Long before the National Weather Service issued its pollen alert, my nose told me. As I sniffled and sniveled, waiting for the antihistamine to kick in, I began to wonder if we as a species have always had this much of a problem.
I’m guessing not. Imagine if you will our stone age ancestors out on the hunt. If one or more members of the party are sneezing up a storm, do you think the prey is going to stick around? How do you line up a spear shot through watering eyes?
And while on the topic, what did our ancient forebears use to wipe their noses, since the trees hadn’t leafed out yet? Or did the development of tissue paper occur much earlier than we originally estimated? I can see it now. The shamans have just finished dedicating Göbekli Tepe (also delivered way ahead of schedule), and one of them sneezes and says, ‘does anybody have something I can use to wipe my nose?’ and two engineers say ‘on it!’ and rush off to invent soft-yet-strong nosewipes.
Reflections on April Fools Day.
Mostly, I’m reflecting on yesterday, during which nothing happened, or at least anything out of the ordinary, at least around here. The few attempts at foolery I heard about were lame. Outside my world, the few attempts fell flat. Even Google gave up on April Fools hijinks.
I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing. Times and needs change. Maybe we don’t need just one day to disrupt the world, when normal operations on all 365 days seem to be doing a pretty good job of mucking things up.
Life lesson.
Alysa Liu retired from competitive figure skating when she was 16. She recently unretired and won the world championship last weekend, the first American woman to do so since 2006.
The difference? Skating had become fun again. Alysa had simply erased the pressure of being ‘the best’ and the weight of expectations. The change in attitude was visible in her skating. She was relaxed, unlike the other skaters, who had let the pressure and the setting get to them.
I think we can see this in other, bigger than big figures. I think of Steph Curry and LeBron James, who are both having fun. They still have goals, I am sure, but approach the game with joy. I have no proof, but I think Warren Buffet is having fun.
I also think of Ben and Erin in Home Town Takeover, in Sebring, Florida, where they helped a young couple open a second, downtown location of their Cuban restaurant. Unlike their usual sunny, pleasant, low key dispositions, they kept hammering away on how important the success of this restaurant was to the future of Sebring’s downtown, if not Sebring itself. No pressure there.
Be interesting to see in a year or so how the restaurant–and the couple–are doing once Ben and Erin have gone home.
Shocked, I say. Shocked!
AI chatbots unable to accurately summarise news,
BBC finds.
No! Wait, that title should be ‘No, not really shocked at all.’
Not even surprised.
For another take, see Rosebud Ben-Oni’s Poet wrestling with {Artificial} Intelligence.
From Prester John to Kubla Khan.
There were poets in 19th Century America not named Poe, Whitman, or Dickinson.
I mention this because I just read a poem by one of the ‘other’ 19th Century poets.
I mention this because it’s from this poem that I lifted the title, strictly because it’s fun to say. I know Kubla Khan, but Prester John I ‘know’ only in the sense that I had heard the name at some point. So off to Wikipedia I go. Turns out he was the mythological ruler of a mythological Christian kingdom in the Far East in the middle of the second millennium.
Still, knowing that is some help in decoding the poem. Two notes. One: the poem is depressing. Two: ‘prester’ is not recognized by third millennium spell checkers. Actually, neither is Kubla. I guess it’s no longer among the 100 most popular baby names for 2024.
Freshness guaranteed?
MSN: US to import millions of eggs from Turkey and South Korea to ease prices.
Do these countries have warehouses of eggs just lying around? Or herds of hens just waiting to be put into service? Will there be a tariff?
Today’s earworm.
Paperback Writer
Lennon & McCartney
New thing.
While driving to someplace I don’t normally go, I was stopped at a light. That gave me time to read a sign provided by the City of Norfolk. It read: For safety: Lock car. Take keys. Remove valuables.
I’m not going to quibble about the order of the items even though they aren’t in a logical order. But…
I have never seen a sign like this before. There are none in my neighborhood. Are there more car break ins where the sign is? Is the city going to give us signs soon? Or are the people in this area particularly obtuse?
I think something Sheldon Cooper said may apply here: Your telling me to be careful is not going to make me be more careful.
Same thing with the sign. Read. Forget. Leave keys and valuables in unlocked car.
Always true.
Robert Sullivan, in the New Yorker: The film [Kneecap] blends fact and fiction, though some of the most unbelievable parts are true.
Bringing to mind Mark Twain, who provides an explanation: Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.
Different times.
Malcolm Gladwell, writing about attitudes towards art in 19th Century Paris: Those [paintings] accepted [for the Salon] would be hung on the walls of the Palais, and over the course of six weeks… as many as a million people would throng the exhibition, jostling for position in front of the biggest and best known artists’ works and jeering at the works they did not like.
I can’t imagine anyone jeering in a contemporary art museum, which sport a quiet matched only in an empty cathedral, a funeral home, or at a poetry reading.
People were strange then. Riots were known to break out at operas, for example. I don’t know what happened to change things, but I suspect it might have something to do with the separation of artistic, creative expression (in all forms) into ‘art’ and ‘entertainment.’ Art gets reverence. Entertainment gets response.
Unpopular opinion.
Whilst cruising through a WSJ magazine, I came to the belief that models are paid to look slightly asthmatic, uncomfortable"and/or kind of stupid. Probably explains why they’re never smiling.
W.o.W.
rambunctious
Headlines we'll never see.
Apple denies next iPhone will be size of helicopter landing pad.