if your glass of orange juice was too tall. And would throw a fit if you told her how stupid that was. I will say my mom was always very entertaining. Something else that I find to be very interesting is for example I find a light that my wife has left on. I simply turn it off and forget about it. My wife finds a light that I left on she proceeds to give me a twenty minute power point presentation on how much our electric bill is going to go up. Complete with charts and graphs. When it would be so much easier to do what I do and just turn the light off. Something else wives do and I'm sure it comes with the mothering instinct is to give really strange advice. For example it could be snowing and ice forming on the ground and my wife will tell me to be careful it could be icy. Now I'm thirty six years old. If I can't figure out that it is going to be icy when I look outside and see the snow and ice your telling me about it is not going to help me figure it out. I also recall my wife upon seeing a bunch of folded cloths on the bed asking me if I had put them away. I had to ask her if she needed new glasses. My mom did something similar. She asked me if the dishwasher had been emptied while she was standing in front of it with steam pouring out of it while the dishes were drying. I said if she could not figure out if the dishes were still in the dishwasher she had some real problems that needed some immediate mental health attention. In both cases I knew what they meant but it was how they said it that made me question their sanity. It just strikes me as amusing the things that cause the biggest arguments around the house are over very absurd things.

They want to put warning labels on what?

We've all seen them. Dumb warning labels. You know the ones. The warning on the back of a frozen pizza that tells you not to eat before cooking. The one on the box of hot pockets that tells you that the product may be hot when you take it out of the microwave, The one on my dogs bag of rawhides that says, "not for humane consumption." Now a new dumb warning label is being tossed around. On CNN Headline News this morning they ran a story on how California wants to pass a law requiring warning labels on French fries. Now who does not know that French fries are unhealthy? While they're at it they should put warning labels on hamburgers since after all they are unhealthy, How about potato chips, cookies, I'm sure getting out of bed in the morning is unhealthy, let's put a warring label on beds that says, "caution, getting out of this bed in the morning may be unhealthy as it could cause you to step on the keys you dropped on the floor when you got in to bed." Ok, I'm being a little silly with those examples but you get my point. When you start putting warning labels on French fires that means people have stopped using common since. If you don't know by now that certain foods are not good for you where the heck have you been. If you turn on the news at all you'll know what is good and bad. Don't expect the local fast food restaurant to take responsibility for your decision to eat bad food. I love fast food like the next guy but I don't need a warning label to tell me that French fries are unhealthy and that if I take a box of hot pockets out of the microwave it is going to be hot. It is called common sence, More people need to try using it and there would not be a need for such dumb labels.

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