The above scene from the movie Contact, starring Jodie Foster, is my favorite of all time for what it symbolizes about Life. No one truly prepares for all that (s)he encounters. We prepare for a baseline in Life, but not for the individual encounters.
In the movie clip, Jodie Foster has prepared all of her life for what might come her way in the form of planetary science. She even made the arrays ready to receive signals from other life in space. She thought she was ready, but it proved to be a confluence of failures for her even though eventually she was very satisfied. She prepared all of her life for the one moment she thought she was prepared to hear. When it came, she swung into immediate action as she trained herself to do. Then everything changed on her. Numerous unexpected events tested her mettle in ways she had not prepared for even though the initial event happened according to her plan.
This clip captures the moments her entire life was centered around and prepared for. It is the moment her life changes in very unexpected ways, none of them to her liking. Eventually, all those changes worked out for her, but only after a whirlwind of unplanned situations.
I have supremely prepared for the encounters I wanted to happen in Life. I've had more than a few of those eye-opening moments when I swung into action according to my plan. But then...
Over the course of the next two years, until the end of 2017, more and more developments will happen to indelibly change the status quo from the world of print and reading to the world of the visual arts and graphic presentation. The digitization of the world around us and the world outside of our own has fundamentally changed the way people think. It is painful to see people try to read anymore. It is also becoming slower in its development in children because the world they live in develops their brain connections (synapses) around entirely new stimuli. The following two app developments for phones serve as sterling examples of things to follow fast and furiously.
MasterCard today announced a pilot for a new way to "sign" a charge to their cards. According to a poll MasterCard had conducted, 83% of Millennials use their phones to purchase online. So, now there is an app to take a selfie, by simply blinking into your phone's camera. That verifies your purchase, and the picture is translated into 1s and 0s and sent as your code to complete the purchase. What a masterful approach! Note there are no typed passwords using this method.
Also an advertising campaign started today on TV to download the app called LetGo. A person simply snaps a picture, sends it to the LetGo app and it is immediately put on the LetGo network for people to buy. People can sell their own pictures now instantly. What a fantastic innovation in entrepreneurship! Note the need for picture production is greater than the need to write an ad to sell anymore.
Over the next two years, smart educators will make writing code a part of their math curriculum rather than their optional technology curriculum. Algorithms and programming for digitization of everything will absolutely take over what is going to be produced in this world. And because the realm of the visual presentation will assuredly replace the fading need to store and transmit the alphabet, these same smart educators will make video storyboards and video transmission a part of their English curriculum rather than their 6th grade, 5-hour introduction in technology.
I'm here tonight on my patio watching the sun disappear below the horizon and the skies gradually change from bright blue to dark blue to gray to star-lit black. Gazing at the transformation is not mystical. It happens everyday in the same way. But, it is thought-provoking.
Watching the change allows me to ponder the type of day it was as it disappears. Was it a productive day? Did I accomplish something of note today? Did I make the day work in my favor? Was someone else better today because I was in their day?
It also reminds me of the process of the daily phenomenon that is so much larger than I am. A planet turns on its axis in the middle of nowhere in space as it rotates around the sun and spins away from the sun so that it faces only the darkness and coldness of nothingness. I am but a speck on the planet peering out into the vastness.
On one hand, my life is meaningful because it makes a difference to me how I live. On the other hand, my life is completely swallowed and overshadowed by the insignificance of life on one planet among hundreds of billions of them. It's good for me to contemplate both the importance and insignificance together I think. That perspective keeps me from arrogance, but allows me to make a mark in the world in some manner or another.
A psychological study done about 3 years ago reported that if someone (speaker A) stands or sits in a position similar to the person one is talking to, then the other conversant (speaker B) is more likely to identify with the speaker A. That is an important principle for those in sales.
In addition, if speaker A were to use a couple of the same words carrying the main idea of the topic (content words), then the identification of speaker B with speaker A was formed. The measure of both words and body position gave an enhanced strength of identification.
A common saying in English is that flattery will get you nowhere. But, a subtle form of flattery seemingly gets a person places. Even if one is not trying to sell someone on some product or idea, showing solidarity with someone else is appreciated. A number of sociolinguistic studies have been conducted to explore the idea of identification. People identify with others using a variety of methods with speech. The father of sociolinguistics, William Labov, conducted one of the first studies showing that the presence of final "r" or lack of final "r" in words like park, car, and floor was connected to social status (which is linked to solidarity). The Milroys in Dublin, Ireland, two decades later showed the strength of the solidarity in speech with the idea of covertly using slang forms when working with others of the same status even if a person didn't speak that way at home. Other studies with populations from other countries are numerous.
