2025 in Review - The Quiz

Introduction

As I close out 2025, I want to give my readers a little quiz about the topics I covered on albertnet over the past year. You can consider this quiz open-book (because after all, how could I police this)? 

Now, you might recall that I did a similar quiz four years ago, which might have annoyed you because all the multiple-choice answers were correct—that is, it wasn’t a quiz at all, but a farce. Well, fear not: this time there’s really only one right answer per question. And you don’t have to wait until next week for the answers … they’re right down at the bottom of the post. As a special bonus, I will award a merchandise prize to the first reader who gets a perfect score and reports it to me by clicking here. (Obviously you’re on the honor system here...)

2025 in Review – The Quiz

1. Which of the following is not a New Year’s Resolution that I recommended last January?

a) Get control of your dog – If you are a dog person, it might come as a real surprise to you that what you consider either adorable or at least lovably rambunctious misbehavior is actually a drag for grouches like me. For example, I’m out for a walk and your dog comes bounding over to me and tries to run up my body, his front paws raking my legs and groin, and you call out, “Don’t worry, he’s friendly!” And I’m thinking, fine, you’re probably friendly too, but would you windmill me like this?

b) Take better care of your teeth – If you don’t always brush, and/or seldom floss, then it’s time to face the fact that your teeth and gums are probably disgusting. If your parents spent a fortune on orthodontia, it’s a shame that you’re taking such poor care of their investment. And if you didn’t get orthodontia, your teeth need all the help they can get.

c) Stop wearing a COVID mask alone in your car – In the early days of the COVID lockdown when nobody know what was going on, we did all kinds of silly stuff, like forensic-grade wipe-downs of shopping cart handles, and wearing a mask in the car. But it never made sense to wear a mask when driving alone, did it? Are you worried you’ll give your car COVID?

d) Stop using my hairbrush – This one really only applies to my younger daughter when she’s home from college. So, L—, to be clear, it’s actually okay if you use my hairbrush on the sly such that I don’t even know about it. But when I have to look for it, I get nervous … what if you took it to a slumber party and lost it? As you know, it’s my oldest possession so I’m inordinately fond of it.

 2. Which of the following is not one of my five recommendations on how to improve your LinkedIn profile?

a) Rework your headline section – Here is an example of a good Headline:

>>Growth | Digital | Generative AI | Culture Cultivator | Mentor | Advocate |Outside the Box | Clarity Bringer | AI/ML | Driving Innovation | Flawless Executation| Podcaster | Olympian | Frontends | Evangelist | Stakeholdering | C++ | pDOOH | Rainmaker |Delivering Scalability| Solutionist

I’m not just supplying that as an example of what a tech worker would list; I’m telling you to literally copy and paste the above into your Headline (except “Executation” which was to make sure you’re paying attention).

b) Create an entrepreneurial vibe – Rank-and-file employees, be they wretched “individual contributors” or pathetic “middle managers,” just don’t get any respect. They’re as despised as tourists. But people love entrepreneurs. The trouble is, we can’t all be entrepreneurs, and if we were, we probably wouldn’t bother to fine-tune our LinkedIn profiles … we’d be whispering right into the ears of angel investors. But there’s another way forward: figure out what other type of –preneur you might be. Choose from the following or invent your own:

• Hellapreneur – like an entrepreneur but better
• Contrapreneur – has a startup that bucks current trends; for example, launches a new flip phone to corner the digital detox market
• Epipeneur – this person is launching a startup despite having a severe peanut allergy
• Codependepreneur – spins his wheels on yet another doomed startup because between him and his partner they’ve convinced themselves this thing is viable
• Saagpaneur – wants to open an Indian restaurant

c) Refine your Experience section and make it data-driven – For example, instead of just saying, “Performed software QA testing,” put, “Via disruptive and visionary software QA testing, reduced operating costs by 37%, saving $2.3 million in one year while improving CSAT scores by 24%.” The recruiter reading this, whose BS detectors will be lighting up like crazy, will think, “Oh, good, he’s also a storyteller! We can always use more of those.”

d) Have an AI chatbot help you revise your profile – As we all know, affinity bias is real. That is, if you and the hiring manager both went to UC Berkeley, you’ll have a leg up. Well, this affects your LinkedIn profile too: since it will only be read by bots, it should be co-written by a bot. Any of these AI LLMs will be sure to prune the unimportant stuff, like how you graduated summa cum laude (because who speaks Latin anymore?).

3. When I solicited advice from ChatGPT about how to monetize my blog, which of the following was not useful feedback that it provided?

a) “Your Blogger page view count is inflated” – The chatbot warned me that, although albertnet received 1.2 million page views in the preceding three months, the vast majority were probably from bots, scrapers, SEO crawlers, and AI training bots, so turning on Adsense would not generate any appreciable passive income

b) “Here is a boilerplate privacy policy for your blog” – When I asked it to help me compose my privacy policy (something I’d neglected to do for like 15 years), it provided a response that was mostly unusable, but did have some good points, and if nothing else prevented writer’s block and paved the way for my own policy, which you can read here and which I’ve linked to in my blog’s footer

c) “Here is what you need to achieve GDPR compliance if your blog uses cookies” – It gave me a nice rundown on what the GDPR requirements are, and I felt I could trust it not to hallucinate because this is such widely available information

d) “Here’s some example HTML script to invoke the traffic tracking” – It spoon-fed me actual HTML that I could paste in to my blog to start tracking various metrics

4. Which of these passages is not from my Ode to Thrifting?

a) A pair of Docs for only forty bucks? / I’ll take ‘em ‘cause they’re only barely used

b) Of course there’s all the stuff you’d never buy / Such pseudo-brands as George and Charter Club

c) Upon the racks of thrift, the brands they lie / Forgotten names that once did softly shine

d) But when I think of forking out full price? / No thanks – I’ll opt for thrift and toss the dice

5. The brutal 105-mile mountain bike ride I did on the Canyonlands White Rim Trail taught me that:

a) If you travel to a sufficiently isolated place like Canyonlands, you can be so dwarfed by giant reddish rock formations towering above you that you never need to see the celestial heavens again, if feeling insignificant is your thing

b) Regardless of how much experience we have, middle-aged cyclists have no business trying to keep up with Division 1 collegiate cross-country runners

c) During two-day driving trips, an all-taqueria-all-the-time approach to dining is totally worth it, even if it causes percussive flatulence that disturbs the much-needed pre-ride good night’s sleep

d) Clif and/or Kind bars are actually inferior to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for long-distance cycling, especially in the heat

6. Which of the following is not a classic O.G. move, according to the albertnet-featured columnist “Ask an O.G.”?

a) Making pour-over coffee instead of using a Mr. Coffee or (shudder) a Keurig

b) Using a traditional double-edged razor instead of the modern plastic type with the blade cartridges

c) Buying your music on vinyl instead of CD or (gasp) Spotify

d) Sticking with standard bike handlebars and levers instead of the narrow, flared-out bars with goofy levers that stick out like chicken wings

