Seen at a grocery store while I was shopping with figmentj:
Yes, you’re seeing that right. It’s caffeinated hot chocolate. As in, hot chocolate with caffeine in it.
Have we as a society really reached the point where we can not face the day without putting drugs into everything we eat and drink?
I have, as I’ve mentioned before, a fireplace in my apartment.
This is a novel experience for me. I’ve never lived in a place with a fireplace before. With winter’s chill approaching, we made a point to go out and buy firewood; the glow from a burning fire is quite lovely.
And that inspired some pictures.
At first, I was quite frustrated; I was using very long exposure times, always somewhat dicey with a digital camera, and I couldn’t find my minipod, so I had to make do with stacks of books to rest the camera on. I finally got ’round to offloading them, and was surprised and pleased that some of them turned out quite nicely.
Take a picture of yourself right now. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture. Post that picture with NO editing. (Except maybe to get the image size down to something reasonable.)
Post these instructions with your picture.
Well, okay. The result is a little scary, though. Plus I’m still at the office.
I am, thankfully, mere moments away from leaving.
…just what is it that you do at work, Tacit?
One of the hilights of this weekend for me was meeting a personal hero of mine. His name is James Randi, and he’s a stage magician, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation, and the adversary of quacks, fakers, charlatans, and frauds of all kinds.
I first got hooked when I read his book Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, first published in 1982. It’s a scorching indictment of all sorts of phonies, fakes, and frauds, from so-called “psychic” and sometimes petty thief Uri “spoon-bender” Geller to “psychic surgeons” who pick the pockets of the desperate and gullible with a handful of chicken guts.
For many years now, Randi has offered a Million Dollar Challenge–a cool one million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate any psychic, paranormal, or otherwise outside the realm of conventional science under controlled conditions. The person making the claim, be it telepathy or dowsing or homeopathic “medicine” or precognition.
A lot of folks who claim to believe in these things don’t much cotton to the notion of actually testing them, and as a result there’s all kinds of objections to the challenge, ranging from “it’s impossibly biased” (in reality, it is the person who claims the ability or phenomenon, not the James Randi Educational Foundation, who designs the test and describes what constitutes a success) to the idea that Randi is somehow “anti-psychic” and his mere presence interferes with “psychic” abilities (Randi is never present at any of the tests, and he is not even informed when the tests are scheduled or where they take place) to the claim that the Foundation will always cheat to skew the results (the Foundation does not run or administer the tests; all tests are administered by a third party, often a university, that both the claimant and the Foundation trust).
In short, this guy has spent a tremendous amount of time and energy over the last couple decades in the thankless task of opposing fraud, gullibility, anti-intellectualism, ignorance, and credulity that poison and corrode reason and attack the foundation of post-industrial society. It is hard to overstate my admiration of this man; people of reason everywhere owe him a debt of gratitude.
Wen I first met him at Dragon, I had a sewing machine under my arm. That’s a whole different story, and one I shan’t go into in this post.
Spotted this when I was shopping a couple of days ago. Yes, the grocery store has a “toys” aisle. No, I don’t know why either. (Something to keep the kiddies out of Mom’s hair while she shops, perhaps?)
Anyway, take a look at the advertising copy on this toy. Liteup Wheel Lights Up!
…err, as opposed to doing something else, for example. Like, I dunno, invading France.
A liteup wheel that lights up. What ever will they think of next? Tautological cat is tautological.
The very first thing I saw when i opened my eyes this morning.
Taken from the camera in my cell phone, which I leave next to the bed at night; it’s my alarm clock, too.
I just got back from lunch at a popular seafood chain restaurant called Joe’s Crab Shack. There are public restrooms in this restaurant; the restrooms are down a hallway. A sign helpfully points the way.
However, the sign does not say “Restrooms” on it. Instead, it says…
Well, see for yourself.
I woke up this morning with the kitty Liam nestled next to me. The instant I was awake, so was he, making even more of a pest of himself than his usual pesty self. He promptly started crawling all over me, licking me, biting me, and generally just being cute as hell.
So, being the indulgent man I am, I not only didn’t kick him off the bed, I picked up my cell phone and started snapping pics like crazy.