Random thoughts (4)

From long tradition, cashiers and bank tellers keep all bills faced and right side up. It’s not difficult; when I worked as a cashier (1961), every cashier in the store, even I, could do it right. But many cashiers and tellers are now abandoning the orderly practice. This trend is a small but telling sign of impending doom.

A California man named Dana Contreras became a woman and began using the name Dana McCallum. I thought people who changed from man to woman changed their first names, as in the famous change from George Jorgensen to Christine Jorgensen.

I keep hearing that Americans’ attention spans are shrinking. However, I’ve noticed that online sales pitches are getting longer. Many of the pitches I see are more than 10,000 words long. I saw one the other day that was 14,000 – almost half-way to the average length of a novella. Long copy must be working, or these marketers wouldn’t use it. So what gives here? – are attention spans shrinking or growing?

Do any natives of Walla Walla, WA, “the friendliest small town in the United States,” move away so that when people ask them where they live, they will never again be forced to say “Walla Walla” out loud?

Speaking of odd place names, my five favorites in my home state of New Hampshire are Deerfield Parade, Gadwah Notch, Gaza, Hardscrabble, and Pickledish Hollow.

The Takeaway: Be here now.

Due credit: I shamelessly copied the title of this series of posts from my favorite columnist, the incisive Thomas Sowell, who writes a column called “Random Thoughts.”

See disclaimer.