7. Which of the following does not represent my take on the usefulness of locknuts for Presta valves?

a) If you have a commuter bike with Presta valves, use the locknuts or not, at your whim

b) If you have a folding bike, use the locknut because this type of bike tends to actually have Dunlop valves

c) If you have a backup “rain bike” that you mainly ride on the indoor trainer, you better be using noise-canceling headphones, in which case you can use locknuts or not, because who cares if they (or your valves) rattle?

d) For your flagship road or mountain bike, run tubeless with locknuts, and if anybody makes fun of you, send them my Presta valve locknut blog post

8. Which of the following strategies is not among my recommendations for when your loved one buys a juicer?

a) Let the juicer-buyer fail – It can be so hard to just stand by and watch a loved one fail, but in the case of a juicer, it’s actually the best thing you can do. If the purchaser perceives a battle of wills between the two of you, his judgment is bound to be further clouded. Just watch and wait, and when that first batch of kale, cucumber, carrot, and beet concoction comes out, accept the proffered glass willingly. Your vain attempt to avoid wincing, grimacing, puckering, or even gagging, and the pleasant smile you try to arrange, will be duly noted. In fact, you will be invoking the juicer-buyer’s empathy.

b) Be alert to collateral damage – If you have children, watch for any warning signs that they are coping poorly. Seeing a juicer in action, and knowing it was purchased intentionally, may cause them to doubt the foundation of reliable, competent parenting they rely so heavily upon.

c) Lead with empathy – Remember, this buyer is already in a highly vulnerable state … if she weren’t, she wouldn’t have bought the juicer in the first place! So instead, as strange and inappropriate as this may feel, thank her for thinking of the family’s health. Remember, if you’re going to eventually pick up the pieces and move on, you need her to feel like you’re on her side.

d) When the time is right, “disappear” the juicer – Out of sight, out of mind. Spare your family the ongoing trauma of repeated attempts to make a palatable vegetable beverage. The juicer-buyer may well assume the juicer is just “hiding” and may even feel secretly relieved not to have to try again.

9. I challenged the three leading AI chatbots to write a poem in dactylic trimeter. The topic I assigned was the reckless behavior of choosing to bike up Lomas Cantadas, a brutal climb, just to celebrate one’s radical freedom. Match each passage below with its author: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, or Dana.

a) Turning to torment, no reason persuades me, / Pain blooms in muscles yet joy is commanding

b) Wisdom, alas, is a flaw when you’re mired / In glory, in notions of being a man

c) This is the freedom to throw all the rules about, / Knowing the payment and what it will cost him

d) Madness is mettle, a jest I renew, / Lomas Cantadas — I suffer for you

10. The term MAMIL—middle-aged man in Lycra—lacks a widely recognized corresponding term for a middle-aged woman in Lycra. Which of the following proposed terms is mine?

a) SOMAT (slightly overweight middle-aged totty)

b) OWL (older woman in Lycra)

c) WILMA (woman in Lycra, middle-aged)

d) MAVIS (middle-aged vixen in spandex)

Answers

Here are the correct answers. 

1. (b) – “Take better care of your teeth” is not one of my suggested Resolutions. Although this is fine advice, I did not propose it in 2025; it’s from my 2018 post about New Year’s Resolutions. [Source: A Scattershot Approach to New Year’s Resolutions ]

2. (d) – “Have an AI chatbot help with your profile” was not one of my suggestions in this post. I don’t actually believe that AI platforms have affinity for one another. (And incidentally, it was a human career counselor who advised me to remove summa cum laude from my LinkedIn profile. I left it in, but translated it to English.) [Source: Five Tips for Improving Your LinkedIn Profile ]

3. (a) – “Your Blogger page view count is inflated.” ChatGPT did not caution me thus. In fact, it was a sucker for raw data and showed a serious lack of skepticism around page view stats. Blithely assuming that page views represented real readers, it calculated that if I were to turn on Adsense, I stood to make about $2,000 a month in passive income from this blog! It did provide a number of caveats, such as how my results might be affected by the geographical location of my readers, the positioning and type of ads, ad targeting, how well ads match my content, user engagement, and so on. But the question of bots vs. human readers didn’t cross its mind until I prompted it very specifically on this. Gemini failed similarly. This kind of “big picture” thinking is a major weakness of AI platforms, I think. [Source: What Is ChatGPT Great At (and Not)? ]

4. (c) – “Upon the racks of thrift, the brands they lie / Forgotten names that once did softly shine.” This was penned by ChatGPT, and shows once again that AI is pretty bad at poetry. Too general, and sacrifices meaning for adherence to the meter. [Source: Ode to Thrifting ]

5. (b) – “Regardless of how much experience we have, middle-aged cyclists have no business trying to keep up with Division 1 collegiate cross-country runners” is not one of my takeaways from this brutal ride. Actually, the young cross-country runners only put the hurt on Peter and me for about the first forty miles. Eventually their rambunctiousness caught up with them, or perhaps it was just the well-earned capacity for endless drudgery that Pete and I have built up over the decades, but we were all equally knackered by the end. [Source: Biking the White Rim Canyonlands Trail With Young Bucks ]

6. (c) – “Buying your music on vinyl instead of CD or (gasp) Spotify” is not something this columnist considers an O.G. move. In fact, he stated, “If a music lover still has the record player he bought as a teenager, and all his original records, plus perhaps a few select purchases to round out his collection, I’d consider that O.G. But when wealthy people buy modern turntables with multi-layer plinths, decoupled motor systems, and carbon fiber tonearms, and painstakingly replace their CD or MP3 collections with pricey records, that’s more of an epicurean thing than O.G. (Not saying it’s bad, mind you. Just not O.G.) [ Source: Ask an O.G. ]

7. (b) – “If you have a folding bike, use the locknut because this type of bike tends to actually have Dunlop valves” is not one of my conclusions from this post. It’s a total red herring here. [Source: Presta Valve Locknuts, aka Valve Rings ]

8. (d) – “When the time is right, ‘disappear’ the juicer” is not one of my recommendations. This would be helping the juicer-buyer to delude herself, instead of facing the fact of her error and learning from it. [Source - When Your Loved One Buys a Juicer ]

9. Here are the authors behind each poem exerpt:

    (a) – “Turning to torment, no reason persuades me, / Pain blooms in muscles yet joy is commanding” – ChatGPT

    (b) – “Wisdom, alas, is a flaw when you’re mired / In glory, in notions of being a man” – Me (from my “Ode to Lomas Cantadas”)

    (c) – “This is the freedom to throw all the rules about, / Knowing the payment and what it will cost him” – Gemini

   (d) – “Madness is mettle, a jest I renew, / Lomas Cantadas — I suffer for you” – Copilot

Once again, AI generally does a fairly poor job of maintaining sense when it’s trying to get the meter right, and Gemini didn’t even get the dactylic trimeter right. The outlier is Copilot which I think did remarkably, perhaps even frighteningly, well. [Source: More AI Smackdown - ChatGPT, Copilot, & Gemini Write Poetry ]

10. (d) – MAVIS (middle-aged vixen in spandex) is the term I suggested. Help me make this a household word! [Source: Ask a MAMIL ]

Scoring

9-10: You are a genius! You probably know this blog better than I do.

