Musing of one thinking about the absent minded driver who pulled up to a four way STOP and sat there waiting for the STOP sign to turn green.

Long before the Heimlich manuever was invented, my mother came up with a similar manuever to rescue children. When I was a kid about half past three (as Johnny Mercer would put it) I was sitting in the swing on our front porch swinging as high as I could and sucking on a jawbreaker. For those who may not be familiar with it, a jawbreaker is a spherical piece of hard candy perhaps 3/4 of an inch or so in diameter. Inevitably I swallowed the wrong way and the jawbreaker blocked my airway. Mother who was maybe 5'5" tall was inside the house. She heard me choking, ran out, grabbed me by the heels, flipped me upside down and shook me so hard the jawbreaker popped out. It is amazing what mothers can do when there is a threat to their progeny.

Musing of one thinking about the man who got in an argument, lost his cool, and tried to regain it by stripping down to his shorts.

I live in Albuquerque, NM which has acquired a reputation as a place where the police go around shooting people.  Once a reputation is acquired it is difficult to live it down and it will take Albuquerque some years to live this down. 

And now for a known sequitur.  After getting an application for an absentee ballot, I began to think about how candidates acquire votes.  There is a variety of reasons among which are reputation, party line voting, and votes acquired by super salesmanship.  In the last case the candidate is usually so persuasive that people decide to vote for him/her regardless.  So elections turn out to be a kind of lottery.

Not directly related, my mother's method of betting was somewhat similar.  When Mary Kay and I lived in San Diego, she came for a visit and we took her to Tijuana to the Jai Alai games. While waiting for the game to begin she was looking at the players standing around and she said, "Number such and such is cute. I think I will bet on him."  And so that is what she did throughout the games. Oddly enough she did very well.  So I guess we will call it Nana's Principle, so much for scientific analysis.