This Ain’t No CNN.

You know, I really should thank Donald Trump. Now, mind you I can’t still bring myself to put the words “President” and “Trump” together in a sentence and I will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. If in his presence I would never call him “Mr. President”. I’m not sure I wouldn’t spit on him, but I really should thank the man before I do so.

During the Obama years things felt fairly comfortable. The country seemed to be moving in a forward direction. Sick people were getting taken care of, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Marriage was available to all. Though we weren’t putting a great deal of money into the Space Program, I felt like we might be able to obtain that Star Trek existence after all.

But then Donald Trump was elected into office due to sheer idiocy on all sides of the equation and all hell has broken loose. And since that day after Election Day, when I took time off from work and drove down to New York to protest with others in front of Trump Tower, I have had a fire in my belly like I haven’t felt since the days of ACT-UP back when I lived in Boston in the late 1980s.

In the seemingly endless nearly eight months since Trump was sworn into office we’ve seen countless displays of sheer stupidity coming out of Washington. Sheer stupidity fueled by evil intentions. Efforts to repress any sort of minority that doesn’t meet the criteria laid out of who is a true American as defined by a bunch of old white men currently holding office in Washington, D.C. The United States is better than the people’s representation today and I have to thank Donald Trump for showing me that I had become apathetic. His buffoonery and horrible leadership has demonstrated that the progress I saw during President Obama’s administration was only on the surface and that the racism, homophobia and other detrimental qualities of this country still run deep.

So thank you, Donald Trump. I no longer tolerate people that support you. I no longer just grimace and stay silent if someone makes a racist joke in my presence. I am ready, willing and able to boycott whatever company supports your outdated, harmful and hateful policies. As of this writing, I’ve got my eye on these companies: Campbell’s Soup, Pepsi and Dell. 

I also have to thank you, Donald Trump, for continually reminding us about Hillary Clinton and the obviously strong impact she made on your psyche. When I see, hear, or think of Hillary Clinton, I am reminded that there are good people out there. Not all politicians are as deplorable as you are. So, please, by all means, keep bringing her name up.

Keep reminding us who won the popular vote. We all know who should have really been President of the United States. And it wasn’t the Nazi that ran as a publicity stunt.

My husband is taking the moving van back to Central New York today. He’ll be home tomorrow. I said to him, “please hurry back so we’re together for the nuclear war.”

I never thought I’d be saying something like this in the 21st century, but then again, I never thought the populace would be so stupid as to elect a dyed-orange buffoon into the Oval Office either, so what do I know.

More of us should be like Samantha Bee. Speak out, don’t mince words and call the farce and chaos for what it is.

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• Planned Parenthood. In October 2016, Planned Parenthood turned 100 years strong. Planned Parenthood was founded on the revolutionary idea that women should have the information and care they need to live strong, healthy lives and fulfill their dreams — no ceilings, no limits.

So I stumbled upon this article by a woman who touts herself as The Food Babe. An avid blogger and touter of all things holistic and natural, the Food Babe apparently tells the world what’s wrong with your food, air and such and strives to educate the world on ways to living a healthier life.

That’s all well and good, except this article tells me that she’s full of crap. Scouting around on the internet indicates that others share the same belief.

If you read the first article I linked to, you’ll see that “The Food Babe” offers tips for a better flight on your favorite airline. Now, even though I am a pilot I must admit that I have never flown an airliner. However, I do know several appropriately related pilots and in my many hours of instruction, as well as my many hours of flight training, there are some things that I’d like to point out showing why The Food Babe is nuts.

From the article:

When your body is in the air, at a seriously high altitude, your body under goes some serious pressure. Just think about it – Airplanes thrive in places we don’t. You are traveling in a pressurized cabin, and when your body is pressurized, it gets really compressed!

Um, not quite. While the pressure in the cabin of an airplane is probably not the same as what you’re used to back home, the purpose of pressurizing the cabin is to make your body as comfortable as it would be at around six or eight-thousand feet above sea level. Even though the airplane is cruising along anywhere as high as 41,000 feet or so, your body still thinks it’s at the aforementioned six or eight-thousand feet. You’re not being vacuumed sealed into the airplane. You’re not a sardine. Yes, it’s different, but you’re not being shrunk, sealed or squeezed any differently than if you were to go hiking in the Rockies. If you feel like a sardine it’s because of the size of your seat, not because you’re packed in for freshness.

The air you are breathing on an airplane is recycled from directly outside of your window. That means you are breathing everything that the airplanes gives off and is flying through. The air that is pumped in isn’t pure oxygen either, it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50%. To pump a greater amount of oxygen in costs money in terms of fuel and the airlines know this! The nitrogen may affect the times and dosages of medications, make you feel bloated and cause your ankles and joints swell.

