Ferri Tales

I am always amazed at how little actual product information is included in marketing and advertising material. As a general principle, I avoid as much advertising as possible because most, if not all of it, contains so little usable information, and I manually mute all commercial advertisements whenever I watch television. This is particularly great prior to any elections. Today's product is the Perfect Choice HD hearing aid device. The advertisement was in the AmericanProfile magazine section of our local Sunday newspaper on Dec. 29, 2013. There is no price, address, or URL, but there is a phone number with a promotional code to indicate somehow that this is an exclusive offer to a select few. A Google search will bring up multiple hits if you're interested. A picture of the product is below: It looks just like a hearing aid, however the ad copy disagrees as follows: " Perfect Choice HD is NOT a hearing aid. It is a  Personal  Sound Amplification Product (...

On October 15, 2013, the U.S. Senate passed its bill to end the shutdown that was manufactured by the Republican cult faction, the Tea Party. The Tea Party was outraged because they were soundly defeated in the 2012 election, and were unable to stop health care legislation that was passed by both houses of Congress three years earlier and deemed Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme court. (If you're a parent, the word "tantrum" comes to mind.) For the bill to become law, it required passage by the U.S. House of Representatives, and of course approval by the president, Barack Obama. While the House vote was concluding, a long-time House stenographer, Diane Reidy, went to the microphone and started speaking :  “Do not be deceived. God shall not be mocked. A House divided cannot stand. He will not be mocked, He will not be mocked. He will not be mocked. The greatest deception here is that this is not one nation under God. It never was. Had it been, it would not have been …...

[Scene]: the smoking remains of the U.S.A. after the Tea Party successfully shut down the world economy because they lost the election in 2012 and couldn't stop a health care plan that passed both houses of Congress 3 years earlier and was deemed Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. What follows is an interview with the former Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner (JB) by a representative of the American people (RAP). [RAP]: John, what the fuck happened? [JB]: The Democrats would not negotiate with a gun to their heads. All we wanted was for them to give us everything we wanted, even though it was unreasonable and childish. After all, we didn't want to walk away with nothing. [RAP]: So you allowed the world economy to go all to hell rather than put the issue to a vote knowing that the votes were there to pass a clean resolution. [JB]: You don't realize how much time it takes to kiss all of those billionaires' asses while at the same time tr...

How long do the people of Earth have before we run out of energy? According to the DOE/EIA 2011 report, world energy consumption has increased by 1.8% per year since 1990 and is projected to increase at that rate to 2035. Subsequent calculations will use a growth rate of 1.8% per year. Funds in an account that offers 1.8% annual earnings would double every 39 years. Annual world energy consumption varies depending on the source, but an average seems to be about 500 billion billion joules. A joule in a unit of energy similar to the familiar kilowatt-hour; one kilowatt-hour equals 3.6 million joules. The population of Earth is currently using energy of all forms (coal, oil, gas, nuclear, and renewable) equal to the annual electrical energy usage of 12 billion average U.S. homes. To simplify the calculations, I'll use 1 WEU (World Energy Unit) as the current world annual energy consumption. What energy resources are available for the world to use? According to the BP 2010 World En...

In Arthur Clarke's science fiction novel "Childhood's End", benevolent aliens from forty light-years away visit Earth, end all wars, help form a world government, and essentially create a utopia. When asked why they were helping mankind, their reply was, "Your race has shown a notable incapacity for dealing with the problems of its own rather small planet." On the real Earth, we can expect no help from non-Earth entities or from mythological super beings. We are on our own and had better shed this "notable incapacity" to deal with our problems. Earth really doesn't care if humans go extinct. The planet will do just fine without us. As with any problems, a solution first requires the realization that problems exist. And yes, we have a multitude of them. The top problems, from a quick internet search include: species extinction, war, nuclear proliferation, malnutrition and hunger, clean water, health care, population growth, peak oil consumpt...

HOLY SEX -  In the movie Cannonball Run (1981), Dean Martin played a race car driver disguised as a Catholic priest. His primary competitor, played by Burt Reynolds, drove a supercharged ambulance with Farrah Fawcett playing a fake transport patient. Martin stopped the ambulance with the pretense that he always stops ambulances to bless patients. However, during the blessing his partner would stealthily poke a hole in one of the tires. When Martin opened the side door of the ambulance and saw Fawcett lying invitingly on a gurney, he said, "Oh, I gotta bless her." I think this is what happened in Wyalusing recently when on May 17 ( Review , May 25, 2013) the local police charged a couple in the back seat of a car with open lewdness, the female mostly naked, the male a Roman Catholic priest. I'm sure there was some sort of blessing happening, and the police were just not familiar with Roman Catholic procedures. Bishop Bambera of Scranton expressed anger at this ...