There’s been lots of commentary this past week about how Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created the office “comedy” Dilbert, has managed to light his career on fire, since the strip is now no longer in any newspaper and he even lost his representation, over his decision to let a Rasmussen “poll” convince him that the majority of Black Americans dislike him as a white American and thus all white people should have nothing to do with Black people because they are a “hate group.”
I was aware of reverse sexism growing up because my mother and my maternal aunt had PhDs. I don't remember when I learned that my maternal grandmother had had one--much later probably because she died long before I was born (her story is a sad one). But she was probably the first female Coloradan to earn that degree (1915, labor relations).
My maternal aunt, Rose Dobrof, along with Bob Butler, pushed for unmarried residents of old folks home to be left alone when having sex with each other. My cousin Joan writes, "Mom and Bob Butler did lead the fight for acceptance of sexual expression in old age. It was in the late 1970's. Bob wrote a helpful and important book about the topic. Bob was the first and founding Director of National Institute on Aging. He died about 2 years before Mom. They were radicals about aging back in the day."
I didn't get the mountain climbing DNA. And after reading Into Thin Air, I'm quite happy about that, but I was never the least it bothered by it. (Google Thomas Hornbein). The only mountain I've ever climbed is New Hampshire's Mt. Monadnock, once in 8th grade with my class, and once in my late 50s. It has a prominence of ~2,100 feet, and back in the '60s there were a lot of great streams to drink out of at the top. I've also climbed Massachusetts' Mt. Wachusett, but that really doesn't qualify as a mountain despite the name.
Thanks. The Hornbeins are an impressive bunch. (My maternal grandmother is the Hornbein I'm directly descended from.) Another Hornbein was de facto head of the Colorado Democratic Party for most of the first half of the last century, and gave the speech advocating an end to prohibition at the '32 Democratic convention.
Actually dilbert means duh. Never had the inclination to read duh because, well, it is not very clever. Plus the drawing left me cold. Unlike Gary Trudeau. Oh well....when I was a visitor to Nicaragua way back in the day, shepherding groups for the purpose of learning how the world really works, I had the privilege of staying with a family way out in the countryside, where several years earlier Hurricane Hugo had decimated the forests leaving huge swathes of open spaces where once rain forest had grown. At that time there was an infestation of one of the most dangerous snakes in Central America making a strong comeback. Called the Bushmaster, it is a real killer and always on the hunt. The people talked a lot about that, how they seemed to rise up out of the ground. The family I lived with for a few days praised their pigs for rousting these virulent vipers out and killing them. I think of hate the same way these days - like a bushmaster hate and haters rise up out of the ground to attack anything and everything, unleashed by...well in the case of the US, the so-called presidency of the former guy whose hate is far flung and multi-faceted. (These guys and gals are present throughout the world, Orban, Meloni, Modi, Erdogan, putin the pitiful). I think the only thing the former guy likes, other than his own face in the mirror, are hamburgers and buxom women. He has made hate popular and a real stand in for clever. And forget about compassion. There is no room for that when hate is the only thing on your plate. The NAZIS began with their Jewish neighbors, but they went after everyone who was in any way different, including the gay, the sick, the mentally infirm, and anyone who tried to speak up against them and show people what was being done in their name. Not unlike russia today, or belarus, or turkey for that matter. Florida is next. When desanctify says he wants to turn the US into FL everyone with any sense of human decency had better wake up and begin to organize to stop him. He is not better than the former guy. The former guy is a buffoon. desanctify is a despot.
Desatan is much better at being the worst human than tffg, and your description of the buckmaster snakes rising from the ground hits really close to home. Yesterday I saw my proud boy insurrectionist neighbor, who has been nice as can be for the past year after raging on January 4th, 2020, (before he left for D.C.) that Biden was going to kill babies. Except now he was raging again: "The schools are showing our kids pornography, I have the pictures to prove it, you have to go to the school board with me to stop them!" When I disagreed he went ballistic, spouting Desatanisms. The Hate is so dangerous, so deadly.
Thanks, but it will only make him worse. I will hire him to - okay, not take down some trees, don't want him armed - but some odd job, and tip him more than his fee. That usually makes him nicer to me.
