20/30 Vision

Today, Doug Pike discusses a remarkable eye prodcedure, U.S. accents, and burnt food.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote
because you were the TV remote. Remember when music sounded
like this, Remember when social media was truly social?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hey, John, how's it going today?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Well, this show is all about you. This is fifty
plus with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances, good health,
and what to do for fun. Fifty plus brought to
you by the UT Health Houston Institute on Aging, Informed
Decisions for a healthier, happier life, and now fifty plus

(00:43):
with Doug Pike.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
All right, welcome, Welcome to Tuesday on fifty plus, which
this afternoon looks a heck of a lot like Monday afternoon,
and what Wednesday afternoon is probably also going to look like.
We have got some high pressure hanging over our heads
over a significant portion of the entire continent. Really, there's

(01:07):
a big old high pressure system. But it's gonna change,
not today, not tomorrow, probably not even Thursday. But by
the weekend there's a little bit better chance of rain,
which we actually could use about now. I hate to
even say that this time of year that we need rain,
but it's drying up pretty good out there for the

(01:29):
last several days. I'm not I'm not meaning to rain
on anybody's parade. God that was so weak, But it
is getting to that point. Tropics rumbling a little bit again.
But the farthest west of the two issues now presenting themselves.
Oh goodness, I can't talk to him right now. I'm

(01:51):
on the air. He knows that the two systems out
in the golf or excuse me, not in the golf,
thank goodness, in the eastern at Atlantic Ocean. Well, one's
about in the middle now, the big red ones in
the middle, and the I guess it's a yellow one
is not a whole long ways off Africa, and both

(02:12):
of them are moving in this direction. But in the
worst of the two, the one out front right now
is expected to not get a whole lot closer to
North America before it takes a northerly turn. And that's
absolutely fine by me, and I would presume equally fine too.

(02:35):
Pretty much anybody and everybody else in this audience, with
the exception perhaps of the roofers, the tree removers, the
flood damage fixers, people whose businesses spike when bad weather
hits us. And honestly, my buddy John Eidman at Country

(02:56):
Boys is pretty straightforward about it. He said, yes, my
business is better when the wind blows and roofs have problems,
but I don't want that for anybody. I graciously accept
the business when I can get it, but if we
all go without needing that for a while, He's okay
with that. He wants us all to be safe and happy,

(03:18):
and when there is a problem, he wants you to
call him. I'll tell you more about that later on
small downward movement in the market earlier today, and then
I heard a little bit ago and checked it again,
maybe thirty minutes ago. It still hadn't changed much. There's
no major thing to worry about. There's rumbling that the

(03:39):
Fed's going to lower the interest rate finally, and may
be a pretty good drop tomorrow, but it still hasn't happened.
Until it does, I think everybody's kind of crossing their
fingers and holding on. The last time I looked, oil
and gold both up a little bit, but also not
by enough of them largin to create any stir amongst anybody.

(04:02):
Just just keep doing what you do and keep hoping
those algorithms treat us favorably. That's a technology, and AI
have changed everything, and the way we do it, and
as humans, we're gonna have to We're gonna have to
get used to being second to the end of most
races because AI is designed and built by humans to

(04:29):
to grow and learn from its own, its own work,
and it has potential to learn, let's say, a million
things in the time that it would take us to
do five. So it's gonna be tough. Somebody's offering me
a free meal online. I don't want that right now.

(04:50):
I want to keep working here stepping into the news.
What have I got about three minutes? Well, four, I'll
do this one. The mayor of Dearborn, Michigan recently said
something that should raise a little flag in the head
of anybody who believes, as we are a nation that

(05:12):
allows its citizens citizens' freedom of religion. And when a
resident of that city, a Christian, came into city all
and during an opportunity to speak to the mayor and
the city council persons of that city, he kind of

(05:32):
questioned the renaming of Warren Avenue after a local Arab
American leader, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud unloaded on this guy. He
really did, he said. This is a quote from him.
He said, although you live here, I want you to know,
as mayor, you are not welcome here. The day you

(05:55):
move out of the city will be the day I
launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out
of the city. End quote. He said that to an
American citizen living in the city he governs, and he
and more than one other leader of that city are