6-8: Excellent! You’re either just very good at taking tests, or you actually read my blog pretty faithfully in 2025.

3-5: Solid! It seems you’re actually pretty familiar with albertnet, even if you fell off a bit this past year.

1-2: Good! I’m impressed you made it all the way through the test!

0: Not so bad! Next time perhaps you’ll actually take the test instead of just skimming my post!

<0: You are either magical, a space alien, or an emoticon of a person with a big nose and a goatee.

Did you win?

If you scored a perfect 10, email me here and let me know. If you are the first perfect-scoring reader, I will respond to your email and make shipping arrangements for your special prize!

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Overlooked Posts of 2024

Introduction

Last year, I enjoyed an article in the New York Times about overlooked stories—those their editors felt didn’t reach as many readers as they should have. Following the Times’ lead, I blogged about overlooked albertnet posts. Did it make a mark? Well, of the twelve 2023 posts I spotlighted (one per month), two subsequently moved from last place to second place, and four moved all the way into first place (i.e., have now reached the  most pageviews of any posts that month). That strikes me as a pretty good response, so I’m going do this again. Below are the 2024 posts that I think deserved more attention from my readers (I’m looking at you, Mom). Like last year, I’ll explain why they deserve your attention.

January

I thought “New Year’s Resignation” was a catchy title since readers’ brains would automatically think “Resolution” when they hit the first syllable of that third word, and then be surprised. If my readers had any such reaction (which I now doubt), it evidently wasn’t enough to get them to click the link; this post has the fewest pageviews of any I ran last January. Perhaps “resignation” is just too negative a word … I’ve received advice that negative words turn people away and we should always use positive ones. But how, then, would we explain the success of the heavy metal band Megadeth?

I feel the Resignation post should have done better. I mean, don’t we all get sick of the swirl around New Year’s Resolutions, and thus shouldn’t readers welcome a suggestion like improving their capacity for resignation? Wouldn’t they be interested in how this behavior, which we’re all trained to feel bad about, can actually be a superpower? Well, to get that message they’d have to actually open the post, duh! I guess it really is all about window dressing. If I decide to do a post this month on the theme of New Year’s Resolutions, I’m going to call it “Make $150K working from home,” or maybe “Megadeth.”

February

The loss leader for February was “Virtual Reality Killer App!” Any reader expecting a well-researched, informative article on VR technology apparently doesn’t know me very well. The more a topic requires actual research, the less I do, and the higher I rev my BS engine. In other words, it should have been obvious that was a humor piece. Doesn’t everyone deserve a good laugh? I guess it’s possible you identified it as a humor piece but didn’t click through because you don’t think I’m funny. If that’s the case, why are you here at all? Shoo! Shoo!

What? You’re still here? You do think I’m funny? Well then click here right away! I won’t say more about that post because there’s a plot twist I’d hate to give away. So go read it now. And then came back here for the rest of this post. Or not. Whatever.

March

If you consider my lowest-performing March post, “The Power of Loafing,” in the context of my earlier “New Year’s Resignation” post, you might conclude I was (and/or am) burned out and just going through the motions of my life, running out the clock. And you’d be right. Er, wrong. Maybe both. Look, this was a useful post in challenging the so-called “grind culture” of “performative workaholism” while introducing a new buzz-phrase that’s sure to take the workplace by storm: “clip out.” Give it a read!

April

I haven’t seen much response to my April post “Can We Unplug Our Kids?” despite it being a serious commentary on an important societal problem. Oh, wait a second … I just realized this is the last sort of thing anyone wants to read, and that moreover reading is the last thing anyone wants to do. I should have posted a video of myself doing a silly dance, or better yet, a video of a really attractive woman doing a sexy dance. In other words I should have just forwarded something from TikTok, like everybody else.

But wouldn’t earnest parents be naturally drawn to this topic? And aren’t parents among the most earnest type of people alive? Maybe parents didn’t read this because they don’t see that I’ve earned the right to pontificate. Don’t they realize I’m a tall male so I automatically have the right? Well, anyway, I do think I’ve earned that right because I raised my kids in a highly unorthodox fashion and reported on the remarkable results. I should have titled this post “Raised By Nutjobs: the Sad Story of a Cell-Phone-Free Childhood!” Or maybe “TikTok Twerk Tease!” or “Megadeth.”

May

Once again, a useful-looking how-to advice post was largely ignored: “Five Home Remodeling Mistakes to Avoid.” Would-be readers may have seen that title and thought, “So what, I’m not contemplating a home remodel anyway,” or “What does this unheralded bookworm cyclist blogger know about remodels that the helpful folks at Home Depot couldn’t tell me?” or “OMG, after my disastrous remodel I can’t bear to think about that topic ever again.” Evidently they weren’t thinking, “Oh, this is obviously another purely BS humor piece along the lines of ‘COVID-19: Helping Teens Cope’ or ‘Plumbing Emergencies for Dummies.’ I’ll bet it’s a scream!”

This post takes five perfectly logical and reasonable rules of thumb and smashes them with a hammer. It is the perfect remedy for the dread that contemplating home improvement can generate. Here’s a teaser so you’ll understand what vein I was shooting up in:

Spring is in the air. Out in their driveways, your neighbors are beating on old Turkish rugs with broomsticks, maybe more enthusiastically than is really necessary. Birds are building nests in your trees, without asking. No matter where you look, spring cleaning and other restoration projects are underway. The warm breeze is whispering in your ear: “Time to start pulling your weight.” Or maybe that’s your spouse, and it’s proceeded from a whisper to plain speech to aggressive beseeching all the way up to a flat-out demand, which has become increasingly hard to ignore. So it’s time to bite the bullet and agree to a home remodel.

In summary, check this post out immediately!

June

I read an article yesterday about how a majority of the movies that Hollywood is working on this year are sequels, prequels, reboots, or remakes, because that’s the kind of crap that gets people into the theaters. The logic of this is not lost on me: I understand that people are lame and don’t like to gamble on new stuff. Thus, when a post does well, I often try to work my way around to a sequel. A post from 2009, “We Have a Winner,” has racked up about 1500 pageviews, and—get this—over 850 of them were in the last year alone. That’s not an albertnet blockbuster but it’s pretty solid. So in June I posted “We Have a Winner! – Part II” and it has done … very poorly.

This post concerns the winner of my second non-annual albertnet Amateur Product Review contest, and recaps the three consumer reviews I featured of various products, with one review each being a fake that I contrived. Then this post provides the correct answer and the winner’s brilliant commentary around how he came to his answer. Give it a read, it’s fun!

July

I am very disappointed with the performance of “What Are Men Extenders?” which concerns a term that (after harrowing Internet research) I traced etymologically to the movie “Barbie.” This post provides a very thorough definition of “men extender” and plumbs the fascinating topic of what products are the quintessential examples. This phrase is utterly useful, as is the examination of what it means to be a man—a man’s man, even—in our modern, enlightened times. This post is my finest on this theme since “The Sissy Syndrome” which I posted back in 2010, and which has been really popular. Read ‘em both!

