If I Had A Hammer

This note is a sequel to the previous one, all about playing the odds when the odds are poorly understood so we have to use intuition. I intuited that there was a good chance I would get out of bed this morning, and I was right. I intuited that there was a good chance church would be cancelled because of snow. There were two phone calls asking about cancellation, but church went ahead as announced. I intuited that I would be able to show slides and videos on the TV at church using my ancient computer. That mostly worked, although there was an unexpected chime at one point and the video of the last hymn quit early so we finished singing a cappella. I had no intuition at all about my hearing aids and I forgot them once again, so I couldn't hear much of what was going on.

That pretty much covers it: sometimes we guess right, sometimes wrong, sometimes partly right and sometimes we forget or don't notice there is something we need to do. We do our best to create order in a chaotic universe and don't quite manage it because the universe is arbitrary (God plays dice) and we aren't sure of the odds. That's life.

I've been thinking about the ghost in the computer that messed up the last hymn. Well, maybe there is no ghost in the computer, but I intuit that if I had a hammer he wouldn't be repeating that little trick. Or I could figure out why it happened and play the odds instead of buying a new computer. 

Now that I think of it, there was some intentional annoyance built into the operating system. Microsoft wanted a way of financing their ongoing support. Their solution was selling an annual subscription for MS Office software by displaying a nag screen when the computer starts up. Years ago, I deleted the nag file, but I couldn't stop the operating system from trying to load it. So, every time I turn on the computer, it spends an hour or so looking for that file and then interrupts with an error message. That is the ghost in the machine. Solution, I should avoid restarting the computer within an hour before church.

Just in case, I have a hammer in the garage; but intuition works best with a dollop of reliable information. 

Now, define reliable.

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Cost of COVID Misinformation: CBC News, January 26 2023

We Were Wrong: Opinion by Kevin Bass, Newsweek, January 30 2023

COVID Remains a Public Health Emergency: CBC News reporting on the World Health Organization announcement, January 29 2023

Post-truth Misinformation: Terence Corcoran, Financial Post, February 1 2023