Welcome to Silicone Valley

Are you short on details about the Boeing 737 MAX fiasco?
Let me help: I will attempt to describe the Boeing 737 MAX situation to you via the Argument Sketch.



737s have been falling out of the sky.

No they haven't.

Yes, they have.

No they haven't.  I'm sorry, are you here for the the FAA version or the NTSB version?

Oh, sorry... the FAA version.

Anyway, no they haven't.

Yes they bloody well have. They fail at the relatively simple act of remaining in the air.

No they don't.

Yes they do. My cousin had a friend that was squashed by one.

No he didn't.

No he didn't what?

Your cousin. He didn't have a friend.

Yes he does.

No he doesn't.

Yes he does.

DING - time's up

Look, the FAA allows more time than this.

I'm sorry, I am not allowed to talk about the FAA, or even the NTSB until Boeing puts out a new aircraft. Wait - Boeing has a new aircraft!

No they don't..

Look here, matey, here's a picture.

That's not a 738 MAX, that's a 737 MAX with the 7 crossed out and an 8 sticker over it.

No it isn't.  Oh, alright, here's $10 billion in loans.

Thank you, but they definitely didn't.

Didn't what?

Change the firmware. In fact, they found another really nasty bug over the weekend.

No they didn't.

Yes they did.

Look, I don't want you to argue about this.

Yes you do.

An argument is a discussion of whether the airlines will require a federal bailout.

No it isn't. An argument decides whether the FAA will bless the 737 MAX with the Flyable Award. Judging from present performance, they won't.

Yes they will.

No they won't. We both know they'll bankrupt the entire company, fire everyone, take away huge bonuses, and magically open up a new airline called Roeing.

No they won't.

Yes they will. And I will further mention that the pilots' association said their membership will not set foot in a 737 MAX until all the problems are worked out (except the French, who have scheduled a riot for it next week).

No they won't. It's going to take more than the demise of a very reliable (til now) plane to bankrupt Boeing.

Aha - I got you: the plane division is not the same as the military contract division, which will never go broke.

No it isn't. Boeing is Boeing.

Further, the NTSB backs the pilots.

No they don't.

Look, if I want to bring the NTSB into this, I bloody well will.

No you won't.

Boeing is working diligently on resolving the issue.

No they're not.

Ok, you got me there.

• Twitter just announced emojis available in DMs
• NO. JUST NO. 

It's so cold outside....
HOW COLD IS IT?
It's so cold that we have to drink a Coke from the fridge to warm us up.


Augmented Reality is the next big thing, says Apple CEO Tim Cook.
We're guessing that it will not be encrypted.

• Cruise's first driverless car doesn't have a steering wheel or pedals.
• So if there's a problem, at least you're sure you're going to die.

I'm nothing if not unfair. Thus I must apologize to Philly for calling it a bottomless pit that only a large fire could improve, that thinks Center City is New York and prices everything accordingly. Today we discovered a $25 parking garage that charges you $5 if you're there under 2 hours and have a restaurant receipt.

What I meant to say is it's a bottomless pit that only a large fire could improve, that thinks Center City is New York and prices everything accordingly, except one really considerate garage. And the gay males stare at me like they haven't had food in 2 weeks and I'm a steak.

UPDATE: just hours after I typed this, I had to drive to Center City. I don't like to drive to Center City, because it involves the worst of every type of automotive bad experience: traffic stopped dead for no apparent reason at 8pm, random lane closures, downtown stupid drivers, highway stupid drivers, random stoppages in lanes so some malnourished rich idiot can run into a restaurant and get something... I can't imagine why anyone would find this fun (and I used to work there).

The city never fails to disappoint and last night was no exception. The new thing seems to be random street closures. They closed every 3rd street, for no reason. Unless the 3rd street was an even-numbered street, in which case they closed every other street. Just to keep you from correctly guessing which street you could use, they closed every street in certain sections. They changed the Welcome sign to "Welcome to Philadelphia - You Can't Get There from Here." After this debacle I foolishly attempted to go home. Oops - the new Neighborhood Beautification Project took all those ugly street signs down, and it was anybody's guess how to get to a large highway. I found more or less where I needed to be, but too bad, 3 lanes going straight had turned into 3 lanes turning right because of... you guessed it... another police lane closure. Because not even in Philly is there room for 3 lanes to turn right, I got thrown onto the highway I wanted, but of course in the opposite direction. I had barely made a noise the entire night, but being downtown always has this effect on me - I screamed like a loon for several minutes, causing William Penn's statue to cover its ears and his bones to rattle in their grave. If you listened closely, you would have heard Mr. Penn saying, "Don't blame me for this shithole."

