Words were redefined as you slept. So were the subtle phrases you formerly understood.
A $400 ticket to a Beyoncé performance does not mean she will sing live without real-time vocal reprocessing or even loop the whole darn thing from an MP3. Oh you thought buying a ticket to a singer meant they would sing? No, it read “perform.”
“I won’t let you scan my ID.” “But we don’t sell your information.” “But will you sell it or just give it away in the future?” (Insert ECG flatline sound)
“This house is a handyman’s dream!” So obvious, as if handymen ‘dream’ of fixing their own houses in order to live in them.
Do You Feel Disabused?
If not, perhaps you should. You are being played more than you ever realized. The “home baked biscuits” at your favorite restaurant had a “home” in a faceless factory at 1AM a few days earlier where they were 80% baked, flash frozen and sent to your restaurant to be browned beneath an industrial toaster oven.
Why am I bringing all this up? I thought I was being punked by my Blah Blah Blah friend when he told me you can deduce a dead alkaline battery from a fresh one by how it jumps on the dance floor.
Bring In The Science Looking Stuff
It took me a bit to devise this experiment and order the parts so you too wouldn’t feel gamed by a $0 Dań performance ticket to this blog. Thus test tubes – from the Sumerian root “to test in a tube.”
Here we have two Energizer MAX AA cells from the same retail package, presumably made in the same batch. The one on the right with the red stripe was fully discharged in my flashlight. That on the left, fresh like a prince.
The black square in the back is a magnet that is retaining both cells through the glass. Like the start of a pinewood derby car race, I pull the magnet off and record their downward on my kitchen counter top.
So there you have it – a discharged battery bounces notably more on the + end (the button terminal) than a fresh one. I’m sure Myth Busters did a full episode on this but you just received useful info in less than a minute. (Assuming you have two batteries you want to test against each other.)
As For Obtundation
This $9 word was listed in a recent journal article I read over breakfast about the defined levels of conscious awareness and how to determine them.
This is important in patient evaluation because armed with this knowledge a care giver is well equipped to act.
My friend joked that I have a name tape on my backpack sporting my last name. “Why would you give out that information?” I replied “Because if I’m ever mentally compromised, like after falling off my bike, a first responder knows what to yell over and over to get my attention. I’ve heard that word all my life.” And as the literal angels of hospice care told me once “Hearing is the first sense to develop and the final to depart.”
And finally, do not be obtunded to the wiles of this age. Don’t delve into cynicism but hold a wary appetite of whatever comes across your domain.
“The best of slaves will become the worst of masters.” – Nerva, as he dies in Caligula