(06:16):
building a track record lately of promoting things that are
pretty inflammatory at best. And that's one of them that
stories at The Midwesterner, by the way, and it's worth
a full read to see really just how deep that
sentiment runs in dearborn Michigan. Right now, moving, I'm gonna

(06:36):
try to go back and forth to up and down
happy and not so happy kind of stuff today because
there's been just so much, so much sadness and negativity
in the world today. By the way, is National IT
Professionals Day. Will Are you considered an IT professional? Kind
of No? Okay, I would think so. Compare to me,

(07:00):
you are so. And that's why every now and then
I'll ask you a question about what's wrong with my
phone or whatever. We actually have an IT professional in
our office today, a guy who got here I think
yesterday maybe all the way from Brazil. And when I

(07:21):
saw him walk by and I said, hey, you're new.
Who are you? And he walked over to my desk
and he looked at my screens I had up, and
one of them had an APP or a. I guess
it's a system software system or whatever. It's called called
AD plus, and he goes, oh, yeah, that's what I do.
I said, really, where are you from? He said Brazil.
He'd flown here all the way from Brazil, so it

(07:43):
must be a pretty dog on big problem, or maybe
we're just I know, we have direct flights down to
there in Argentina. I've been on one of those flights
back and forth from Argentina on an outdoors related trip
a while back. All Right, I got to quit yapp
and to start telling you about Berry Hill bajaor a
family run restaurant on fifty nine down there in Sugarland

(08:03):
at Sugar Creek Boo Levard. It's been there almost as
long or maybe a little bit longer. I'm not exactly sure.
I need to ask Wendy when I go back in there.
Almost as long as my wife and I have lived
in sugar Land, and she and I eat there well
we don't go in. Usually we'll bring it home, but
we have eaten in there many times, especially when my

(08:24):
son was younger, and we'd all three go up there
and you walk in. You can sit kind of on
the family side, which is family and casual dining. On
the left that's tables and tables and booths, or there's
a sports bar kind of in the middle of everything.
And then to the right of that, beyond the wall
and the glass is outdoor dining, which is going to
be more and more comfortable as the season finally changes.

(08:47):
Same two chefs in the kitchen for better than about
ten years of piece now, I think Wendy told me so,
you can count on a very consistent product that fulfills
anything and everything your little heart desires. As tech mechs
food goes traditional text mex food. And by the way,
Treasure letches in chocolate or vanilla. And trust me when

(09:09):
I tell you that, if anybody asks if you want
one or the other, just say both, get a little
piece of both, and you'll be able to pick your
favorite and you won't be disappointed with either one. I'm
a fan of the fish tacos. I'm a fan of
the seafood, enchiladas. My wife's into the chicken tacos, and
then there's everything else in between that you can imagine.

(09:31):
Berryhillsugarland dot com is a website. By the way, they
cater all over town. We've got some coming I think
in a week or so. That was ordered a few
days ago, and I guarantee you I'll be in the
office for that lunch. Berryhillsugarland dot Com aged to perfection.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
This is fifty plus with Doug Pike.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Welcome back to fifty plus and thanks for listening. Certainly
do appreciate that. Moving to Texas education and tying it
to things that have been going on for the past
seven days, the tea is working its way through some
one hundred and eighty complaints against school teachers who wrote

(10:17):
questionable posts after the assassination last week of Charlie Kirk.
We are a nation of free speech, but we're not
a nation, at least I hope we're not. We're not
one that contone that condones the celebration of unwarranted, unnecessary

(10:39):
violence against the guy who was one of the least
violent people on the planet. I was quite surprised, actually
that so many people thought it was okay. People from
all walks of life too, thought it was just fine
to rejoice in the shocking death of a guy who's detractors,

(10:59):
the people who claim he was so evil and filled
with hate. His detractors, have a hard time finding anything
he's actually said that fits their narrative, And when they're
asked about it, can you give me an example, he say,
just show me an example, just one of something I
said that was this, that or the other, And they

(11:21):
typically didn't have much to say after that. Vice President
jd Vance said this week that unity with the people
who embrace murder just just may not be possible. Honestly,
it's very difficult to reason with someone who stands on
a platform of it being okay to murder somebody whose

