Pluviophile: Someone who loves rain; one who finds pleasure in rainy days; yours truly.
The fear of rain would be pluviophobia.
This is my word of the day!
Thanks, hugs & kisses to the incomparable Wendy McIntyre for passing this photo along to me.
You are, as always, the best!
Grammars Don’t Makes You Into Geekazoid
Reblogged from the The Literal Loudmouth.
Oh dear almighty Father in heaven, may grammar like this title never appear again over the entire course of humanity. Not only does this phrase slander every known truth in the universe, including the commandment of not committing murder, it also is so offensive it would put The Ugly Stepsisters to shame. Please God, just eradicate these types of sentences from existence… In Jesus’ name, Amen.
These are just one of the many prayers I must make every time I open my Internet Browser, because there are sentences like this plaguing the cybernetic world every single day. The internet has now become a place where we may publish these forsaken sentences onto the bowels of the internet history, and unfortunately, there will continually be the opportunity for many more to come. Comments on Youtube videos, facebook statuses, even blogs I admit… they become the grammatical battlefield, where in most cases…
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There’s something that’s been much on my mind lately.
(A caring parent back in the day)
I’ve given it a lot of thought and have come to the inescapable conclusion that when I was young, no one gave a damn about little kids.
We ran amok in the summer for hours on end. Sometimes all day. We went home when the streetlights came on. Adult supervision? Hell, our parents didn’t even know where we were half the time. No one cared. I’m serious.
It goes a long way in explaining the bizarre toys we all loved so much. Firecrackers. Lawn darts. Mercury.
(Hideously dangerous, life-threatening toys)
Dangerous? Toxic? Are you kidding me? That was part of the fun!
You’d go up to a mom on any summer day in those days and ask her where her precious children were and you’d most likely get, “Oh, they’re around somewhere. Probably off with friends doing something.” Why? No one cared about kids. At best, we were tolerated. Looking back, I get the feeling we were probably considered a form of livestock or necessary evils or some such thing.
(Who the hell thought this was a good idea?)
When I tell teenagers this, they roll their eyes and make that annoying sound deep in their throats. “All older people say the same thing!”
We all say the same thing because it’s true, dammit! You think we got together and made this crap up? Yeah. Millions of grown-ups huddling off to a giant covert midnight meeting in some Top Secret secluded area to decide what we would say about what it was like when we were kids. Holy smokes, the kiddie-winkers are on to us!
(One of my favourite childhood toys)
Nope. There can only be one plausible explanation. Back then, kids were considered fungible goods that were easily replaced. Remember, people, shortly after the Baby Boom, adults were hip-deep in children. Little Suzie or Debbie bounced off the trampoline and into an oncoming Ford Pinto? And the ensuing gas tank explosion ignited the polyester clothing on every kid in a 25 yard radius? Well, it’s not like we can’t make more kids, now, is it?
Such a staggering supply of youngsters not only diminished the demand but it also cheapened the value. When you’re awash in kids, after a while, they’re practically inanimate objects. It’s a weird way to grow up and, given the dramatic change in adult attitudes to children these days, it’s even harder to explain to kids today what it was like back in the olden days.
Teenagers marvel that cars back then did not have air-conditioning. Air-conditioning? We didn’t have seatbelts let alone children’s car seats! Dad slammed on the brakes and you’d go sailing past your parents and out through the windshield. You’re a hood ornament and your folks are yelling at you about how expensive it’s going to be to replace the glass you broke!
(I mean, really. What could go wrong?)
I don’t know exactly when this laissez-faire parental attitude changed but by at least the early 1980s, the pendulum swung the other way. Parents began to be overprotective to an insane degree. I’m not exactly sure which is better. To me, they’re both nuts. There has to be some kind of reasonable middle ground between lawn darts and bouncing around your parents’ car like it was a pinball machine on the one hand and on the other hand evacuating a school because someone brought in a peanut butter sandwich or accidentally dropped a thermometer.
I don’t know which is worse – parents who think their children are idiots so they feel the need to protect them from every possible form of injury… or parents who know their kids are morons who will injure themselves but just don’t give a damn. Both are scary prospects.
It will be very interesting to see what happens when the present crop of college grads starts raising kids of their own.
This is going to be good.