One of the traits of the so-called woman's intuition is to somehow know when people are connected or not. But, showing loyalty or bondedness is part of the socialization process for girls as they learn to converse with each other as teenagers.
Call it socialization, covert solidarity, or (non)prestige status, the result is the same whenever it is studied. I know I've had "better luck" with people when I follow the suggested features for identification with someone.
And what would happen if I applied this principle to software in advertising? Watch below.
I was eating a barbeque place for lunch the other day. I was by myself, so I sat by a monitor on the wall to watch the NFL channel. About five tables away three men were engaged in a conversation they were really enjoying. They were telling stories about the people they worked with.
I like to hear samples of conversations because it reveals a lot about the individuals engaged in those conversations. One of the really noticeable, very predictable behaviors of language is that it follows one of the world's oldest observations: familiarity breeds contempt. A number of societies have seen this to be true, even making it into Aesop's fables, The Lion and the Fox. Shakespeare uses it in The Merry Wives. Mark Twain is famous for saying it and adding "children" to the quote. Latin works have it. It's a time-tested saying.
So the men "talked up a storm" we might say. What about others in the restaurant who were eating around me. Well, it was almost 2:00 in the afternoon, so there were not many people in the place. However, after I had been there about 15 minutes, two couples came in separately. One was a couple in their mid-20s it appeared, the other a couple in their mid-60s.
If I follow the line of thought used in the age-old observation, the younger couple would have not been together long enough to have contempt for each other. But, the older couple would show contempt. As I listened to the younger couple's snippets that were loud enough to hear, I could hear laughter, animated stories, a number of questions, a lot of short answers, but very little silence. The older couple came in sat down, began eating, looked around at the empty tables, watched TV, but did not talk to each other. In the 25 minutes they were there, they spoke twice to each other, that I was aware of, and then only a one turn exchange.
I see this pattern again and again. It's an amazing pattern. The very reason conversation exists is to share and ask for information. When a person gets to the point that the reason for conversation's existence is not enough, then (s)he should not waste another person's time. (S)He should exit before the point of contempt. Society has a lot of people wasting others' time. I would rather be around people I want to share with or want to ask questions of. I can be by myself the other times.
I caught up with a friend last week that I had gone to school with starting in 6th grade. We have known each other for a very long time, but we haven't kept in touch through the years. We were on the same football team when we were 11 years old, in school together during junior high and on the football team there too. When we went to high school we began to travel in different circles, and we branched out from our junior high spheres, becoming involved in different activities and with the friends of those activities. But certainly we still passed in the halls and had a few classes together.
After high school I didn't see him again. Many years passed and our lives took us to places very far from our hometowns, so the intersection of our paths didn't happen again until last week. We spent about an hour rehashing our journeys. I never would have guessed where his journey took him. I was really surprised he had landed in the banking business and eventually training bank managers for one of the largest banks in the country. Coming out of high school I would never have figured that for him because he was a rather reserved guy with good grades, slightly better than average, and had very conservative values. He mentioned that he would never have guessed my journey either.
We had a calm, interesting conversation because that's what old friends do. The two of you go so far back, you knew the other before he was impressive to everyone else. You don't tell your journey to impress, he knew you back at your roots. So, you might not want to exaggerate your story in any way. When you have one of these conversations, there are two trademarks for them. A sense of calm or ease pervades your words, and an element of genuine interest in the other person's events lightens the spirit. I had a conversation with a high school friend and teammate earlier this month, and the same two trademarks surfaced.
Old friends do a heart good in this world of deceit, ambition, and ego-centrism.
The thing about a supermoon is that it is enlarged enough for a person to imagine what it would be like to live there. That's about to be a reality since NASA has decided to tell the world that they have found water on Mars. They have known this for quite some time, but I am glad that they have decided to release the news.
Of course there is the group that believes the secret military of this country already has colonized both the moon and Mars, but for the rest of us who don't get to see much evidence of living on an extraterrestrial body, the supermoon represents the awe and wonder of space travel and space living. It's a good thing that the possibilities are opening up since our world will be at 7 million occupants in the not-so-distant future. Food and water will be at a premium.
