oh for pete's sake ....

i was just reading an article about superstition and the paranormal. i don't have a problem with people believing in ghosts or bigfoot or ufos. as long as people in charge aren't burning people at the stake for their beliefs, and the far-out beliefs aren't hurting anyone, i don't think it's a big deal. live and let live.

it's surprising to me, though, to read this quote: "regardless of the person or the phenomenon, paranormal experiences are purely quirks of the human brain" so says michael shermer who publishes skeptic magazine. i'm not going to bother checking out this guy or his credentials, but really. wrapping it up so neat and tidy just isn't the way the world works.

quantum physics is shadowy and mysterious yet has stood up to rigorous testing. how egotistical for smarmy shermer to declare that paranormal things are just imagined. making this simplistic ruling which discounts and discredits people, that is something that irritates me. buzz off, small man.

oh so cute!

are you having a bad day? sick of the world? can't stand people or things and just want to be left alone?

let's see if we can lighten your mood. go here and be sure to watch the videos.

dr. strangehand ...

this is just hard to believe. an independent hand! i can't give you the exact website because it only comes up as http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/ but the title is "when one hand develops a mind of its own". so go to the website and see if you can find your way to the article. it's creepy ... and hilarious!

yay! pix!

these are definitely cool!  pictures that people took of things that interested them. i liked the first one, the third, the sixth, the seventh, and the ninth.

then there's this series.  i liked the first and last. why were they their favorites?

wow!

wow! there's some interesting stuff in this world!

people can do amazing things -- scary, too.

this was back when, but still -- pretty funny.

remember when they first started making robots?

this is for the husband.

how could i have forgotten?

this is a great article on an old passion. it's just not too neat to be on the receiving end.

how fun!

MYS sent some very interesting articles!

one is of a family living in the tippy-top of a pointed building in downtown seattle -- you HAVE to see this (complete with chihuly)!

and the other is of a woman living in a teeny-tiny studio -- very cool!

great tunes

you know, sometimes you just have to take an hour or so and check out Improv Everywhere.

it shows that life is good and so are people.

i was right!

this grand design book really is a curious and thought-provoking book. i remember one of my high school teacher's saying, just before the end of class one day, that the shortest distance between two points isn't always a straight line. i was floored. how can this be?

i was so taken by his statement that it's the only thing i remembered from ANY of my math classes from 9th grade on. i didn't care for math, having lost lots of ground when i moved in 7th grade and ended up with this HORRIBLE teacher who knew absolutely nothing about math and couldn't answer any of my questions. i was in tears because i knew it was the end of math and me.

but back to the straight line -- i always remembered his comment and one day back in about 1989 when we were hiking in the cascades, i finally realized i knew what his comment meant. we were following a trail along a mountainside (straight up on the left, straight down on the right) and i could see the trail we would be reaching shortly, across the valley on the right. our path was going to curve back around almost 180 degrees.

well, it was obvious! it was much shorter to continue on our drastically curving trail than to cut off to the right, in a straight line which just happened to go down and back up. it was so cool to KNOW that.

and here it is on page 101 of hawking's book -- "The geometry of curved spaces such as the earth's surface is not the Euclidean geometry we are familiar with." it goes on to show an intriguing diagram and then explains that if you took a route from new york to madrid on a flat map, it would be a straight line of 3,707 miles. but because the earth curves, the shortest distance is 3,605 miles and you go n.e. then e. and then s.e.

validation! by no less than hawking himself! yay!!!

water woes

 i thought this map was interesting (above). it shows estimations of drought conditions in 2030+.


the u.s. is going to be hard-hit, especially southern south dakota/northern nebraska and the california coastline.


Even though they're tiny and hard to see, you might be able to compare your area on the colored map to google's map below to see how your area will fare.

the article was worrisome, although i'm not sure what a person should do about it. move north and stake your claim, i guess.

we make our own jokes

at lunch today the husband and i were discussing going to mars and not coming back. we both thought it wasn't something we'd do. then he said if an alien came along and said he'd fly the husband to far-away worlds and he'd see things he couldn't even imagine, he'd be mighty tempted to take the offer.

we talked about what situations would make our names go down in history. then he commented that even if we made the history books people probably wouldn't remember our names for long. i mean, how many people landed on the moon and could we remember their names?

hmmm .... we thought about it a minute then i said, 'bob armstrong?' just teasing. and he said, 'yes, neil armstrong.' and i laughed and said that i really thought it was lance armstrong, and he said, 'yes, lance armstrong and buzz lightyear.'

the future is coming ....

want to see a machine made out of legos, build a house made out of legos? go here (background article here) ... and be sure to stay until the end.

hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to mars we go ....

i read an article today about the idea of going to mars ..... and not returning.

