Ramblings of the Mule, Volume 2

July 26, 2017July 27, 2017 J.R. Bergey

Welcome to Volume 2 of Ramblings of the Mule. This time I talk about video games, Instagram, Philly sports, ASMR, Dilbert, Sam Harris, PETA, Nashville, whisky, beer, and more!

Doesn’t PETA have better things to do than represent a monkey in a frivolous lawsuit? Seriously, I think PETA does more harm than good for the protection of animals. People hear about this kind of stuff and just say fuck it, I’m going to eat that cow.
It turns out that Luminosity and other “brain games” are full of crap. You’re just as well off playing Zelda or Pac-Man.
I love taking pictures of whisky bottles and sharing them on Instagram, but it’s a bit disheartening to know that I’ll never come remotely close to being as good at it as Scotch Trooper.
Scotch Trooper isn’t the only great whisky photographer/blogger on Instagram—I’m amazed at how many talented whisky lovers are posting great photos. There are too many to list them all, but a few of my favorites include whiskylifestyle, scotch_doc, whiskyinrussia, whiskywithaview, and peat.and.more. The Instagram whisky community is a lot of fun, and I’m enjoying being part of it.
The beer community on Instagram is also great. On a related note, I’m amazed at how frequently I see photos of Bearded Iris pop up on Instagram. I know Bearded Iris is good, but I’m a little surprised at how popular they’ve become amongst craft beer lovers all over America, far outside of their distribution reach.
Do people make money on Instagram? How?
Although I live in Nashville and am a Predators fan, I’m ultimately a Philly sports fan. I’ll always root for the four Philly teams ahead of everyone else. And this might be the worst period in Philly sports history. It’s depressing. At least I had the Preds’ Stanley Cup run—which was a lot of fun… until they lost to the Penguins, who happen to be the Flyers’ arch rival and the team I hate the most in all of the NHL. Ugh. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in the Philadelphia area right now and have to deal with all the losing up close. Oh wait, yes I can, because I lived there during a similar stretch in the 1990s. Better times will come. And I’ll always have October 29, 2008.
I’m tempted to play EVE online, but I’m afraid I’ll quickly become obsessed with it and end up spending way too much time and money playing it. Still, it sounds like fun.
I was recently introduced to the concept of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). ASMR is an experience that results in a sort of “low grade euphoria” characterized by a tingling sensation felt on your scalp, back of the neck, and spine. It’s extremely relaxing. I’ve been watching or listening to ASMR videos before going to bed every night for the last couple of weeks. I’ve never slept better.
Macallan makes decent whisky today, but it supposedly pales in comparison to what they used to produce a couple decades ago. I wish I could try some of the old stuff.
It used to be that everyone you ever met in Nashville was a musician. EVERYONE. But as the city has grown, it seems like other types of people have taken over. I rarely meet musicians anymore. I’m not upset about it. I’m glad I don’t have to hear people talk about their crappy songs.
Nashville’s plan to take 8th Ave South from four lanes to two is incredibly stupid. Why would you ever remove lanes from a major road in a growing city? I understand the need for improved bike safety, but this is not the way to do it. And on top of that, the plan does little to improve the bigger safety issue—walkability. I nearly hit a group of pedestrians jaywalking on 8th Ave just the other night. And it’s not really the pedestrians’ fault—there are large stretches on 8th with no sidewalks. Adding sidewalks and better crosswalks should be the top priority.
Yazoo recently announced that they are selling their current building and looking to move to a larger facility. Hopefully the new facility will include more parking. And expanded tap room hours would be nice.
I really want to like Little Harpeth Brewing. They make nothing but lagers, and I love lagers. But lagers take time to make. If you rush your lager, you end up with an inferior product. Unfortunately Little Harpeth rushes their lagers, and it shows. Their beers are simply not good.
If you’ve been to downtown Nashville on a weekend night over the last few years, you almost certainly have noticed the proliferation of bachelorette parties wandering the streets, honky tonking, and riding party buses. Nashville has become one of the hottest spots in the US for brides-to-be and their friends to party. I’m sure that Nashville’s tourism economy has benefitted from this trend, but there are some downsides too. Recently a couple of popular bus tours in Nashville banned bachelorettes from attending their tours because they tend to get too crazy and out of control. Bachelor parties are still welcome though.
You can get some good clues about someone’s character and sanity level based on whether or not they like Ayn Rand. If you’ve ever written a coherent sentence, then you are probably a better writer than Ayn Rand.
If you pay attention, you can find interesting articles about new scientific discoveries and research nearly every day, such as this piece about the running ability (or lack thereof) of the Tyrannosaurus rex or this one about why monkeys can’t talk.