The former guy doesnt' "like" buxom women. He lusts after them and wants to use them. (But you knew that--you just weren't paying full attention to what you were writing, I'm guessing.)
Probably the same problem with the bushmasters. Their venom IS extremely deadly, among the deadliest, but they are almost certainly using it defensively. In fact, there's a wonderful African American folktale (which I found in a book I inherited from my mother) called How the (rattle)Snake Got His Rattle.
The snake was tired of getting stepped on all the time, so he went to God and complained about this situation. God gave him the poison. Well, the snake started biting every time he felt threatened, killing off a lot of the other animals, and the other animals grew very upset about the situation.
So, one of the other animals took the snake up to God to see if God could remedy the situation. God loved his cigars, and Mrs. God hated them, and somehow this got into the story... But regarding the problem at hand--the snake killing the other animals every time he grew afraid, God decided the snake needed a warning device, and so he gave him the rattle, and that solved the problem.
What's super interesting about this folktale is that the authors got the evolution exactly right. Rattlesnakes don't want to spend the venom unnecessarily, as its expensive to make. So they rattle instead, which usually causes whatever is frightening them to flee. The rattlesnake is the only example of the rattle having evolved. Even the closely related copperheads don't have rattles, nor, alas, does the bushmaster, which, like its relatives the rattlesnake and the copperhead, is a pit viper. It would have been nice if God had given the bushmaster a rattle.
A friend of mine's Great Great Uncle put the first copperhead into the collection at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. I didn't get this factoid from my friend, but from a wonderful book, Landscape With Reptile: Rattlesnakes in an Urban World, by Thomas Palmer. I highly recommend this book if you want to get to know this important but oft-maligned creature. It reads very well, like a bunch of New Yorker articles.
There must have been something, because black racers definitely do not have rattles, or venom. And rattlesnakes are the only snakes with rattles. That fact is of interest to students of snakes, as rattles are a significant advantage, in reducing the need for production of venom.
the only time I've ever read about the Bushmaster prior to just now was when I was studying Homeopathy (yes, yes...). its venom ( highly lethal, even to the touch) is used to make the remedy called Lachesis.
since Gary Trudeau always had a continuing plot, can he really be compared with Scott Adams (I don't recall "Dilbert" having a narrative, but I'm also not a fan, to begin with)?
Actually I don't think that comparison is that good. Read my post which as I write this is directly above yours. (And if you think I'm wrong about the quality of the comparison, you can tell me [I'm not sure about it myself].)
OOOOkay, David - guess you "hit the nail on the head"! I (personally) didnt mean to cast aspersions on bushmasters in general - and yeah, I'm aware, snakes do get a bad reputation only because they arent cute & fluffy, and pretty much most of the time, they are defending themselves. Considering the ongoing rattlesnake "hunts" should be put into the same category as the coyote/wolf "contests".
Yup guess the bushmasters should be insulted by being compared to the dumbasses!
Thanks for another good, clear, and on target column, TC. Nice revelation about the name Dilbert. I never have particularly read Dilbert, so i won't miss it, although as you said Scott Adams really "managed to light his career on fire....." Well deserved.
I'm an avid reader of comics, but I never liked Dilbert. Of course, that and 50 cents will get me enough gas to drive ~6.66 miles down the interstate in my Civic now that I got a new oxygen sensor.
I read Dilbert a few times when it was all the rage. I had no trouble realizing that he was a right wing jerk, although more subtle than most I knew at the time. The evil is proud these days.
Name the subject; they have cadres in about any field you can mention. They are the rotten apples that taint all of us.
Yeah, go ask black people if they think white people are ok. Ha. Likely they just got screwed by some white jerk. Maybe I’m “woke” to the situations around me, but more should be.
As to why whites hang with whites and blacks tend to hang with blacks, maybe each hangs close to their comfort zone. Maybe all mammals do. Maybe all living creatures do.
Maybe it’s a clue as to why we are no more integrated than we are.