they likened it to christopher columbus who sailed off, not at all sure of where he was going or what he'd find. to a certain extent i agree with that thought. new explorations are necessarily into the unknown, and there's a real likelihood you won't make it back.

still .... the idea of going to mars -- as tantalizing as it seems at first -- would almost have to be really, really depressing. i mean, no clouds, no trees, no buildings, no animals. so much sameness. maybe someone who grew up in the sahara could handle it, but i'm pretty sure i could not.

they mused about the possibility that the only people willing to go on that one-way trip would be oldsters, who didn't really have that much to lose with not returning to earth. being with a bunch of oldsters might, in itself, be depressing, and sooner or later someone would get stuck taking care of everyone else.

a number of possibilities and many things to think about. if they knock on your door and ask if you want to go along for the ride, what are you going to say?

overheard in ny

Hobo sitting against building: Hey! You!
Girl walking by: Yeah?
Hobo: Want to go jump in the East River with me?
Girl, stopping and looking at him: Not a bad idea. Maybe later.
-------
Subway employee: And what kind of cheese would you like on your turkey?
Woman: Tomato.
-------
Guy: You should've sat at my end of the counter. I'm rich and well hung.
Girl: You should've sat at my end. It doesn't turn people into assholes.
-------
Girl #1: You know my half birthday was yesterday?!
Girl #2: Yeah! So you're 18 and a quarter!
Girl #1: I'm 18 and two thirds!
-------
Redhead girl: No, I totally want you to meet him -- I just don't want him to meet you.
-------
Guy to friend: I went to the anarchists' meeting, but they turned out to just be a group of spoiled, white, middle-class kids.
-------
Girl #1: Ugh, the economy is so bad I don't know how I'm going to get through the recession.
Girl #2: Oh my god, I know! I mean, I lost my job and now my parents are only giving me $50 allowance a week!
Girl #1: Wow, that's crazy! Only $50?

let's see -- ignorant? misogynistic? insane?

did you read about the islamic cleric who said there's never rape in a marriage? i was disgusted and shook my head.

and now there's a headline in which an islamic court says it's okay for a man to beat his wife as long as he doesn't leave any marks.

it's dogma like that which leaves me not feeling very friendly toward these people. i remember reading back in  my college days where an ethnocentric person is one who feels his group or beliefs are superior to others. being ethnocentric was regarded as not being a good thing.

weeeeeelll, do any religions in america say it's okay to beat your wife or rape her? not that i know of. especially not in the mainstream.

if islam teachings run along these lines, then let's just say there aren't enough bytes to express my ethnocentricism about it. still .... gaaack!

clever old guy

the husband has a friend who's dying. he's lived a full life -- teacher and priest, among other things. he's never married but has been active in whatever community he's lived in and is well-read and well-spoken.

the husband enjoys speaking with this man and, since he's 84 or so, enjoys listening to him talk about various things. he has a wry sense of humor.

he hadn't been feeling well and was determined to keep out of hospitals, so he hadn't been crazy about seeing the doctor. he finally had the husband take him and found out his kidneys are failing. since the dr. knew he wasn't having any part of any type of medical care, he advised him to go home and reach out to hospice to get the process started.

he's been pretty comfortable with hospice, but a little curious about the questions they asked him when they first came out. he figured they were trying to find out if he was gay. they asked about him never having been married and finally he said, "I know I'm not gay. I know I'm straight, but I've never had a woman interested in me. So I guess I'm kinda in between straight and gay. I'm stray." ...wry sense of humor.

rod serling and me ...

i've always thought things were really out there when the subject of dimensions came up. i mean, three dimensions I understand, and the fourth, well sure, that makes sense, too. but then they go on about  6, 7, 8, and even 12 dimensions and i just back away. it's too much for me and scary, too. no matter how i try to understand what they're saying, i just can't wrap my mind around it.

oh, ho! but then i was playing chuzzle last night (not to be confused with guzzle, which i don't). if you've ever played that game, it is kinda fun and while it seems innocuous, it's tricky. and while the comparison is in no way close to the real thing, i realized that what i was doing was playing in a whole bunch of dimensions at once.

since we're lifting reality anyhow, you need to imagine the three dimensions as being played out on the screen. yes, it's two dimensions, but just pretend it's three. then we add time, which makes it four. then we add color (each little chuzzle is a different color with about five or so colors being the set), which influences how we play, which makes it five dimensions. then we add right-angled configurations, which makes it six. and i suppose if we're going to be technical about it we should add in the scoring since if you use a 'hint' it subtracts from your score which might influence how you play the game -- that's seven.

whew! and it can get hard to play in seven dimensions! your mind has to shift gears constantly and after awhile, it's tiring. still ... i thought it was curious that all the manipulating i was doing in my mind made me feel like i was dealing with multiple dimensions. very curious.