(11:43):
opinions you don't like. That's that's a big, big step
in the wrong direction for us. It's it's kind of
come to a point in which people who hate from
afar who they hate based just on what somebody says

(12:03):
about a topic that is needs to be discussed, and
all these things that Charlie Kirk talked about warrant conversations,
and that's all he was trying to do with turning
point was have conversations with people who disagreed with him,
and he was very polite. He would when they would

(12:26):
kind of start talking and talk louder and feel like
he was talking over him, he would just set his
microphone down and listen until they got their points out.
Sometimes he would interrupt, sometimes he would be interrupted, but
generally speaking, these were very calm and civil conversations, and

(12:47):
I would hope that people understood that, but clearly some don't,
and it's just a little frustrating. I heard heard this
morning somebody talking about how many young people in our
country now are just happy as little larks to talk
openly about their belief that communism is a great way

(13:09):
to run a country. They like the idea of what
they think would be a world in which everybody gets
everything they need from the government. But the reality of communism,
which has never truly worked on the planet, not for
long enough to be something to look forward to. There's

(13:30):
only a handful of people who take the overwhelming majority
of that country's wealth and power and resources and profit
from them and live quite luxuriously. And what they do
is very quickly reduce their followers to servitude and remind
them constantly that if they don't like what they're getting,

(13:53):
they might not be around long enough to keep complaining
about how poorly they're being treated. That's not the way
I want to live, and it's certainly not the way
this country should be run. But there are people in
the United States of America who think communism is a
great idea, who think socialism is a great idea. And

(14:15):
most of the people who came running here through the
past four years, we're trying to skep to escape one
or the other, and we're thrilled to have gotten here.
And what we've got to be careful of, though, is
that they don't bring those values with them. They don't
try to change our way the way that they Some

(14:38):
of them walked one hundred miles, two hundred miles, I'm
not sure how far they had to walk to get
to here. If they had done it right, they would
have been welcomed here. And we're going to work all
that out, but right now it's kind of rough. From Breitbart.
By the way, in Congress, South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace
has filed a resolution intended to strip Representative klan Omar

(15:01):
of her committee assignments, I guess, because that's about all
you can do. After she made some really vile statements
behind Charlie Kirk's horrible death one day after Kirk was
shot one day on Thursday, Omar said on X and
this is the direct quote, Charlie Kirk is dead, and
before the body got cold, the far right propped his

(15:24):
corpse up as a cudgel for their holy war. End quote.
That warrants some sort of reprimand. And then she added
fuel to the fire. She continued in that quote, don't
be fooled. These people don't give a single blank about
Charlie Kirk. They're just using his death to further their

(15:45):
crysto fascist agenda. End quote. How can somebody who has
benefited so from this country and what it has to offer,
who's been elected into public office and knows how this
country works, how can they think that's true. I just
don't get it, I really do.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
You know.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
I hate having to talk about negative stuff. So I'm
gonna jump off that train now and go to some
uplifting stuff. And I'll lead today with a story that,
quite frankly, is gonna sound entirely unbelievable. From the good
News Network a story out of Canada that kind of
sort of, kind of sort of twists its way into

(16:27):
the maxim an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth, only in this case we've got to
splip it around a little bit and call it a
tooth for an eye. And here's why. Guy named Brent
Chapman up in Canada. When he was thirteen, he suffered
a very rare but very real reaction to ibuprofen that

(16:49):
caused extreme burns somehow to one of his corneas. I
don't know if it was one or both, it may
have been both. Those burns really impacted his right eye
vision and his opthalmolic surgeon since then has performed more

(17:09):
than fifty surgeries on the guy who's he's now thirty four.
He's had from thirteen to thirty four, twenty one years,
he's had fifty surgeries. Fifty surgeries. So here's where it
gets good. Though, the last hope of hopes was and
still is in this condition. By the way, listen closely.

