Big Bang Theory

Without laugh track.

Louis de Funes

Classic gag from 1966. Subtitles are their own joke.

Memorial Day Weekend Bonfire

Pull up a tree stump and sit around the bonfire for a while.  Tell stories, laugh, sing some campfire songs if you feel like it. 

The old radio has been brought outside; a long electric cord from the house  makes the tubes glow in the fading sunlight. The music is old, traditional country and western: Ray Price, Kitty Wells, Bob Wills, and others.

No talk of politics or wars or news.

Memorial weekend



Official twitter account of Democratic party, so it says.

We're glad you're happy. We do realize this is the best you can manage. Enjoy your ice cream, your photo op while eating it on this national funeral weekend of remembrance. 

The faces that go across the screen of young men who have died in service to our country used to look so mature and advanced, disciplined, well put together in their uniforms and their home activities, and now as I age they all look to me like children, the flower of our nation.

It must be Climate Change again

Portage Lake, ME right now. Even for Maine this is kinda messed up. #MemorialDayWeekend (HT @TomMooreTWC) pic.twitter.com/F4ljI6fjoT

— Keith Carson (@KeithCarson) May 23, 2015

Breckenridge, Colorado.

"We woke up today to a new Ireland"

"The amount of people who came out to vote is just such an emotional thing for us," said Fred Schelbaum, 48, standing with his civil partner Feargal Scott, 43, who he said he intended to marry.

"Up to now a lot of gay people felt they were tolerated in Ireland. Now we know that it's much more than that."

"The future for young LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) people in this country is incredible," O'Neill said.

"I'm just glad to be here on the day this Ireland came into being."

Bulldog meets Bull

 

Link to YouTube

"The Simple Logical Puzzle That Shows How Illogical People Are"

"Wason tells you that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is blue. Which cards must you turn over in order to test the truth of his proposition, without turning over any unnecessary cards? Click on your answer in the interactive video below:"


"If you got it wrong, keep your spirits up: More than 90 percent of Wason’s subjects erred, too, and in quite a systematic way; the mistakes they made followed a pattern. “I feel very unhappy about my original choice,” a subject once told Wason, “but yes, I would still choose the same ones if I had to do the task again.” In that 1968 paper, titled “Reasoning about a Rule,” he wrote that these were “disquieting” results. The reigning assumption was that humans naturally reasoned analytically, but here was Wason’s subject admitting that, if given the choice, he’d be irrational again. It made Wason wonder: Is it the logical structure of the rules that make the puzzle difficult, or are people tripped up merely by the words with which the puzzle is expressed?

peach paletas

It's an al sur del la frontera thing, the cognitive is "wooden palate" for the popsicle stick. Whereas Americans would use sweetened juice for their popsicles Central America uses real fruit for their paletas and berries, often exotic, some vegetables, odd combinations you would not think could go together, but do, horchata made with ground almonds, rice, barley, sesame seeds, tiger nuts (chufa sedge, yellow nutsedge, nut grass, earth almond). This book, Paletas: Authentic Recipes for Mexican Ice Pops, Shaved Ice & Aguas Frescas is #1 bestseller, I just now noticed. You will want to have the real popsicle mold kit, not a junk plastic one with reusable plastic handles, no, those types are for babies, you want paletas, real wood sticks, or else it's just, pfft, no fun at all, plus you can buy 1,000 popsicle sticks for extra wood stick related projects, say, make a castle with its own jet airplane.

I don't think of them that much but I noticed an odd pattern arise suddenly from countries south of us.

They're looking at this.

I have this book. It's small as far as books go. Only 108 pages with a lot of photographs. The raspados (shaved ice) look delicious and so do the aquas frescas (refreshing drinks) but let's look at the paletas described in the book.

Strawberry

Blackberry

Cantaloupe

Watermelon

Grapefruit 

Avocado

Lime

Apricot-Chamomile

Hibiscus-Raspberry

Spicy Pineapple

Mezcal-Orange

Spiced Tomato-Tequila

Sour Cream, Cherry, and Tequila

Yogurt with Berries

roasted Banana

Passion Fruit Cream

Lime Pie

Quick Coconut

Fresh Coconut

Pecan

Mexican Chocolate

Mexican Eggnog

Caramel

Rice Pudding

¡Cómo imaginativa! Mi mente es soplado. My mind is blown. But wait, what? No mango, no papaya, no apple, no kiwi, no tamarind, no vanilla, no cherry, no pear, no quince. I expect the author expects us to have the idea after 25 examples. They mostly follow the exact same formula, the best ingredients you can find, sweetness adjusted with cane sugar keeping in mind that sugar tastes less sweet when cold and the pops will not freeze with too much sugar. Lemon or lime juice, water, pinch of salt. That's it. Some use milk. 

I think I'll try chocolate malt. 

Emma's Mattress

New Twitter account, Emma's mattress speaks for itself and, boy, does it ever have a mouth on it. 127 tweets so far and 381 followers as of right now but I expect that will rise rapidly.

Must you have a Twitter account to view the page? I don't know.

Conservative satire is improving. Slowly but surely. This is good, a mattress that speaks frankly about being bounced on, stained, forced to participate in unwanted activities, dragged around all over the place, made to attend classes. Here is another good example unrelated to improved conservative satire, the author states outright to look up Poe's Law if you don't know what it means, (eventually reality overlaps satire so unless explicitly stated people will be unable to discern a difference) so he gives it away upfront and that is very American, instead of allowing it to be misunderstood, even broadly, and work out by itself in the comments and admitting to nothing. But he does admit, so there goes the joke. Even then viewers are still taken in. He matched things up so well. He imagined what he would like them to be saying based on what he sees so he can come up with lines that match like "what does he expect, a big hug from everybody?" While the Arab guy on t.v. hugs his own body but says something else entirely. Like bad lipreading. Video: How Muslims react to Obama's latest speech.

Monkey Go To Heaven

“My back! My back!”

Watch a Shooting Suspect in Front of a News Camera...

Shake It Off, Taylor Swift

Rotoscoped is the process animators use to trace cartoons from video or film. The original is nice, you can see why the students chose it. Nice clean lines all around. It is an exercise in symmetry against a cleared canvas. An aerobics and physical exercise video too, apparently, if you would take her advice and shake it off like this for four minutes here and there you are guaranteed to shed excess body fat and tighten right up all over. After this rotoscoped version I had to give up on the cleaner original version on YouTube after its fourth interactive slap-on advert just a bit over half way through, having seen what I went there for, their mad free-form dancing and their pigeon-signing and hand configurations really are interesting.

Americans believe one out of every five Americans is gay or lesbian

"The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian, little changed from Americans' 25% estimate in 2011, and only slightly higher than separate 2002 estimates of the gay and lesbian population. These estimates are many times higher than the 3.8% of the adult population who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Gallup Daily tracking in the first four months of this year."