Birds are really graceful creatures. I have never seen a bird botch a landing and yet this one by an albatross was a spectacular failure.
But the albatross did what anyone would do after suffering such an embarrassment. It got up, dusted itself off, and walked away as if it had planned to do that all along, hoping no one noticed, other than the chick that was there.
Readers may recall a previous post where a turkey held me hostage in my car for about half an hour.
While taking a walk a couple of days ago, I saw a turkey standing guard over someone else’s car and then chasing yet another car down the road. Whether this was the same turkey that held me captive I do not know, since we were never properly introduced the first time around.
I then saw another resident approach her car where another turkey was lurking. I watched from a distance for about ten minutes as she, after getting into the car and starting it, could not drive away immediately because the turkey kept hanging around the car, walking around it, and even seeming to peck at it or maybe it was getting up close to it to see its reflection. The driver clearly did not want to risk driving over the turkey and so could barely move. She would inch the car backwards and the turkey would follow. This went on for about ten minutes, until she was sure that she could go without hitting it and then she drove off, with the turkey in hot pursuit.
So I think that my encounter with the turkey was not due to any personal animosity towards me but instead that the neighborhood turkeys are on some kind of mission to harass cars in general. It means that the turkey who held me hostage is not likely to be rounding up a posse and planning a surprise attack on me personally.
Some people who have been skating on the frozen canals in Europe despite warnings that the ice was thawing have fallen unceremoniously into the water. Luckily there were others around to rescue them.
Readers may recall my earlier close encounter with the wild turkeys that wander around the housing complex where I live. We could call that encounter a draw. But a couple of days ago, I had a rematch with one of them and this time the turkey was clearly the victor.
What happened was that I was going out somewhere and as I started driving on the road that exits the complex, I saw four turkeys ahead of me, straddling the road. I stopped to let them move on but turkeys are pretty casual about getting out of the way of cars and just hung around. After waiting some time, I drove around them but one of them took umbrage at this act of disrespect and chased after my car. I sped up and left it behind.
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I, like so many people, have become used to using videoconferencing. This recent cover of a New Yorker magazine captured how someone can use the limited frame of the Zoom window to show oneself to best effect with the least effort.
Commenter Mark Dowd urged me to get on board with the spreading movement to capitalize Black when referring to a group identity. I had noticed the trend myself but had not done anything about it partly because of inertia and partly because I was not sure what the full ramifications were. How much does it generalize? For example, does that mean that ‘white’ should be capitalized too?
So I looked to that authoritative journalistic source, the Associated Press Style Guide and they said that had been looking into this question for over two years and in June 2020 gave reasons why they had decided to capitalize Black.
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Not being a classicist, I had not known much about the ancient philosopher Diogenes other than the story about him wandering around with a lantern trying to find an honest man and presumably failing.
But this video says that there was a lot more to him than that, that he was the founder of the philosophical school known as cynicism that meant something somewhat different from what we associate with the word nowadays.
Plato once described the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope as ‘a Socrates gone mad!’ It’s a good comparison. Like Socrates, Diogenes gave the bird to respectable society. He undermined status and manners in the 4th century BCE with his bottomless reserve of shamelessness and irreverence, opting to live on the streets like a stray dog. But, of course, there was a method to his madness. In this short video by TED-Ed, the Irish philosopher William D Desmond explains how Diogenes lived an authentic and ascetic life in accordance with nature, and how in doing so he founded the philosophy of cynicism – an iconoclastic tradition that continues to illuminate and infuriate today.
Chess is a game whose rules were determined centuries ago and are thought to be unchangeable. Chess aficionados would be offended at the idea that it is not exciting and that some changes might benefit it. Without getting into that particular argument, there is no question that because it is so rigidly structured, players nowadays, aided by computers, have studied and memorized most of the openings and defenses and their variations so that there is little surprise, at least in the early stages. As I mentioned in an earlier post, one reason I gave up chess was the realization that to really improve, I would have to drop all my other activities and devote myself to studying and memorizing a huge number of openings and defenses. This was just not worth it to me.
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A porch thief gets caught in the act and tries to run away quickly but his car gets stuck in the snow. While he frantically tries to remove the snow from under tires in order to regain traction, the homeowners struggle to figure out how to call the police while giving advice to the man on how to free the car from the snow, such as pointing out that clearing snow from under the rear wheels is pointless because it is a front-wheel drive car, and even offering him a shovel. Did I mention that this took place in Canada?
What shocked me was that the man kept the engine running and the car in gear (since the wheels were still spinning) while kneeling in front of the car to clear the snow with his bare hands. If he had been successful, the car would have run him over.
If this should happen to you, one thing you can try is take a floor mat from your car and wedge it under the wheel that’s spinning.
At least the thief was wearing a mask, so that is one point in his favor of not being a total doofus.
(Via Rob Beschizza)
I am not a wine drinker so cannot speak from personal experience but know that suggesting to people who consider themselves connoisseurs of wine that some tests have shown that there isn’t that much difference between expensive and cheap wines (and that some tests found that experts cannot distinguish even between red and white wines) is sure to arouse indignation. I know personally someone who when he visits his parents’ home, takes some of their wine and pours it down the sink because he thinks it is inferior. My own attitude to any matters of taste is to follow Duke Ellington’s advice in music that “If it sounds good, it is good.” If you like the taste of something, you should ignore other factors like its cheap price or the attitude of experts.
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