Reg the Fronkey Farmer

@ Enco  – If I were using a hard copy dictionary…..I did and my parents made me eat it!  We used to get a new or uncommon word to learn every few days. I am addicted to cryptic crosswords and have done at least one but usually 2 or 3 every week since I was 18. I average about 35 books a year. So I am very good at sophisticated blasphemy 🙂

Funny, before I looked it up, I thought jejune was when SeSummer began.

Enco, please take a seat at the front of the class 🙂

Reg, you’ve confused me with Enco…

Apologies to you both…..I was thinking that you Jake, would appreciate the word when you read it.  Not quite a mondegreen though. Mrs. Malaprop, you have a rival in Lisa Simpson, but don’t worry Lisa, iconoclasts are very welcome here 🙂

Right now, christian nationalism is the #1 immediate threat to our nation and democracy on this planet. Not Islamists, not trans athletes, not antisemitic  Harvard, not China, not Ukranian Nazis, not even climate change. Anyone fighting this shit, I am gonna root for them. When the threat is over, then back to the regularly scheduled program.…[Read more]

Here is one of the reasons that Jews were discriminated against at Harvard and many elite American institutions in the early 20th century.

Jewish enrollment at elite colleges in the U.S. began to rise significantly due to merit-based admissions (which emphasized academic achievement). By the 1925, Jewish students made up more than 25% of the…[Read more]

Permit me Jake the indulgence of extending my most effulgent approbation for your recent prolix perambulations through the luxuriant lexicon of our beloved English tongue. Your sesquipedalian predilections, far from being an impediment to intelligibility, represent a salubrious balm upon the oft-diminished art of articulate articulation.

Indeed,…[Read more]

Try explaining what water is to a fish.

In Wittgenstein’s famous discussion of pain and private language he points out that there is no way to know what someone else senses. If you and I coincidentally stub our toes at the same time and react simultaneously in a similar fashion, is this sufficient to declare that we both feel the same thing? No, and there’s no way to verify the not…[Read more]

This new London Tube map is excellent!  Article.

But if I see you stub your toe, and I am at all sympathetic with you, then I will feel your pain by empathy. We’ve evolved that as part of the human suite of cooperative abilities.

What is it like to be a Bat?

Have a great week!

Once MAGA replace all the State Library boards, the mess will be cleaned up. But the range of books will be all under the same section. The Dewey Decimal system will become redundant. They will probably have hundreds of copies of the same book. Any other books will require crayons.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of…[Read more]

@Enco – I make a point of telling Science deniers where all the information they need  can be discovered 🙂

Abiogenesis is the study of how life might have originated from non-living matter, while evolution deals with how existing life changes over time through mechanisms like natural selection and genetic drift.

They’re distinct domains: evolution presupposes life already exists. The fact that we don’t yet fully understand how life began doesn’t und…[Read more]

Yes, If I were starting over, I would upload my genome to a server and get it to start running scenario based tests on it. That would give it time to run millions of tests to find the optimum “CTAG” string to make the best new parts.

Yes, “keep your government hands off my Medicare. Don’t you even think about socializing it”!

Reg,

Is there any validity to life extension technology?

The Ballad of Bio-Lies and Wrinkle Wars
(With apologies to your wallet and your face)

In jars of glow and tubes of youth, they sell us hope—or so, in truth,
With “hydra-quench” and “nano-peptides,”
They promise time will let us slide.

There’s “dermo-lift” and “chrono-repair,…[Read more]

A Sonnet for the Smokin’ Truth of April’s End
—In Memory of the Pope, 4/20

On four-twenty, ‘neath Rome’s eternal dome,
A holy puff drifted through sacred air.
The Vatican clock struck “Whoa, bro” with a groan—
As incense mixed with something… dank and rare.

JD approached, with scripture in his coat,
Hillbilly psalms and MAGA beads in hand.…[Read more]