The air you are breathing on an airplane is the same exact air that you’re breathing on the ground, it’s just getting to you differently. The way The Food Babe words this paragraph, you’d think that there’s a huge net hanging off the back of each engine scooping up air and pumping it into the cabin, but that’s not quite how it works. For more information on how the environment is maintained on an airliner, take a look at this blog entry over at Ask The Pilot. And don’t worry, you’re not getting dosed with anything from the “chemtrails” (don’t even get me started on that).

Choose a seat as close to the front as possible. Pilots control the amount of airflow and it is is always better in their cabin.

I have no idea what this woman means by this. As a pilot that often flies a Piper Cherokee I can tell you that we have air vents around us just like you do in an automobile. I can also tell you that your standard run of the mill Boeing or Airbus airliner probably has the same thing. If you need air, use the twisty thing above your head and enjoy the breeze, it’s probably coming from the same place as the air vents in the cockpit. And if the pilot is sitting in the cabin, they’re not flying. Flight deck or cockpit, you choose.

One of the most disappointing things about the Internet is that it’s easy for anyone to write up they’re own version of the truth and sell it to the masses, which seem all too eager to lap it up and take it as the Gospel. Coupling this with the trend toward eschewing common sense and you end up with a whole bunch of malarky out there.

Take everything with a grain of salt.

Crystal O’Connor, owner of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, was the first to step forward and announce that they’re not serving gays at their restaurant, but only if a gay couple wants them to provide catering for their wedding. It’s perfectly fine for a gay couple to come in and dine in their establishment.

Predictably, the Facebook page and Yelp profile of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana are both getting trashed, and not in a “I drank too many beers” kind of way. There’s also stories of the Memories Pizza website being hacked and reimagined with images of gay men in various states of undress accompanied by penis shaped pizzas, but it turns out that website address was registered today, so that doesn’t count.

I have just two comments: Ms. O’Connor doesn’t seem to be the brightest bulb in the chandelier as I don’t know how she thought this would bring any positive attention to her establishment but more importantly, what self-respecting couple, gay or straight, would ask a pizza joint to cater their wedding?

Adirondack Central School District has decided to implement “Incentive Raffles” for students taking state mandated exams. ACSD is about 30 miles from us.

Students are entered into a raffle if they attend school all three days of standardized testing. If they take the tests they are suppose to take, they get entered into the drawing. If they get good grades, they are entered into a drawing and if they show improvement when compared to last year’s performance, they are entered into drawing. Prizes include gift cards to Subway, iTunes, Google Play and the like.

As mentioned in the newspaper opinion piece linked above, the school is essentially bribing their students to participate in the standardized exams. I have no children in any school district, so I don’t really have a vested interest in this, but I can’t help but think that bribing students with prizes simply to take a group of tests can’t be a good thing for the public in general.

When I was in school (I graduated 29 years ago) we had standardized testing as well. In elementary school we took the “Iowa Tests”. There are only two things that I remember as being remarkable about the Iowas: it was the first time we colored in the dots on a scan sheet for scoring purposes and when we got to the end of the section for our grade, there was a very accurate STOP sign graphic signaling where the test ended. I didn’t feel emotionally scarred by having to take a standardized test. I don’t remember it phasing me in any way; it’s what we had to do.

As an adult do I agree with standardized testing? Absolutely not. I think the whole Common Core program and the endless barrage of scripts and mandates and the like are ludicrous but then again, I think that the thought that EVERY student that graduates from high school is automatically going to go to college is idiotic as well. Not every person is wired to go to college. The latest approaches to education in The Empire State focus too much on trying to make every student fit into the same ideal. There’s no room for creativity, on the behalf of the teacher nor the student. Follow the script, take the test, move on. I really am against standardized testing.

But this is the direction that our education system is headed today, just like when they got rid of “Algebra”, “Geometry” and “Trigonometry” when I became a freshman in high school and they replaced it “Course 1”, “Course 2”, and “Course 3”. Did I have an interest in every subject I had to take? No. I couldn’t care less about “Afro-American” (a Social Studies course) but I still took the course, for the most part did what was expected of me and got through it. The “bribe” in all of this was my success. I did what I had to do to succeed. This should be the rewards. Not game store cards, not iTunes cards and certainly not food. Is the school going to give them a biscuit when they sit on command?

In a society that seemingly gives child a reward for remembering to breathe and refraining from not soiling their pants in the middle of a restaurant (and if they do poop, they still get a reward, because, well, just because), how are students going to cope with life once they’re outside of their little world full of bribes, goodies and prizes for routine, mundane activities?

Yes, I think this whole standardized testing thing is ridiculous, but Adirondack CSD is approaching this in completely the wrong way by having door prize raffles simply for attending what should be a required activity. Example #71823 why I think the world has completely lost its collective mind.