I decided that this blog has been woefully lacking when it comes to providing helpful household hints, so here is something that I found pretty useful.

Fitted sheets are nice in that they stay in place on the bed. But anyone who has tried folding them prior to storage knows that you end up with just a bulky mess that takes up a lot of space in the closet. So I was pleased to come across (via Mark Frauenfelder) these two videos that show how to fold fitted sheets (with and without elastic along the edges) so that they end up flat, something that really appeals to someone like me who likes to keep things neat.
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A 10-year old boy in Cleveland took his father’s car and set off a high speed chase that saw him driving on highways at speeds reaching 100 mph, pursued for 45 miles by a large number of police cars and his mother in another car.
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In a penalty shootout, a goalkeeper on one side celebrated prematurely and will likely never forget that lesson

So the Cleveland Indians, the baseball team of my hometown, was eliminated from the championship playoffs by the New York Yankees, losing 3-2 after winning the first two games. Last year they made it all the way to the World Series before losing to the Chicago Cubs.
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I will be traveling the next few days to visit my infant grandson as well as visiting old friends on my way there and back so blogging will be sporadic for the next few days.

A nobleman went up to the Zen Master Hakuin and asked him “What happens to the enlightened man at death?”

“Why ask me?” said Hakuin.

“Because you’re a Zen master.”

“Yes, but not a dead one.”

I am reading an excellent book titled The Infidel and the Professor that I will review in more detail once I have finished it and had time to fully digest it. The book is an intellectual biography of two Scotsmen David Hume and Adam Smith who were so influential in shaping modern western thought and were also good friends, with each of their ideas building on the other’s, though since Hume was twelve years older and a far more prolific writer, his ideas went into print before Smith’s.
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Yesterday I was working on several documents on my computer and so there were several windows open as I shifted my attention from one to another. The overlapping open windows were scattered across the screen so that I could make any one of them ‘live’ by just clicking on it. I noticed at one point that if the document I was going to work on was at the right end of the screen, I would first move it to the left end before working on it.
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I have not seen the recent Wonder Woman because I am not a fan of comic book superhero films. But it has been a huge hit and the fact that the superhero in this case is a woman acting alone rather than as a member of a team dominated by men has clearly resonated with a lot of people. So it was not a surprise when two young Sri Lankan women, inspired by the character, dressed up as her at a Comic Con event in that country, where they were photographed in costume.

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Swearing can be quite cathartic. I myself do not casually swear (though I do use the word ‘hell’ a lot) and never swear in anger at other people. But I cannot prevent the occasional “Oh, shit!” escaping from my lips when I do something stupid or careless or when some unfortunate event occurs. In the video below, we see how swearing is done in sign language for those who cannot verbalize it. It may also come in useful when the recipient can see you but cannot hear you. (Language advisory, obviously.)