Thanks to the wonderful geeks and nerdlings over at LiveScience.com for the following infographic and article.
Zombies, à la The Walking Dead, don’t exist in the real world, but they have been a big part of pop culture and show up time and again in history and folklore.
As portrayed in the classic 1968 film “Night of the Living Dead,” zombies are lumbering, flesh-eating corpses. Some say this film reinvented zombies, who were shown in earlier films such as 1932’s “White Zombie” as “beings whose brains had been zapped by some ‘master’ who was then able to control their actions,” according to the University of Michigan website.
Zombies are even mentioned in Haitian folklore, with the Haitian word “zombi” meaning “spirit of the dead.” These tales showed voodoo priests who had the ability to resurrect the deceased through the administration of a magic powder. And according to legend, “In Haiti a zombi is someone who has annoyed his or her family and community to the degree that they can no longer stand to live with this person. They respond by hiring a Bokor, a vodoun priest who practices black magic and sorcery, to turn them into a zombi,” according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has jumped on the zombie bandwagon, with a post on their website in May 2011 entitled “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.” The post, a tongue-in-check way to promote real disaster preparedness, went viral that week.
Of course, the CDC was not suggesting we need to worry about zombies. “If you’re prepared for the zombie apocalypse, you’re also prepared for hurricanes and flooding,” said CDC spokesperson Dave Daigle at the time. Another scientific endeavor, by the Oxford Internet Institute, visualized in map form the global distribution of Google Maps references to “zombies.”
While no scientific evidence suggests human zombies exist, there are plenty of zombies in the animal kingdom.
Recent research in a Thai rain forest showed how a parasitic fungi, a species of Ophiocordyceps, forces an infected ant to wander drunkenly over the forest’s low leaves before clamping its jaws around the main vein on the underside of a leaf in an ant-zombie graveyard. [Mind Control: Gallery of Zombie Ants]
By watching 16 infected ants bite down, the researchers, who describe their findings in the journal BMC Ecology, found that the ants’ last bites took place around Noon, indicating they are synchronized to either the sun or a related cue, like temperature or humidity. Another study found the fungus not only guided timing of death but also the zombie ant’s whereabouts, on the undersides of leaves sprouting from the northwest side of plants that grow on the forest floor. That’s where temperature, humidity and sunlight are ideal for the fungus to grow and reproduce and infect more ants.
Zombie caterpillars have also been spotted by scientists, with one study revealing the mastermind behind the gypsy moth caterpillar’s zombie-like run for treetops once infected with a virus. Turns out, a single gene in the virus turns the caterpillars into tree-climbing zombies. Once up high in the trees, the caterpillars die and their bodies liquefy, raining deadly “zombie” virus onto their brothers and sisters below.
Saw this on Facebook the other day and thought I would pass it along.
It was compiled by Toronto Public Health.
Gothic Charm School.
You may not tell a book by its cover… but the title sure can give you a giggle. 🙂
Is this my very first book review? I think it might just be. It seems fitting for my first to be the informative and adorable Gothic Charm School by Jillian Venters. Complete with gothy makeup tips, badass illustrations (by the author’s talented husband), and great advice for Goths (and everyone else, really), this book was an enjoyable read. It even confirmed my suspicion that I was a Goth, too! (Sidenote: I once was that person who was too special and awesome to be tied down with labels. Nowadays, I happily embrace them. Maturity is a funny thing.)
I will be shamelessly honest in saying I was drawn to this book because the title reminded me of one of my favorite crappy reality TV shows. The difference is, Gothic Charm School is full of class and Rock of Love: Charm School was full of…trash. (I believe being a stripper/porn star was…
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Did a bit of a DVD movie marathon this weekend.
Saw a few movies which were basically more of the same. Which isn’t a bad thing, really.
They were good. I liked them a lot.
But when it comes down to it, they were… well… more of the same.
(The Dark Knight Rises)
If you are a fan of this trilogy, you will not be disappointed in The Dark Knight Rises… the last installment. It may not have a villain as deliciously brilliant as Heath Ledger’s Joker… but it does have Anne Hathaway at Catwoman, and that ain’t bad.
(Men in Black 3)
Men in Black 3 is perhaps the most ‘more of the same’ of the three movies I saw this weekend. Josh Brolin as young K is a hoot. If you love the Men in Black franchise, you’re going to love this one too.