• Dr. Phil annoys me. Does that put me in the majority for once?

NASA is getting ready to name its Mars 2020 Rover.
The first suggestion rejected was Mars 2020 Rover.
Maybe ThermionicEmissions can help name it...

• It Cost How Much Rover
• Zero to 20 in 10 Minutes Rover
• The Second Rover
• Rover II - this time it's personal
• The Aliens are Messing with Us Rover
• No Fossil Fuels Rover (because we can't find any fossils)
• Bob (my personal favorite)

Speaking of which....

• Mars Rover frozen in place following software error
• Microsoft force-updated it to Win 10 

Boeing, a recent favorite target, for killing 346 people, is in even deeper today. The software fix to make it flyable won't happen in the near future and due to certification, may be several more months. Their new slogan: Boeing - Failed to Fly. The company has officially stopped building the plane until it gets the OK.

• a brothel owner was detained for pouring Viagra in the water of his town.
• Oddly, no local women were available for comment.

The first chocolate chip cookies in space took 2 hours to bake.
No offense, but people with Alzheimers don't take that long.




I went to a new doctor the other day.
He seemed surprised that I hadn't seen a doctor in 10 years.
I seemed surprised that he didn't have a lot of really attractive nurses.
He said I needed a colonoscopy and prostate exam.
He put a finer point on it by disagreeing that every 10 years was a fine space between prostate exams.
"What is your focus on the butt?" I asked. "May I recommend a mental health professional?"
He suggested bloodwork. More than suggested - he gave me a paper the size of War and Peace, that the techs told me would require blood draws every week or so because they need so much of it.
I told him I passed out at the sight of blood. He felt sorry for me and scratched off 1 test.
I recommended the best pizza in the area. He grew up down the street from it.
I finally won when I lectured him on the importance of left-handed ergonomic mice and proper ergonomic posture to avoid carpal tunnel and various other infirmities (none affecting the butt).

• How much longer will we trust Google's search results?
• Do we trust them now? 

I want to warn you in advance about this next subject. It will shock you to your very soul. If you insist upon reading it, at least sit down in a comfortable chair, so there's less room to fall to the floor:

The surveillance video taken from outside Jeffrey Epstein's jail cell on the day of his first apparent suicide attempt has been permanently deleted, federal prosecutors said. Epstein, the disgraced financier who was facing federal sex-trafficking charges, was found semiconscious in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, or MCC, in New York around 1:27 a.m. on July 23. But that video is now gone because MCC officials mistakenly saved video from a different floor of the federal detention facility. The FBI made the discovery last week while reviewing a copy of the video provided by MCC officials. "After reviewing the video, it appeared to the government that the footage contained on the preserved video was for the correct date and time, but captured a different tier than the one where [the cell housing Epstein and his cellmate] was located.” The filing was made in a case involving Nicholas Tartaglione ... who was Epstein's cellmate on the day of the incident. The July incident was investigated as a possible suicide attempt, assault or ruse by Epstein to get himself transferred to a different facility. Tartaglione's attorney, as part of an effort to exonerate his client, asked the jail to preserve video from outside the cell. The MCC agreed, but "the MCC computer system listed a different, incorrect cell for Tartaglione," prosecutors said in the court filing. A backup video system was in place, but the requested video wasn't available because of unspecified "technical errors," the court filing says. 

I am sorry to be the one to bring this to you, but I thought it would be less startling coming from ThermionicEmissions.

• Scientists discover why stress turns hair white.
• Voting.

London police to deploy facial recognition cameras across the city.
NO.
C'mon, is this sort of thing acceptable? In addition to their already ubiquitous surveillance? Don't forget - England and Australia are test beds for things to come....



Heroes of the Stupid

On a paranormal discussion show, a reader called in and asked how she could get in touch with the aliens. The host asked why. She said the aliens could help her out with her teeth.   Ok.

Bernie Sanders' Deputy Digital Communications Director locked her Twitter account.



SJW Statistics

"trad wives" are white supremacist women who devote themselves to domestic duties in the service of perpetuating the white race. It is a dog whistle to sound less white supremacist than it is.     Twitter -  @beccalew

A delightful frequent-flyer, Jessica Yaniv (WAX MY BALLS!) has been arrested and charged with assault. The same day, she (falsely) accused a journalist of sexual assault. As Canadian justice goes, Yaniv was "released back into the community," with a Friday court appearance.  I hope her balls are waxed by that time.

