Can’t ya understand plain English?

Some time back, The Girlfriend was delighted to find a stuffed toy version of a blue-footed booby, and who can blame her? Everyone should have one, and I know if I had possessed one while growing up instead of a neon-orange-and-white velveteen rabbit, I would be a different person today. I’ll just leave that hanging out there…

Around christmastime, somehow, it got one of those self-sticking read more

Repercussions

Tree Lobsters! is a webcomic that I only peruse periodically, once a week or so, and when I found this one I had to check to see whether I’d posted my trash talk on artificial intelligence predictions before, or afterward. Luckily, mine came first – I hate looking like I’m stealing someone else’s idea.

[I also love the references to Voight-Kampf testing, with the caveat that, read more

Didn’t consider that possibility

While the cartoon that I’m about to link to had been available when I finished the previous post, I hadn’t found it until afterward. The Perry Bible Fellowship has been updating a bit more frequently recently after a long dry spell, so I only check occasionally. But this one is fairly relevant to the topic of that post, even though it deals with prayer answering instead.

It could explain read more

The struggle for an appropriate title

You’ll understand in a second.

So, there is a documented case of a woman named Mary Toft who, in 1726, claimed to have given birth to rabbits. Now, there are a lot of weird stories from a few centuries ago, mostly of the “so we are told” variety, and even today there are a number of medical marvels that we know of through supermarket media that somehow never have a thesis written read more

Odd memories, part 14

Those memories – sometimes they’re stirred by the oddest things. Especially when they’re odd in themselves.

Watching an episode of Sealab 2021 recently dug this one from the (sordid) depths, but that show can do that to you. Sealab 2021 is a reboot, or something, of a children’s cartoon from, my dog, 1972, called Sealab 2020 (look closely read more

Are you serious?

Among the many reasons why my photography, and thus my posting, has slowed down so much is the temperature, which like most of the rest of the country has dropped significantly. The triops tank on the porch, which was no longer showing any activity anyway, had formed several thin sheets of exploratory ice crystals extending down into the depths – cool enough (a ha ha) when viewed within the read more

Worse than Speedos


So, I was testing out a new flash attachment (not quite what I was after, but still functional) when I came across this little guy, quickly identified as an Enoplognatha ovata, but you probably said that the moment you saw it. You likely also know it’s a male, because that detail is kind of hard to miss, seeing as how it’s displayed in those boxing gloves right read more

Underlying

As you may have been told in high school, many great works of literature and filmmaking are actually metaphors, using familiar characters and situations to represent deeper, more nuanced abstract ideas. The reasoning behind this is obvious: even small stories, seemingly inconsequential events, are part of an overriding narrative and purpose, reflecting in their nature that everything read more

Odd memories, part 13

I am a big fan of decent education, which is funny perhaps, because I don’t consider that I received one myself. I attended school in a rural farming community with fairly small populations, which many might tell you is much better than overcrowded city classrooms. But the tax base also plays a role, and the classrooms I was in hovered around 30 students, a number now considered more than read more

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