August

Okay, the loss leader for August, “Ageing Focus – Make Balance a Habit!” is unabashedly earnest, helpful, useful, and understandably has been ignored. It’s really not very amusing and concerns the unpleasant reality of getting old and lame. I guess I could have titled it “Try This Weird Trick That Your Therapist Doesn’t Want You To Know About” or “Too Hot For TikTok!” but that would be a bait-and-switch. Look, there’s some helpful stuff in this post, okay? And if you want the punch line without having to read anything, just scroll down and watch a couple of the 20-second videos shot by my daughter. (In one of them you can hear her yawning, which is probably the highlight of the whole post.) Just do it. Do it for your future self, assuming you don’t want to be falling-and-you-can’t-get-up.

September

All of my posts did pretty well in September, but one had to be the loser, so I’ll draw your attention to “Major League Baseball FAQ – a Guide for Foreigners.” Given that a large percentage of albertnet viewers are overseas, I figured this would be popular (especially given the strong performance of “Super Bowl FAQ – A Guide for Foreigners”). But it hasn’t gone viral or anything (not really, not yet).

You should read it whether you’re foreign or not, whether you’re a baseball maven or a total newb. (My nephew, who played varsity baseball in college, says he learned a couple things.) It’s not because you need this knowledge, but because you need a laugh. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite.

Cuba has won more Olympic medals for baseball than any other country but they have never played in the World Series. How can MLB baseball call it the “World” Series?

Because America.

What is the seventh inning stretch?

This is when all the fans in the stadium stand together and stretch, since they’ve been sitting so long on those uncomfortable bleachers.

So it’s like yoga or Tai Chi?

No, just stretching out your arms a bit, and singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Is it always the same song, across the nation?

No, in Boston they sing “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond.

Why Boston? Why don’t they sing “Sweet Caroline” in North or South Carolina?

Nobody knows. That is to say, I don’t know.

October

It’s not often that the title of an albertnet post includes “Mea Culpa.” In case you’re not fluent in pig Latin, that roughly translates, “Just kill me.” I fell on my sword with this post (schadenfreude, anyone?) based on the myopia of my April loss-leader post, “Can We Unplug Our Kids?” My “Part II: Mea Culpa” post considers the social media conundrum afresh, letting parents somewhat off the hook and examining how the Internet industry is more to blame. I examine in particular how privilege and luck helped my family grapple with social media responsibly. Gosh, any time I tap into liberal guilt I ought to touch a nerve, right? With readers either commiserating or condemning me, possibly both? Well, not this time … people simply ignored it. Do you want to remedy that? Click here! (Note: reading the post will not actually help you save the world. But you might feel smug and/or indignant. Won’t that feel good?)

November

Frankly, November was a great month for albertnet. Its four posts have accumulated over 1,100 page views so far, and the count from those four is still climbing with well over 100 views in the last week. The least number of views is from “Bell’s Seasoning II – The Spawning” with only 180 views so far (38 in the past week). I already mentioned how sequels are supposed to be a slam-dunk, so what’s going on here? I even included “The Spawning” in the title, which strategy seems to have borne fruit in the past (e.g., “Tire Chains II – The Spawning,” “Keep Calm II – The Spawning”). And yet my Bell’s sequel hasn’t yet propelled me to international fame and stardom.

You should read it anyway, because it’s not just about a spice concoction that is the key to Thanksgiving, but also about a dogged blogger who is persistent beyond all reason. It’s almost like a cautionary tale, except there’s no moral (unless I missed it, in which case you could enjoy some first-rate dramatic irony). I know your next turkey dinner is over ten months away, but you should check this post out anyway.

December

Well, I posted only three times last month, and it’s probably not fair to pick on the most recent, lowest-performing post for December because it’s only been up for a week and a half. I’m talking about “A Mysterious Note” which is the strange, true story of a mysterious note, and includes as a bonus the even stranger, also true story of the time I terrorized a junkie during his heroin fix. At least, I think I terrorized him. I can only assume he experienced actual terror (since I’ve never tried heroin myself, obviously). Does any of this make you curious? Good, good. Click on through!

Here’s to 2025!

Thank you for visiting albertnet. I look forward to another year of writing about, well, anything that amuses me, and I hope you look forward to reading it.

Overlooked posts of 2023:

• Jan: Ask a Fitness Dweeb (now up to second most popular of the month)
• Feb: What We Should (and Will) Be Embarrassed By
• Mar: Schooling ChatGPT (also up to second)
• Apr: Errata
• May: More Tom Swifties
• Jun: Impromptu Commencement Address
• Jul: Gravel Riding in the Rockies
• Aug: If William Wordsworth Were Writing Today (now up to first place!)
• Sept: Jumbo-Visma & the Kuss Conundrum
• Oct: Epic Trans Alps Cycling Trip – Part VI (also now first)
• Nov: Undeterred - A Critique of a Book About Life Without Free Will (also now first)
• Dec: Cycling Smackdown – Small Cog Tale (also now first)

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Overlooked Posts of 2023

Introduction

This evening I’ve been casting about for a post that would tie together the events of 2023 and kind of put this long and tiresome year to bed. In the process I discovered this fun article in the New York Times listing stories from this past year that their editors felt didn’t reach as many readers as they should have. That inspired me, and in this post I’ll go one better: I’ll not only list my least-viewed posts from 2023 but explain why you shouldn’t have missed them. (And if you did read these, this is your chance to feel all smug and validated.)

January

 “Ask a Fitness Dweeb” has so far received the fewest pageviews for January 2023. In fact, by my rough math, if I had ads turned on for this blog, this post wouldn’t have even earned me enough for a cup of coffee. And yet, doesn’t a fitness-themed post seem perfectly timely as readers ponder their New Year’s Resolutions?

Maybe it’s the “Dweeb” part. That was my daughter’s idea. Don’t worry, my persona in this post is no dweebier than ever. This (albeit contrived) advice column is particularly worthy if you check out the bit about gamification, and my description of the international training contest I run every year that is super easy, fun, and effective. (The Q4 contest just wrapped up today with, amazingly, a tie for first place!)

February

For this month, the most neglected post was “What We Should (and Will) Be Embarrassed By.” Ask yourself: has it ever seemed like people are more shameless than ever? Well, this post can be a useful guide for avoiding that. If you’re tired of the phrase “lean in,” and/or the promotion of cannabis as a “wellness” aid rather than what it is (i.e., a hedonistic drug that dudes like Jeff Spicoli use because they’re young and irresponsible and like to party), and/or you think Vitamin Water should be called “Stupid Water,” this post is for you.

March

I was pleased to see, in February, how well my (harsh) critiques of ChatGPT did. My two-part series, “A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT,” garnered gobs of pageviews. I was a bit bothered, though, by a sense that the posts were slightly passive-aggressive, given that I was showcasing A.I.’s failings without exploring the potential upside. This led to curiosity about how ChatGPT would do if I tried to formally teach it, which I tried doing with the post Schooling ChatGPT. This was, for me, a fairly fascinating exercise, though also tedious as ChatGPT apologized constantly for its repeated errors. What I discovered is that (as it eventually admitted) it cannot learn in any formal way, by taking instruction from a knowledgeable person. It can only train itself by ingesting vast troves of data from across the Internet.