I went to a funeral for the black dad of a coworker. I was the only white person there. The people could not have been kinder or more welcoming. I still felt “odd.” I thought that must be how blacks feel about every day of their lives, always being in anything but a comfort zone. My “odd” feeling surprised me, but taught me a valuable lesson. Maybe one we all should learn…
you actually managed to account for the anxiety I've experienced in virtually EVERY job I've ever had. in MY case, however, I actually DID get shitcanned any number of times, so it's possible I wasn't really that competent. on the other hand, I've never voted for ANY Republican.
the proverbial horns of a dilemma?
well, I WAS married to somebody who was ALWAYS the smartest person in the room.
what? ME worry??
I actually DON't know any white guys who are Repugs, but I'm pretty sure it's a skewed sample. actually, as I've occasionally discussed, I really do know a couple. one or two might be friends, but there's my standing gag order that's ALWAYS operative. it's the only time I find myself defending the concept of private property.
I've talked about Scott Adams before...the so-called "knowledge" of hypnosis, which led him to support TFF because "he's a master hypnotist." this can only lead someone to assume that Adams would be tweeting about his enthusiasm for Hitler if we were somewhere else in history since Hitler was even more of a "master hypnotist" in exactly the same way. this guy was born on second base and thinks he belongs on third base. he might even think he got there but, to extend the metaphor, if he got there, it's because someone else got a walk. that is the first time in my life I've ever tried to use a baseball metaphor, which shows you where I've been all these years; or where I haven't been. I do know that if someone hadn't pointed to me that "Dilbert" existed twenty-some years back, I wouldn't know it existed now. and soon it may not exist, unmourned in these quarters. actually, it might have been carried in "Newsday," which I haven't subscribed to since an old friend stopped working there and since Murray Kempton's column stopped showing up.
as we all know, the NYT has its own comics, but they're disguised as Op-Eds.
Providentially, I spent the spring and summer of 1988 helping disassemble the Dilbert at NAS Norfolk - a true allegory to Scott “Dilberrito” Adams.
It was installed in the old air station swimming pool, bolted to an exterior wall and starting to pull the wall down after several years of hard stops. The pool chlorine has gotten through the paint and primer, and the nuts and bolts holding the mounting frame together had corroded enough that you could tell that previous chiefs at the Naval Aviation Physiology Training Unit had not chewed enough on the maintenance sailors and the contractor that subsequently took over maintenance.
One of the unit divers asked me if I wanted to ride Dilbert during an equipment test one day. I said no, because I didn’t want to be pinned under the tower and ramp after it pulled out of the wall.
Never took in Adams' work because he is to cartooning what Dennis Miller is to humor. But he's wealthy now so he can go full bore in exposing who he's always been. His time has indeed come--the homestretch of the devolution of the right wing into the larval magas. He's shed any shame he ever had because he's found his people and will luxuriate in their alternately brittle and slimy embraces.
Change one letter in Dilbert’s name and you have “Gilbert, the filbert, the nut with a K, … Gilbert, the filbert, the kernel of the nut.” I sang this as a child. https://Youtu.be/ppJCuAx1K40
TC, your Curse of the Competent reminds me of what we called Imposter Syndrome. When you are a student midwife, no one expects you to have all of the answers in every situation, but once you have graduated, passed board exams, and been licensed as a CNM (Certified Nurse-Midwife) patients trust that you are the expert. It's common to feel like an imposter when you realize that it will take years of practice experience to develop the degree of expertise that you aim toward.
It's pretty sad we even have to have the discussion anymore, isn't it? On another topic entirely, Tom, I recently found a pretty cool plaque on a nearby corner and thought you'd be interested in seeing it. It's about an airfield (no longer in existence) and some fellas who purchased surplus biplanes, which they refurbished and sold. Can't attach it here and don't have your email. Should I print and send to the address you gave us for cards?
Figured out how to do it! Apple's "live text" allowed me to copy the words from the plaque:
FRED SONNE AIRFIELD 1919 - 1932
This airfield was established in an open -prairie from
Dempster Street north to the forest preserve and between what is now Moody and Meade Avenues. Early air shows were held here featuring stunts such as wing walking, parachute jumps and other aerobatics. Chance Lawson, a pilot hired for a local promotion, had to make an emergency landing at Wayside Woods, now known as Linne Woods. One of the wings was damaged during the landing
Local resident Fred Sonne repaired the
damaged plane.
