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Counting the Stars

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Once legitimate and now somewhat sensational journalist Bud Buck has decided to turn his limited attention to Minnesota’s Gubernatorial Race. He sent a note yesterday promising a story that would “break the recount wide open”. Bud told me to watch for his “bombshell”. Naturally I was suspicious. Bud has a tendency to rely on a single source for his reporting. A single source if you don’t count his vivid imagination. When the story arrived this morning I saw proof positive that I had good reason to be concerned.

Galactic Fraud Hinted At!
By Bud Buck

Scientists studying the galaxies have reached a startling conclusion that should cause Minnesota election officials to re-examine their methodology and data.

In a paper published this week in the science journal “Nature”, researchers have determined that there has been a massive undercounting of the number of stars in the sky. Previous assumptions made about star populations based on the density of our own Milky Way may have led enumerators to overlook gazillions of faint stars known as “Red Dwarves”. New scholarship suggests there could be trillions of these uncounted furnaces in some elliptical shaped galaxies alone.

This revelation was eagerly seized by activists following the re-count in Minnesota’s Gubernatorial race. “Note that these stars are categorized by cosmologists as “red”,” said Julius Blustering, a self-described ‘constitutional astronomer’ who has been camped in front of the Secretary of State’s office since mid-November. “There was no mention in the paper of any undercounting of “blue” stars.”

Standing in front of his three cornered tent that mimics the design of the well-known Patriot hat style, Blustering pointing out that conditions in the larger universe are often mirrored on a much smaller scale here below. He demanded that the Minnesota Secretary of State use a similar methodology to the one used in the star study to cross check the gubernatorial ballots from last month’s election.

“The scientists figured out they had something wrong in the count when they examined the temperature of distant galaxies. There were differences in the readings that could only be explained by the presence of a larger than expected number of red stars,” said Blustering. “I call on the election officials to use the last remaining Shuttle launch in conjunction with the Hubble Space Telescope to train those same scientific instruments on every Minnesota precinct. If the temperature readings mirror the actual division of votes, no problem. But if things don’t match up, that’ll be a clear sign there are more red votes than the ‘official’ tallies indicate!”

Blustering’s demand was dismissed by election officials as impractical, unscientific, unconstitutional, and possibly a delaying tactic intended to create a political advantage for one side in the dispute.

“Nonsense.” said Blustering. “We’ve been looking at the stars for several thousands of years and are just now getting the count right. What I’m proposing will take less than half that time.”

What is your favorite delaying tactic?

109 thoughts on “Counting the Stars”

      1. On Shakespeare day the answer to this was, “orientate him with normalcy and impactfully.” Could be a new answer today. It appears tim delays with distraction and humor.

        tim=class clown?

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      2. Only three Polish ahd Finnish jokes I will tell because they are just fun word play:
        Who was Alexander Graham Kowolski?
        The first telepohne Pole.
        These two are a test of how well you are acquainted with the delights of Finnish names.
        Who is green and flies over Finland?
        Peter Paninen.
        Who was the oldest Finn?
        Matt Tusela

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  2. Rise and Droop Babooners :

    Woke up with a cold this morning. My husband had it earlier this week, and I just could not resist. So I slept in until 6:42 a.m., delaying reveille.

    My favorite delaying technique is not very sophisticated. I just do nothing and wait. When I worked for organizations I pretty much refused to do anything having to do with a new policy or procedure until the 3rd time it was announced. Otherwise, I assumed that they weren’t serious. This was especially true of computer systems introduced to we minions. Until the third announcement I began to notice that there was a large chance it would just go away. If management could not stay with the change for 3 announcements…poof. It never happened, and why should I get my undies in a bundle.

    Off to the day she sniffed, hackhack.

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  3. I manage to not actually do a lot of things by reading about them instead. I suspect a lot of academics have also found this a useful tactic. For instance, I was able to not play Go because I was “studying” it, not do Hardanger because I was “researching” embroidery techniques, and entertain myself for hours reading cookbooks and looking at the pretty pictures, then moaning that I can’t actually cook.

    This technique really only works for things that have a lot written about them–I had to find other ways to not practice hand drumming because there aren’t that many books on the subject (lots of music CDs and some instructional videos helped divert my energy safely), but I was able to not dance because there were magazines and catalogs instead. Feel free to borrow my technique–if nothing else, you may make a bored reference librarian happy!

