American composer Samuel Barber was born on today’s date in 1910. You have, no doubt, heard his Adagio for Strings many times so here is a lovely piece that is not the Adagio for Strings

Robert T. McCall - Wonderful space and futuristic art, plus a few flight history paintings. Dozens of images.

Via Dark Roasted Blend

These are unrelated. Just two quotes I found recently that I like a lot.

First one found here.

I think science does not contradict the Bible. It has only made us more aware of how great the miracle was.

– Irene Dunne, Anna and the King of Siam (1946)

The other one found here.

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts – for support rather than illumination.

– Andrew Lang

I’m a little embarrassed about this because I usually don’t do this sort of thing. I suppose you could call it my attempt to live up to my new reputation as a shocking blogger. But really, it’s just because this is very interesting. 12 Things You Didn’t Know About Boobs. NSFW, of course! Several of these things I did know, a couple I did not want to know and there are certainly some pictures I did not want to see, like #1. What the hell and why on Earth?!

Here are 6 more facts, even more fascinating.

For as long as I can remember, wearing socks with sandals has been considered tacky, tacky, tacky! Unless they’re toe socks or other novelty socks that are made to show off and then they’re still tacky but acceptable because that’s what they were made for. And if the sandals happen to have stiletto heels… just, no! And just because you’re Prada doesn’t mean you can get away with it.

First seen here. Do click on that link and see the LOLsocks.

Shoes - not just for feet anymore

FOOF - “fun” with chemistry

Cryptid Coloring Pages

Carnivorous Plants - beautiful photography

Compass Table - Cool!

Will a lava lamp work on Jupiter?

15 Cool Photos

Lately I’m getting a lot of athletic shoe spam. Well, just one or two a day but when you don’t want to get any, then any at all is a lot. But I got a comment this morning that amused me so I’m going to share it before I delete it. It said: “I think it’s absolutely fantastic, and it’s so lucky for me to find your blog! So shocking and great!

So, this blog is “shocking and great”. Fantastic! Spread the word. If more people knew that I’m shocking and great I’ll bet I’d have a lot more visitors. But wow, what a review to try to live up to! I’m going to have to try hard to post something shocking and great this week.

Awesome (and weird) photo art of Erik Johannson. More here

I plan to keep on walking indefinitely. I see myself at the age of 110 strolling through the mall running over teenagers and cursing them because they’re walking too danged slow. However, I suppose it doesn’t hurt to have a back-up plan.

This might be the cutest cat on keyboard photo ever.

I have an appointment with the eye doctor this morning. This will be the third try. First time the doctor was sick and cancelled; second time I was sick and cancelled. This morning it’s raining. It’s the perfect kind of day to stay home and listen to Bach, drink hot tea, read a good book, and pet the cats. But I’m going. (Darn it.)

I’m pretty sure I don’t need new glasses. It’s just a routine appointment. I’m trying to pretend I’m a responsible adult and keep up with these things.

So the Oscars were last night. I didn’t even know until I signed on to Twitter around 8 o’clock or so and everyone was either “tweeting” about the Oscars or “tweeting” that they must be “the only person in the world” who was not watching the Oscars. I used to love watching the big awards shows and I sort of miss them - miss loving them that is. Last few times I tried to watch (which was probably over two decades ago) I was bored out of my mind. Even after I stopped watching I used to be sort of interested in knowing who won but now I don’t even care much about that. I have to admit, I’m more interested in the clothes than anything else.

Later, I guess I’ll finally get around to looking up the winners and some photos of what all the beautiful people wore. That’s another neat thing about the Internet. You can find out what you really want to know without sitting through five hours of Hollywood patting itself on the back.

Last year, from April until sometime in the fall, I walked to the top of a hill about half a mile or so from my house two to four days a week. Then the weather turned cold and I stopped going, though I had intended to keep up my walks through the winter except when the weather was really bad. Today it’s nearly 70°F so for the first time this year I went for a walk. It was lovely and my energy and endurance do not seem to have suffered much from my winter laziness. I didn’t see any early wildflowers but I heard one of my other favorite signs of spring: frogs.

