Social Security Reform Bill...

The Onion is a national treasure...

How to Live to be 450...

Via my mom:

As I was lying in bed pondering the problems of the world, I rapidly realized that I don't really give a rat's hiney. It's the tortoise life for me!

1 If walking is good for your health, the postman would be immortal.

2. A whale swims all day, only eats fish, drinks water, and is fat.

3. A rabbit runs and hops and only lives 15 years.

4. A tortoise doesn't run and does nothing, yet it lives for 450 years.

And you tell me to exercise?? I don't think so.

I'm retired. Go around me.

In Case of Fire...

Senior humor, via my mom:

I failed the mandatory Health and Safety course at the Senior Center today.

One of the questions was: "In the event of a fire, what steps would you take?"

Big ones" was apparently the wrong answer.

Gender Differences in Brains, Explained...

Have you ever wondered how a woman's brain works? Well, it's finally explained here in one, easy-to-understand illustration:

Everyone of those little balls are a thought about something that needs to be done, a decision to make, or a problem that needs to be solved.

A man has only 2 balls. They consume all his thoughts, and he sleeps like a baby.

Sound Familiar?

Continental Drift...

The geology texts used in my primary schools ('50s and '60s) either never mentioned plate tectonics or continental drift, or devoted a single derisive paragraph to it.  My first real exposure to plate tectonics was in the popular press, in the early '60s – during the period when the plate tectonics theories were being fleshed out and convincing evidence to support them was just being found.  It was still, back then, a revolutionary theory – becoming mainstream, but not quite there yet.  A little earlier than my own experience, the notion of continental drift was considered pseudoscience.  Nowadays, of course, it is as close to “settled science” as anything else is.

The emergence and acceptance of plate tectonics was the first time I personally witnessed science (in any field) evolving.  I was fascinated by the way the heroes of plate tectonics metaphorically fought their way through platoons of doubters to win out in the end.  Years later, after much more reading on the topic, I realized just how heroic some of those folks actually were – having your career dashed on the altar of truth can't be very much fun...

Fractal Gears...

I had to examine this animated image closely to figure out how the artist did it – quite clever!  Note that the image is a gigantic (3.9mb) animated GIF; you have to give it a bit of time to download...

Flickers on the Wall...

I got up this morning at my usual 3 am, and wandered, bleary-eyed, into the bathroom for my morning shower (I'm only truly awake after this).  Just as I was reaching for the light switch, I noticed a distinct flicker in the shadows on the wall near the switch.  My slightly paranoid chaparral-trained mind immediately translated “flicker” into “fire” – but the color (a lovely blueish-white) was all wrong for that.  There are no artificial lights of any kind in our bathroom other than the main incandescent lights, so I had no ready explanation for the flickering.  As I watched, the flickering repeated.  Where was it coming from?

With a little investigation, I figured it out.  Looking out our small, high bathroom window, I could see a clear, moonless sky with a high horizon defined by the surrounding hills and our pine trees.  Then I noticed that one particularly bright star (I couldn't see enough of the sky to tell which star it was) was placed right at the edge of the pine silhouette – and the pines were moving about because of a light wind.  The star provided a nice point source of light, which made the pine tree shadows on my bathroom wall reasonably well-defined even though the pines were over 100 feet from my window.  And my eyes were sufficiently dark-adapted to let me see those shadows produced by the light of a single star.  Amazing imaging instruments we have in our head!