Cloudy and a nice coolish wind. Very pleasant.
"Nobody but a fool gets bit twice by the same dog." Josh Billings (1818-1895)
01. Acrostic
The New York Times had an acrostic as one of their puzzles yesterday.. and by coincidence, the quotation came from Ray Bradbury's Yestermorrow.
"Cats come at dawn to sit on your bed. They may not nip your nose or inhale your breath, or make a sound. They simply sit until you open one eyelid and spy them, about to drop dead for need of feeding.. so it is with ideas."
02. Make-believe Residents
Fairhaven Continuing Care Retirement Community has an ad in the Carroll County Times today.. with the title: "Senior Class." It's a scene in a gym-like setting, and as far as I can tell, it shows only one "senior," some young white folks, a young African American man, and a "bubbly" female leader. This is, of course, a picture extracted from a file of pictures made for sale in advertisement situations.
As far as I can tell, all CCRC advertisers use pictures from files of "appropriate to the occasion" pictures, including Carroll Lutheran Village, where I live. I know that such pictures help to "sell" the properties, in fact, I have a picture of the St. Louis Arch for sale to advertisers; I just think that for retirement facilities, it would be more honest to show pictures of actual residents in actual situations.
03. Creationists... think on this..
A 400,000 year old thighbone found in a Spanish cave has yielded the earliest DNA recovered from a human ancestor, and it suggests that our specie's family tree may include some surprises because this DNA is from a time before Homo sapiens evolved, and is believed to be related to the Denisovans, who colonized Siberia and are our cousins, like the European Nieanderthals. It indicates that since modern man retains some DNA from both Denisovans and Nieanderthals, who lived thousands of miles away from each other.. we must be the results of widespread interbreeding over a long period of time.
04. Audit of the Carroll County, Maryland, Department of Public Works
A $100,000 audit of the Department of Public Works is underway by an engineering concern. Lame duck commissioner, Robin Bartlett Frazier asked the engineers to look into the possibility of Carroll County workers switching to 10-hour work days, so they can get more work done. Be prepared for lots of nasty emails to be written to lambaste Robin on this.
And what about the $100,000 cost of this "audit?"
05. The FBI Can Do It
The Washington Post reported that the FBI has the ability to secretly activate any computer's webcam and view a room without turning on the indicator light. Damn! You can't get away with anything these days!
06. Stuck on the Joker's Jinx
Twenty four riders had to be rescued from a Six Flags America roller coaster. They were stuck on one of the curves and fire trucks and ladders had to be used to extricate them.
Besides that, the ride, named after a Batman villain, is only one half mile long and it reaches speeds of 60 mph in that short amount of space. Doesn't sound like much of a ride to me.
07. So you think you are legally married
Amanda Bennett points out that recent anti-gay marriage rulings in Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia and Texas indicate that gay marriage is not protected by the Constitution, because the couple cannot reproduce biologically. This means that all post-menopausal unions will not be legal, if the Supreme Court agrees with these rulings. This would open an enormous "can of worms."
And what about our friends.. a nice interracial couple combining a gay man and a transgender man who retained his female reproductive parts and has produced two beautiful children, who are being raised in a loving family situation. How does this case fit into all the thinking on gay marriage?
08. Hooray for Puzzlers!
The Week mentions that a word-search puzzle in Australia's Sunday Telegraph included an insult of the newspaper's famous owner, Rupert Murdoch. The puzzle featured the letter combination: LIVESIHCODRUM which in reverse says: MURDOCHISEVIL.
09. Burning Question
Why is it that it's always the man who has the hearing aid?
10. *Westboro Baptist Church.. A New Slant?
Bill Maher talked to John Wiener of the Nation magazine; here is a piece of that interview:
JW: Your live shows have been picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church.. the people with the "God Hates Fags" signs. What's that like?
BM: That's what we love about America.. everybody has free speech. I'm rather flattered that I'm being put in the same category as Satan. I treasure some of their fliers that I've collected. They have me Photoshopped with horns, and I'm praying to my satanic master, who of course is Obama, the Antichrist.
But the last time they did it, I went out to see them, and soon we were all taking pictures with their arms around me and smiling. You have to wonder how serious they are about the whole thing.
11. Tosca thrusts home!
Reported in the Victor Book of Musical Fun:
In the opera Tosca there is a famous scene in which Tosca backing away from the evil Chief of Police, Scarpia, bumps into a table. Reaching behind her, her hand closes over an object lying on the table.. a dagger. She picks this up and stabs Scarpia. At one historic performance Tosca backed in the usual manner and felt for the object behind her, grasped it, and stabbed the Chief of Police. Only this time the prop man had screwed up and what she picked up was a banana. This is the first case in opera where someone was stabbed by a piece of fruit.
12. *Guns .. Statistics
The Week magazine reports that USA Today says: "Every day, an average of 20 American children are hospitalized for injuries caused by firearms...another 3,000 die every year before they get to the emergency room. For people ages 15 to 19, firearm injuries are the second leading cause of death, behind motor vehicle crashes." (When will they learn??!)
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1 comment:
The Joker's Jinx was the first roller coaster I ever rode - I went on it with Bridget. It was a lot of fun, but it went by pretty fast and left me with a sore neck for days. I have to say, I think roller coasters can be extremely dangerous if people don't ride them safely. I went on a ride at Hershey Park a few years ago, and some teenagers were trying to show how cool they were by sitting on top of the seat back instead of in the seat. For the entire ride I kept waiting for one of their heads to be torn off by a low beam, or for one of them to tumble free and be crushed to death (or plummet to his death 100' below.) Happily, the jerks survived unscathed - that time.
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