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Sly Comments

Author:	Emory Schley	Created:	10/4/2006 3:15 PM
Readers are invited to comment on any of the items or discussion seen below, or any matter of concern here in Beautiful Marion County!

The never-ending challenge that awaits each of us...
	By Emory Schley on 5/30/2007 7:51 PM

Ever have one of those days when absolutely nothing goes right? I had one of those recently. I awakened at 5:30 a.m., same as every other morning. My cat, Morris always seems to think I should get out of bed at that time. I’ve always wondered how he knows what time it is. I have a digital clock in the bedroom, but as far as I know, cats can’t read numbers or tell time. Nevertheless he wakes me up at 5:30 every morning. As I crawled out of bed, I slipped somehow and wound up sprawled on the floor. Still groggy from sleep, I managed to pull myself upright in the dark before stumbling over toward the light switch. When I flicked the switch, the overhead bulb flashed and died, and I stood there, still in the dark. I should have known better than to continue the day at this point. After all, wha ...

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So, is statistical science leading us down the garden path?
	By Emory Schley on 5/28/2007 10:50 PM

I’m not much of a mathematician, and that subject has always been a shaky one for me. And a quick glimpse into any reputable text on statistical science will show you enough math to make your head spin completely off your shoulders and screw itself at least half-way into the ground. So, I’m not exactly an authority on statistics and the methods used to compile them, either. I will say, though, that while my confidence level in higher mathematics is pretty solid, my confidence in statistics is down toward the bottom of the scale, at best. I suppose the reason why is that I’ve seen many so-called studies that didn’t seem to make much sense to me. That situation has remained unchanged, largely because they keep rolling out study after study that doesn't quite seem to measure up to reality. I know that a supposed key ...

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Keeping a wary eye towards the skies – and the Weather Channel
	By Emory Schley on 5/25/2007 7:51 PM

So the weather experts are predicting another nasty hurricane season this year. This is of particular concern to those of us living in Florida, as our state is frequently the target of Nature’s fury. However, as deadly as hurricanes are, we always at least know they are on their way, and thanks to the Weather Service, we generally have a pretty good idea of where they are headed for the next couple of days or so. The only big unknowns about a hurricane are the tornadoes they spawn and how much rain they’re going to dump on us, but we even have some insight – based on the storm’s current performance – on the rain situation. That leaves the only real question mark firmly attached to the tornado issue. Frankly, I’ve always been far more a ...

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You've got to stay on your toes, and think!
	By Emory Schley on 5/23/2007 8:15 PM

Making a mountain from a molehill used to be just an old saying when I was younger, but now I’m at an age where I see it happening more and more frequently. We are surrounded by such shenanigans. The more you look, the more you start to find. As a driver who always looks way down the road in order to avoid any dire “surprises” in the very near future, I’m more inclined to wonder aloud where all this molehill-into-mountain business will ultimately lead us, a little later in our common near future. It seems like some of our news media seize every opportunity to regale us with breathless reports on whatever crisis they can find, no matter how trivial it may ultimately be. TV newspeople seem to be the biggest offenders. Reporters ...

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Getting up to "speed" with numbers
	By Emory Schley on 5/21/2007 7:58 PM

Back before the days when pocket calculators dropped in price to the point where anyone could easily afford them, most people had to do their arithmetic the old-fashioned way – and that usually meant with a pen and paper. Figuring out square roots was a particularly challenging task. It could be done, but it was more a trial and error thing than a carefully crafted scientific method. If you’re curious about how it was done back in the “dark ages” of the 1950s and 1960s, then check out “methods of computing square roots” at www.en.wikipedia.com. Even simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division had to be done the old-fashioned way in those pre-calculator days. However, there were a few shortcuts available: Quick now, and without ...

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Who decides on what speed limits should be?
	By Emory Schley on 5/18/2007 8:01 PM

I’ve often wondered what standards, if any, are followed by whoever it is who decides what speed limits should be established, and where. Many of them seem to make no sense at all. I once received a speeding ticket, decades ago, for doing 40 mph in a school zone. And I admit I was probably guilty as charged, however, there were no children outside in the playground, and the playground was separated from the street with a chain-linked fence that was eight feet tall. This was an elementary school, up to fifth grade. I passed by that school perhaps hundreds of times, and not once did I ever see anyone, child or otherwise, trying to scale that fence to get to the street. The fence was almost twice as high as the tallest students there. And all the students were in class, or wherever they go to whenever they’re not outside in the playground. I was ...