I will probably not live long enough to do any space living or traveling, but I wish I could sit in a spaceship soaking in the splendor of looking back at Earth, anticipating the trip to the new planet, and gazing at the majesty of its first glimpse as it would draw closer to our landing. I would love the feeling of being some of the first to ever do this and that a crowd would probably follow. I am just a trailblazer at heart.
I am always amazed at how people respond to symbols and traditions. They are two sides of the same coin. They both represent the values people have. People forget the two are not the values themselves. Flags and flowers are the usual examples given. A flag is not the same as the country. It stands for the country. Flowers are not the same as a person's loving actions. They stand for loving actions.
A really good other example is the language people speak. When that first happened, there was no writing. That was invented later. Language was just language in the beginning. But, at some point people invented symbols for language so that they could store the language and transmit it to others. Thus, people in civilization centers around the globe invented symbols for the languages they spoke. Some invented letters for separate sounds, such as t and d and n to show where the tip of the tongue is placed and whether one wanted to use the vocal cords, use air only, or use the nasal passage. Others made symbols for ideas. Still others would put sounds together and show a word by circling it with an oval. These inventions were not the languages themselves, but representations of the language.
I have a friend who puts pictures from a website called Traces of Texas on his Facebook. The site contains many, many pictures of Texas during the period of the 1930s and 1940s. He is a nostalgic friend and muses about the good values of the early days of his life. So, he puts symbols up for the values he cherished that are different from today. Since the values today are so different, he gets stuck in a time warp and responds to symbols from the past.
I have another friend who is really caught up in the idea of family. It's really a facade, however, because the family she came from and the family she raised are dysfunctional, more than average. So, she has adopted the symbols for family - pictures of everyone, singly and in groups, on walls all around her house - to help her realize the ideals that family represent.
Don't get me wrong. I like the occasional symbol. They can be very meaningful. But, as a way of life, I want to deal in the real events, real values, real relationships, and real jobs.
I grew up in a humble little home many years ago. I was taught that religion and education made the world a better place. I supposedly needed copious amounts of both in my life to be successful and moral.
Now I find myself in a world where religious people fight among themselves and denigrate those outside their beliefs. I hear people who go to church saying the most awful things about the people they work with and religion and democracy often get confused. I look around at the successful people and see truck drivers with little education making $150,000 a year, plumbers charging $80 an hour and earning $40 of that for themselves. I get my hair done by a stylist who brings home more than most people with college degrees. A felon I know makes 80K running a landscape business, and an illegal immigrant I know runs his own pool service business that employs others and provides for the families of the two brothers who own it.
It's a little hard to believe anymore in what I needed copious amounts of to be successful and moral. So, I have retreated into a different view of things in lieu of the puzzle that life presents for making sense of one's experience. This new world consists of doing good for the ones who need it, loving the events that each moment presents, and following my heart in matters of sharing love. I find this yields a much, much more satisfying life. Val's art diary is a good visual for my current state of affairs.
Recently ? has been in the news. Here is a case of one of my favorite principles in life. "When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade." Watch below.
So, Ahmed spent a little time in jail. I would like to have recorded what went through his mind those first 30 minutes in jail. Maybe he thought about prejudice against his nationality. His father certainly did in an interview about the arrest. Maybe he thought about how life was tougher than he bargained for and he would give up making things. Maybe he was bitter at the school, especially his English teacher who turned him in, and thought that he wouldn't be able to finish school and accomplish his dreams. Maybe.
All of us are handed such circumstances in life. And we can't see past the dimension of momentary time walls to the next move in Life's game called "our lives." But we can make lemonade from the lemons if we will have patience to let things develop on their own. If left to his own and his family's logic, a discrimination lawsuit would have been filed, publicity about national bias against Islam would have ensued. Ahmed would have served a suspension from the Irving school district. People would have taken sides. All of that was in the works. Instead, what happened was that the white house offered him to visit the president. MIT offered him a scholarship. Twitter and Microsoft both reached out to him. And soon he will enroll in a technology-oriented school where he can further his interests.
That's beautiful, isn't it? With a little patience and time, our paths turn from being sprinkled with lemon juice to being mixed with a little sugar and water. The transformation is amazing.
I used to hear the expression, "You can't just make something out of thin air." I knew that saying would disappear once holographics came on the scene. Already it is a saying that young people don't use because they're the virtual generation. Air is not a dimension of separation for them. Their world is seamless between reality and virtual reality.