This incident started their friendship
and later on, they became business partners. The two men purchased surplus World War I biplanes which they assembled and sold to other pilots, such as World War I Ace, Price Hollingsworth. Ar first, airplane rides were given at this field for $50 per person. In later years when as many as 30 planes were stored at the field, the cost for a ride was reduced to $5..
Fred Sonne's sister, Hermine, married local pilot Dick Boettcher and became the first woman to fly from this airfield.
Fred Sonne went on to establish the Chicago Aerial Survey Co., an air mapping and air photography company. He was later honored by the U.S. Government for his contribution to aerial photography during World War I.
Perfect - will watch for it. I'd passed this little piece of history multiple times before I read it in its entirety (mostly due to walking an impatient little dog who didn't want to stand still long enough!).
I was aware of reverse sexism growing up because my mother and my maternal aunt had PhDs. I don't remember when I learned that my maternal grandmother had had one--much later probably because she died long before I was born (her story is a sad one). But she was probably the first female Coloradan to earn that degree (1915, labor relations).
My maternal aunt, Rose Dobrof, along with Bob Butler, pushed for unmarried residents of old folks home to be left alone when having sex with each other. My cousin Joan writes, "Mom and Bob Butler did lead the fight for acceptance of sexual expression in old age. It was in the late 1970's. Bob wrote a helpful and important book about the topic. Bob was the first and founding Director of National Institute on Aging. He died about 2 years before Mom. They were radicals about aging back in the day."
So it's in your DNA to be you, eh? :-)
I didn't get the mountain climbing DNA. And after reading Into Thin Air, I'm quite happy about that, but I was never the least it bothered by it. (Google Thomas Hornbein). The only mountain I've ever climbed is New Hampshire's Mt. Monadnock, once in 8th grade with my class, and once in my late 50s. It has a prominence of ~2,100 feet, and back in the '60s there were a lot of great streams to drink out of at the top. I've also climbed Massachusetts' Mt. Wachusett, but that really doesn't qualify as a mountain despite the name.
But yeah.
My parents also lived together before they got married--back in 1946. So yeah ;')
very, very impressive.
Thanks. The Hornbeins are an impressive bunch. (My maternal grandmother is the Hornbein I'm directly descended from.) Another Hornbein was de facto head of the Colorado Democratic Party for most of the first half of the last century, and gave the speech advocating an end to prohibition at the '32 Democratic convention.
Thanks for this post TC. You describe the Curse of the Competent very well. I wish the incompetent folks had half the self-awareness.
Then they wouldn't be incompetent.
🤦🏼♀️
Exactamente, TC.
🗽
🤣
Oh, so do I. Takes care of the curse once we are all self-aware. Competence on the rise.
Salud on the weekend, Ally!
🗽
Salud!
Actually dilbert means duh. Never had the inclination to read duh because, well, it is not very clever. Plus the drawing left me cold. Unlike Gary Trudeau. Oh well....when I was a visitor to Nicaragua way back in the day, shepherding groups for the purpose of learning how the world really works, I had the privilege of staying with a family way out in the countryside, where several years earlier Hurricane Hugo had decimated the forests leaving huge swathes of open spaces where once rain forest had grown. At that time there was an infestation of one of the most dangerous snakes in Central America making a strong comeback. Called the Bushmaster, it is a real killer and always on the hunt. The people talked a lot about that, how they seemed to rise up out of the ground. The family I lived with for a few days praised their pigs for rousting these virulent vipers out and killing them. I think of hate the same way these days - like a bushmaster hate and haters rise up out of the ground to attack anything and everything, unleashed by...well in the case of the US, the so-called presidency of the former guy whose hate is far flung and multi-faceted. (These guys and gals are present throughout the world, Orban, Meloni, Modi, Erdogan, putin the pitiful). I think the only thing the former guy likes, other than his own face in the mirror, are hamburgers and buxom women. He has made hate popular and a real stand in for clever. And forget about compassion. There is no room for that when hate is the only thing on your plate. The NAZIS began with their Jewish neighbors, but they went after everyone who was in any way different, including the gay, the sick, the mentally infirm, and anyone who tried to speak up against them and show people what was being done in their name. Not unlike russia today, or belarus, or turkey for that matter. Florida is next. When desanctify says he wants to turn the US into FL everyone with any sense of human decency had better wake up and begin to organize to stop him. He is not better than the former guy. The former guy is a buffoon. desanctify is a despot.
