Things I Wondered About A lot of things I wonder about are very minor so really shouldn’t, but it’s mainly curiosity on my part. A lot of newspapers in the nineteenth century had the name Picayune in their title and I wondered why until I found the answer. Today we know Picayune means petty or worthless according to the dictionary but most of us don’t know that it also means a small coin of little value. That’s why the old newspapers used it in the title of their paper because they were stressing the fact the paper was very cheap to buy. In truth, I wonder about anything I don’t fully understand. I wonder who came up with some of those terrible names for towns we see across America? There are so many of these names it is almost like these people were working in concert. How would you like to live in Dismal, Tennessee or Peculiar Missouri? What about the town which sounds like somebody picking their nose, Boogertown, North Carolina? One town in Colorado must’ve had a population that didn’t agree on a name, so they named the town No Name. I guess that was better than Hooker, Oklahoma. If I were you, I’d stay away from Peculiar, Missouri or Hell, Michigan. To all the folks living in these places I’m only kidding. I would like to know how George Orwell’s depiction of the future is coming true? Was the man really a prophet when he said there would be no privacy. He said they would be much more government control and he was also right on that point. In 1984 George Orwell wrote, “every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered.” Is this starting to sound familiar? We are not quite there yet, but we certainly started on the trip. I wonder why scientists feel they have to keep building bigger and bigger colliders? Those are the machines which need tunnels sometimes over 20 miles long which run in a circle in order to speed up particles so they can be smashed together. I can’t help but think it has become a prestige thing. Hey your atom smasher is only 20 miles around and mine is twenty-three. Some scientists are starting to revolt on a suggestion a new one should be built which is even bigger than the proposed Chinese collider which has a proposed diameter far more than 20 miles, which means it will be far larger than the Large Hadron Collider. I have to wonder why some people are so officious when dealing with the public? It is very frustrating to deal with someone when they refuse to listen to your complaint and say it is impossible that such and such happened. It is particularly frustrating when it has to do with a computer complaint such as when an ATM makes a mistake and you are told an ATM wouldn’t do that. I wonder why when large groups of people get together, such as a jury panel, the group is only a smart as the dumbest person. No, they can’t all get on one elevator, when there is fifty people in the pane the jurors are selected from, but they will try if not stopped. Why is it Hollywood insists on remaking movies which are nowhere near as good as the originals? Is it because they think today’s generation never saw the original anyway so they can get away with an inferior product? When you have a movie like Ben-Hur which was made in 1959 which was so good, why would anybody think they could equal it? It was remade in 2016 and in the words of the Seattle Times was an epic failure. The same was true for Ghostbusters, Robocop, the Karate Kid, and so many other films. You have to wonder where our consciousness comes from. We thought it was something in our brains and then we found out just recently, probably not. This was found out when people went to doctors and it was found they physically had little or no brain and yet they were of average intelligence. One man just had a little piece of tissue at the top of his spine and his whole cranium was empty. I have to wonder where the end of the universe really is. Just because we can only see about 13,500,000,000 years back in time doesn’t mean that is the edge. Yes, we are seeing light from those years finally reaching our telescopes. One has to wonder if the universe is infinite or as Einstein stated and if you had enough time and went straight ahead, he said you would eventually land up in the same spot. What part does luck play in people getting ahead in life? Some people seem to have gotten ahead because of incredible luck while others despite their education and their intelligence were only able to get mediocre employment. Are far more people luckier than others? I also wonder how many people have gotten good positions only because they were related to people in power or they did a favor for people in power and this was their payback? Why is it some people are very uncomfortable talking about certain subjects? The subjects might include religion, personal information, sex, or education. It gets even worse if they have to stand in front of an audience and discuss these things. Did you ever wonder why candy was so expensive at the movies? Why are people paying double and triple for the same thing they could buy in the store? It is said the money made at the candy counter in a movie house is where the movie house really makes its profits, and in a way subsidizes the ticket prices. It is said if the candy counter didn’t exist movie tickets would be far more expensive. The average price of a large popcorn at the movies ranges from $8.10 to $9.09. I wonder about how the ancient people moved stones which they used in construction which weighed 60 to 100 tons or more? Some of the stones which were moved and piled on other stones we can’t even lift today with heavy machinery. In the same vein I wonder how the Coral Castle in Florida was built by one man using 60 ton blocks of coral and no machinery. I also wonder how he moved the whole thing in one night by himself? Maybe I wonder too much but I will say this, there sure is a lot to wonder about and every year that goes by there seems to be a lot more. I’d like to say at the conclusion of this article, I wonder what you are wondering about?
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