I’m not sure why this third post didn’t do as well as the other ones on this topic. Perhaps three posts in fairly rapid succession was just too much. Suffice to say, if you enjoyed the first two, you should definitely check this one out.

April

The loss-leader for this month was “Errata.” My jumping-off point was the policy of the Times copping to its various errors over time. Perhaps readers skipped this post because they don’t overmuch care to see my errors corrected, being more laid-back than that. But that would be missing the point: this is just a humor piece. Here’s an excerpt:

In “Everything You Wanted to Know About Getting a Vasectomy - But Were Afraid To Ask,” I wrote, “The nurse arranged towels around my groin until the entire area was reduced to the pink-red scrotum shrouded in white, like a sunburned toad poking out of a field of freshly fallen snow.” Upon reflection I realize that my freshly-shaved scrotum more closely resembled a frog than a toad.

Who doesn’t need a good laugh or two? Check it out!

May

Speaking of a good laugh, the post “More Tom Swifties” was my most unpopular for May (even though my original “Tom Swifties” post has done quite well). This post offers dozens of easy one-liners that ought to be a pleasant diversion for anyone. For example:

“Man, you really stink!” Tom fumed.
“I’ll just give my boss the finger,” Tom said flippantly.
“How do you feel about gay couples?” Tom queried.

In case you’re looking for something a little more sophisticated, this post also puts ChatGPT through its paces creating A.I. Tom Swifties. Spoiler: ChatGPT crashes and burns horribly; for example, “‘I’m terrible at baseball,’” Tom said bat-terly.” Huh?

June

Why did “Impromptu Commencement Address” do so poorly? Beats me. The premise—what speech would you give a college graduating class if given only twenty minutes to prepare?—seemed like a good one, and I’m frankly pleased with the result. I make fun of myself, of college grads, and of all the hand-wringing and anxiety saturating our culture these days. If nothing else this speech has some good stage directions (e.g., “[Wait for applause or maybe mostly silence, or the generalized murmur of people who have tuned out completely and are chattering away amongst themselves, and/or one or more people yelling things like ‘Get off the stage!’].” I also explore one of the pressing questions of our day: is it true the future is female?

July

Historically, my bike ride reports do quite well; for example, “Mount Baker (WA) with Brother & Nephew” has garnered over 2,000 pageviews. So why did “Gravel Riding in the Rockies” fizzle? It had the usual attractions: food descriptions, breathtaking landscape photos, and schadenfreude (e.g., “My rented helmet was designed, apparently, for Ernie, from ‘Sesame Street,’ but my head is evidently shaped more like Bert’s, so the helmet slid forward during the bumpy descents, mashing my sunglasses into the bridge of my nose, unless I tightened the bonnet hard enough to threaten a gradual concussion and/or some sanded-off forehead flesh”). So, if you’ve enjoyed my other ride reports, get over to this one and see what you think.

August

Okay, this next one isn’t just my biggest disappointment of the month, popularity-wise, but of the entire year: “If William Wordsworth Were Writing Today.” I get that Wordsworth is a moldy old British poet, and has likely been labeled “problematic” by modern scholars because he was white, male, etc. But trust me, this post is anything but stuffy. It presents a hypothetical instant-messaging dialogue that might take place if the great poet submitted a new work for review to a modern, sales-obsessed editor. It’s breezy, fun, and one of my shortest posts ever. Check it out!

September

I wasn’t able to cover the Vuelta a España on albertnet, but I wrote a special post, “Jumbo-Visma & the Kuss Conundrum,” about perhaps the most exciting thing in the race: an American, Sepp Kuss, had a couple of amazing days in the mountains and moved into first place overall, only to have his biggest challenge come from two of his own teammates. This was a major soap opera for anyone following the sport, and though I was perhaps a day or so late covering it, I was surprised how little traction this post got. To this day, YouTube is constantly offering me up more videos on the whole affair, even though I didn’t even use YouTube for my research.

This post advances ten theories on why a professional team would hamper their own star rider when he’s winning for them. My theories range from the quite plausible to the mildly facetious to the outright bogus, all in keeping with my primary goal, which is to entertain. Rereading it now, I think it’s held up well, long after the race itself has been decided.

October

I guess it’s not really fair to pick on one post in particular for October, since all four of them were on the same topic, that being my weeklong cycling trip in the French Alps. But the last installment, “Epic Trans Alps Cycling Trip – Part VI” has the fewest pageviews and doesn’t seem to be catching up. I guess six posts on the same topic might have pushed my readers’ patience. But if you missed this before, it’s a good one: lots of photos, with the best scenery of my entire trip, and perhaps the most potent Schadenfreude as I completely melted down on the legendary Alpe-d’Huez climb. Give it a whirl!

November

I am frankly offended by the notion that human beings don’t have free will. You can well imagine, therefore, that I’d be super annoyed when a vainglorious douchebag from Stanford, with a big dumb Karl Marx beard and long hair in ringlets, throws together a crappy book that pretends to prove, via neuroscience, that we don’t have free will. To make matters worse, the book is selling well, and a surprising number of intellectual types are apparently stroking their goatees and saying, “Yes, yes, this is all very compelling.” I bent over backwards with my critique, “Undeterred - A Critique of a Book About Life Without Free Will,” and even got my daughter to do a wonderful drawing of the douchebag in question, the bloviating, preening Robert Sapolksy. Naturally I’m disappointed more people didn’t read this post. Even if you never considered reading Sapolsky’s book, you should read this as a cautionary tale about academic types getting drunk on their own bathwater.

December

Okay, I’ll grant that it’s a little early to tell which post from this month is underperforming. It’s not like my posts open like Hollywood blockbusters. But I suppose I can feel a bit disappointed that “Cycling Smackdown – Small Cog Tale” hasn’t already gone viral and made me an overnight Internet celebrity, or at least racked up a really solid number of pageviews. This is a ripping yarn about an all-out cycling sprint on a cold, dark, rainy evening, depicting a classic confrontation between robust teenagers and a seasoned but middle-aged coach. I suffered horribly to produce this tale so you might as well honor that with a quick read.

See you next year!

Thank you for visiting albertnet. I look forward to another year of writing about, well, anything that amuses me, and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

2021 in Review - the Quiz

Introduction

As I close out 2021, I thought I’d give my readers a little quiz. You can consider this open-book (because after all, how could I police this anyway)? Or, for an extra challenge, try it without peeking. 

(Don’t worry, you don’t have to wait until next week for the answers … they’re right down at the bottom of the post.)