(The Avengers)
This is a great idea. Take a bunch of Marvel superheroes. Give them each a movie. Then roll all of the characters into one big epic smash ’em up blockbuster. If you love Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man (and who doesn’t?) and Scarlett Johanssen as Agent Romanov (and who doesn’t?) and every other Marvel character in the other movies… then The Avengers is just the flick for you!
These people drive me up the wall and across the ceiling!
The ones who hover around or lurk somewhere near you.
They are silent, sneaky and they make me crazy.
People who walk up behind you at the computer and then start looking at what you are doing, pretending that if it is on your monitor, then obviously it is open to the public.
And it doesn’t matter if you are reading the news or composing a personal email. Everything is open season for the hoverers and lurkers.
They can’t be that oblivious. I refuse to believe they have no concept that what they are doing is an invasion of privacy.
And it’s just creepy!
It’s not exactly stalker behaviour. They don’t concentrate their lurking and hovering to one person – they are more ‘free range.’ But it sure feels like it sometimes.
It’s weird. Stop it. Now!
For centuries, scientists have studied how we go about the difficult task of choosing A or B, left or right, North or South — and how both instinct and intellect figure into the process. Now new research indicates that the old truism “look before you leap” may be less true than previously thought.
My little geeks and nerdlings over at the University of Tel Aviv have stumbled upon an interesting finding regarding instinct and intuition. [1]
The article begins, “Decision-making is an inevitable part of the human experience, and one of the most mysterious. For centuries, scientists have studied how we go about the difficult task of choosing A or B, left or right, North or South — and how both instinct and intellect figure into the process. Now new research indicates that the old truism “look before you leap” may be less true than previously thought.”
(Prof. Marius Usher)
In a behavioral experiment, Prof. Marius Usher of Tel Aviv University’s School of Psychological Sciences and his fellow researchers found that intuition was a surprisingly powerful and accurate tool. When forced to choose between two options based on instinct alone, the participants made the right call up to 90 percent of the time.
“The study demonstrates that humans have a remarkable ability to integrate value when they do so intuitively, pointing to the possibility that the brain has a system that specializes in averaging value,” Prof. Usher says. This could be the operational system on which common decision-making processes are built.
The results of their study were recently published in the journal PNAS. [2]
I have a healthy respect for intuition, especially women’s intuition. Not that anything and everything a woman intuits can be taken to the bank… far from it. But there are times when I will take a woman’s intuition over a man’s intellect.
Case in point, my friend Tracy. She has an almost unerring ‘gut sense’ about many things. On several occasions in the past, when I have rationally thought something out, planned it meticulously and could see no real flaw… Tracy would say “I wouldn’t do that if I were you”… based on nothing except her instincts and intuition.
(Tracy: I don’t think we should go that way. I dunno… we just shouldn’t!)
She has an uncanny ‘spidey sense’ that I ignore at my own peril. Many a carefully crafted scheme has been tossed into the garbage bin because Tracy didn’t ‘feel right’ about it. Were there times when I went against Tracy’s gut feelings and it turned out ok? Sure. Were there times when Tracy was completely blindsided by something that she did not expect? Sure. She’s not psychic. She can’t predict the future. But there were many more times when I did not heed her gut feeling and I regretted it. Enough times that I learned through bitter experience to Just Trust Tracy.
There are times, however, when going with your gut leads you astray. There are times when you disregard facts and choose what Stephen Colbert calls ‘truthiness’… what feels like the truth rather than what is the truth.
(Karl Rove’s Election Night Meltdown – When truthiness and The Truth collide)
Some people learned that the hard way recently.
So I will continue to make plans based on facts and figures as I know them. But… I will always run them by Tracy first!
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[1] Personally, I use the terms ‘instincts’ and ‘intuition’ interchangeably. I am sure people could quibble with this, but if there’s a difference it’s not substantive enough for me to care about.
[2] Journal Reference: K. Tsetsos, N. Chater, M. Usher. Salience driven value integration explains decision biases and preference reversal. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; 109 (24): 9659 DOI:10.1073/pnas.1119569109
Insufferable winners.
They gloat.
They smirk.
They love to rub people’s noses in it.
They do everything except (perhaps) say, “Nyah, nyah!”
Vampyre Fangs 