Desatan is much better at being the worst human than tffg, and your description of the buckmaster snakes rising from the ground hits really close to home. Yesterday I saw my proud boy insurrectionist neighbor, who has been nice as can be for the past year after raging on January 4th, 2020, (before he left for D.C.) that Biden was going to kill babies. Except now he was raging again: "The schools are showing our kids pornography, I have the pictures to prove it, you have to go to the school board with me to stop them!" When I disagreed he went ballistic, spouting Desatanisms. The Hate is so dangerous, so deadly.
You're absolutely right. And it is free floating attached to fear that spreads like smoke.
Yes.
Cults always can be counted on to be bat schitt crazy.
Holy shit MaryPat! Want me to come slug him?
Thanks, but it will only make him worse. I will hire him to - okay, not take down some trees, don't want him armed - but some odd job, and tip him more than his fee. That usually makes him nicer to me.
LOL I hired the crank next door to cut my grass while away, and overpay.
The former guy doesnt' "like" buxom women. He lusts after them and wants to use them. (But you knew that--you just weren't paying full attention to what you were writing, I'm guessing.)
Probably the same problem with the bushmasters. Their venom IS extremely deadly, among the deadliest, but they are almost certainly using it defensively. In fact, there's a wonderful African American folktale (which I found in a book I inherited from my mother) called How the (rattle)Snake Got His Rattle.
The snake was tired of getting stepped on all the time, so he went to God and complained about this situation. God gave him the poison. Well, the snake started biting every time he felt threatened, killing off a lot of the other animals, and the other animals grew very upset about the situation.
So, one of the other animals took the snake up to God to see if God could remedy the situation. God loved his cigars, and Mrs. God hated them, and somehow this got into the story... But regarding the problem at hand--the snake killing the other animals every time he grew afraid, God decided the snake needed a warning device, and so he gave him the rattle, and that solved the problem.
What's super interesting about this folktale is that the authors got the evolution exactly right. Rattlesnakes don't want to spend the venom unnecessarily, as its expensive to make. So they rattle instead, which usually causes whatever is frightening them to flee. The rattlesnake is the only example of the rattle having evolved. Even the closely related copperheads don't have rattles, nor, alas, does the bushmaster, which, like its relatives the rattlesnake and the copperhead, is a pit viper. It would have been nice if God had given the bushmaster a rattle.
A friend of mine's Great Great Uncle put the first copperhead into the collection at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. I didn't get this factoid from my friend, but from a wonderful book, Landscape With Reptile: Rattlesnakes in an Urban World, by Thomas Palmer. I highly recommend this book if you want to get to know this important but oft-maligned creature. It reads very well, like a bunch of New Yorker articles.
Wow, amazing. Thanks for the book suggestion. Yes - lust. Talk about understatement.
Interesting! The common black racer has a rattle. Scared the bejeebus out of me while weeding one day. I had no idea they were so equipped.
They actually don't have rattles, or venom, but they apparently do make rattling noises by swishing their tails in dried leaves.
Not sure. There were no dry leaves lol. #OCD.
There must have been something, because black racers definitely do not have rattles, or venom. And rattlesnakes are the only snakes with rattles. That fact is of interest to students of snakes, as rattles are a significant advantage, in reducing the need for production of venom.
the only time I've ever read about the Bushmaster prior to just now was when I was studying Homeopathy (yes, yes...). its venom ( highly lethal, even to the touch) is used to make the remedy called Lachesis.
Never knew that but then I think there are other reptiles whose venom is helpful.
What is Lachesis used for?