2021 in Review – the Quiz

1. The movie Wonder Woman 1984 sucked because:

a) Diana (Gal Godot) got all soft and mushy as soon the love interest, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) arrived; she stopped being badass and was mainly clingy and needy, pining for him (I know, bad pun, I couldn’t resist), which was distracting and annoying

b) Diana stubbornly refused to give up Steve, though this was necessary in order to save the world (according to the absurd logic of the so-called plot) and wasn’t until Steve sternly mansplained the whole thing to her that she fell in line, as if it takes a man to save the world, even when he’s not a superhero

c) It’s totally unrealistic that a woman as gorgeous as Diana would wait for forty years for her sweetheart to reappear rather than moving on, and it’d have been so much cooler if Steve had shown up suddenly in 1984 only for Diana to say, “Uh, sorry Steve … I’m actually in a relationship”

d) The female villain in the movie was meek, nice, and nerdy until she gained her powers, which consisted of being charming, beautiful, and strong, at which point she instantly became evil as well, as if the natural consequence of empowering women is that they become total bitches

2. Why is a low-sodium diet not necessarily for everyone?

a) Modern life has people working too much, exercising too little, eating a lot of crap, and then trying to undo the damage by eating less salt … nice try
b) When I surveyed my bike team, 17 of 23 responded that they don’t worry about limiting their salt intake, and yet we’re all very healthy
c) Added salt is not a major contributor to hypertension; the salt in processed foods is more often the culprit, and these are the foods we should all be avoiding anyway due to their trans fats, nitrates, refined flour, etc.
d) Sometimes a little salt goes a long way, like regular peanut butter that has only 6% of the recommended daily value, whereas low-sodium peanut butter is so disgusting I’d rather eat my scabs … and in fact I’d almost rather eat your scabs

3. Knowing what we now know about football, and looking back at the NFL’s lawsuit against M.I.A. for flipping off the camera during the halftime show, their lawsuit is absurd because…

a) These halftime shows are so lame, the scandals (like this one or Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction”) are really the only even slightly dramatic or exciting things fans ever get to see
b) Innocuous gestures like the flipping the bird are nothing compared to the domestic violence committed by football players, which the NFL happily tolerates as detailed here
c) The NFL has a long history of turning a blind eye to the rampant concussions suffered by their players and took great pains to block research into the problem, so they cannot claim any moral high ground
d) Football fans, being remarkably tolerant of all this, should totally be able to handle being flipped off

4. Primoz Roglic’s come-from-behind victory in Stage 7 of the Paris-Nice cycling stage race was actually kind of lame because…

a) Despite having already totally stomped all over his rivals for the GC, Roglic needlessly passed up Gino Mäder, a young pro who had launched a very brave breakaway and would have achieved his first-ever WorldTour victory if Roglic hadn’t cruelly nipped him at the line, thus crushing his dream
b) Roglic did this great big alpha-male victory salute as if this were the most impressive victory of his career when really it didn’t matter much, this being such a minor stage race for a rider like him
c) The way he punched the sky, it was just so tone-deaf, bringing to mind the smarty-pants kid in the classroom who’s constantly putting his hand up and, when the teacher ignores him, raises it higher, higher, higher, so his shoulder is raised, half his butt is lifting off the chair, and he’s going “Ooh, ooh, ooh” and can’t figure out why the teacher won’t call at him yet again

d) We’re all kind of tired of Roglic anyway

5. As of April, 2021 (i.e., pre-Delta) variant) what generally had to be true for COVID-19 to be transmitted from one person to another?

a) The two people had to be in fairly close proximity to each other (within about six feet)
b) There had to be a lack of good air flow (e.g., the two had to be indoors without much ventilation)
c) The exposure had to be fairly prolonged (e.g., more than just a few minutes)
d) The people had to not be wearing masks

6. Which of the following is a totally legit Tom Swifty?

a) “Nice boobs!” Tom tittered
b) “Lousy dog doesn’t even have a pedigree,” Tom muttered
c) “Denmark is full of assholes,” Tom said disdainfully
d) “Oh dear, I can’t get it up,” Tom said softly

7. What was interesting about the post-race interviews at Stage 9 of the 2021 Giro d’Italia?

a) The ever-stoic stage winner Egan Bernal said, “It may look like I’m crying right now but those are just raindrops, or maybe snot”
b) Geoffrey Bouchard, who had gotten passed with only 400 meters to go after a daring solo breakaway, said, “I hear Bernal has been sleeping with my girl as well”
c) Bouchard said, “My dad just texted me, ‘You’ve always been a loser, son,’ so my disappointment is absolute and my pride irrevocably shattered”
d) Both interviews were embellished if not outright fabricated by a playful blogger

8. What was interesting about the post-race interview at Stage 9 of the 2021 Tour de France?

a) The interviewer said to winner Ben O’Connor, “You’re a little glassy-eyed … are you gonna start crying now, like a QuickStep guy?” and O’Connor replied, “I think I can avoid that … I’m able to control myself better [than when I crossed the line] and I’m not yelling ‘yay’ anymore”
b) When the interviewer said, “Walk us through that victory salute, where you clapped your hands like a little girl at a birthday party,” O’Connor replied, “I went into that victory salute completely unprepared—I wasn’t meant to be in the break, I screwed up, I didn’t know what to do, then I heard we had three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, one fish two fish red fish blue fish, it was a mad stage, conditions were atrocious”
c) O’Connor said, “At the end there, I had to not panic, and when you think you’re gonna win a stage you can freeze up, and … look at me, dammit, I am starting to cry”
d) It’s possible the entire transcript of the interview was fabricated out of thin air

9. It can be argued that the metric system is not actually superior to the imperial, aka US customary, system of measurement. How?

a) Celsius is inferior because the units are too large, and because its scale goes beyond the temperatures generally experienced by humans, such that part of the scale (38 to 100) is wasted, and to express very cold temperatures you have to go into negative numbers, which is awkward
b) There’s no arguing that 60 mph—that is, a mile a minute—is a really handy mnemonic, since it’s roughly the speed we drive on the highway, so a destination 300 miles away will take 300 minutes to reach; no such mnemonic exists in the metric system
c) The metric units of weight, kilograms, are too large to be precise, and since a majority of Americans would like to lose weight, the units are demoralizing because who wants to forgo snacks for a whole week and only get to say, “I boy, I lost a whole half-kilo!”?
d) Base-10 is overrated because it lacks sub-multiples, so it’s poorly suited to calculating quickly in your head via fractions, which is why we don’t have a base-10 system for measuring time

10. What is the key to making good guacamole?

a) Don’t put sour cream in it
b) Don’t mix it in a blender—just roughly hack it up so it’s nice and chunky
c) Don’t use inferior ingredients—the whole idea is that Mother Nature makes the guac great so long as you don’t screw it up
d) Don’t add peyote, even if the characters in Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo spiked their guacamole with it (and note that Acosta himself just said no)

