Sounds & Fury linked to five performances of the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita No. 2. Here are two of them.

Somehow, when I read the headline, Surprising Ingredient Causing Weight Gain I knew it would be MSG. I was right. It seems like there’s been a war on MSG for ages. Most people think of it as a scary chemical food additive but it’s actually a naturally occurring substance. As the article says, even “slow-cooking [...]

… like many my age I stand continually amazed at our failure to achieve new space milestones. Space shuttle: bah! — here “Bumpits” hair-accessory ads: somehow, I blame Sarah Palin for this. — there (Twitter) It’s never too late or too early to take up quilting, sewing, and fabric fondling. — here (another one from [...]

Wednesday, this week: view large Scenery along Talimena Scenic Drive in southeastern Oklahoma almost two years ago. This is the original version of the picture on my entry page. view large See hundreds more sky photos from around the world at Skywatch Friday.

Fascinating: An article posted today on New Scientist suggests that, over the course of a 150-minute film, audience members will miss an incredible fifteen minutes simply through the act of blinking – but also that people watching a film tend to blink at the same time. It’s called “synchronized blinking,” and it means that “we [...]

I really shouldn’t put this where the kids can see it (And by “the kids” I mean my two adult sons) but they’d probably find it eventually anyway, if they haven’t already. Apparently this was on Mythbusters but I missed it somehow. Via The Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys

XKCD understands so many things about life. Being an adult who never completely grew up is so much more fun than being an actual kid. Found on Twitter.

Seen on my deck a couple of days ago… view large And this morning. What is this, a horsefly? I didn’t know they got this big. The deck rail upright it’s sitting on is about an inch and a half wide. It’s like something out of a bad movie. view large (if you dare)

I got nothin’ today (so far) so here are a few more links. The restored Amber Room Panda bread – Who knew bread could be cute? (via Neatorama) Cheating on the Rorschach test 15 Concept Computers – Can we please NOT encourage people to use computers while driving?

Awful Library Books – strange and outdated books. What kind of burgers?! – I knew McDonald’s food is pretty bad but… Rubik’s Cubewich – It doesn’t look very appetizing to me but it was a clever idea. Top 15 Nasa Inventions – (via The Daily Grail) 20 Fascinating Ancient Maps – I guess the definition [...]

Everyone is talking about this. Well, that is, everyone a few people on Twitter. I don’t know anything about modern poetry but this sounds quite good to me. To be fair I guess I really should listen to the original now. UPDATE: Curses! YouTube had to remove the Shatner/Palin video but fortunately I found it [...]

Last night I watched Broken Blossoms, a 1919 silent movie that aired on Turner Classic Movies recently. There is no way to adequately express how awesome TCM is for showing these old movies. In Broken Blossoms Lillian Gish plays an abused girl who is befriended by a Chinese immigrant. (played by Richard Barthelmess) This movie [...]

I saw this Coke commercial at Bioephemera and it makes me laugh every time I watch it. I love the brain. If I hadn’t already tried Coke Zero and found that it tastes more like zero than Coke this would definitely make me want to try it.

Thanks to Blue Tea for the link to the Flickr pool Strange Vintage Fictions, a fascinating collection of Photoshopped sepia tone photographs. I like this one. I think it’s the old dresser that attracts me more than the reflection. And here’s an interesting one.

I listened to Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 4 on the radio (KWTU, Tulsa) last night. It is mesmerizingly beautiful – somewhere between moody and mystical. Here is just the beginning of it. (not the same performance I listened to last night)

This one will be familiar to a lot of people but it’s a good video. I wish it showed the pianist’s face more. He’s interesting to watch. And because one is not enough… . ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . By the way, while I was browsing the [...]

But why, oh why, couldn’t he at least have lived three more days to see the 40th anniversary of the moon landing? That’s just mean, Mr. Reaper. — here And I personally prefer not to verb nouns when it can be avoided. — there (in the comments) But wouldn’t it be cool if we’re wrong? [...]

Last week I did sunrises so this week it’s sunsets. Just two from the archives. To see more beautiful skies from around the world please visit SkyWatch Friday.

I have finished the “secret project” quilt top, put all the layers together and yesterday I started the actual quilting. Yay! I think this is going to be the best looking quilt I’ve done so far. Since it’s a gift I don’t want to post a picture of the whole thing yet even though there’s [...]

I really hate to have to say this – hate that it’s come to this – but I am totally done with Brett Favre. Why couldn’t he have just retired gracefully? Everyone has to sooner or later. Of course, if he can still play and still wants to play there’s no reason why he should [...]

I remembered finding a blog about dreams several years ago so I googled dream blog and here’s what came up. Most of these are not about dreams at all but I’m posting them anyway because that’s what I do. The Dream Blog – This one is a group blog about dreams. It’s similar to the [...]

Thanks to Fillyjonk for finding this one. Dreams and dreaming is a fascinating topic to me but to most other people, apparently, not so much, judging from the non-reactions I get when I try to start a discussion about it. I think there are probably two reasons for this: One is that most people don’t [...]

Brit Gal Sarah has been treating us to some British TV commercials. There’s this Guiness commercial but the ones that really made me laugh out loud were the two marmite commercials, especially the second one. You would never see anything like that on American TV.

For a while after I signed up with Twitter I managed to remember it about once a week but now that I’m following a couple of people who “tweet” regularly I’ve been checking it once or twice a day and posting something, not everyday but more often than I did at first. I would like [...]

I have been neglecting my sacred duty as a blogger to bore you with pictures of my cats so here’s one of Three sleeping in the recliner. view large …and in the same spot later in the day. (When he’s not sleeping he’s usually moving too fast to photograph.) view large Dax is still the [...]