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The ultimate test for a good steak house
	By Emory Schley on 5/15/2007 7:46 PM

I like going to steak houses to eat. I like steak houses because, duhhh, I love steak! However, I guess I must not be in synchronization with most other steak lovers. That’s because I like, in fact I insist on, having my steak well-done. I don’t want to cut into a piece of cow and see any red meat. I don’t wanna see any pink meat, either. All I want to see is plain old brown, fully-cooked meat done through and through, no ifs, ands or buts about it! Back in the ’60s, when I was serving in the Army in what was then West Germany, I once went to a really fancy restaurant. I felt in the need for some steak because what we had been getting on post for steak ...

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Customer relations for Dummies: Counting change 101
	By Emory Schley on 5/11/2007 8:02 PM

Lately, I’ve been marvelling, once again, how a cashier standing in front of a modern cash register, can fail to hand out the correct change to a customer. My little bit of experience on a cash register came decades ago, long before they started building computers into them. Back in those days, you had to make change for a customer’s purchases manually. I doubt that many of us screwed up back then, because we all had been taught how to make change correctly. Apparently, they no longer teach that lost art. Now, the procedure is to ring up the purchases, total the bill, punch in the amount tendered, th ...

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Blockbuster movies rake in the cash
	By Emory Schley on 5/10/2007 7:50 PM

This is the summer for blockbuster movies, one that may very well go down in the history books, at least for a few years. I read that Spiderman 3 cost $248 million to produce, which certainly puts it in the far upper levels of the most expensive movies ever made, and maybe even into first place. I have not seen the movie yet, but will once the throngs thin out somewhat. The several reviews I’ve read have ranked it in quality as falling somewhere between the first and second screen outings of the web-slinger, with the second edition considered by the critics I read, to be the best of the lot. Coming up soon are the latest installments of Pirates of the Caribbean and the Bruce Willis series of Die Hard movies, both of which are hoping to clean up at the box office. &nbs ...

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Reality can intrude impolitely upon your dreams
	By Emory Schley on 5/9/2007 7:45 PM

I suppose it’s just plain ol’ unadulterated Human Nature to always want more than what you have; or to want something you don’t have. For some reason, I’ve always thought it would be nice to have a fancy little pool in the backyard. I don’t want one of those big holes in the ground where you can go swimming, or even an above ground model. No, what I’m talking about is much more modest, something more like a little wading pool, y’know, one with lily pads, bulrushes and maybe even a goldfish or two. A little fountain in the middle, trickling water down some rocks, just to keep everything stirred up might be nice, too. A little stand of trees to protect the area from the hot summer sun would seem to fit in quite nicely with ...

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A peaceful and pleasant Saturday morning in Belleview
	By Emory Schley on 5/8/2007 7:49 PM

My wife and I decided to go to festival held in Belleview over the weekend. We drove on over, found a parking space, I pulled out my camera, donned my hat and sunglasses; she did the same, and we began to stroll around the grounds surrounding City Hall. There were a lot of exhibitors displaying all the usual stuff one generally sees at events such as this. However, one that I had not seen before, was a vendor selling little devices that we once called pea-shooters, only these were made of PVC pipe and shot little mini-marshmallows. Kind of like “nano” Nerfballs! Looked like lots of fun! As we ambled around the display area, we saw lots of interesting displays, but as we were nearing the end, I spotted an area where a couple of soldiers were apparently recruiting.&l ...

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Life-long battle has become a war by now
	By Emory Schley on 5/8/2007 5:55 AM

Seems like we all have our personal battles to conduct. Some of us battle our level of literacy, some of us battle our income level, and still others – like me – wage a relentless Battle of the Bulge, the “bulge” being in the belly, of course, and not the World War II battle of the same name. When I was a teenager, I was about 145 pounds, and I always thought I was just a bit too small. I longed to weigh about 160 pounds. This was because I had a friend about my size, height-wise, and he weighed 160. His weight looked to me like a good balance between too skinny and too chubby, so I considered 160 to be the ideal weight for me, too. & ...

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OK, are you ready for lesson number two?
	By Emory Schley on 5/7/2007 7:13 AM

On Monday, March 12, I explained to you how to go about learning how to juggle. The technique I described was a simple one wherein there is only one ball, or beanbag, in the air at any given time, although that’s kind of hard to discern when you’re watching someone do it. The technique discussed then is called the cascade. There are other forms of juggling, too, but the cascade is the one most people find to be the easiest. Another much more difficult technique is called the shower. Whereas the cascade juggle is based on a more-or-less figure 8 pattern with the paths of the balls crossing over each other, the shower adopts a circular pattern where each ball follows a circular (or parabolic) path with no crossovers.