(17:31):
A hole is drilled through the canine tooth, hardest material
in the human body, and a high tech lens is
fitted inside. The tooth is then attached to the cheek
through the eye, and an aperture to the retina. An
optic nerve is created so that the light can enter
the lens and reach it. And now this guy's got

(17:53):
twenty thirty vision, which is better than mine in one
of my eyes. Every time I think I've seen her everything,
I get checked on that pretty quickly. And this story
is this story is probably going to be the highlight
check of reality for me anyway on how just how
miraculous things are in the world of medicine. This one
takes the cake so far. I don't know. I don't

(18:15):
remember a better one. All right, we'll take a little
break now on the way out. Speaking of medical things,
UT Health Institute on Aging is where you and I
and anybody else who qualifies chronologically as a senior can
be seen and treated and helped with pretty much any
medical problem whatsoever by people who have gone people in

(18:37):
the medical field from every discipline who have gone back.
They've taken it upon themselves to go back and get
more training, get more education on how they can apply
all of that knowledge to seniors. What a simple concept,
but it's it's not practiced in but a handful of
places around the entire country, and ut Health is pretty

(18:59):
much the the trailblazer in all of this started ten eleven,
maybe twelve years ago by a woman named doctor Carmel Dyer.
Go to the website, look around, look at all the
absolutely free resources you can take advantage of through this website,
and then work your way toward a consultation and perhaps

(19:20):
some treatment by someone who probably works mostly in the
medical center, but also travels to outlying hospitals and clinics
and offices, so that if you don't want to go
all the way in there, you don't have to. Ut
h dot edu slash aging uth dot edu slash aging.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, they sure don't make them like they used to.
That's why every few months we wash them, check his fluids,
and spring on a fresh coat of wax. This is
fifty plus with Doug Pike Plus.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Show right here on KPRC. I do appreciate that you're
always welcome to interject if you'd like. The easiest way
probably would be the talkback button. And if you use
your twenty or thirty seconds whatever it is, wisely when
you're at the app and you just got it on
KPRC and you're listening, you push that button, message will

(20:17):
get directly to me and then I will address it
as soon as possible. I don't have any problem with that.
Email is good too, Doug Pike at iHeartMedia dot com.
And if you're in the mood and you just can't
stand it and you got to say something, then use
the phone seven one three two one two five nine
five zero, just the call number or the station number
on the dial nine fifty seven one three two one

(20:41):
two five nine fifty. There you go. Uh hmm, where
do I want to go from here? Uh? This I
found a little bit interesting and not at all surprising. Uh.
The TB tuberculosis almost called it turbokulosis. It's not. It's
tuberculosis is on the rise in this country after a

(21:03):
long time of not being on the rise at all.
And if you guess that seventy five percent of those
cases are among foreign born people, you'd be exactly right,
because so few countries other than ours work diligently and
effectively at getting those diseases out of here. We let

(21:26):
what ten fifteen million people walk into our country during
the past four years and never bothered to ask them
about vaccinations. Or infections or anything else that well now
is causing out breaks of diseases that were once eradicated
from this country. Measles was a nothing for a long
long time, and suddenly we got an extra ten twelve

(21:47):
million people around, and measles is back. Lots of countries
don't vaccinate because most kids can shake that, especially measles
without major health issues. Kids from those countries came here
and hung out with kids from our country and out
pop Pop goat. Oh this is too punny, Will pop

(22:10):
goes the measles? Is that bad? Not bad? Not bad? Okay,
I'll go with that. Oh bad. Yeah. I was hoping.
I was hoping that it moved you slightly, just ever
so slightly. But I understand why it didn't. I don't
know why I love these stories about missing artwork, but

(22:32):
I do. I find it fascinating when somebody trips over
a van go in their garage or in grandpa's attic,
or wherever it may have originated. Or well, it didn't
originate there, certainly, But there's another one circulating now all
the way down in Argentina, in the estate, or maybe

(22:55):
one a state removed from its original home in Argentina,
where it didn't belong. A story of a painting stolen
by the Nazis as they tore through Europe during World
War Two. The painting showed up somehow in a photograph
hanging in the living room of a very large estate
home for sale down there in Argentina. The work is

