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Surviving another polar vortex, and the polar brain freeze

1/31/2019

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Charles City Press, 1-31-19

If you are reading this, congratulations!
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You’ve survived the recent “polar vortex,” whatever that is.
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Your eyeballs have come unfrozen, and your brain has warmed up enough that you’re able to comprehend written language. I’m very proud of you.

If you’re like me, you became tired of people telling you how cold it is. I know it’s cold. I’m right here with you.

All over social media, people posted photos and videos and “memes” about how cold it was. I’ll admit I posted some, too. I’m not immune to jumping on the icy bandwagon.
​
I think I saw the video of the guy blowing soap bubbles in the freezing temperatures about a kazillion times. It was kind of cool the first time — the bubbles would freeze as they were floating through the air, then they would become kind of squishy, like gum drops. Then they’d burst with a visible puff of vapor. Other people tried it and failed.

Like I said, neat to watch the first time, highly annoying the 10th or 11th time and beyond.

Not nearly as annoying, however, as the viral videos that made the rounds the last time we had a polar vortex, a few years ago.

Remember? People started throwing boiling water into the air like a pack of morons. It was embarrassing to watch.

It all started with one person, who claimed that it was so cold where he lived (I think it was Wisconsin, go figure) that he could throw a pot of boiling water into the air and it would freeze before it came back down.

A ground-breaking experiment, right?

The theory was that water, when exposed to extremely cold temperatures, turns from liquid to solid. Seems I’ve heard that before, like maybe in third grade.

The guy had someone shoot video as he threw the boiling water into the air, and what seemed to be snow and ice crystals and mist came back down to Earth. At the time, I found the whole thing a mildly amusing way to spend about 35 seconds of my life.

I said a little prayer for the person who did the experiment, asking the Good Lord to point him in the direction of some kind of treatment center where he can get the help he needs, then I moved on to other endeavors.

But there is a good percentage of Americans who aren't content to just sit idly by and watch an idiot do idiotic things. They have to join in. It’s the polar brain freeze.

Once that initial video was up, thousands of others decided they had to go to the trouble to boil a large pot of water, bundle up under layers of clothing so they could stay warm, lug the pot of dangerously hot water somewhere outside into dangerously frigid temperatures, and throw the water into the air, all the while filming it.

The results? Yeah, you guessed it. At least a hundred people burned the heck out of themselves.

It got so bad that meteorologists were following their weather reports with warnings to viewers and listeners.

"Please," they said, "please don't boil water and then take it outside and throw it into the air. You'll probably just end up burning the flesh off your Uncle Charlie's face."

Oh, and don't lick a flagpole either. Even if someone double-dog dares you.

A dozen or so other people managed to avoid the burning part but suffered injuries when they slipped on the once-boiling-now-frozen water and fell onto their butts. Or their heads. Or both.

One local media publication where I lived at the time even tried the experiment themselves, and reported on themselves, as if they were breaking news. They published the story on the front page.

That was some top-notch investigative reporting — they uncovered the stunning facts. I had always suspected that whole section in my third grade science book about water freezing when it gets cold was some kind of fabricated liberal conspiracy, but sure enough, those scientists were telling the truth.

I’m still waiting for that newspaper to publish the headline, "Area Fishermen Magically Walk Around On Lake Without Drowning."

It’s not fair to single out that one publication, however. Hundreds of local and national news organizations also attempted the boiling water trick, as a part of their coverage of the polar vortex, with varying results.
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And all over YouTube, as recently as yesterday, you could find new videos of people doing things with hot water in cold weather. One guy filled one of those super-duper water guns with boiling water and shot it out into the cold. I have to admit, this was kind of cool to watch, and I wish I would have thought of it.

Then there was the guy who wanted to show what happened when you urinate in 50-below wind chills. I have to admit, this was excruciating to watch, and I wish I had never seen it. It was disturbing.

However, it's always disturbing to me when I realize that I live in a world where people have to tell other people that throwing boiling water into the air is a bad idea.
Or that water freezes when it gets cold.

Anyway, keep warm. And congratulations for surviving another polar vortex.

Take heart. Spring is just around the corner.

I promise.


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Expressing ‘outrage’ over razors and burgers

1/17/2019

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Charles City Press, 1-17-19

People are outraged.

Or so they tell us.

Yesterday, I saw an advertisement that purported to be about razor blades, although it didn’t seem to have anything to do with razor blades to me.