11. This year’s Paris-Roubaix bike race was particularly fun to watch because…

a) It was raining so with all the wet cobblestones and the dirt turning to mud, it was slicker than snot and there were tons of crashes
b) Gianni Moscon, who is a total scumbag who’d been in the news a number of times for misbehavior ranging from racial slurs to deliberately crashing a rider to getting a tow from the team car to punching a rival to throwing a bike at another rider, was off the front solo for a good while before falling on his ass, which made the race feel like a morality play
c) Sonny Cobrelli celebrated his victory with the most over-the-top hysterics in the history of the sport, shaking his bike at the sky as if daring the gods to defy him, throwing himself on the ground and howling like an animal, “BAAAAAA-HOO-HOO-HOO! BAAAAAA-HA-HA-HA!” and generally carrying on like he’d completely lost his mind
d) Cobrelli, when chided by the post-race interviewer for having mud on his face, replied, “No, you’re mistaken, this is an oatmeal facial mask; you see, it’s important to rehydrate your skin after a tough race like that, and oatmeal is a humectant, which means it helps the skin retain any moisture added to it, and meanwhile, oatmeal has naturally occurring glycolic acid, which effectively exfoliates dead skin cells and speeds up cell turnover, so you’re left with softer skin, less visible pores, and a more glowing and dewy appearance”

12. Which of the below products, promoted as a gift during the 2021 holiday season, is mind-bogglingly lame?

a) The aromatherapy candle, “poured [by] skilled artisans in the USA using only premium and cleanest soy wax available,” and “ideal as an aromatherapy candle or relaxing candle for yoga, meditation, and stress relief” and, best of all, “decorated with a cute, fun, adorable, and always heart-warming message of assurance,” which says in giant bold letters on the label, “I’D SHANK A BITCH FOR YOU RIGHT IN THE KIDNEY”
b) The smartphone-controlled coffee mug that enables you to set the temperature of your coffee remotely and even to set up alerts in case your coffee is in another room, since it’s simply not practical to just throw your coffee in the microwave for 20 seconds if it cools off too much
c) The clock that shows the hours and minutes as math problems you have to solve, so that you have to stop, shift gears, waste valuable time calculating the hour and minute, and then spend more time trying to calm back down because you’re pissed off now about having had to do all this
d) The $995 Gucci shoe/slipper that is a leather dress shoe in the front and a fur-lined slipper in the back, like what Chewbacca would wear if he went to prom

The answers

Great job, you made it to the end! Let’s see how you did.

Guess what: all answers are correct, thus I congratulate you on a perfect quiz! You are clearly a very astute reader of albertnet, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog for the last twelve months. Come back next year and pay close attention, because some of my upcoming posts are gonna be on the test!

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

2014 - The Year in Review

Introduction

It is of course only in retrospect that we can decide what were the most important news stories of the year.  Isn’t it therefore somewhat uncanny how, if we look back now, we can see that albertnet covered all the most newsworthy happenings, even though I only blog four times a month?  How is it that my posts line up so perfectly with everybody’s “biggest news of 2014” lists?  Man.

Of course it’s not enough just to digest the news—we also need to learn some lesson from it, and take some action in our own lives.  Exactly what this lesson and these actions should be aren’t always easy to determine, so I’ve distilled them into handy slogans for you, one per month.  So, read on to distill all of 2014 into twelve easy steps to improving yourself and the world.

Note:  this will probably be my last-ever “year in review” post because this is a royal pain in the ass and I’ve finally had it.  Dang.  At least my youngest daughter supplied this groovy poster:

January:  Just lie

I know, “just lie” seems like an improbable slogan for how to be better in 2015.  But if you just take a moment to recall the big news from January—I’m talking of course about the Great Velveeta Shortage that was predicted (by Kraft) but that never actually came to pass.  In case you don’t remember this one, Kraft warned consumers that demand for Velveeta could exceed supply during the NFL playoffs.  And just in case consumers suspected this was just an attempt to drum up sales (e.g., “while supplies last!”), a Kraft spokeswoman explicitly said, “This is not a marketing/advertising campaign.”

No, albertnet didn’t report directly on the make-believe Velveeta shortage, preferring to tackle the larger issue of lying in general.  With my post Santa Denial, & How Lance Armstrong Taught Me to Lie, I described how my own ability to lie improved over the years as I watched one of dishonesty’s master craftsmen, Lance Armstrong, steadfastly deny his doping.  Kraft should really hire Lance as a consultant before their next big hoax.

Wait, you might be thinking.  Should I really take away the lesson “just lie” from these stories?  Well, yes, if you’re trying to sell food that isn’t really food, or victory that isn’t really victory.  Just make sure you come clean later, like Lance did, to teach everybody to be more skeptical.  Velveeta shortage, indeed!

February:   Learn from your mistakes!

In February, I posted a decidedly didactic essay, in which I urged my fellow cyclists not to ride in the rain and cold.  I decried the notion that riding in the rain makes you a badass, by contrasting the petty suffering  of cyclists to that of 19th-century sailors who manned the deck in all kinds of rain and snow, beating their hands against the frozen sails to ward off frostbite.

I was alluding, of course, to another badass sailor, that being Jorge Salvador Alvarenga, the fisherman from El Salvador who spent over a year adrift in the ocean catching birds and drinking turtle blood.   Alvarenga has since vowed to stay away from the ocean, which makes all kinds of sense.  You, too, should learn a lesson.  Not to stay away from the sea, necessarily, but to learn from your mistakes, or—better yet—learn things the easy way.  (Hint:  you can do this by continuing to read about my hard-learned lessons via this blog.)

March:  Bitcoin – The Emperor’s New Money!

In March, I took a moment to explain bitcoin to the masses, which essentially meant explaining why it’s such an absurd, doomed financial instrument.  Not surprisingly, my perspective was immediately validated when, days later, it was reported that the bankrupt bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox found 200,000 bitcoins, which had previously gone missing, in an old wallet.  (“Old wallet” in this context means an old digital wallet that was thought to be empty.)  What does it mean to find an electronic representation of a made-up currency lying around in an electronic representation of a wallet?  It means you’re living in a fantasy world.

Incidentally, the value of those 200,000 bitcoins was reported as being worth $116 million at the time.  Well, that was back in March.  Those same 200,000 bitcoins are now worth only $63.6 million.  (And if you’re reading this long after December 31, 2014, I predict you’ll find it’s dropped even more.)

April:  Don’t fluff that aptitude test!

Normally, when I use the phrase “sample intelligence test” or “genius quiz,” I’m referring not to an actual written exam but to an opportunity life presents to test our mental mettle.  (And if I’m honest, I usually use these phrases to mock one of my children—for example, when one of them is struggling to operate a can opener and I say, “Don’t think of it as a can opener, but as a sample intelligence test”—just to keep the pressure on and take her down a notch.)

As you will recall, not one but two pressing news stories involved such life tests, and how a person dramatically failed.  First, of course, was the airline passenger who mistook the cockpit for the lavatory, terrifying the pilots and getting himself arrested.  And then there was the homeless guy who broke into a motel room to spend the night, not noticing that it was actually a museum exhibit:  the room where Martin Luther King was assassinated. 

Earlier that very month, I blogged about one of those rare non-life-initiated, written aptitude tests, which began with a questionnaire about my race that sent my mind reeling, and a Scantron form with unnumbered boxes snaking in every direction across the page, putting me almost into a panic even before I read the first question.  What does this have to do, exactly, with the airline passenger and the homeless guy?  I’ll let you figure that out.  Think of it as a little genius quiz.

May:  The umpire strikes back!