Elizabeth Warren (D-Uranus) promises her cabinet will be "at least 50% filled by women and non binary people."  They don't even have to have any qualifications - just woman and non binary! What a great step forward for Indiankind.

Taking and tweeting a picture of a woman breastfeeding is the foundation of fascism: stigmatizing basic care and empathy and promoting (species/cis/white) supremacy.

Regis, Kelly, the Geneva Convention and a Colonoscopy

It's not like I meant to get up at six in the morning: usually that's reserved for things I enjoy doing.  But I smiled (sort of) and did my husbandly duty, escorting my wife for her diagnostic procedure this morning.

PREP

Before you have a diagnostic instrument inserted into your choice of orifices, there's generally some sort of preparation.  This can range from simply not eating to taking all sorts of interesting medicines, with what one can only describe as spectacular results.

My wife, being the woman she is, went for spectacular.  And why not - she deserves some spectacular in her life.  [FAB-u-lous!]

The way it was explained to me, my wife's plumbing is like her husband - a little slow.  As a result, she had to go with the half-week super-spectacular preparations.  Rather than explain it to you, let's just say it involved pills, ginger ale, a hamster and four to six midgets.

I'm reasonably certain I missed the best parts of the prep.  The only thing I really witnessed was her talking to me one moment, then leaping like mad for the bathroom (with one crazed cocker spaniel attempting to keep up).  It would have been amusing if it weren't so downright hysterical.

I don't know what side effects the medicinal preparation claimed but in total they had the effect of turning a perfectly normal (and FAB-u-lous!) woman into a gas-spewing man.  From all available outlets.  It was like the guys digging in your yard hit a gas main and couldn't quite figure out how to shut it down.  Between gaseous exhalations, my wife found this quite amusing.

The musical question then became `how do you convince a dog who knows how to open the bathroom door to stop it'?

I don't know how she did it but she finally went to bed.  I was terrified to get next to her but as there were no rhythmic tents appearing and disappearing, I figured it was probably safe.  The dog seemed relatively unaffected, serving as my canary in this particular coal mine.  And wasn't I lucky that there were no noises as I crawled into bed..

WHAT TIME?

Her phone went off at four o'clock.  Never mind, I thought, that's just email.  Bless her heart, she left email notification on.  I can only guess at the treasure that felt the necessity to slam into her email at that time of the morning.  Probably an urgent missive from some shopping site or a polite offer for Viagra.

After what seemed like moments, it was six.  Even the dog wasn't interested in being awake.  He kept wondering what his mommy was doing and feigning sleep so she wouldn't drag him outside.  To no avail.

When the hospital tells you to be there at seven, they're not kidding.   And when I say not kidding, I mean that the time of arriving is arrived at by a complex numerical and illogical process so secret that nobody in the entire chain knows what it is.  Therefore they just throw out a time and hope people show up.

Check-in is a breeze, almost like a cheap motel, only forty minutes longer.  There are over seventy separate forms that must be filled out with information such as third nephew's cell phone number and husband's favorite dessert.  The twin ironies here are that

1. they asked for all this information last time
2. they don't need it - it goes right into the shredder

It turns out that check-in is just the first in a long series of exercises designed to frustrate the patient, create employment for the extremely elderly and incompetent members of the board's extended family, and frustrate the patient.   Oh yeah, and to hike the insurance rates.

I don't know about you but our medical premiums have gone up nearly fifteen percent yearly, with an accompanying leap in copays but no additional coverage.  In order to keep down the number of people using the emergency room for primary care, they instituted a fifty dollar fee for emergency room visits, waived if there was an admission.  Now it's a one hundred dollar fee, which becomes five hundred dollars if there is an admission.  Now we need a fee to discourage people from staying home when they get sick.

Having said that, the fee for the short procedure unit was three hundred.  I sure picked a bad time to work in an industry that doesn't get bailed out.

AT LEAST IT WASN'T KATHY LEE

We were directed to a waiting room.  Do you know why they're called waiting rooms?  Because the doctors get some sort of perverse joy from making you wait.  I knew a physician who couldn't wait til he could afford to expand his waiting room because it made him look even more important.  He felt that the more people he could make wait, the better a doctor that made him.  I wonder if he ever got properly medicated....

Sitting down, one could hardly miss the concert volume of the television, which was busy blasting the blasted Kelly Rippa show.  We were spared Regis, as they are getting ready to watch him fade into the sunset.  The joke is on them, though.... Regis has been dead for twenty years.  The man makes Al Gore look animated (and I've only seen him in commercials).

