Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Right Person for the Job

Right Person for the Job

Spelling challenge for the day.... See if you can spell the sexually transmitted bacterial disease that starts with a "G." (Sounds like "Gone to Reno" or something like that.) It is spelled correctly later in the blog but before going on, see if you can spell it.

I am fully aware that nobody here at WDC really gives a rat’s petotti about my RC Modeling, political, world finance views or car building experiences. This blog is a journal of the things that interest me and is not written with an eye in mind to attract readers. Readers are welcome, but since I am very ordinary and my life rather boring, I don’t expect many to follow my musings, particularly since this is a writer’s forum. I’m amazed when in this microcosmic backwater of the internet I get twenty-five views in a day.

My father used to say that… “You can pick your friends and pick your nose but you can’t pick your friend’s nose. “ It occurred to me that the word “can” is probably incorrectly applied, because it is certainly physically possible to pick your friend's nose in the sense of cleaning out dried buggers. However, what Dad was referring to was the genetic propensity for the size and shape of someone else’s proboscis.

Isn’t it interesting that in some societies behaviors are encouraged while in others they would be taboo? For example in Vietnam I used to watch the young girls pick head lice. Now in the United States head lice are not all that common and when they occur there is a rather straight forward medical remedy, however this is not the case everywhere and in some parts of the world people must cope with this very treatable problem.

I was reading somewhere that when the descendants of the Bounty’s mutineers were discovered on Pitcairn Island, most everyone was suffering from gonorrhea. The article said that a passing schooner, after WW2, stopped, gave everybody an antibiotic and the chronic infection was eliminated. Is that an arcane and interesting tidbit of history or what? People somehow adjust to the vicissitudes of their conditions and life goes on. We take the absence of suffering for granted when we are not experiencing it. For example our teeth… we hardly notice they are in our mouth until one starts to ache.

That whole story about Mutiny on the Bounty and the sequel, Men Against the Sea is incredible. It provides a case study in how good leadership is dependent on our personalities and the conditions we face. The Captain of the Bounty was perhaps the worst choice for skipper ever appointed by the Royal Navy. He was singularly unsuited for his role as a commander of a vessel, in peacetime, engaged in a botanical expedition. However, in the longboat, cast adrift by the mutineers, he came to be venerated almost as a god. Captain Bly never changed, but the conditions did and showed that having the right man/woman for the job is indeed important. (As if any readers out there ever had the slightest doubt… duh!)