But, I'm not going to have to wait for the holographic realm. Something else has been invented. It's in the real world, not the virtual, but it allows you to make something from thin air. Watch the video below.
I know a really artistic girl who would enjoy this invention. It would help her go to the next level that paper can't take her to. It would allow her and her generation to imagine things AND draw them to make them come alive. I look forward to the time when she and others become adults and put their ideas into place in a society where reality can come from thin air.
I saw a Facebook post of a photograph of a someone's second grader's homework. On the line for the name the child had written her name "Alyssa." The name was in cursive handwriting. The teacher had written a comment by the child's name, "Do not write in cursive. I have already warned you twice about this."
This is really unusual, but it illustrates where literacy is headed. Reading and writing are definitely on their way out the door. Even in traditional circles at least one person is thinking that printing is the only legitimate kind of handwriting. That could just be the effect of the computer on a generation of young people, but I see it as a signal that even the traditionalists are moving toward a different definition of literacy. Cursive handwriting has effectively been greatly diminished in use for a decade now. One teacher is waging a campaign to keep it that way.
But in the larger picture, printing is on the way out too. A recent Reuters News Agency ad in a Google banner read, "Read less, know more." Included in the ad was a video of a news story. The dots have been put in place over the last 9 years since the advent of the iphone. Now the dots are being connected. It's amazing to me that people continue to want literacy to be writing/reading-based rather than opting to embrace what is on the horizon now and soon to be mainstream.
I promised myself I would chart this change from 2007 to 2017. I have, but it's hard to see so many unbelievers. Well, one day...
I would have thought that one of the parts of given to Meryl Streep in Ricki and the Flash was an error on the part of the script writer if I hadn't seen it for myself. Streep's character is one of a divorcee who has not lived with her children. Apparently, the children had sided with their father in the divorce. Nothing was ever explicitly stated, but one gets the idea that Ricki (Streep) had not been stable or present enough in the kids' lives for them to respect her.
During the course of the movie her adult children definitely didn't want her to be a part of their lives. The script writer here doesn't show a callousness in Ricki's character but a willingness to support her children with the awareness that they didn't want her around. That's reality in the case of many broken marriages. That part of the story is plausible.
But, without reason, there is a scene in which Ricki's boyfriend from the band she plays in tries to encourage her to go to her grown son's wedding. She had actually been invited. But she was going to miss it since she was aware of the son's animosity toward her. So her boyfriend goads her to go, saying, "It doesn't matter if they don't love you. It's not their job to love you. It's your job to love them," (1:44-1:48).
My first reaction to that line was one of artificiality. What parent doesn't know that? Children are fickle. Anyone who has raised teenagers knows this. Anyone who has raised a child to age 25 knows how egocentric he or she is. It's no mystery you have to love your kids through certain stages before they achieve an adult understanding of life. I thought the script writer had made a glaring error in his writing.
But, I have seen this first hand in at least three different women. They bore resentments toward their daughters in their cases. They castigated them, put them off, and treated them horridly saying that their children didn't show them the proper love and respect. They didn't know it was their job to love their children, rather than waiting for their adult children to show them the respect they thought they deserved. It's not pretty, but it is reality. I appreciated the script writer for showing how real the situation was and for having a character try to coax a selfish mother into a better way of thinking. Kudos for the psychological fight for good this writer built into his movie. He was trying to rid his viewers of an evil among us.
Meryl Streep puts in another very good performance. The movie is not a complex movie of weaving the lives of many characters to form a mosaic like her movie August:Osage County, nor does she depict a character that spans a number of years to show dynamic change in a person's life like Sophie's Choice and The Devil Wears Prada. However, she delivers in a movie that shows the strength of a static character, a mom who is needed to help her daughter in a particular situation.
She depicts a divorcee who has found her own truth in life apart from what her wealthy husband could live with. Her interaction with each of the story's characters, mainly her biological children, shows the trials she has to face as an "outsider" to her own children. Her children have had a hard time accepting their mother's life and dreams, so they portray their disdain for her during the entire movie except at the very end.