You might remember a photo that I posted last May. Here is one taken today from nearly the same spot. I was standing on the other side of the road. This is not the very top. There is a lot more hill behind me but this is the best view.

And here’s one of a creek that meanders through this area. I like the reflections. The sign on the post is a warning about an underground pipeline.

Fillyjonk writes: “Sadly, lots of things in life are either hinky or wonky.”

I especially like the word, “hinky”. (Interestingly, the infamous Firefox spellchecker recognized “wonky” but not “hinky”.) I think I first heard it used by Abby on NCIS and that probably has something to do with why I like it but mostly I like it because it’s so useful. “Hinky” and “wonky” both mean “not quite right” but they are not interchangeable. Wonky is a more common, normal kind of “not quite right” like, as Fillyjonk said, a wobbly table. Hinky, on the other hand, edges into the bizarre. It’s something that’s “just wrong” or maybe even a little bit “WTF?” But just a little bit. The difference is subtle. It’s hard to define, but I know when something is wonky and when something is hinky.

Long before YouTube, I read a description of Shostakovitch’s String Quartet No. 15 and thought, from that description, that it was something I might like. That was at least a decade ago, likely more, and this week, after all these years, I finally got around to looking it up and listening to it. And yes, I do like it, quite a lot.

Here is the first of five:

I’m not a big fan of most cold cereals. My favorite is Post Great Grains Raisin, Date and Pecan. It’s almost the only one I like but I keep trying others, always cereals with fruit bits, nuts and crunchy clusters. The other cereals in the Great Grains series are not as good because the flakes are not as good, which is very disappointing. Why can’t I have blueberries or cranberries in the same kind of flakes?

This week I saw and decided to try Post Trail Mix Crunch Cranberry Vanilla - somewhat hesitantly because I usually end up not liking new cereals. My only complaint about this one is that it’s a little too sweet. The thing that impresses me about it is the amount of cranberries. I suppose it’s possible that they just happen to be all at the top of the box but in my first bowl I got a lot of cranberries.

I do also occasionally like kid cereals, without milk, for snacks but I haven’t had any in a long while.

The yellow curtain pauses a moment to take in their absence before settling down. — here

First harbingers of the coming spring, the violets stay close to the forest floor while the narcissus bob above, small suns against a grey background. — there

One is driven near frantic with all to do that must needs be done and then a moment’s pause amidst the field of wires, yes and apple trees, fencing tool in hand and glove, resting what now seems a young man’s arm upon the accomplished task. Though then the age I was seemed central and precisely there, neither young nor old. — here

Astonishing. Of course it’s the logical next step from the usual mistake of confusing the possesive its with the contraction it’s but still… — there

Antonio Vivaldi was born on today’s date in 1678. I was alerted to this fact by Google’s lovely special logo for today. To celebrate, instead of the usual Vivaldi, here’s something just a bit unconventional. Familiar, yes, but without violins.

We’re in the middle of a television drought right now. Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs are both on hiatus. So is Fringe and I haven’t seen a new Castle in several weeks. There are still a few drops of entertainment in the vast TV desert though.

There are two new shows that have recently captured my attention. One, on the History Channel, is American Pickers. Two guys who call themselves “antique archaeologists” travel around the backroads stopping and looking through people’s junk collections for valuable items. For some reason this sort of thing fascinates me. Exploring rusty junk piles discovering interesting stuff is something I think I would probably enjoy myself. The show also makes me realize that I’m not as much of a pack rat as I sometimes think I am. I throw stuff out, which I sometimes regret, but there are some people who never throw anything away. On one episode they paid - I forget how much; a rather large sum - for an old metal Coca-Cola sign that was exactly like one my parents had when I was a kid. I can’t think of anything that I, personally, have thrown out that might have been valuable but I see stuff like this and I always wonder.

