Yuckaroids

The coolest day in the forecast is 104°F; the hottest is 107°F. That’s 40-42°C. No record-setters, though, just misery enough to last at least a week. Yuckaroids.

Insanity reigning in agriculture

This is just crazy. In order to keep food safe for people, we have to kill everything else! An article in the San Francisco Chronicle here.

Photo: San Francisco Chronicle

In the know…

I was cleaning the car this morning and had the radio on to a news station from San Francisco. When Karla and I go driving and the conversation runs dry, I suggest that we turn on the radio and listen to “traffic and weather together every ten minutes” from the Bay Area. This morning I heard that there were scattered traffic cones in the number one lane and a large box in the right lane of some freeway. Wow. How cool. I felt really in the know, and could carry on a relevant conversation with a Bay Area native.

But then I thought why not make those traffic reports more interesting to people other than the drivers who are approaching all those hazards. Like, instead of a large box, make it a large box of barge locks. The traffic cones could be traffic cones like doggie bones.

Once we heard a report on the radio of a car that was crushed by a truck, the driver trapped and burned beyond recognition. I said to Karla that there was one good thing about that otherwise terrible outcome. “What’s that?” she asked. “He should at least get a discount from the crematorium.”

She made me turn the radio off.

Time-waster extraordinaire

Bored? Have nothing going on? Here’s the place to go. Mind-altering substances could enhance the experience, but don’t ask me; my choice is coffee. Sometimes chocolate. You can get some control of the motion by dragging your cursor over the image while it moves.

3,500 words, one at a time

Actually, you have to type in two words at a time. One has already been deciphered, the other is your contribution to the cause. You never know which is which, so it’s a mystery. For example, shown above is the word ironies, which is pretty obvious. But are they looking to solve Austin? For that matter is it really Austin? I will never know, and that makes it worthwhile. Not knowing is what leads to the mistakes that are the basis of all great discoveries.

Porch perch

Having a mind curious about scientific stuff has helped me in many ways to understand the mysteries of life on earth. An example is shown above, a plastic chair on a wooden porch. The chair is obviously a popular spot for birds to pause for a sit-down and eliminate waste. Most folks would look at the droppings on the chair and the droppings on the porch below and break out the garden hose. But I look on the scene and get a much bigger picture brought on by my deep thinking skills.

I noted that the droppings on the deck are:

1. Fewer than on the chair back
2. To the north of the chair
   

It’s obvious. Birds resting on this chair are migrating. During migration it is important to keep your direction of travel in mind so you don’t get off course. At this time of year, more birds are migrating to the north than to the south, thus the droppings on the chair back are more abundant than the ones on the deck. It’s elementary…

2 bad

Has anybody out there not played Asteroids on a computer? A triangular shaped space ship shoots blasts of light at incoming space debris until it gets hit and disappears in a flash only to reappear ready to shoot more rocks. It turns out someone thinks a movie can be based on this time-waster. 2 bad they dont know to much about speling.

Graphic: Universal Studios