(23:18):
called Portrait of a Lady and was created in the
seventeen hundreds by Vittoric Gizlandi. It's an oil on canvas
of the Italian countess Coleoni, whoever she was two hundred
and something years ago or three hundred years ago. Good heavens,
and now it's found. And that although thousands more pieces

(23:43):
of equal or greater value and significance still have not
been found. And I think by this point they're going
to have to wait their turn to be discovered hidden
in people's attics. And I'm sad, but a lot of
those works of art likely already have been destroyed, as

(24:03):
some of these older homes across around the world, literally
where the Nazis fled after World War Two, some of
that stuff just may never be found. A lot of
it may have been destroyed when homes occupied by those
people for so long after they passed away, somebody else

(24:28):
buys the house to tear it down and rebuild it,
kind of like what was going on in parts of
this city and West u in areas like that bel Air,
most of the original homes are gone, and once the occupants,
maybe a second, third or fourth owner came through there
and left, they took out everything they knew of of value,

(24:51):
and then those things were just raised. They were just
flattened to the ground and piled into dumpsters. And who
knows what fell in those dumpsters. Who knows. I find
that that kind of fascinating too. This will get me
to the one minute marker a little bit inside, and
we can go to the final break of the program.

(25:12):
I title this Forget about It. New research analyzed US
accents and somehow, some way determined this is all just
kind of tongue and cheek, frankly to me, that Boston
and Cajun accents are the most trustworthy, whereas Mountain West
and New Jersey accents are the least trustworthy. I don't know,

(25:39):
I don't know how. Just good old fashioned Southern Cajun
is not Southern, and Southern is not Cajun. They're distinctly
different accents. The good people of Louisiana, who where ninety
percent of the Cajuns live, still have a really it's
a beautiful language.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Really.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
They interject a little bit of French here and there,
and it's really cool. But I don't know why traditional
Southern language didn't make it. Maybe it was third because
I take a break. Now, remember Country Boy's roofing I
was talking about just a little bit ago. We're still
in storm season. I want to remind you full force
here that you need to get that roof of yours

(26:20):
checked out before heaven forbid, we do get a major
storm through here. I've been talking with John Eiman about
other things quite a bit, and we still go back
to conversations about how important it is to get an
inspection of a roof that maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty
years old, and little tiny things up there that aren't

(26:41):
causing problems yet could manifest themselves to become something worse.
And you'll wake up one morning or or hear something
in the afternoon. What's that sound? I don't understand that,
And you'll see water on your floor in your house.
You have to go get a bucket, You have to
call a roofer. The best rooferer I can tell you

(27:01):
to call is going to be Country Boys. John and
now his son ze Or Zach have been in the
roofing business. Well, John's been in it for decades. I'm
not sure exactly how long Zach's been around, but he's
making a fine partner for his dad, I'm sure. And
what they'll do is come out there or send someone
out there to do a thorough inspection of that roof.
Let you know if there's anything wrong, tell you how

(27:23):
much it's going to cost to fix it with quality
materials and in a timely manner so that you don't
have to worry about that anymore. You can just relax,
go to sleep when it's pouring buckets, and not have
to worry about a roofing problem. If you're getting a
whole roof replacement, John offers a fifteen hundred dollars discount

(27:44):
to educators, to first responders, and to law enforcement. It's
as simple as that. If you don't qualify for any
of that, you can also get a discount of one
thousand dollars just by mentioning my name country Boy Roofing,
Country with a K, Boys with a Z or for
the boomers in the audience like me, you could just

(28:05):
spell it a traditional way and you'll see the country
Boy's roofing logo pop up and the name pop up
countryboys Roofing dot com. What's life without a net? I
suggest to go to bed and sleep it off.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Just wait until the show's over. Sleepy Back to Doug
Pike as fifty plus continues.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
All right, welcome back, fourth and final segment of the
program starts right now. I wanted to bring this one
up yesterday, and I even considered it earlier or late
last week, but things gotten away. And what I found
is a poll that says that our country isn't exactly

(28:46):
doing so red hot when it comes to education, as
if none of us knew that. But it confirms a
lot of things that I think is are going on
in education. According to the latest testing, twelve graders average
math and reading scores in twenty twenty four were the

(29:08):
lowest on record. Eighth graders' average scores in science declined
between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty four and were the
lowest since two thousand and nine. I can't help but

(29:29):
feel like some of this is a product of an
education system that so wants to look good that it
has lowered the standards required. And lowering the standards has
enabled some of the teachers, certainly, not all of them.

