Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Moving!

I am transferring this blog to Wordpress. Hope to see you there!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Tuesday Quote of the Week

"Wit is cultured insolence."
~~Aristotle

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

"Soaring at the Midnight Sun" Sarah Palin's goodbye poem

This is just too funny for words. The Sarah Palin farewell speech as read by William Shatner. (You have to sit through an ad first, but it's worth the wait.)

Quiz for people who know everything

This came via email. Not that I needed the lesson (the lesson being I don't know everything...if I know anything, I know that!) but there you have it. And here it is:

These are not trick questions. They are> straight questions with straight answers:

1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.

2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables?

4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn't been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the> bottle?

6. Only three words in standard English begin with the letters "dw" and they are all common words. Name two of them.

7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?

8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.

9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter "S."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Answers:
1. The one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends: Boxing

2. North American landmark constantly moving backward. Niagara Falls -- The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.

3. Only two vegetables that can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons: Asparagus and rhubarb.

4. The fruit with its seeds on the outside: Strawberry.

5. How did the pear get inside the brandy bottle? It grew inside the bottle. The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the entire growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.

6. Three English words beginning with "dw": Dwarf, dwell and dwindle.

7. Fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar: Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation mark, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.

8. The only vegetable or fruit never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh: Lettuce

9. Six or more things you can wear on your feet beginning with "S": Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Frenzied Waters

This site is pretty cool. Extremely creepy, but cool. Warning: Don't visit this site if you don't like the idea of seeing yourself in the past tense. But if you can get past that, it's actually pretty clever. It works in conjunction with your Facebook account. Simply go to the site where you'll see this video with four bottles bobbing in the water. If you want a generic sneak preview, click on one of the three to the left. If you want the personalized version, click on "My Story" and follow the prompts to access your Facebook information.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Dot-Dash-Dot or was that Dot-Dash-Dash?

Apparently spelling is not all that fundamental, especially if you're doing it in Morse Code.

There is a Pittsburgh landmark, the Grant Building, that since 1929 has used Morse Code on its beacon to spell out Pittsburgh. At least that was what everyone thought. According to Scott Carmichael on Gadling, a travel blog, for 80 years it's been spelling out something else.

No more Rock of Boston

The Rock of Boston is rocking no more. Another local institution is closing its doors, as WBCN is putting away its drum kit and guitars, according to Boston.com.

Truth be told, I haven't listed to 'BCN for quite some time. I migrated over to 'ZLX when the rock music I grew up with became classic rock. But it was the first station I listened to when I arrived on these shores (OK...I came over from Western Mass., but I think you need a visa to travel from Western to Eastern Mass. these days...) in the days of Charles Laquidara and the Big Mattress, and it was years before I changed the dial, following him and the Mishigas madness to 'ZLX.

At the risk of further dating myself, my first true Boston experience was through 'BCN. Shortly after I moved here, John Lennon was killed. I was living in the dorms at Northeastern and a bunch of us joined a candlelight procession from the Commons down Boylston Street to the radio station. It was the moment when I truly bonded with the city that I have called home ever since.