Creationist sycophant Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter group is flat out despicable. Originally the Ark Encounter was a for-profit endeavor taking advantage of a Kentucky tourism tax rebate worth millions of dollars. Recently the group sold the attraction to their non-profit arm in order to avoid a relatively small local tax that would have paid for the needed increase in local community costs, such as police and fire departments (the increase in costs for police and fire departments is due to the Ark Encounter’s presence). The state of Kentucky quickly wised up and suspended the tax rebate. The funny thing is that by trying to rip off the people of Kentucky and fill their own pockets, Ken Ham’s group ended up costing themselves millions of dollars. Or at least they would have—predictably, the group just announced that they sold the Ark Encounter back to their for-profit side. Didn’t Jesus say something about the love of money? Maybe… Ken Ham is too worried about (unsuccessfully) disproving scientific facts to care.
I know there are a lot of fans of Highland Park whisky out there, but I am not one. I don’t understand the appeal. Everything I’ve had from them is weak and boring. I recently bought a bottle of Dark Origins, which will be the subject of my next whisky review, and I was extremely disappointed. It’s… not good.
One word you will never see me use in a whisky review is “smooth.” I hear people say “oh, that’s really smooth” when describing a whisky they like, and I just don’t get it. It tastes smooth? What does smooth taste like? Sure, you could use “smooth” to describe the texture of a whisky, but that’s not usually how I hear people use it. (And even as a texture descriptor it still confuses me.) I think people use smooth as a generic whisky descriptor meaning good. And that’s fine—not everyone wants to sit down and take detailed tasting notes like I do. So if you want to describe your whisky as smooth, go right ahead, but unless I figure out exactly what smooth tastes like, I will leave it out of my reviews.
I’m a regular listener and big fan of the Waking Up with Sam Harris podcast. Sam Harris is a big Trump critic, and he’d been wanting to have on an intelligent guest who is a Trump defender, and apparently the most “intellectual” Trump defender recommended was Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. Adams’ arguments in favor of Trump in the podcast are some of the most intellectually dishonest and insane statements I’ve ever heard (not to mention old—the idea of “emotional truth” was explored by Stephen Colbert in the very first episode of the Colbert Report 12 years ago). Although I strongly disagree with Adams about Trump, there was one argument he made that had nothing to do with Trump or politics that particularly stood out to me as being crazy. Adams chided Harris for using an analogy in his argument. To quote Adams: “When somebody retreats to analogy… it’s because they’ve run out of reasons… nobody uses an analogy if they have a reason, because the reason is way better than analogy.” Huh? As Harris correctly responded, analogy is a tool of communication. There are good analogies and bad analogies, but to say that all analogies are a retreat and imply defeat in a debate is simply absurd. When it comes down to it, all of human speech is an analogy of sorts. Heck, Star Trek The Next Generation did an entire episode taking that concept to it’s extreme (Season 5, Episode 2 “Darmok”). And of course, Adams used multiple analogies throughout the conversation. In fact his central point in defending Trump is an analogy (that Americans are moviegoers watching two different films in the same theater). All of Adams’ arguments amounted to one logical fallacy after another. He is either completely brainwashed by Trump propaganda or simply a con-man himself.
One of Adams’ arguments in support of Trump basically boils down to this: Adams correctly predicted that Trump would win and has correctly predicted more or less everything that has happened in Washington. And since he predicted it correctly and says it’s a good thing, then it must be a good thing. Um, OK. So if I predict that there will be a terrorist attack somewhere in the world within the next year, when that happens does that make it a good thing? Like I said, logical fallacies. Michael Moore also correctly predicted Trump would win, but he’s not going around gloating about it.
From idiots on the right to idiots on the left: A radio station in California recently decided to cancel a live event with Richard Dawkins, because Dawkins has been critical of Islam in the past. News flash: Dawkins is an atheist. He’s critical of all religions. Why is the left perfectly fine with criticizing Christianity, but completely intolerant of any (legitimate) criticism of Islam? It’s hypocritical, unethical, and retarded.
If you’ve never listened to the Sam Harris podcast, the Scott Adams episode is not the best place to start. As crazy as Scott Adams sounded, it wasn’t exactly Sam’s finest hour either. Instead check out any of his other recent episodes. Leaving Islam was a good one.
To quote the previously-referenced episode of the Colbert Report: “We are a divided nation. Not between democrats and republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms…. no, we are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know with their heart.” Truthiness.