It is this part of the story that carries the clear and poingnant message of the movie. In the trailer above,that message is found at 2:12-2:18. She is at her son's wedding in the midst of a very wealthy crowd. She lives a rather hand to mouth lifestyle, so she knows she can't participate to any monetary level worthy of this crowd. So, she takes her participation in the wedding to an arena the others can't participate in. She gracefully says, "I have never been a traditional mother. But I am a musician. And I'd like to give all I have to you."
It is that last comment, "And I'd like to give all I have to you," that moves me. I am motivated to be that gracious and giving to those I have in my circle of contact every day. Years of practicing music made Meryl Streep very good at music. That is what she had to offer, so she offered it. I hope those around me see me constantly doing the same.
An acquaintance put a post on her Facebook today encouraging teachers to "fight the good fight." By that she meant to keep fighting for literacy. She included a link to a Mississippi newspaper article talking about a literacy program that had helped literacy test scores in that state.
I'm all for literacy, but my definition of that term is very different from anything that would show up on a test score. The acquaintance went on to say that she knew that cursive writing, sentence structure, and diagramming "had gone by the wayside." It's good she noticed that they've been gone for a while now.
Newsflash! Those three things are not returning. They're gone into infinity. Fight that fight all you want to. Literacy has changed direction and meaning. It's just one more sign for those who want to remain in denial that even the die-hards like my acquaintance are noticing that reading and writing are about to hit a hiatus. I'm serious. They will be pretty much gone by the end of 2017.
The commercial on the radio today pretty much sums up where young people's heads are these days. There's a new app out for your phone. It connects everything you do on your phone to a screen in your car so that you can do everything "hands-free". Texting is done by voice command. Touching icons for app activation is a thing of the past. Icons are voice activated too. Search is by voice command. Call directory is by voice command. And more. All via bluetooth to a screen in your car.
Yep. Writing is pretty much out the window, down the toilet, and otherwise gone with the wind with this new app. Mississippi better start preparing students in a different way or it will really be a sinkhole of a state to grow up in. That would be true for any state that tests reading and writing literacy skills. I'm thinking that video and voice presentation has more than adequately shown it is the new literacy. It's past time to swallow that pill.
It's hard to say sometimes how much of a person's behavior is due to personality given by genetics, and to conditioning of our training given by others, and to experience given to us through life's situations. From observing people I have known a long time, I can see the merit of the saying, "You can't change the stripes on a zebra." Genetics play a large part of our behavior. But the idea that "clothes make the man" lends itself to the environment and its influence on our behavior. And, Janet Fitch's words, "The phoenix must burn to emerge," cannot be counted out of any formula for dealing with people.
Psychologists have been working for years on what shapes a person's behavior. Studies include changes in behavior due to hormones and medication, changes in one's environment, manipulating routines, and changes to one's preferences in established routines. Still there are no definitive answers.Since the science of the mind can't really produce the ultimate answer on why people act the way the do, I don't mull that question too much.
Personality to me drives behavior, so understanding personality is the path to enlightenment on this issue. But personality is a tricky thing. It has facets to it. It seems to be related to genetic makeup more than any other factor. In a lot of cases, knowing the pattern of the stripes on one side of the zebra allows for one to predict what the other sides of the zebra look like. Personality is not divided into four quadrants showing primary and secondary traits as major companies have presented this idea. Personality has a blend of traits that react to all kinds of circumstances, even to elements in a circumstance that may seem minor to an onlooker. The trigger that activates anger in one setting is allowed to pass without reaction in a different setting by the same person. Why?
One way to find out is by analyzing the words people use. Words can serve as the windows to see into the mind. Patterns develop with words that indicate the patterns developing in the mind. That allows one to see behaviors such as lying, risk, preoccupation, depression, nurturing, and love. To a great extent, patterning the words of someone, reveals the patterning of a person's mind. So, knowing how to listen is a real virtue these days.
Where was I? I stood at the front door. They were made of heavy metal and locked from the inside. 20 feet glass panels were on either side of the doors. Through the doors I could see students eating at cafeteria tables. They could also see me, but no one moved an inch to allow me to enter. Faculty members with badges on lanyards around their necks also walked past the door. I punched a button on the wall next to the door, and answered the voice that asked me what my business was. Click. The door had been remotely unlocked.
I walked past the students eating lunch to a reception area, showed them my ID, received a lapel guest sticker for my shirt pocket and waited for my party to show up. I accompanied him to a classroom but had to change buildings on the way. The doors behind us in the first building shut, and I heard the click again of the door locking. Across a courtyard we had to enter the second building. My friend whipped out his ID badge and tapped the scanner to show that we were authorized to enter.