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    2. My college techniques
      1. Why study on week nights; I’ve got the full weekend to catch up. On weekends I would say to myself, Hey, don’t blow the weekend with study.
      2. Early in the quarter I would tell myself to wait for later in the quarter when I was more likely to retain what I had studied. Late in the quarter I would tell myself that if I did not know it by then I never would.

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  4. when i think about doing something i don’t want to do i always remember when wally asked the beav why he didn’t take care of it earlier ad the beav said “gosh wally, the whole world could come to an end before that and it would be a shame to do all that work if the world was going to come to an end anyway”

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  5. Morning–

    I’m with Jacque… I just don’t do whatever it is… but I’ll tell you what; I can ‘putz’ with the best of them. I can putz whole days away engaged in minor, but useful, endeavors!

    Thanks for the question Dale!

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    1. We must be kindred spirits (or maybe is a theater thing) – I am fond of the “putz with other stuff” technique as well. It makes you look like you’re doing something. Especially if what you are puttering with is the peripheral stuff around whatever it is you are avoiding.

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  6. Good morning and is there something I should be doing?

    What are you talking about? Do you think I might be putting off work I should be doing and just fooling around? I don’t want to talk about this. Isn’t there a 5th amendment against self incrimination?

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  7. Who needs technique to not do something? My laundry room floor is messy now (and if you knew the truth, you would thank me for not being explicit). All I have to do to not clean it is to not clean it. I can handle that. I’m up to meeting that challenge.

    Things are tougher when others want to do things I don’t want to happen. Like when I am at the doctor’s office and don’t want to talk about some things. Then I like to use a smokescreen of charm and distracting humor. If your doctor is laughing, he isn’t asking unpleasant questions.

    When three drunks attacked me and I did not want to fight them, I used the distraction technique. I bought them beers. When they tipped their glasses to drink, I ran out of the bar. To chase me they would have had to put their beers down, and I had a good sense of where their priorities lay.

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    2. Barbara — the whole story takes time to tell, and it is special enough that I want to use it when it will get more attention than tucked in here two levels in on the outline. I promise to tell it as soon as I can. If Dale ever asks us to describe our most embarrassing moments, this is the one I will discuss. (It is actually Number 2 on that list, but Number 1 is just too disgusting.)

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  8. I just remember something I heard an older very independent person say about getting things done on time. He said ” I just draw a red line through the dead lines”.

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  9. I am not actually much of a “delayer”… I’m hardwired to get the nastiest stuff done first and out of the way. However, at work I follow Jacque’s lead… quite often a new process doesn’t make it much past the training stage. So I tend to not get too worked up about any new process until it’s clear that it has survived the actual training!

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  10. But this temperature technique could work on the candidates. The astronomers could point their instruments at Dayton to see if he is as inert as he appears and at Emmer to see if he has any warmth in him at all.

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    1. Clyde, if what you suspect about Dayton and Emmer is true, the testing should have been done earlier. I also think Dayton has the appearance of being inert. Let’s hope not. I will not even say what I think might be found out about the warmth of Emmer. Both of these guys should have been tested with the temperature technique before they were allowed to run for office.

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      1. Here’s an interesting question. If Emmer and Dayton were characters in The Wizard of Oz, what would the Great Wizard give them in the last chapter? Emmer obviously needs a heart, but if we gave him one he’d just try to sell it to someone else. Dayton needs a better sense of humor and tons of charisma.

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      3. If we somehow wind up with Emmer (which seems doubtful, thank heavens), I’m going to dig out my ruby slippers and keep clicking my heels until it all goes away…

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  11. I’ll get right on researching this question and make you some samples.

    Crow Girl, can I double check my resources against yours, just to make sure I haven’t missed anything?

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      1. once I get it all into a spreadsheet and work up the samples, it is all yours.

        I have some suggestions of who you might like to include on the commision to review the research too.

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      2. Maybe we should schedule a meeting to outline project parameters and guardrails as well as expected outcomes and key measurement tools for the team.

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      4. We should probably collect data and then have a meeting to come up with the agenda for the decision making meeting.

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      1. Oooooo… you guys are good. Let me do some research on setting up a committee to study this situation and develop a plan for our stakeholders to share so they can see the benchmarks we have achieved.

