Did you see the red moon last night?
One warm evening untold millennia ago, during the time when humans were only just beginning to assert their presence on this planet earth, the tribal elders of a tiny village in the land that would come to be known as Peru became terrified. They noticed for the first time that the rising moon was rapidly turning from its familiar brilliant gray-white appearance to the color of death – a deep dark red. It was the consensus of the elders that the gods must be severely unhappy with them and their small village. In an act of penance, they summoned a young virgin, who was quickly adorned in the finest of clothes, crowned with a wreath of blossoms and then flung to her death from the highest cliff. And by morning, the moon had returned to its normal hue. Phew.
Surely you have heard of this acronym, which stands for “keep it simple, stupid.” Which reminds me of an old joke: A guy has a flat tire on the street next to the insane asylum. He removes the lug nuts from the wheel, pulls it off and replaces it with the spare from the trunk. But as he reaches for the lug nuts, they all fall down the drain gutter. Dismayed, he says to himself “Dang. How am I to get home?” Then he hears a voice coming from a window high up on the building behind him. “Hey, you down there – just take one lug nut off of each of the other three wheels and use them on your spare.”
You might be surprised to learn that the product-dating routinely found stamped on packaged foods in your local grocery is not required by the feds, or anyone else for that matter, except in the case of infant formulas (it surprised me). After all, every food processer/manufacturer I know of would lead us to believe that they know exactly when it is time to chuck those leftover salad dressings, eggs or baloney and replace it or them with a new package.
WYSIWYG is the acronym for “what you see is what you get” and comes from the world of information technology. It involves a user interface that allows you to view a document on your computer screen with essentially the same editing and graphics with which it will appear when printed. Wouldn’t it be nice if people had such an interface? That is, some way for you to be assured that the pleasant gentleman you just met at a cocktail party is as he appears and is not secretly a pedophile or a serial killer or something.