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I guess those 18¢ per gallon days are gone forever, y'suppose?
	By Emory Schley on 5/6/2007 7:25 AM

Well, it’s been one of those weeks for me that sometimes happen to all of us. I started off the week by trying to find a store in Leesburg. This, of course, was after I got off work in Ocala. The address information for the location of the store was a bit minimal, only a building number and “S.R. 44” which didn’t tell me much about what part of Leesburg to go to, while burning some of my precious $3 per gallon gasoline. The address, as listed, gave no indication of east, west, south, north, or any combination of the cardinal points. Just before I gave up for the day, I called the store to verify the directions only to discover that I was checking out the wrong part of S.R. 44, and that the actual location was many miles from where I was. &nbs ...

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Fleeting art brings joy, but it's soooo ephemeral!
	By Emory Schley on 5/5/2007 5:49 AM

Occasionally, my wife and I will watch a few programs on the Food Network. We especially like the programs that are about cake decorating or sugar sculpturing. A few months back, we used to watch, on another network, a program which centered around building sand castles. These sand castles were not simple little structures. No, they were massive sculptures involving tons of sand, into which intricately-shaped parapets, flags, soldiers, horses, moats, drawbridges and more were depicted. Some of those castles were so compelling, it was a shame they couldn’t be encased in epoxy and kept for the enjoyment of generations yet to come. The same is true of some of the incredibly intricate cakes on the Food Net ...

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Floating along in pure unadulterated bliss!
	By Emory Schley on 5/4/2007 5:08 AM

When you start really feeling glum and depressed, or you’re distracted by the worries of this tired old world we all live in, sometimes it helps to refresh your spirit by doing something totally out of the ordinary, something wild and crazy, but not quite crazy enough to have you committed to the local calaboose. One activity I’ve found that really helps clear my mind, is to have fun just like a little kid. I’m not nearly limber enough or agile enough to be running or hopping or jumping around anymore like a child at play. Heaven knows – I feel good when I’m just able to make it across the room under my own power, and unassisted these days. So I have to resort to some other activity, sedate enough for someone of my advanced years. ...

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Both sides need to get serious about serving nation's best interests
	By Emory Schley on 5/3/2007 5:50 AM

Something I’ve often wondered about is whether political parties in this country are truly necessary. There was a time when people actually seemed to be proud of being a Democrat or proud of being a Republican; but in my personal life, I’ve noticed more and more people I normally associate with and discuss these subjects with, becoming more and more disgusted with both parties. I think this country is probably long overdue for a new party, a third party, a party to give the other two a bit of competition. I know it’s been tried befor ...

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Communicating clearly and concisely...
	By Emory Schley on 5/2/2007 5:56 AM

When I was in school, I can remember many of my teachers trying to impress upon us students the importance of clear communications: orally, verbally, and in writing. Clear communications, I’m sure they each would have agreed, are the only guarantee that you will get your ideas and proposals across to another person effectively. Clear, concise communications, especially in their written form, are an almost impossible goal to achieve with 100 percent efficiency, despite there having been many tools invented just for assisting in that purpose. The invention of those tools goes back at least several millennia. At one time, Roman script did not use spaces between words and punctuation was unknown. Everything was in all capital letters. Over the years ...

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Is there any solution to this mess?
	By Emory Schley on 5/1/2007 6:15 AM

There are lots of puzzling episodes in life, but to me, one of the most puzzling of all is the system of billing coming from hospitals, clinics, medical offices and their allied disciplines. We received a statement the other day in the mail detailing the expenses of an office visit and the associated laboratory and clinical work that my wife had about a month ago. What it boils down to, is that they took some blood from her arm, and ran a few tests on it, checking for various conditions in an attempt to assess her overall state of health. What we received was a listing of the various tests performed, along with the associated cost of each procedure, the ...

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Creating effective but hard-to-break passwords can be quite easy
	By Emory Schley on 4/30/2007 1:01 AM

In today’s world, especially with all the Internet accessing going on, an important element of our everyday lives is becoming ever more so, and that element is a password. We have passwords for ATM accounts, passwords for on-line access to banking services, passwords to subscription Websites, passwords for on-line purchases, passwords for e-mail and passwords for just about anything else you’d like to keep reasonably private. I was becoming so overwhelmed with passwords at one point, that I threatened to hire a secretary just to keep up with them. But doing that was really not practical (besides, I couldn’t afford it. Secretaries probably make more than I do). So I decided to tussle with the situation for ...

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