I could hardly contain my excitement when I discovered that the cohost was Katie Couric.  How they could fit that much cute on one show, no one will ever know.   You'd think it would reach critical mass and explode on camera.

The larger problem here, content aside, was the volume at which this nonsense poured out of the hospital television.  Mind you, my television isn't anywhere near as nice as the hospital television.  I also can't charge people for watching it (or can I?).   But it seemed as though the telly had an entire sound system for the express purpose of making patients deaf.  Even the old people's ears were bleeding....

Just as we were attempting to become comfortable in the spineless seats set out for our lounging pleasure, we were escorted to a much nicer waiting room.  Much nicer in that the television was not causing deafness (just partial hearing loss).

Did you know that blasting Regis and Kelly at the unwilling (and let's face it - who is willing?) is a violation of the Geneva Convention?

At this point, someone's relic of a relative walked in with a brand new computer system to take down the same old information.  We asked her why wasn't it transferred from the perfectly fine old computer system.  She mumbled a bit and asked us a few questions about President Roosevelt.  Then only fifty or sixty of the same questions asked at check-in.  She asked pages of questions then, almost as fast as you can say shouldn't be allowed near a computer, she deleted the answers.  Some of her beefier coworkers came in and gently carried her away so procedures could start eventually....

WAITING ROOM.  AGAIN.

You could have knocked me over with a feather: I had cell phone reception deep in the bowels of the hospital (oh great, a bowel reference... how clever).  Well, there you have it: me saying something nice about T-Mobile (nah, the hospital must have set up repeaters indoors).

So I started waiting.

About ten minutes into my waiting, a nice staff member asked if I was with a patient (apparently she didn't remember talking to me ten minutes earlier) and said that I could wait in the original waiting room.  Well sure, if someone would have asked earlier, I would have gone there.  Certainly don't know to go there on my own...

Unfortunately, the Katie and Kelly Show had somehow managed to attain additional volume (and additional cuteness).  With a pair of in-ear phones, cranked past Painful, I could not drown out the volume (and worse, the content).

Have you ever endured the pain of George Stephanopoulos discussing Dancing with the Stars on a morning show?  Having to watch the premier of an Americans Idle winner's new album (fresh from the Noise Factory)?

As if it couldn't get any worse, Rachel Ray appeared.  I know this is Rachel Ray from her Dunkin Donuts commercials, just like I know Regis from the Stupid Bank Commercials.  In addition to being deceased, the man apparently has no nasal passages.

Rachel doesn't appear as overtly cute as Kelly, so I hoped for some semblance of sanity.  In morning tv, you say?  HA!  

Luck just wasn't with me, as one of more attention-y whores of the Kardashian family came on to discuss Rachel and some connection they had.  I had given up on my headphones, even to simply block out the cacophony.  I was in such a bad state that I was starting to consider Christianity (or something) when I saw in the distance a vision.  A very attractive nurse was holding up rags, attempting to call my name in semaphore.

IS IT SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE THAT?

They brought me to my wife, who looked worse than I felt.   Perhaps they had Rachel Ray on in the operating room too.

But no; she was sitting up, hunched over (don't even attempt to visualize this), and rocking a bit.

Failing in the Witty Entrance Department, I asked if she was ok.

Major fail.

Apparently it was an interesting procedure, in which they did things that shall not be described nor repeated in polite (or otherwise) society.  And then the aftershocks started.  She was sitting there with what is referred to as an emesis basin but we regular folks call a puke bucket (in harvest gold).

She was making very good use of said basin, emesis-ing like a pro.  Unfortunately with each surge of activity from the north, there was a corresponding blast from the south.  The prep was still making her a man!  If we could only bottle that stuff, we would end our dependence on foreign oil.  And local oil.

And if we could have rocked her manually, we would have the most interesting and complex musical instrument Simon Cowell had never seen.

The problem, at the moment, was trying to decide what to do with myself.  It was apparent that I could not be of any assistance.  I was vacillating between making myself invisible, yelling SOMEBODY GET ME A DOCTOR, and laughing hysterically.  I wisely chose invisibility (saving the hysterical laughter for the blog post I was already composing in my head).

SMALL PRINT

If you are to have any sort of procedure involving tubes and orifices, it will not go this way (at least in terms of gas, emesis and pain).  You will absolutely fall victim to the hospital and its staff but that's as it should be.

You should be screened for All This Stuff<tm> when you reach a certain age or show symptoms.