We went to his office, unlocked the door for him to get a piece of paper he needed, then departed the building for his car, the door to the building locking behind us. We left in his car from his designated parking spot, stopped at a gate that he opened with a remote opener, and left for about an hour to eat lunch.
Upon returning, we went through the gate using the remote opener again, parked in the designated spot, tapped the scanner with the ID badge to reenter, then walked to his second story classroom. I visited the bathroom on the way. I opened the bathroom door, entered, and the door clicked lock behind me. It had all the automatic amenities - flushing toilet, water spout motion sensor, automatic towel dispenser, and something I had never seen before... but why not in this building. To dispose of the towel, I had to wave it in front of the disposal receptacle so that its cover automatically opened for me to deposit my used paper towel and automatically shut after the towel was dropped in.
I joined my friend in his room and sat in front of the newest version of a smart board which was the focal point on the wall at the front of room. He and I visited, then left, but not without scanning our way through locked doors of two buildings, retracing our steps to the receiving desk where I had started my visit in order to check out, then leaving the building, the door clicking behind me to lock it remotely.
Where in the world was I? One would think that I was visiting my friend in a high security prison. But no - it was just a good ole American high school. It was renovated and parts of it newly built, but it was certainly a state-of-the-art, extremely high tech building. I was informed that next school year the cafeteria was going to be converted into a technology court that would replace the library.
Easily this school could have been used in a science fiction movie for a future school. I plan on returning to see this futuristic library next year. I don't know that it is the most 21st century school in the country, but it might be. For sure, it is one of the 3 safest places I have ever visited.
From time to time I get to see people after a hiatus of several years. It's always interesting to catch up and see what has happened, how things were dealt with, and what the outcomes have been.
I ate lunch with a friend today that I have known since I was in 7th grade. We have periodically kept in touch, so we don't have to catch up in ten year leaps, but it has been interesting to see how things have turned out for him after all these many years. In the last two years his two children have both married, so he had to spend a whole lot more time with his ex-wife than was bearable at times. Over the last 12 years he returned to what he wanted to do in life the most - coach basketball at the high school level. And before that he owned several businesses after starting out from college as a banker.
One of his real talents is with investments. So, he has done well over the years dabbling with different entrepreneurial ventures and putting money in building value with various instruments. Most surprising to me, however, has been to watch his philosophy of life. In high school, I was raised in a more conservative home than he was. Over the years, he and I have switched places completely. Now, he has become really worried about society's values, and has opted personally for a devout religious life. My bent has been to liberalize most of my views and to opt for a more open religious life.
Nonetheless, we had a great time talking about everything under the sun, parting friends, and pledging to eat lunch again soon. These kinds of days are the way life should be rolling.
Gifts are always nice to get. It's the thought that someone cared enough to get you something that you didn't have that's nice. The object being given is also nice because it's symbolic in nature if nothing else, but many times it's something that is useful or that you desired to have. But then there's always that one gift that has a special quality - it multiplies itself. It delights you when it is first given, but then you are able to use it again and again, in many instances for to help other people.
I was given a gift several decades ago, and it was something I had desired and worked for. It blended with my personality, and lo and behold, here several decades later it still is giving me the thing that enchanted me about it in the first place. I can see that it will give me quality of life until I die, so I am forever grateful for having it. From time to time, I have seen others enjoy receiving the gift when I would regift it in a form useful to them, and I have been told by others who received it of benefits they have received.
I worked hard for the gift that keeps on giving and received it, but unwittingly didn't know it would be that way. It is my hope that everyone can receive the gift of their desires and in return, shower others in her/his sphere with its benefits. That's just how the world is made a better place.
Me: Thanks for the birthday wish. I feel the heat from it coming from your place. (My cousin lives in Arizona) [I'm thinking of temperatures between 112 and 121.]
Cuz: It's not as hot as you think. I don't live in the Phoenix area where they get hot temperatures. It's about 20 degrees cooler here. [She's thinking between 85 and 90 degrees.]
Me: 118-20=98. Even so, that's still hot. [I'm thinking upper 90s and low triple digits. I'm thinking her next remark will be to say OK, you're right.]
Cuz: OK. Maybe 30 degrees cooler. [118-30=88.]
I have been talking to other people for several decades now, and it seems like communication has never become easier. One would think...