(29:51):
In fact, I would say a small minority of teachers, certainly,
not anywhere near a big percentage, but enough that it's
tweaked the numbers a little bit of teachers who think, Okay, great,
I can teach these kids everything I have to teach
them in the lesson plan that the district requires me

(30:12):
to teach quickly, and then I can get onto my
indoctrination stuff. And I'm just I've read too many stories
about it and heard too many quotes from teachers who
they just really want to make sure that the little
minds in their classrooms fall in line with their beliefs

(30:35):
and their wants for this country, which don't really necessarily
align with those of the majority in this country. It's
very frightening to think that way, and I hate to
be that way, but when twelfth graders are posting the
lowest reading and math scores on record, that's kind of

(30:58):
frightening that how are they going to survive in the world.
And if you want to see just snapshots of just
exactly where we are. Get online, go to Facebook or
go to one of the other social media sites and
find the interviews with college students in which college students
are asked very basic, very simple questions about history, about geography,

(31:26):
about math, about science, about anything, about anything, and you
will find that the answers that are given to some
of these questions, Even if you don't consider yourself better
than an average student, you're you're a regular old person.
To see student all the way through school turned out

(31:48):
make it a decent living because you worked hard, and
you'll know the answers to every question those people are asked,
and they won't know the answers to half of them.
It really is. It's scary to think that people who
are so by traditional standard at least so uneducated, get

(32:12):
pushed out of high school, they go to college, and
then an hour and a half after college, they can't
answer simple questions about anything. Very I think we're headed.
I still god, I don't know why, almost, but I
still feel like we're headed in a better direction now
than we were a couple of years ago. And granted

(32:33):
some of that, some of that fall, some of the
decline in these scores has to be blamed on COVID,
But have we not skill kicked the kids out of
school during COVID that may not have been a problem.
There were teachers' unions I think in Chicago was one
of them where the teachers absolutely positively said, no, we're

(32:54):
not gonna go teach those kids. You're gonna have to
teach them remotely or not at all. We don't want
to be in the classrooms anymore. And as it turned out,
if they'd have just taken a deep breath, they probably
would have been just fun. A lot, a lot is
A lot of water has gone under the bridge. And
I hope right now that we're gonna we're gonna get
things going. Two minutes left, Okay, I'm gonna lighten it

(33:16):
up a little bit. A woman in California. These are
from a little a little while back, so you might
have heard it. Women in California fighting the Department of
Motor Vehicles out there trying to keep her personalized. Isis
license plate that says I am isis? Now that sounds
it sounds like a pretty okay, why would you want

(33:37):
that on your license plate? But it turns out that's
her name, that's her name, and why she wants. I
don't know, that's just I think a deliberate stirring of
a pot that doesn't need stirring. We get it. Your
name is isis? That's okay? And you know what, maybe
she's just really lonely and wants people to talk to her.

(33:58):
Maybe that's what it is, And that could be. It
didn't really dawn on me until just now. Oh by
the way, a former e n t EMT excuse me
is going viral after telling people not to throw burnt
food directly into the trash as it turns out. As
it turns out, it can start a fire even ten

(34:20):
to twenty minutes after you toss it in there. So
that's a little something to throw in if somebody in
your family's not a really good cook and you come
into the house sometimes and the smoke detector's going off
and you hear sirens coming, just remind them not to
throw that stuff in the trash, okay. One of the
most ingenious robberies I've heard of in a long time,

(34:42):
and we'll end it on this one. In Florida, an
investigator searching for a guy who robbed a popular Disney
Springs restaurant. It said by swimming up in scuba gear
and a wetsuit and then swimming away after stealing thousands
of dollars. Be hard to identify a guy in a
in a wetsuit. Uh yeah, he's the one. Had one

(35:05):
big eye in the middle of his head, kind of
like a minion. Well, that was weird. We'll end it
on that. We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you all so
much for listening. Audios