As I go through life, the depths of my ignorance never cease to amaze me.

For example—-as kids often do—mine will fight with each other on road trips…. As I try my best to keep them separated—I’ll often hear “Dad, MacKenzie is looking at me!!!”

I’ll reply with something like, “Looks don’t hurt—now keep quiet and let me drive!”

Well—turns out I was wrong. Really, really wrong.

Apparently—looks not only can hurt—they can destroy objects!

This story linked here says cosmologists believe “by observing dark energy the universe has been nudged closer to its death .”

It all gets rather complicated—and involves quantum mechanics and physics that require calculations too complicated for me to do on my fingers.

The bottom line is that we apparently are sucking the life out of the universe by using telescopes and such to observe things like dark matter.

As best as I can understand it—it’s kind of like water spilled on a counter top and a paper towel.

The spill stays there until we lay the paper towel on it. The water still exists—but it’s now sucked into the paper towel instead of being on the counter top.

The same thing is apparently happening in space when we look at objects. We suck up their photons—slowly draining them of their existance in their present state…

Now— the good news is that we’re not going to kill the universe tomorrow.

We’ve got a couple of YAZILLION epochs before it occurs.

(In case you’ve run out of fingers, that’s more than a milliondy-trilliondy-gazilliondy years)

So, we’ve got enough time left to accomplish what needs to be done in our lives.

In my case—that means finding a way to get the kids to ride quietly in the back of the van so I won’t miss that turn we were supposed to make 2 miles back….

—Steve

Pet peeves and other things that are the burr under the saddle of life…..

CONSERVATION CONUNDRUM

It seemed like it took years to get the kids to to flush the toilet each time they used the bathroom.. . I can’t count the numbers of times I found the toilets unflushed in the house… After what seemed like a dozen years of ranting—I finally got them to flush each time they used the facilities.

SUCCESS !

NOW comes the drought—and I’m still screaming at them.. This time—it’s to get them NOT to flush the toilet UNLESS it’s necessary. I can’t tell if it’s just habit that’s making them flush every time now—or that they’re at the age where they just want to be contrary.

In any case—my new age parenting friends say I’m probably setting up a severe sets of conflicts in their minds—and years from now—they’ll be sitting in a psychiatrists’ office trying work out the angst resulting from the FLUSH–NO-DON’T FLUSH messages they received as kids…

OH NO, YOU DIDN’T…

Here’s another one of those things that frosts my cupcakes…People citing the 1st Annual this or the 1st Annual that! It’s especially prevalent among my fellow broadcasters—many of whom OUGHT to know better !It can’t be annual UNTIL it’s happened more than once… the first time is the INAUGURAL !!

This is my 37th annual complaint about that particular mis-use of our language!

HEY, USE A KLEENEX, I DON’T WANNA CATCH YOUR FATNESS…

I always thought my middle-aged spread was my fault because I was eating too much and not exercising enough. Now—come to find out—I have no responsibility in this whatsoever. I have a DISEASE ! This study linked here cites research that indicates you can catch being fat!

Yep—the same virus that gives us pink-eye, diarrhea, and the common cold can make us uncommonly chubby they say..

So, if being fat is a disease—I’m ready to start treating it like one. I’ll begin by taking a sick day… “Hello Boss—I’m not coming in today. I’m felling a little fat.”

Of course—this fat virus creates a few new problems too.

How fat do you have to be to be considered sick? A pound overweight? Ten? And what if they come up with a vaccine? Do they not give you sick days if you come down with “fat-itis” after you’ve refused to get the anti-fat shot?

As the scientists say—this requires more research.

Let me get back to you after I’ve had a cup of coffee and a couple of slices of cake.

—Steve

Link here to the story Steve covered today on NBC-17

I love my kids. I really do. And most of the time I’m proud of them. But there are times, when I know something is amiss.

It usually begins with the phrase, “Hey Dad…..”

It’s called Spackle. And, they’re asking about it because they’re trying to cover up a hole the size of Pittsburgh. When you try and find out how this cavern was created, you usually get the response “I dunno,” or “It was there when I came home.”

At that point I figure it’s time to call Scoobie Doo–because the cartoon dog’s got about as much luck as I have in solving THAT mystery!

Usually uttered about 5:30 in the morning, when there’s about 30 seconds to go before the school bus comes, and while I’m still in deep REM sleep. The document that needs my attention is usually a report card, or important note from the teacher.

When you ask why your child waited till this late moment to hand you the paper, you get the famous, “I dunno.”

Yeah right.

Should we call Scoobie Doo again?

That “thing” is guaranteed to be a crash. A hard crash that leaves the computer completely and totally devoid of anything in its memory or hard drive.

It usually happens just before me or my wife need the computer for some very important, work related task.

When the child is asked what they were doing before the computer decided to become a very large and expensive paperweight, the response is something like, “Nothing… Just playing Webkins, listening to my I-Tunes, looking at Wikipedia, Instant messaging my friends, and downloading some stuff.”

I guess ought to be grateful she can multi-task.

…..

As it turns out, being a father means you’ll always get the “HEY DAD …”

But of all of the “Hey Dad’s” I’ll hear as my daughters grow up– perhaps the one that will strike the most fear into my heart will be:

Not even Scoobie Doo will be able to explain that one to me!

— Steve