Shadow Flutter

You are looking at a nano-truck, about the width of a single strand of DNA.  Well, actually, this is someone's rendition of one because you can't actually see it.  That would be silly.  Nonetheless, it's amazing, and something I hadn't heard of before.  Imagine the size of the tweezers used to place these few atoms and molecules together.  This probably took a while to achieve. Then, again, as fast as technology progresses, perhaps this little wonder was created overnight, while we were sleeping.  But, no, that can't be, because... There's more than one. There is an entire nano-transportation world out there -- trucks, taxis, limos, jeeps, 4-wheel drive, AWD, Nano-Uber -- if only we could see it, which we can't.  And they race them on nano-race tracks. Sorry no dimensions on the size of the track, but I'm sure its circular and about a nano-mile in circumference because there are no nano-towns to run a Grand Prix through.  But who knows wha...

Warning !  Don't condition your hair after a nuclear attack. This one goes right along side the Internal Revenue procedures for collecting taxes after a nuclear attack.  I don't want to be that tax collector. And here's a short  NYT article  on the IRS procedures to collect post-apocalyptic taxes.   ''Operations will be concentrated on collecting the taxes which will produce the greater revenue yield.''  Yield? That could be the all time example of  double entendre .  Like I said, I don't want to be that tax collector. Sneeze Trivia  -- Did you know we can sneeze up to 10 miles an hour?  That our brain stem contains a sneeze command and control center?  That when we sneeze our body contracts from esophagus to sphincter?  Why do we close our eyes when we sneeze?  This and more just a click away. Scientists report isolating the gene that produces large plump tomatoes.  How about rediscovering the gene that puts ta...

Not everyone was enthralled by the eclipse.  A few, a very few, journalists thought the media had gone bonkers in its reverence.  Shepard Smith was one.  Here is a two minute video of Smith covering the eclipse, and it's hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bft7LQobSnw

A couple of years ago I really got into walking.   I never run.   Walking is easier on your knees, ankles, and feet than running, and it can be just as effective at keeping you in shape as running.   But there are people who swear by running.   “Great exercise, running.” “I run 7 miles a day and do 5 marathons a year.” “I meditate while running.” To those who say running miles each day and doing a marathon about once every two months is great exercise, I say wait until age 60 when your knees and hips have been replaced with metal and plastic.   Then l et’s see what you think of running. As to meditating while running, well I see people at the recreation center reading books while walking fast on a treadmill, so I guess there are people who can do this, but I’m not one of them.   About the only thing I’d remember from reading a book while on a moving treadmill is how out of breath I was.   And the only thing I can meditate on whil...

"He was willing to do anything for people except get off their backs and let them live their own lives. He would never let go until they forced him to and then it was too late. He never seemed to understand there's a big difference between trying to save people and trying to help them. With luck you can help 'em -- but they always save themselves." -- Raymond Robbins (Sept. 17, 1873 -- Sept 26, 1954), economist and writer criticizing Woodrow Wilson and his foreign policy.

My personal favorite.  Finally, a website that clearly demonstrates the usefulness of correlation graphs .  Enjoy. The problem with Priming Studies .  These studies make the news, but attempts to replicate often fail, which doesn't make the news.  Only 6 of 53 landmark cancer studies could be replicated.  What does this say about science and the "university-professional association-academic publication-research grant" industry? It says this .  Perhaps universities, academic publications, and professional associations are to close to one another and scratching one another's backs.  Where does the contrarian scientist with a great hypothesis go to get grant money and publish his findings? History and science continue to remind us that we have nothing over the Ancients.   Here's a 2,000 year old "computer" that predicted astronomical events, including eclipses. What the Rwanda genocide tells us about mob mentality.  Local conditio...

Today President Trump lost his mind.  Aids have yet to find it but remain optimistic as they continue the search.  AP reports this is merely a figure of speech and that the president hasn't literally lost his mind.  Others disagree.  Still others say this happened long ago and what we've got we've got, so get used to it. In related news, Vice president Pence, while visiting Colombia, South America, asked for asylum.  It is not yet clear if the vice-president was asking for asylum for himself or for one to put his boss in. Update at 11. #FakeNewsYouWishWasTrue

Duck! Octopus Bodypaint Contortionists

No, this isn't a poem, although it would be a nice title for one. The Moose is the largest animal in the deer family.  Its name is Algonquin for "twig eater," and these two beautiful specimens are rare white bull Moose. A White bull moose is not an albino; it is a moose with white fur.  A moose is not a friendly Bullwinkle who hangs around with a flying squirrel; in fact, Moose don't hang around with anyone, including their own kind.  No, the moose is a grumpy, solitary ungulate that stands taller than a man and weighs 3 to 5 times as much.  In Alaska Mouse injure more people than Grizzly and Brown bears combined.  Imagine how easy it would be for one of these to blend into the snow -- they lay down to rest, especially after eating, and you could easily come upon one without realizing it.  But these two would look fine on anyone's front lawn during the winter holidays.  You could even hang Christmas bulbs and tinsel from their antlers. And th...

