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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for April 12, 2015.

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1. Time for a bit of science here. Did you know that there is a one-to-one correlation between the length of a sermon and the number of people who catch colds from the man in the back row who is coughing on their necks?

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2. You have heard people say that man is supposed to be the crowning achievement of evolution. Yet, how far we have fallen. Witness the countless pictures on Facebook of plates of food, pet dogs and cats, grandchildren, and, far below the bottommost pit in hades, my before and after pictures of a bookcase I hauled home from the dump. Yesterday, to keep from doing anything productive, I got as far as arranging a few of my CDs on the shelves of that bookcase. Fat cases on one shelf and thin cases on the other shelf. Not in alphabetical order as they should be, but nothing on the shelves that I would not consider playing on a show. Garner, Scott Hamilton, Django and a couple of others, like Carl Smith's favorites, held together by rubber bands. Do you know Carl Smith? Carl Smith is a lawyer in Portland or south of there, who generously gave me some of the first CDs I ever had when CDs first came into vogue. Carl Smith was before the days of computers and email so I have no record of him in my files, other than to remember that he was one of the original Radio Friends who sent me CDs so their music could be enjoyed by one and all. Louise in New Jersey sent me many choice things I have played for you hundreds of times and will probably use again when I make a show today. How I'd like to have you all in a room so I could personally thank you once again for all the help you’ve given me over the past 37 years. If you can put me in contact with Carl Smith I'd appreciate it. And if you ever sent me a CD to play, I'd like to know about that, too. I’m the humble farmer at gmail dot com.

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3. Let us consider Fermi’s paradox. Part of Fermi's paradox says that any planet whose population had reached or possibly surpassed our level of "progress" might have already have self-destructed. Which might be why we see no evidence of other life in the universe. You probably read that years ago. I'm amazed that you can still remember it. It must be fun to be able to remember things that you read. I wish I could do it. There is a thing called the Great Filter, and I think that self-destruction is on one side of the Great Filter. It is interesting to read about many things. And why we have seen no other signs of life in the universe is one of those things. There might be some things that science will never understand which is where myth and superstition step in to fill the gap. Why life evolved on this particular planet might be one of those things that will never be explained. What do you think?

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4. Professor Nick Boström has a series of lectures on YouTube and I hope to see all of them. Perhaps this thing I've been reading about called chaos is the only thing that keeps people like Boström from being able to tell us exactly how man will do himself in. Chaos makes it difficult to predict things, like the weather. Boström talks about the odds of the human race destroying itself and how it will happen. If that kind of thing interests you, you might check him out. Wouldn’t you bet that chemicals and poison would have more of a hand in our demise than atomic warfare? Scientists keep putting together/creating toxic substances. And today no one knows what long term effect some of those substances will have on living organisms. You and I have friends who spray it all around. Some of it is certainly in our food. Ingesting poison is like smoking or being overweight. You can get away with it for a long time, but somewhere down the road it will snip a few years off the end of your life. Not a thing you think of at 50, but when you're 79 and wondering if you'll make it to 85 when your mortgage will be paid off so you can run about with your trophy bride and hoot and holler, you are doing whatever you can to put off the inevitable day when you drop in your tracks. v 5. Do you think this is interesting? You have to have a certain percentage of truth in any lie to make it credible. You might have heard that some folks who make it a business to check facts discovered that 18 percent of the facts presented on Fox News were true. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the percentage of truth contained in Nazi radio broadcasts designed for domestic consumption in 1944. Right up to the day that Germany was being overrun by allied troops, German farmers were being told by their version of Fox News that they were winning the war. It would also be interesting to know if Rupert Murdoch has a team of psychologists working to determine the lowest percentage of truth in a broadcast that would still be believed by anyone who listens to it. Do you think they could shave a few more points off that 18 percent of truth and still have most listeners want to believe it? v 6. As you might know, I have this sickness where I have to spill my guts on my Facebook page every morning whether anyone is paying attention or not. Every once in a while I inadvertently come up with something, much as someone who fires bird shot at a turkey is often likely to bring home a bird, and I have something that can, with some little extra effort, be converted into a column I can sell. Please, if you teach writing, please impress upon your talented little scholars the importance of writing something first thing in the morning, whether they feel the need to do so or not. When you get to the point where a morning mental evacuation is more important to you than any other kind, you might want to consider writing as a vocation.

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7. The email from Alan said: Robert, I have a good one for you. It just happened. I was in a line and you had to take a number to be served. There were two people ahead of me. The first person as it turned out got the number one. Must have been a new roll. The lady ahead of me took two numbers and turned to me holding the numbers two and three out to me and said "do you want two or three"? I said "no just one would be OK thanks." She said I do not have one, do you want two or three"? I said, "no just one number is OK." She said "this is all I have."

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8. You know that I am interested in history, sociology, anthropology and most anything along that line, so I was pleased to tell my brother that Marsha's oldest grandchild amazed and delighted me by being familiar with Hammurabi, Gilgamesh and cuneiform writing. It was with enthusiasm that I asked my brother, "What kind of teacher do you suppose would teach a sixth grader such things?" He said, "An Iranian terrorist."

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9. Did you hear about the wedding where the best man ran off with the bride? The groom had asked him to make sure the wedding came off without a hitch.

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10. A romantic legend has it that today’s military salute descended from the medieval knight's gesture of raising his visor to reveal his identity as a courtesy on the approach of a superior. Handshakes are known to spread countless germs, so how did that custom originate and why do we continue to do it? The next time the grandchildren are here I must tell them why napkins are found on tables beside dinner plates. Can you guess how that custom originated and why I insist it be continued in this home? We must have napkins on the table. Yes, you are right, as always, because you never forget anything you read. Since time began, countless scientific discoveries and great pieces of music came suddenly to mind during a meal and were immediately scribbled on tablecloths --- which were, of course, borrowed by the genius and carried off to the lab or studio for transcription, and were never seen again. Hostesses, who got tired of running out of tablecloths, started to put smaller cloths, called napkins, on the table which were easier for guests to write on and carry off at the end of the day.

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11. The other day a bunch of us were sitting around chatting when the man across the table from Lawyer Crandall how anyone got to be a judge. Crandall said, “I think you just have to be willing to take the job.”

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12. When I went into the doctor’s office, the doctor asked me if I had noticed the man who just left. I allowed as how I had seen a man leave but I hadn’t paid too much attention. The doctor said, “That man is 107 years old, and he plays golf every day.” Wow. Isn’t it sad to see a man who is still strong and active at 107 who’s completely lost his mind?

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