Wow! Incredible.
I agree regarding duh & the drawing itself was far from clever - never really "got" it. And Gary Trudeau? Yes.
Comparing a bushmaster to the current dumbasses? PERFECT!
since Gary Trudeau always had a continuing plot, can he really be compared with Scott Adams (I don't recall "Dilbert" having a narrative, but I'm also not a fan, to begin with)?
BUT Trudeau DID have a plot, right? And could draw. Therein is the difference! Come on guys - nitpicking much?
I barely recall Dilbert. I probably read it a handful of times after it came out, and then quit for lack of interest.
Actually I don't think that comparison is that good. Read my post which as I write this is directly above yours. (And if you think I'm wrong about the quality of the comparison, you can tell me [I'm not sure about it myself].)
OOOOkay, David - guess you "hit the nail on the head"! I (personally) didnt mean to cast aspersions on bushmasters in general - and yeah, I'm aware, snakes do get a bad reputation only because they arent cute & fluffy, and pretty much most of the time, they are defending themselves. Considering the ongoing rattlesnake "hunts" should be put into the same category as the coyote/wolf "contests".
Yup guess the bushmasters should be insulted by being compared to the dumbasses!
Great response Maggie. You put a big smile on my face. Thanks!
Thanks for another good, clear, and on target column, TC. Nice revelation about the name Dilbert. I never have particularly read Dilbert, so i won't miss it, although as you said Scott Adams really "managed to light his career on fire....." Well deserved.
I'm an avid reader of comics, but I never liked Dilbert. Of course, that and 50 cents will get me enough gas to drive ~6.66 miles down the interstate in my Civic now that I got a new oxygen sensor.
🤣👏
I read Dilbert a few times when it was all the rage. I had no trouble realizing that he was a right wing jerk, although more subtle than most I knew at the time. The evil is proud these days.
Name the subject; they have cadres in about any field you can mention. They are the rotten apples that taint all of us.
Yeah, go ask black people if they think white people are ok. Ha. Likely they just got screwed by some white jerk. Maybe I’m “woke” to the situations around me, but more should be.
As to why whites hang with whites and blacks tend to hang with blacks, maybe each hangs close to their comfort zone. Maybe all mammals do. Maybe all living creatures do.
Maybe it’s a clue as to why we are no more integrated than we are.
I went to a funeral for the black dad of a coworker. I was the only white person there. The people could not have been kinder or more welcoming. I still felt “odd.” I thought that must be how blacks feel about every day of their lives, always being in anything but a comfort zone. My “odd” feeling surprised me, but taught me a valuable lesson. Maybe one we all should learn…
you actually managed to account for the anxiety I've experienced in virtually EVERY job I've ever had. in MY case, however, I actually DID get shitcanned any number of times, so it's possible I wasn't really that competent. on the other hand, I've never voted for ANY Republican.
the proverbial horns of a dilemma?
well, I WAS married to somebody who was ALWAYS the smartest person in the room.
what? ME worry??
I actually DON't know any white guys who are Repugs, but I'm pretty sure it's a skewed sample. actually, as I've occasionally discussed, I really do know a couple. one or two might be friends, but there's my standing gag order that's ALWAYS operative. it's the only time I find myself defending the concept of private property.
I've talked about Scott Adams before...the so-called "knowledge" of hypnosis, which led him to support TFF because "he's a master hypnotist." this can only lead someone to assume that Adams would be tweeting about his enthusiasm for Hitler if we were somewhere else in history since Hitler was even more of a "master hypnotist" in exactly the same way. this guy was born on second base and thinks he belongs on third base. he might even think he got there but, to extend the metaphor, if he got there, it's because someone else got a walk. that is the first time in my life I've ever tried to use a baseball metaphor, which shows you where I've been all these years; or where I haven't been. I do know that if someone hadn't pointed to me that "Dilbert" existed twenty-some years back, I wouldn't know it existed now. and soon it may not exist, unmourned in these quarters. actually, it might have been carried in "Newsday," which I haven't subscribed to since an old friend stopped working there and since Murray Kempton's column stopped showing up.
as we all know, the NYT has its own comics, but they're disguised as Op-Eds.