I used to read people's futures with Tarot Cards, not for money, but for fun.  I make no claim to be any good at it, and only ever did it to learn something about the psychology of fortunetelling.  I did meet with some small success.  The secret is to learn a little bit about your client before beginning and then read your client's facial expressions and physical gestures as you proceed through the reading, slightly adapting the meaning of the cards and their relationship to one another (the story they tell) as you do so.  The more and more you do it, the better you get at it.  I always thought of this as establishing an non-supernatural psychic connection. But as much a learning experience as that was (anticipating a person't hopes), the real reason Tarot cards interested me was my fascination with the artwork.  There are many, many decks of cards out there -- google Tarot Card Decks -- with artwork ranging from the very simple to the very elaborate. Som...

I was in my mid twenties living in the New York City area when I had an epiphany: “I hate this place.”   I had lived there all my life, except for a short hiatus in Rhode Island where I went to college but failed to learn anything except how to smoke dope, drink lots of beer, cut class, and play with coeds.   I was tired of the hustle and bustle that was the metropolitan area, tired of the crime and the endless traffic jams.   There is a reason why the Long Island Expressway is called the world’s largest parking lot.   I was tired of the cost of everything.   I once paid $17 to park my car in a parking garage for two hours while I interviewed for a job, and this was the 70’s.   I can only imagine what it must cost now.  Are there enough zeros? I was tired of the gruff impatience of the denizens of a city who, for some reason, felt the need to refer to their city as a fruit.   Once, while standing in line at a cafeteria, when asked what I ...

A Newsweek description of travel author Patrick Leigh Fermor.  He could be a character in a book. What life has been lived with more élan? At the age of 18, Leigh Fermor walked from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople—never “Istanbul” to this irrepressible philhellene—a serendipitous, marathon journey immortalized half a century later in the refulgent prose of  A Time of Gifts  and  Between the Woods and the Water . He has secluded himself silently with Trappist monks, fallen in love and run away with a princess, fought for his country, kidnapped a German general, joined a Greek cavalry charge, and swum the Hellespont. The  Financial Times  considered  Mani , his celebrated travelogue on the southern Peloponnese, and  Roumeli , its counterpart on northern Greece, “two of the best travel books of the century.”

I'm laid up in bed flat on my back watching the overhead fan go round and round.  I've hurt my back. I have this disc in the lower extremities of my back, that if I don't watch carefully, sneaks out from between vertebrae and wanders off looking for something more interesting to do than keeping my spine erect. If you've ever been laid up in bed due to severe back pain, you know that you have to keep changing positions.  As you remain in one position, the pain slowly increases.  Shift to another position, the pain lessens then slowly increases again.  Of course changing position is easier said than done when one's back is out.  The simple act of shifting from lying on your back to lying on your side can be an act of great courage. The pain makes you wish you could swallow a whole bottle of oxycontin right then and there and end it.  Brush your teeth?  Nope.  Eat?  Nope?  Pea?  Get me a bottle. But it is not the pain that concerns...

Redding, California.  Outside the front of a supermarket stands one of those gum ball machines.  Put a quarter in the slot, turn the knob, and you receive one gum ball.  There are several like machines standing next to it, each offering an enticing candy. A child stands in front of them with mom standing immediately behind her, so close behind that she is breathing on her daughter.  The young girl, maybe 6 or 7, holds a quarter in her hand but can't make up her mind.  She has only one quarter and there are several juicy choices.  Her mom loses patience. "Dammit.  You've been bugging me since we started shopping that you wanted a candy from one of these machines.  So I give you a quarter and there you stand.  Make up your mind or I'll spank you."

Say hello to Presidio Terrace, a wealthy San Francisco community with an HOA that no longer owns its common grounds or the sidewalks and street that surround it.  How can an HOA not own its common grounds you ask?  Simple, it doesn't pay its taxes. Here's the the background story. Many years ago this community of the rich and famous -- past residents include Senator Dianne Feinstein, ex-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, SF Mayor Aliota, and others -- decided to change HOA management.  I imagine previous management was not thrilled and probably offered little assistance during the transition.  The new management team, possibly to impress the HOA's wealthy members, immediately failed to pay the property taxes on the common grounds, a staggering sum of $14.95 per year.  This oversight, of course, would easily have been remedied upon the new management receiving the first delinquency notice. Except they never received it. It seems new management also for...

I’m reading Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon in small chunks, enjoying gorgeous prose, wonderful landscape descriptions, and fascinating vignettes about the characters she and her husband meet as they travel through Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, etc.   The book comes in at 1,300 big pages, and has yet to lose my interest.   West had great command of language, an artist's eye for countryside and detail, and a piercing understanding of the passions simmering within the people she meets.    I’d like to share with you parts of a chapter named Two Castles . One castle is a monastery and the other a hospital for those who have contracted tuberculosis.   Both are actual castles converted, but it is the second castle, the hospital, that I’m interested in.   The doctors were competent, even excellent, but they had a very different view of how to treat the physically ill from western doctors.   Here the patients were free to roam around and...