Life Explained, Explains Rats, and Other Things.

Last night we, here at Life Explained, were researching rats in American cities.  We were doing this by watching Monster Quest, one of our favorite tools in the pursuit of knowledge.  Turns out the common rat is the Norway Rat (Rattus Norvegicus).  Norway is a unitary Monarchy whose territory comprises the western most portion of the Scandinavian peninsula.  It seems to be either a very productive location, or a completely hostile place, for rats.

Also, according to Monster Quest, rats used to be much larger.  At some point, for some reason, the average rat size became what we consider to be an average sized rat.  Unless you happen to see one, by chance, in public, then it is a "giant, man eating rat."  But, according to Monster Quest, these are insignificant, miniscule rodents, when compared to earlier version of rats, and it seemed that it was not "Jurassic Rat" they were talking about either, these rats may have lived as recently as...

Due to technical difficulties, our wife came home and refused to watch a television show about rats, we did not get to discover when these giant rats lived, or what made rats become smaller. It might have been the fitness craze that swept the nation, or smarter eating habits.  Nor what would drive the increase to a more historically proportioned rat.    It might be a better class of garbage, maybe there are dietary supplements in the waste, or maybe they have been watching too many Under Armour commercials.

Fortunately for everybody, we had the foresight to record the episode and will watch the rest as soon as the television police go grocery shopping.

It is not without parallel, though.  Think back to the arc of the cell phone, at first big, blocky, heavy contraptions, many of which came with a big bag of equipment.  But, the rapid pace of technical innovation compressed, and compacted the phone, until it would fit comfortably on the head of a pin. If you had a phone so small it was difficult to find in your pocket you had "arrived."

After the discovery of YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, people noticed that it was almost impossible to watch a video of somebody doing something humiliating, or painful on a screen the size of a postage stamp.  Soon phones were expanding exponentially.  People were clamoring for bigger screens, more "pixels" more memory, more processing power.  It requires a bag to to carry the phone around and it is almost impossible to hold it to up long enough to have a decent conversation.  But, a phone the size of a television is the ultimate symbol of success.

Absolute Proof, it is a chart, right?

Evolution is funny that way.  Things change, and sometimes it make sense, but most times life seems random, capricious, and occasionally cruel, no matter how big your smart phone.  But, stay tuned, we are making great strides in understanding the vagaries of existence, and the absurdity of life.  When we can use the remote, anyway.

A brief update, we have been making great progress in Life Explained the Movie.  So far we have a star, and a walk on signed to participate.  And we are, kind of, learning how to use the app.  Make sure to keep some popcorn handy, you won't want to miss this, it will answer a lot of questions, or at least the question of "what are you going to do with an app that costs that much?"

Technology Explained

It has been several weeks since technology landed here and life was altered by the addition of an iPhone.  It has been a whirlwind of activity.  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all waiting.  It was a fresh beginning.  Smart phones are a blessing, sent from the heavens to reward us for living so long with a phone that was tethered to a wall.  Today we will discuss the time saving, multi-tasking abilities of the iPhone.

Everyday you see countless people driving, robot like, both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road, machines, scanning the traffic ahead and judiciously using the mirrors to watch behind.  Cautiously looking for potential problems.  Think of all that down time, wasted.  Fools!

Smart phone users, on the other hand, are answering emails, sending text messages, scheduling appointments.  Using all of that wasted time driving to get things done.

Just this morning, on the way to work, I surfed the net for a recipe for dinner tonight (found one using cheese and ground beef patties, might be good), updated my Facebook status, "driving to work, 75 mph, passing doofus in Festiva, flipped him off."  And I liked it, too.  Took a few pictures and posted them to Instagram, titled, "Nice day for a drive, enjoying the scenery"  Answered an email from some guy that has a time share plan that will make me rich.  "Not interested, still waiting on a big fat check from Nigeria" (I was tempted, but how much money can one person use?).  All while rocking and rolling to the Jim Carroll Band performing "People Who Died."

Plus, somehow, during the spasm of productivity that my commute has become with the addition of "SMART" phone technology, I managed to top my high score on "Angry Birds, On the Road, Again"

Not only that, but I am typing and posting this right on the 5th Avenue curve, the maelstrom that has taken so many careless souls over the years.  In case my wife reads this, that was just a joke, I am not really writing this while driving our car, at 75 miles an hour, on the 5th Avenue curve.  It was just a joke.

Anyway, I am here, time to go make coffee.  Have a nice day, and stay connected, it is what separates us from the animals.  Please tune in next week when we cover minor home surgery thanks to YouTube tutorials, in a post titled "Thanks to the iPhone, you don't need to be a physician to heal thyself!"  Or, "Go ahead and try this at home."