Providentially, I spent the spring and summer of 1988 helping disassemble the Dilbert at NAS Norfolk - a true allegory to Scott “Dilberrito” Adams.
It was installed in the old air station swimming pool, bolted to an exterior wall and starting to pull the wall down after several years of hard stops. The pool chlorine has gotten through the paint and primer, and the nuts and bolts holding the mounting frame together had corroded enough that you could tell that previous chiefs at the Naval Aviation Physiology Training Unit had not chewed enough on the maintenance sailors and the contractor that subsequently took over maintenance.
One of the unit divers asked me if I wanted to ride Dilbert during an equipment test one day. I said no, because I didn’t want to be pinned under the tower and ramp after it pulled out of the wall.
Pretty much like Adams’ empire.
Ah yes, "The Dilbert dunker"
Goodbye Dilbert. Goodbye Scott Adams. Your bizarro thinking won't be missed.
Never took in Adams' work because he is to cartooning what Dennis Miller is to humor. But he's wealthy now so he can go full bore in exposing who he's always been. His time has indeed come--the homestretch of the devolution of the right wing into the larval magas. He's shed any shame he ever had because he's found his people and will luxuriate in their alternately brittle and slimy embraces.
Change one letter in Dilbert’s name and you have “Gilbert, the filbert, the nut with a K, … Gilbert, the filbert, the kernel of the nut.” I sang this as a child. https://Youtu.be/ppJCuAx1K40
TC, your Curse of the Competent reminds me of what we called Imposter Syndrome. When you are a student midwife, no one expects you to have all of the answers in every situation, but once you have graduated, passed board exams, and been licensed as a CNM (Certified Nurse-Midwife) patients trust that you are the expert. It's common to feel like an imposter when you realize that it will take years of practice experience to develop the degree of expertise that you aim toward.
Yes, what I mentioned is more commonly called Imposter Syndrome. Happens to everyone, not just nurse/midwives.
I adore esoteric knowledge.
So do I. Esoteric knowledge is not the same as trivia.
Excellent distinction, but I admit that I am pretty fond of trivia as well.
Me too.
see my post just a few above.
Scott Adam’s really shot himself in the foot -- if not worse!
Can’t argue with the logic. And yes, the most competent people I knew in business always reached for achievement, not status quo.
It's pretty sad we even have to have the discussion anymore, isn't it? On another topic entirely, Tom, I recently found a pretty cool plaque on a nearby corner and thought you'd be interested in seeing it. It's about an airfield (no longer in existence) and some fellas who purchased surplus biplanes, which they refurbished and sold. Can't attach it here and don't have your email. Should I print and send to the address you gave us for cards?
The next email you get, click the reply arrow at the bottom and it will send to me directly.
Figured out how to do it! Apple's "live text" allowed me to copy the words from the plaque:
FRED SONNE AIRFIELD 1919 - 1932
This airfield was established in an open -prairie from
Dempster Street north to the forest preserve and between what is now Moody and Meade Avenues. Early air shows were held here featuring stunts such as wing walking, parachute jumps and other aerobatics. Chance Lawson, a pilot hired for a local promotion, had to make an emergency landing at Wayside Woods, now known as Linne Woods. One of the wings was damaged during the landing
Local resident Fred Sonne repaired the
damaged plane.
This incident started their friendship
and later on, they became business partners. The two men purchased surplus World War I biplanes which they assembled and sold to other pilots, such as World War I Ace, Price Hollingsworth. Ar first, airplane rides were given at this field for $50 per person. In later years when as many as 30 planes were stored at the field, the cost for a ride was reduced to $5..
Fred Sonne's sister, Hermine, married local pilot Dick Boettcher and became the first woman to fly from this airfield.
Fred Sonne went on to establish the Chicago Aerial Survey Co., an air mapping and air photography company. He was later honored by the U.S. Government for his contribution to aerial photography during World War I.
Perfect - will watch for it. I'd passed this little piece of history multiple times before I read it in its entirety (mostly due to walking an impatient little dog who didn't want to stand still long enough!).