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    1. yes, Clyde – inscrutable to non-goat owners, so no one really knows if i’m getting the goats bred or not. (what do they know from signs of heat in a doe??) but i can say i’m busy with it for about four months.
      MIG – you gave me another tactic – decorating for the holidays in the goat barns. so many holidays, so little time….. i’ll get back to you i promise, after the holidays.

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  13. When I was in grad school, I would clean the house and rearrange the furniture a lot. Stripping that annoying wallpaper was always a good distraction, because then you have to paint or put up new wallpaper, and who can work on qualifying exams or esoteric dissertations when the walls are such a mess?

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    2. My wife’s work is rearranging the furniture. This woman who cannot do much of anything can push a heavy couch across the carpet. A year or so ago once again she could not sleep so she redid the furniture at 3 a.m., her favorite time to do it. So I got up as always in the dark and went through the livingroom in the dark so as not to disturb her, walking the safe path I had memorized, but which now had right in the middle of it the chest we use as a coffee table with my carved chess set on top.
      Now I turn on the light every morning.

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      1. I’m sorry to say your wife and I are twins, except for the 3 am part. I have back issues, but when furniture is involved I can summon hitherto unknown feats of strength…

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  14. I’m just like Jacque – wait and see if this change, process, computer software, whatever it is, actually becomes permanent. It took me a very, very long time to break down and learn to use a computer. I was certain it was a fad and would go away. I didn’t want to deal with this new and expensive hassle! I dragged myself, kicking and screaming, to classes and forced myself to learn. I’m glad I did, though. It brought me to this enormously rewarding Congress!

    I want to warn all of you about the treachery of lurking ice. There is ice under the layer of snow outside. It’s waiting there, patiently, for you to come along, all confident about your walking ability, and bring you DOWN! SMACK! on the ground. You could hit your head or your shoulder or your hip or your knee. It could hurt. It could be very dangerous for you. I know. It happened to me yesterday. Oh. Ow.

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  15. “…mmm, I don’t want to do that, exactly, but how about if I do this instead?” Seems like I sort of come up with an alternative idea that is much more pleasant than what I was asked to do. Sometimes it works. College was not one of those times, and I used a lot of Clyde’s college techniques, and pulled quite a few all nighters.

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    1. procrastination is the gift you give yourself, delaying is for the benefit of those who think you should be done by now.

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  17. I found a credit card on the street a couple years ago. So called the company to report it. They had no options for reporting a found card on their voice menu. Finally found a human being whose whole tone was suspicious of me, wanted everything but my SS#. So if I were going to use a CC falsely, would I call in and report it?
    Found a wallet on the street this morning. Had an address but he has no phone listed (an expired ID, not a driver’s license). Tried calling the police without calling 911. Got caught in a network of “if you want this hang up and dial this” and after calling that number getting “if you want this dial this.” Five levels in I got to police on duty but then got direction to hang up and dial the first number I was told to hang up and dial. So did call 911 so she sent a police officer to my office whose whole tone was suspicious of me and wanted everything but my SS#.
    Which reminds me–had forget this until now–that many years ago I was tending to a house of friends in St. Paul who were on a trip when they were burglarized. The cops told them that either I did it or they would never catch the thief. I was put under investigation by the police for awhile.
    In there is my delay tactic for when I retire. I will tell everyone not to talk to the hand but to talk to the phone, but they will get into a nested loop of directions which bring them back to step 1.

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  18. Anyone else remember a cartoon in the seventies (taped up by the water cooler, perhaps) that showed a bunch of guys laughing hilariously, head thrown back, slapping their knees… the caption was You Want it When?

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    1. I have a post-it note up in my cube (had it for years) that says “Of course you want it today. If you wanted it tomorrow you’d order it tomorrow.”

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  19. In the book “Up the Down Staircase” whenever anyone sent a message down the janitors office in the basement, they got back the message “Nobody down here.”

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    2. Lousy movie but get the movie “Teachers;” it has in it that great parody of a certain kind of teacher in the form of Mr. Ditto.

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  20. Responding to Clyde, I wonder what other baboons do when they are stuck in a phone triage system and it leads to a choice, all of whose options are false? Like if you want to eat an ice cream cone and now the phone is saying option 1 is getting a flu shot, option 2 is joining some thrift club and option 3 is buy a snow globe of baby Jesus in a snowstorm in Bethlehem.