not high maintenance

i've started reading The Grand Design by Hawking and Mlodinow. i'm on page 40 and so far my eyes have glazed only three times. the book is interesting and i think i'm going to really like it when they get to the part about alternate realities, something that i view as a totally cool thought.

the book is actually not quite as spellbinding as some of the stuff i read -- murder mysteries *oh yeah!*, sci-fi stories *rad, dude!*, girl porn *i'm not dead yet*, or some combination thereof. like, the stephanie plum series keeps me in stitches and i totally love detective eve dallas.  and karen marie moning -- ohmygod, that girl can write! give me a funny book or an intriguing book and i'm happy. simple pleasures ...

up, up, and aw-- ... choo, choo ....

i ran across some interesting things this week --

apparently the airlines are planning on doing away with first-class. hmmm .... that will pretty much put the kabosh on any flying that i do. after our trip in august, which we took first-class for the first time, i decided that was the only way to go. the rest of it is just a cattle call or a chicken farm.

it's too bad greed has become such a pervasive part of our lives in this country. i can remember when things were built to last and companies took pride in delivering excellent service. but now ... not so much.

so if first class goes, i won't. it will be the train or the car for a leisurely trip.

out in nature

yesterday was a gorgeous day and today promises to be the same! there's nothing as pretty as a pretty day in this small town -- no traffic, blue skies, pretty shoreline, few people. it's really a lovely experience. if i had grown up here, i would have learned how to sail and do the boat thing. there's too much to learn, water-navigation-wise, at this late date so ... too bad. and besides -- no energy. but still, a pretty day here is totally satisfying.

partay!

we went to visit the grandkids last saturday to celebrate the grandaughter's birthday. she's three as of today. she's a beautiful, brilliant, smiling little sweetheart and it's hard to wait and see what she does with her life.

grandson is growing like crazy and it looks like he's going to give her a run for the money. it sort of seems like he's going to be the walk-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick type. and you ought to see his smile -- a sweet little piece of heaven.

be a boy scout

remember what i said about survival?  here's another guide.

it talks about survival, do-it-yourself medicine, making friends, keeping from getting killed, and the bible. i particularly liked the humor with the last one.

i suggest we go with plan b, r2 ....

this is a pretty cute article about survival, although it may not make much sense unless you watch a lot of movies.

why would they do this?

for whatever reason, i don't usually think of 'europe' as being against the u.s. boy, am i naive. read this.

medical humor

i don't know what the deal is with this group, but aren't they cute?!!!  i wonder if they sing to people when they're going under?

facebook, again

what is this service called scribd? i already do not like it since i read about the way it's getting people involved via facebook. honestly, this encroachment is bad and seems to have a life of its own. and i'm sure it will get worse.

back home

our little vacation was very nice and just the thing to relieve tension and stress. the 100-year old house we stayed in was decorated beautifully, but i was displeased by several things (soap container in downstairs bathroom was almost empty, overhead light in downstairs bedroom kept not working, there were no pans in the kitchen -- skillets, but no pans -- plus a few more things) so i would not recommend it; i mean after all, the owners in the multi-million dollar house next door weren't as giving and conscientious as the place we stayed last year or the year before, so phooey on them. the girlfriend didn't have the objections i did, but hey.

we spent time in anacortes and found a FABULOUS restaurant called ADRIFT. if you're ever in anacortes, for god's sake you need to stop there and eat. the place next door was also supposed to be very good -- gard-a-deli or something like that, but we didn't have a chance to stop there.

the library in anacortes is thriving and is open every day of the week. our library has truncated hours and isn't open in sundays, so i was jealous of the anacortes libray.

we drove down to oak harbor (kinky downtown area) and again found a good eating place -- seabolt's smokehouse seafood & deli. that's where i found the three micro-brewery beers, in cans (from colorado), that i brought back to the hubby. i don't drink but the husband offered me a sip and i thought the scotch ale was particularly tasty. we drove on south through coupeville and freeland, then headed back to the beach house.

we got there on monday and explored anacortes, stayed-in on tuesday and read all day since it was grey and dreary, went out and played in sunshine on wednesday, then packed up and played in sunshine on the way home on thursday.

we stopped at the coop in mt vernon where i transferred the girlfriend to her hubby. i also picked up some sticky rice and checked out the boobies of one of the checkers. she had tattooed landscapes from several beloved places she had lived as she was growing up. it was colorful but strange in the extreme and i was reluctant to stare and observe her statement, since i'm not a man (girlfriend's husband got the story).

we had gotten our flu shots, which we try to do when we're out in late september, a pretty good haul of used books, got caught up on family and problems, and ended up having a really great time! yay, girlfriends!!