#816 |
Say what you want about spherical geometry, you've gotta admit: it's unparalleled.
These pages mirror my Facebook status updates.
Say what you want about spherical geometry, you've gotta admit: it's unparalleled.
One underappreciated piece of medical equipment is the humble stick, often a simple tree branch. Medical professionals use this tool as part of end-of-life care to determine whether the patient has ceased all vital activity. Proper technique involves poking the patient with the stick from as far a distance as possible while either holding one's nose or saying aloud "Is it dead?". If complete deanimation is confirmed, best practice is to then shout "Gross!"
I'm a pretty big deal, you know. So big that I have more GitHub followers than Facebook friends.
"I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department." —Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963, "Letter from Birmingham Jail"), demonstrating the use of understatement
Today I saw somebody with a cat on the roof a building across from me. I've seen people walk their dogs on rooves, but this, I have no explanation for this. The cat was on the tubby side, as cats go, so perhaps the owner felt confident she could grab it if it got rambunctious before it jumped off the roof.
Why is agricultural labor so widely demonized? The Devil is depicted with a pitchfork, the Grim Reaper uses a scythe, and anybody who consorts with hoes is considered morally suspect.
When somebody first described to me the plot of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, I thought they were probably making the whole thing up and no such sequel existed.
Pathfinder 2e mentions that "velociraptors and deinonychuses, like their bird cousins, enjoy keeping sparkling baubles in their nests", which suggests the delightful mental image of a (realistically turkey-sized) velociraptor approaching an adventuring party only to grab the wizard's crystal ball in its teeth and dash away.
Silly combinations of adverb and adjective that I've seen:
People these days use the word "dopamine" as if it was something they snort lines of: "I got a hit of dopamine when…". Yes, I know you think this makes you sound educated, but actually you're revealing that you barely know what dopamine is or does. Heightened dopaminergic activity is neither necessary nor sufficient for pleasure; ask all the Parkinson's patients on L-DOPA if you don't believe me. It would be more honest to say that you got a hit of one of the four humors, because then the casual listener would more easily apprehend that you're talking out of your tuchus.
While you're at it, stop using the word "DNA" to mean "character". You're not misinforming people about physiology with that one, but it's a no less buffoonish abuse of a scientific term.
I was deep in the archives of an obscure mailing list the other day and I saw an argument in which one guy said "First, to be clear, I do not support" a proposal, without elaborating, so the other guy said "It's hard to respond to an objection without a rationale." That's a mood.
I think it's a tad hypocritical when people who are urinating in public get mad at you for looking.
No man is an island. In fact, in today's highly interconnected world culture, no country is an island, either. Even the island countries aren't islands. Especially the island countries.
"You know, that might be the answer—to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail." —Colonel Korn (Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, 1961)