    I usually don’t choose any, and I get dropped. Sometimes I hit 0, with unpredictable results. This week I spent 15 minutes entering information for a survey, and then I was given options all of which were false. I hung up.

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    1. I tend to hit “0” over and over again as well… or say “representative” multiple times. At home there is the obligatory slamming down of the handset onto the receiver. At the office I use a headset, so there is not any slamming satisfaction!

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    2. After many attempts where I try to find the secret way to get the answer or an operator, I give up and wonder why I even tried. There are the rare times when I do finally get what I want which gives me hope that I will have more luck in the future than I had in the past. It’s a false hope.

      I am amazed by the help I have received with computer problems over the phone. The people who give help over the phone on computer problems always seem to be very patient. I don’t know how they manage to do that.

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      1. i ask those peopl if the have a numbers game or some brain teaser while they sit patiently waiting for me to tell them ok the computer is doing it now… they say they are not but they also realize what a good idea it is and say they will try getting a crossword puzzle or a (what is that 3×3 math game called?) to keep a sharp brain while waiting for 10 minutes to have you tell them the little light came on. of the reboot wait etc…

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      1. i saw a factoid that talking to a live person in customer service the usa costs 15.oo, none from india is more like 4.00 the answering machine is like 75 cents. i would imagine they try to drive you crazy enough to hang up.

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  24. Attention everyone: we have 1/2 inche of snow and more coming; thus all meetings, projects, and programs are postponed until further notice.

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  25. I just realized that I do a version of what Crow Girl does, but planning instead of (well, maybe in addition to) reading . So borrowing from her first sentence:
    “I manage to not actually do a lot of things by planning them instead.”
    Once we get to the doing part, interest fizzles. Some say it’s an Aries trait, Fire for the beginning of things…

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      1. Planning is good, but it should be done in advance. My planning usually ends up being done at the last minute because I found some way to put off doing the planning for the work that I also have been avoiding.

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      3. Well, the weather burro heard me in re to drawing the target around the hole. They just made a prediction for 3-9 inches total for the “storm.” Since we already have 4, there lower end is a lock. Why not 1 to infinity?

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    3. a friend of mine tells of the summer her structural engineer husband was going to paint the (little one story) house. he spend the entire summer building the scaffolding. and then she gave up and painted it. it worked 🙂

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      1. My favorite Click and Clack call: woman said her husband told her that she should not drive the 1 mile up and over the hill but instead drive the 1.75 miles around the hill because it was better for the car. She wanted to know if he was right.
        Both Click and Clack at the same time said, “What kind of engineer is he?”
        She laughed and said, “Electrical.”
        One of them said, “It’s a mechanical engineer question. Tell him to stick to his own domain and do what you want.”
        My daughter married to a man with an engineering degree he does not use loved it.

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  27. ATTN: all my flurry of posts in the last 45 minutes are a delaying tactic; I am supposed to be cleaning the house for a showing tomorrow. Dagnabit. Cannot think of anything else to say.

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  28. I had to get on here to tell you all: my 18 yr old son just fed me a line of gibberish as a diversionary technique.

    … I couldn’t be more proud.

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      1. Heh, heh, Ben. But what if silicon were? Huh? Then he would be throwing sand in your face.
        I know, this is just a brief fest period between rooms.

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      2. You could always ask what he knows about the new arsenic-tolerant life forms…(apparently these little bacteria can even incorporate the stuff in their DNA).

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  29. Greetings! Wow — I thought I was good with delay tactics but you guys are masters! I’ve learned more good ways to procrastinate today — when I get around to it, I’ll try them out.

    Went to karate just after work and was there until 7:30pm, and then drove home. OMG — that was a nightmare drive. I’m finally calming down and relaxing after that 5 miles of hell on wheels (literally). Luckily, I had all green lights or had plenty of time to stop if needed. I was sooo stressed out and frazzled from driving on really bad roads, I was shaking and crying. Yes, I’m a major driving wienie. Now, I’m going to soak in a really hot tub and relax. Later, Booners …

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  30. just got in from blowing out our 6 inches for the 3rd time. i had the genius idea to go to fleet farm for sidewalk deicer at 700 and found traffic was slow but there was no sense trying to drive any faster . the roads were tough. the wipers wer the tougher part the ice on the blades. got the good stuff and im set for the storm now. probably not going to college vists tomorrow either.

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