It was about 45 seconds long and addressed issues like bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault. It deftly worked in images of men and boys displaying what was obviously bad behavior, integrating images of other men and boys displaying good behavior.

“We believe in the best in men,” said the voice-over. “To say the right thing. To act the right way.”

The intent, it seems to me, is to encourage men to not behave like jerks — and to lead by example and show other men, and our children, how not to behave like jerks. Don’t excuse bad behavior by brushing it off and repeating the unimaginative “boys will be boys” cliche.

I still haven’t figured out where razor blades fit in, but it seemed like a decent, thoughtful message to me.

However, the essential directive, “don’t be an awful person,” was apparently too much to ask of some folks. The commercial sparked a wave of “outrage.” Many decried the commercial as “offensive to men.” Some even called for a mass boycott of the company.

Outraged? Over a little razor blade commercial? OK, sure.

The NCAA Champion Clemson football team visited the White House earlier this week, which is traditional. With the U.S. Government under partial shutdown, there were not enough people available to prepare and serve the team a dinner. So the President decided to buy huge piles of fast-food burgers and pizza, paid for out of his own pocket, and told the players to help themselves.

That’s not traditional, and it seems silly. Most of the players didn’t seem to mind, a few grumbled about it. The food sat there for quite some time and got cold before anyone had a bite. Cold fast food isn’t a culinary delight. The whole episode was good fodder for jokes from late-night comedians.

A whole lot of people said they were outraged about it, though. The editorial pages of major publications, cable news hosts and internet postings all expressed unhinged anger over the situation.

To me, it doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing to get that worked up about. The NCAA champs got served a lousy meal. A prime rib dinner would have been nice, for sure, but they’re still the NCAA champs, they still got to visit the White House, and now they’ll have a cool story to tell for the rest of their lives, about how the billionaire President bought them burgers.

Meanwhile, a freshman congresswoman called the billionaire President a dirty word earlier this month. There has been a plenty of outrage directed toward her, and although I honestly wish people in the public eye would conduct themselves with better manners, and raise the level of discourse, I don’t find myself becoming outraged. Perhaps that has something to with the fact that I’ve heard the man who is now President publicly use dirty words and call people childish names time and time again over the last 30 years — all the way up to this past week. There aren’t many people more responsible than he is for the coarsening of our culture. I know, two wrongs don’t make a right — but turnabout is fair play — so when someone uses a potty mouth to insult the king of potty mouths, it doesn’t ruffle my feathers all that much.

Meanwhile, our own congressman, Steve King, essentially told a major publication this month that he didn’t understand why being known as a white nationalist or a white supremacist is a bad thing. This would probably be outrageous to me, if it weren’t for the fact that the congressman has said things far dumber than that over and over again for the last 16 years or so, and our friends and neighbors keep electing the guy, over and over again. It seems a little late to be outraged now.

I tend to get annoyed about things, but not outraged, so it’s hard for me to believe people who claim they are outraged. I sometimes think they’re faking it — or maybe they’re a little unstable and need help.

I have a friend, who I grew up with, who now works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He defends our borders. He doesn’t work on the Mexican border, he works on the Canadian border.

When everyone talks about border security, they talk about the southern border — but the northern border is just as important.

My friend’s primary job is to protect our country from terrorists, illegal aliens, illegal weapons and illegal drugs. It’s just as much a priority in Minnesota as it is in Texas. He trained hard and he works hard.

Because of the government shutdown, he hasn’t been paid for his work since before Christmas, but he still goes in, every day, and does it. He has a wife and kids and a home. He has all the same bills you and I have, and has to figure out how to pay them.

He is not a politically outspoken person, and is not in any way responsible for the shutdown. He loves his country and doesn’t bad mouth its leaders — essentially his bosses — even when he disagrees with them. He’s too responsible. He doesn’t complain about the situation he’s in — at least not to me. In fact, he’s very optimistic, and quick to tell me not to worry, there are a lot of folks worse off than he is.

He knows that when the shutdown ends, he is supposed to receive back pay, but that’s not a certainty — and there’s no telling when the shutdown will end. I don’t know how he’s making ends meet in the meantime.

I love my old friend, and there’s nothing I can do to help him right now.
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But if I were the kind of person who got outraged, I think that might be the kind of thing I’d get outraged about.


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