Microsoft Word’s imbecilic grammar checker has flagged “umpire” above and suggests I “correct” it to “empire.”  I guess they assume their software is a tool for merely regurgitating other people’s content.  Sweet.

I didn’t mean “empire.”  I meant “umpire,” dammit.  I’m talking about umpires striking back after being attacked.  I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the big news in May, about the unruly baseball fan in South Korea climbing a fence and putting the umpire in a headlock.  Well, they sure showed him … dude got a lifetime ban from that stadium and narrowly avoided a $48 fine!

I got my own comeuppance in May after attacking a group of self-appointed arbiters of cycling culture, the so-called Velominati.  Of all my 283 posts to date, none has received so many negative comments.  The Velominati also trashed me in their own pages.  (Do I mind?  Actually, no.  In keeping with the old adage “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” my blog has enjoyed increased traffic ever since that fracas.  And, I hasten to add, I stand by all my criticism of those silly Velominati rules.)

June:  Dads are people too!

June brought the earth-shattering news of a study finding men are actually more sensitive than women.  (I’m not, of course; I’m often called a “heartless, unfeeling iceberg,” though mostly by myself.) 

As if in response to the aforementioned article, a day later I posted an essay, What Are Fathers For?, that showcases the sensitivity of the modern man—not just to things like Father’s Day cards, but to touchy issues, like whether fathers serve any real purpose, and to what extent our helpfulness and solicitousness actually cause us to lose our children’s respect.  Colud it be, I wondered, that we should just get out of the way?  I guess I could handle that, and just hang out at the Hotsy-Totsy Club with my degenerate friends.

[Okay, we’re halfway home.  Yeah, I know this post is long, but chances are good that, like me, you neglected the 24-hour news cycle all year, so you’re really getting off easy.  (I hope you know I’m missing out on watching “Dr. Who” with my teenager right now.)]

July:   Spelling counts!

Once again, my blog and the greater news media converged this month.  Almost the same day I blogged about how nobody in Hawaii seems able to spell, back on the mainland a baseball team committed a serious spelling error itself, dishonoring its star player 15,000 times in one fell swoop.  I’m referring, of course, to the Colorado Rockies celebrating their shortstop, Troy Tulowitzki, and specifically his league-topping batting average, by making a whole slew of commemorative t-shirts with “Tulowizki” printed on them.  (In case you missed it, they spelled his name wrong.)

There’s nothing very funny about that, which makes it even worse than some of the Hawaiian spellings.  Our favorites were “Bubba’s Buger” and the salubrious “Acai Bowel” (both of which were items on menus). 

August:  Talk to the hand (not the handheld)

In August I decided to review a taqueria in Hawaii, but didn’t have a laptop on me.  No problem, since I had a smartphone … right?  Well, I never got very good at typing on the touch-screen (maybe my fingers are too stubby), so I used the voice recognition feature.  This yielded some amusing errors and a couple of new turns of phrase I rather liked (e.g., “when it folded in 2007 it was a great opera”).  Of course, this is all harmless fun when you’re just talking about burritos.  When the same technology is applied to a ton and a half of steel that can do 80 mph, that’s another matter, and here my blog prefigured the really big news in August, which was the scathing report J.D. Power gave of the current state of the art in automotive voice recognition.  For example, you might clearly ask your car to turn on the AC, only to have it search for nearby pizza places.

September:  Rats are people, too!

It’s funny how we think of rodents.  Mice are cute and all, but rats—with their big fat hairless tails—are almost universally reviled.  Birds, meanwhile, poop on us and get away scot-free.  (Who hasn’t been pooped on by a bird?  And who has been pooped on by a rat?)  In fact, many of us—such as my own daughter—make a special effort to feed birds in our own backyards.  I’m not aware of any castigation of birders, until their actions breed rats, as was famously described here in the sordid tale of a crazy bird lady attracting rats to a community garden.

Of course my finger was right on the pulse of this growing societal ill, as I demonstrated with my September post  I Don’t Smell a Rat which chronicled the shockingly bold rat who took up residence in my backyard, shamelessly stuffing himself on the expensive seeds we’d earmarked for local birds.  This rat caused family strife by seeming to ignore my cat, who in turn seemed to ignore the rat.  What was I to do, other than berate the cat?  Poison seemed too harsh (for either of the little mammals).  So I did nothing, which worked out fine because opportunity ushered in Misha’s finest hour—her apotheosis from old, lazy layabout to fierce, fearless, brilliant slayer of vermin!  Yeah, that’s right, she got medieval on that rat’s heinie, despite it being just about the hugest rat I’ve ever seen!  Go Misha!

October:  Subject sweets to serious science studies!

For decades I’ve subscribed to the “glycogen window” idea, that being that simple carbs consumed right after intense exercise will greatly enhance recovery.  I only ever had empirical evidence of this principle, until my daughter stepped up and tested it, rigorously, for her school science project.  If you somehow missed this post, click here and see if you don’t find her methodology, execution, and conclusion to be utterly compelling.

Ah, if only the professionals were so thorough!  This same month, a study by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) rebuffed the long-held and universally accepted premise (far more mainstream than the glycogen window theory) that consuming carbs is beneficial during endurance exercise.  That’s right, they denied the benefit of taking in calories during hours-long efforts.  Critics proposed that the EFSA’s finding was due to evidence not being presented properly or some such nonsense.  The more accurate conclusion, obviously, is that all the funding for that study should rightfully go to my daughter.  Sheesh.

November:   If you can understand it, it ain’t “Andrei Rublev”

I’ve long believed that the acid test for intellectual cred is being able to watch, and understand, the Russian movie “Andrei Rublev,” and until last month, I didn’t think I could actually do it.  After all, I’d tried before, but crashed and burned.  What a triumph, then, to actually prevail, and glean enough to blog about it (here).  It’s a good thing this viewing triumph bolstered my confidence, because as all educated people know, the biggest news worldwide in November somehow never got translated into English.  

If you’re one of those who missed out, don’t worry … it’s not your fault.  I’m referring of course to the business with the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, “Russia piece of evidence awakening spirituality,” which was covered only in Indonesian.  I wouldn’t have bothered painstakingly translating the article, except that it mentioned that the works of Andrei Rublev adorn the walls of this cathedral.  I guess once you’ve made it through the movie, your intellect is forever improved, to the point that an article in English hardly seems challenging enough to bother with.

December:  Just say “no” to shopping

I will confess that my blog lagged behind world news a bit in December.  I was so busy celebrating the lack of public interest in Black Friday, and the suggestion that Americans are actually finding better things to do than shop, that I missed the bigger story about retailers wanting to open on Thanksgiving Day itself, just to extend the consumer frenzy even further.  Fortunately, there’s a backlash to this development.  In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need a backlash, and wouldn’t need consumers to pledge not to shop on this holiday, but of course a perfect world wouldn’t give bloggers like me as much to make fun of.

In closing

At a loss for new year’s resolutions?  Well, you could do worse than to turn my 12 month-by-month slogans into action next year.  And if that seems like too much work, resolve to get all your news from albertnet next year.  That’ll save you a lot of effort, since world news and this blog are pretty much saying the same thing anyway…

Happy new year!