Return to Work place – abort?

(The name of this article is taken from the old STS “Space Shuttle” term “Return to Launch Site abort” about a way to land the space craft if it can’t launch fully properly.)

I was at work late on Wednesday and so missed all of the events at Washington, which I am purposely not using any description or adjectives of. Today, Thursday, I was working remotely, which was something of a disaster. I got some work done, minimal compared to what I wanted to and should have in more often times, and was oddly compulsed to look at news articles.

These were all text and still image based, but besides getting annoyed at the new layout and function of the “Microsoft News” app in Windows 10, all I did was give me reason to wonder why I was so … dependent on reading different news about this. It was not the same in different words, but things like teachers’ deciding how to teach tomorrow, editorial boards and editors views, important questions that investigations were being called to answer, and the things that news organizations are supposed to hear about, ask for details on, check out what they get, and summarize along with background information that lets the recipients have the best chance to learn the new things, or previously hidden things.

I am not (so) invincible to slow attracting by things that can make me less aware of what I am doing, and of what I would want to do if I wasn’t.

The title of this post means, do I return to the workplace tomorrow or not? Will that make things better (other people, minds, voices, things to do and look at) or worse (distracting and dangerous co workers or visitors?)

A C-suite idea to improve society

In American English, the “C-suite” refers to all the various head positions at a firm, named because they all have “Chief” in their tituls. The most notorious by far is CEO, or “Chief Executive Officer”, who runs all of the other C-suite inhabitants. There are others, as CPO (privacy), COO (operating), CFO (finantial), CIO (information), and what ever other tituls the organization wants.

I am going to propose something that will add another “CCO” to the Wikipedian list already compiled: Chief Calmness Officer.

We are almost all familiar with the hair trigger of societal media going off half cocked¹ on partial information, sometimes maliciously cooked up, often not.

Report of the Wheel-Barrow Man

I knew in a slight way, a few years ago, an older man who lived alone on the outskirts of a village, further than I did. He lived alone and walked almost everywhere. When traveling to the store in the village to pick up groceries, he used a wheel barrow on the shoulder of the State road there and back. I called him “Wheelbarrow Man” once when my grand mother was around she didn’t like it, correcting me with his real name and title.

After he died, his sister, who I knew independently, let me have some of his things, including a typescript proposal. Having used a scanner and Microsoft Word to digitize it, I set it out below

Schnozzology, a pseudoscientific hoax

From the April 2, 1899 edition of the New York Times, we get an article about “nasology”.

The Commies are coming?

I was born far too late to have lived through either of the “Red scares”, but that doesn’t mean their detritus isn’t available for me to find. Here is one example:

The publisher of this one is far from “lost”: The American Bar Association is still around, probably as strong as ever. Their “Standing Committee on Education against Communism”, however, appears to no longer exist.

Do note the “bar” in the ABA’s logo, though.

Is the Public Library useful?

From July 1, 1905’s Literary Digest, we have a serious question, although one stuck under the unappreciable headline:

Is the Public Library feminized?

Nice party to be in

While looking up old YA literature on HathiTrust, I ran across this, which is the voter roll for the Bronx in 1903.

It is what it is at first glance really, a tedious enumeration of voters, addresses and parties, useful only for genealogy. And noting that the United States did once have parties like “Social Democrat” and “Socialist Labor” (and the occasional “Prohibition”).

Then you turn up:

I have no idea what Charles H. Douglas’s party registration is. There wasn’t, that I’m aware of, a “defective” party. If his registration was bad, wouldn’t they just reject it? Was this the 1903 version of “show ID at polling place”? Persons with mental limitations (“mental defectives”) were forbidden to vote, so I doubt it is that.

If anyone knows anything about this, please post a comment here.

Related language questions

For all English language speakers:

• What do you call the organized group of people who maintain and use equipment to put out unwanted and dangerous fires?
• What do you call the building housing the equipment used by them?
• Any reason(s) why you use those terms?

Reply with your answers please.

Odd Economical names

As mentioned before, I occasionally look into the magazine called The Economist (exactly like that, with a capital article).

One of their online features is a little quiz each week, where you have to answer general (or specific) knowledge questions about the news of important things and then know who someone’s picture is.

Someone Arabick’d my rent

Don’t know why, but when I got my monthly rent mony from the credit union, three of the bills¹ had some Arabic on it: