It's time to check the coffeepot

Laziness more or less invented all the things. https://t.co/QE1WguScSG

— John Ringo SF Author (@Jringo1508) June 18, 2025

and another X post I liked:

The only machine I want pic.twitter.com/LEID4cAgiB

— Puchy Catto (@PuchyCatto) June 18, 2025

happy tax day to you Yanks

actually I did my tax with Turbotax six weeks ago and have gotten my refund.

When we were in the US, we had an accountant but he said don't waste our money on him after retirement since we only had pensions etc and no longer had to calculate stuff about CME, licenses, offices, business expenses etc. so it didn't need him to figure it out.

Stuff below the fold

Heh. strategypage says that Jack Bauer is popular in Iran (via NewsCorps' Farsi One via satellite).

Rupert Murdoch and friends, countering propaganda one Korean soap opera at a time.

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Minneapolis Metrodome collapses.
Guess that "air supported roof" won't support snow.

It snows in Minnesota? Who wudda thot?

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Archeoblog writes about "lost" civilizations under water in the Persian Gulf...

Of course, the US Navy is now calling that area the "Arabian Gulf", but never mind...

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Filipinos sailing replicas of ancient boats along ancient trade routes of SE Asia are back home.

"Balangay DIWATA NG LAHI" crew member MARK LIM of the Philippine Coast Guard ...

butuanglobalforum.org

Photolink and more info here.

..

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Not the best time to go to Martha's Vineyard

Hurricane Bill (the windy one, not the Windy One)is due to hit Martha's vineyard at the same time the President is going there on vacation.

Oh well, it could be worse...as every expert of film trivia knows, JAWS was filmed there...

another piece of trivia: at one time, there were many deaf people living on the island, which developed it's own version of sign language. Later, teachers mixed this with French Sign language and it became ASL: American Sign Language.

which is a different language from those descended from British sign language but related to Russian and Dutch sign languages.

Trivia for today

The "smart card" used to ride the London rail service is called an Oyster card.

according to Wikipedia:
Oyster was conceived and subsequently promoted because of the metaphorical implications of security and value in the component meanings of the hard bivalve shell and the concealed pearl. Its associations with London through Thames estuary oyster beds and the popular idiom 'the world is your oyster' were also significant factors in its selection as was the uniqueness of the word Oyster.



And, of course, don't forget to carry your oyster card in your
Genuine Sanrio Hello Kitty Oyster Card, BusPass Holder

Music stuff

like to listen to old time radio shows?

Check link...

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And your beautiful music link for today comes via DiscipleOfTheDumbOxBlog:

Trivia fact of the day

The term "The Real McCoy" refers to an oiling device used for industrial machinery. What? A Canadian inventor named Elijah McCoy was issued US patent number 129,843 back on July 12, 1872. His invention allowed machines to remain in motion while being oiled. Elijah McCoy's simple invention revolutionized the industrial machinery for years to come. In fact, his device became so popular that people inspecting new equipment would often ask if the device contained "The Real McCoy". This later lead to the popular American expression, "the real thing" or, "The Real McCoy".

Elijah McCoy also invented an ironing board and lawn sprinkler...

Wikipedia entry on the AfroCanadian inventor is HERE.
The other possible origins of the phrase are found HERE...

Evolution's secret weapon

NYTimes article says grandmoms are evolution's secret weapon.

Headlines below the fold

Same political junk in US news...Dan Rather still thinks that someone had an Apple computer with TimesRoman font back in the 1960s and says no one has proved hix xerox copies of the Bush letters are fake...


And here in the Philippines, the big scandal is the broadband telecom deal that benefits certain politicians and their families...nope, no need for public bidding...
There were hearings on all the channels yesterday, but I don't know enough about who is connected to whom to follow it...and lolo just says they're all crooks.

Another day, another coup plot? What else is new.

WMD in Syria? Formerspook analyzes a report of Iranian engineers and Syrian Army officers killed by nervegas from a weapons malfunction....

What fictional hero would you want with you in case of disaster?
MacGyver wins the poll...of course...Jack Bauer is good with terrorists, but MacGyver can make gadgets to get food so you can survive out of his shoelaces...

Murphy's law

You might have heard about the skydiver who plans to go to the edge of space and skydive to earth to set a new high altitude record...he plans to jump out at 24 miles, and the article notes:

The record for highest leap was set in 1960 by a U.S. Air Force test pilot, at just under 20 miles.

ah, and the story of that dive is here, along with how it resulted in the coining of Murphy's law...

During one of the early tests of these so-called strain gauges....returned no data. Now, when the military goes to the trouble to fire a chimp down a railroad spur using a rocket engine, they aren’t exactly thrilled with a null result. It turns out that the technical assistant who installed Murphy’s prototype instruments wired the gauges in backward.

Now, here’s where the recriminations start, as Murphy and his compatriots didn’t get along that well. Murphy reputedly blamed his assistant, stating, “If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will.”

Meanwhile, the other project staff blamed Murphy for failing to check and calibrate the sensors before the test, conjuring up their own sarcastic Murphy’s Law, which held that “If it can happen, it will happen.” Murphy’s Law became part of the project’s lore.

Shaken, not stirred

"...antioxidants can help protect against tissue damage that leads to heart disease and cataracts, and James Bond seems to be pretty tough with good eyesight, so this seemed a reasonable subject for study. (In fact, the authors of the study cite James Bond as their motivation in their paper in the British Medical Journal. They even conclude, "007's profound state of health may be due, at least in part, to compliant bartenders." -- Who says scientists don't have a sense of humor?).."

Well, eat ma grits

Of the peoples who settled North America, some preferred a life away from the towns. These self-reliant backcountry people lived for generations on the same land. They may well have learned survival from the natives that once lived on the same land. These people ground their corn or made their hominy and grits. By social norms, they were considered "...an inferior class of white hill-dwellers in some of the southern United States...." They were disparagingly called crackers. "The name is said to have been applied because cracked corn is their chief article of diet; it is as old in Georgia and Florida as the times of the revolution." (Century Unabridged Dictionary, 1889)

Redneck Games

Remember the Atlanta Olympics?

Some nearby locals, annoyed at the MSM types from NYC who worried about the local rednecks, decided they may as well celebrate their heritage.

Ceremonial Barbecue Grill...horseshoes...bellyflop diving...
and don't miss bobbing for pigsfeet.(headsup from the britishredneck at the corner)

The Klingon translation of the Book of Mormon

It's a link from the Startrek Family Home Evenings group...

And the book of Mark is found HERE.

Klingon is one of many artificial languages, and their website is HERE

Myself, I prefer Sindarin....not so many gutterals.

Princess Di Update

Summary: Probably they were spying on one of her many boyfriends, an American.

Bad news: Spying on an American should have required a court order and there is no paper trail. So either it's not true, or warrentless spying was done during the Clinton administration.

CS Lewis trivia

I am listening to a lecture on CS Lewis, where the teacher mentioned about his problem in sports due to a stiff thumb. We were told about this in Medical school, and it took me awhile to find exactly what it was, but if you are interested in medical trivia, go to the link.

And here is a Flannery O'Connor quote about Lewis' books:

"This book of C.S. Lewis on prayer is a good one but I don't like to pray any better for reading it. I also just read one of his called Miracles, which is very fine. Deceptively simple. You really need to read every sentence twice. Go among the biblical scholars, says he, as a sheep among wolves...."

Trivia in the news

MedPundit has a post on Tuvan Throat singers.
I was always a fan of Richard Feynman, and first learned about Tuva on a PBS special on Feynman...on a whim he and a friend decided to investigate Tuva...just out of curiosity. And now I've learned they use extra laryngeal muscles to sing.

Learn one fact a day, stay young.

And BNN has a letter from someone in Zambia...made me sentimental...sounds like when I worked in Zimbabwe 30 years ago...not much has changed.

The Climate change tourists are waiting for Bush to leave before they save the planet...so are asking for money for "sustainable development.
Well, if Africa ever decides to follow Asia, the pollution will be even worse. Of course, global warming has caused deforestation in Africa...After all, the Sahara was once a veldt...

Syria calls for a timetable to remove American troops....
They want them out of there before they and Iran invade Israel disguised as Hezbollah...and of course, if the US continues to kill Syrians and Iranian "Iraqi insurgents" they will keep losing soldiers.

Richard Dawkin's book on athiesm is supposed to be heading Amazon's best sellers. A lot of people who take religion seriously think he is actually writing against an infantile form of religion not the real thing.
On the other hand, when you read stuff like THIS it makes you understand why non believers are clueless.

And for all those who think we can withdraw from the world, you might want to check out THIS site. It's the prewritten announcements for local officials to use in even of terror attacks (Headsup Medpundit).

Makes you feel all warm and cuddly, doesn't it.

Trivia in the news

Hate sushi? BoingBoing has a link to chocolate sushi treats.

RogueClassisism links to the Cleopatra nose gadget, and comments you really wouldn't like to have Cleopatra's long large nose.

Emmanuel Levy has a review of the new movie on the Nativity...ApocryphicityBlog says parts of it seems to be based on the apocraphyl gospels that most Catholics know about and that have inspired artists, but are not in the Bible....,.TheGreatKento has actually seen a rough cut, and says it's more about the people than with the miracles...


GeekTrivia tells the story of how the Lockheed Skunk works got it's name...from Lil' Abner...

And will the Home PC be extinct in five years?
Well, I don't want to trust some huge monolithic corporation to keep my files, so no...but read the article for predictions on things to come.