Another new show that I’ve discovered is on CBS - Undercover Boss. After only three episodes this one is showing a clear pattern: CEO of a big, famous company goes undercover as an entry-level employee. He demonstrates that CEO’s are basically useless when it comes to real work. He is impressed with most of the people who work for his company. He meets at least one employee who has some personal challenge. (chronic illness, a disabled child, etc.) He finds at least one manager who is doing something very wrong. He discovers that some company policies are making life difficult for the employees. At the end of the show he reveals his true identity and one or more employees get promotions and one gets an all expenses paid vacation, on the boss. Still, in spite of the predictability, so far I like it. The companies they have had on the show are Waste Management, Hooters, 7-Eleven and White Castle.

NCIS and Criminal Minds have both been showing new episodes recently. Warning: This paragraph contains a SPOILER for this week’s Criminal Minds. I liked last night’s episode. It had a partially happy ending but I do have a few complaints about it. One, they didn’t reveal a lot about the background of the “un-sub” and what made that person crack in the first place. The profile was one of the thinnest I’ve seen on the show. Another thing that sort of bugged me and this is something that bugs me about a lot of crime dramas - I guess I’m different from most people but it bugs me when the perpetrator gets killed instead of going to prison. Maybe some people find it satisfying to see the criminal die but I want them to live to think about it, to suffer the humiliation of getting caught and the permanent loss of freedom. Of course, when the person is clearly insane their having a chance to think about it is not going to make any difference but still, there might be humiliation and there’s the loss of freedom. That’s something, maybe. And in the case of someone who is not insane themselves but is helping and protecting a relative who is… well, I guess I can understand wanting to protect a loved one up to a point but one should protect them from themselves long before they start killing people, so those people, the helpers, I really want them to suffer the humiliation and the loss of freedom and the lifetime of having to think about what they’ve had a part in.

Possibly the coolest watch ever. Except, it will only fit a big, burly man wrist. If they made a clock like that it would be awfully tempting.

Of course, The Watchismo Times features a lot of other watches, each of which might be “the coolest watch ever.”

It’s not often that I get weird and disturbing search referrals and I’m not sure why it is that we bloggers always feel the urge to share such things but this morning I got one and I have to share. Here it is. I just can’t bring myself to put those exact words on my blog. Oh I know… It could be a lot worse, but still…

When I looked to see how high I am on the list, I noticed a number of other innocent blogs. That happens with long search strings containing a lot of innocent common words like “new” and “yesterday” and “time”. (They’re all innocent words actually; it’s just when you put them together like that…) You’re more likely to find what you’re looking for if you only include words that are specific to what you’re looking for.

Anyway, one of those innocent blogs that I found particularly lovely is Posie Gets Cozy. (and now she’s going to have that creepy search in her referrals too if she doesn’t have already) She posts a lot about sewing, knitting, cooking and other pleasant, cozy things.

50 Wonders of the Ancient and Medieval World - You have probably heard of all or most of these but this is a wonderful list, with beautiful photos (click to enlarge) and brief details.

Robert Oshatz’s treehouse is pretty cool.

Brian complains:

I wish my bloody spellchecker (OpenOffice.org Writer) would stop changing iPhone to Iphone, iPad to Ipad, etc. Normally I can ignore this interfering thing, but this is annoying. You’d think it would know things like that.

Indeed! At least Firefox’s spellchecker just shows you what it thinks is spelled wrong and lets you decide for yourself. I hate, loathe and despise programs that change what you’ve done and yes spellcheckers should “know” that iPhone starts with a lower case “i” just as it should know that some brand names have an upper case letter in the middle. This is not something new. We’ve had these kinds of words for two decades. It’s past time programmers started making spellcheckers that can handle them.

Message to certain bloggers: Learn how to do hypertext links. Most blog programs have a button to do it automatically but if you can’t find it follow that link and learn how to do it manually. I know that little bit of HTML looks scary the first time you see it but it’s honestly not hard at all. Wordpress does have the button to do it automatically but I always just type it in because it is so EASY. A couple of you are driving me freaking batty posting URLs like this — http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/html/article.php/3478171 — instead of doing it the right way.