More images from Google Street View. These are much better than the ones I linked yesterday. (article here)

If you are waiting on something that happens “once in a blue moon” look for it to happen today. And it will be the last time until 2015. (Or maybe not. It’s just a saying you know) The moon is not actually blue. Blue moon just means the second full moon in the same month. [...]

The Art of Vogue Covers – Mostly rather ridiculous looking fashion art. Binary System – fascinating Victorian astronomy and nudity – Not what you would expect from the “prudish” Victorian era. Clutter – My problem isn’t only that I have clutter; it’s that I have the wrong kind of clutter. Too many tools and cat [...]

I am frequently frustrated and disappointed by Walmart’s inadequate selection of sewing notions. It’s not just that they have so few – it’s about what I would expect for a small department in a big store – but since they do only have space for a limited number of items, it seems to me that [...]

Yep. This is pretty close. XKCD Reading the reviews is more helpful though. Usually on any product with ten or more reviews at least one of the bad reviews will be by someone who obviously misunderstood the purpose of the product or didn’t read the description. A few weeks ago I bought a pot/pitcher sized [...]

I am getting really f’ing tired of food paranoia. Absolutely everything, except a few roots, leaves and seeds from the forest primeval, is bad for you. The preachiness and the food police type attitudes are bad enough but what I really hate is how this stuff gets into my head. I resolve to ignore it [...]

Imagine that you are 11 years old and seeing this as it is happening. Imagine what visions of the future you might have. Of colonies on the moon and spaceships visiting more distant worlds. Neil Armstrong could have been the greatest celebrity ever, bigger than the biggest superstars. But he chose to simply fade back [...]

When I was a small child in the 60′s grown-up women’s dress length was below the knee and little girls’ dress length was just above the knee. At least that’s the way it was in my mother’s world. I thought the longer skirts were beautiful and wanted dresses like that for myself. Usually my mother [...]

These days you don’t hear many people say, “The devil made me do it.” More likely they’ll blame their amygdala. — here The first true blue rose can only happen once, but there will always be a next great smart phone, or laptop, or tablet, or whatever. — there Today, more than ever before, we [...]

What exactly is a hot mess? How does it differ from a cold mess or a plain old room temperature mess? If I cooked something that turned out awful I could see how that might be termed “a hot mess” but that’s not how this phrase is normally used. What makes a pro tip a [...]

I want this silly thing. It’s so bright and… uh… sunny. And I am such a child sometimes. Seriously, What the hell? My apologies to any time travelers out there who might be under the mistaken impression that “hell” is still a really bad or “inappropriate” word but I really can’t wrap my brain around [...]

This is my grandmother. I don’t know what year (or even what decade) it was taken. Like many of the old photos I have, it was taken from too far away and the detail is poor. My grandmother wore slacks only once that I know of. She just tried them on to show everyone and [...]

I think there must be a law – like a Murphy’s Law type thing – that says if you say on the Internet that you will not do something, you will do it within a very short time. Not quite two weeks ago I said that the orange batik dress would be the last summer [...]

Saturday I knew it was going to rain. The sky was filled with dark clouds and when I checked the weather the radar showed lots of yellow, orange and red jagged splotches moving from northwest to southeast. They were coming right at us! I was so excited. I thought they were maybe an hour or [...]

Imagine my surprise when I realized men don’t walk around in three-piece suits any longer, but may show up to lunch in white undershirts. I’ve never quite recovered from the shock. — here (That’s from back in January but I just now discovered it thanks to Idle Fancy) Even surrealists have to pay the bills [...]

In the comments Soubriequet wrote: My mother who made her own wedding dress out of illicitly obtained parachute-silk used to say ‘labels are for people who don’t know how to judge worth for themselves.” “‘Labels are for people who don’t know how to judge worth for themselves.” I am going to use that if I [...]

I keep saying this. The silly germaphobes with their anti-bacterial everything are going to kill us all. They’re breeding superbugs that will be resistant to all our efforts to wipe them out (the superbugs that is, not the germaphobes) and at the same time they are breeding children that have less resistance due to being [...]

Health benefits of beards – Let ‘em grow guys Sheaff Ephemera – Beautiful old ads and stuff The Typeface of Truth – Your brain on fonts Red Shirt Analytics Cube art – Rubik’s cube of different colors Move poster colors, 1914 to 2012 – Movie posters have been getting bluer Bound Buttonholes Tutorial – hmmmm… [...]

“What are you looking at, Human? This is my truck.”

I know this may piss off the pathologically PC (I can only hope) so I apologize to those who come here for the peace and quiet but I must say this. A sentence I would very much like to never have to hear or read again is, “You wouldn’t ask a man that question.” News [...]

A year ago I only knew of one or two sewing blogs but just in the last couple of months I’ve been finding a few more almost every week. This morning, via my comments, I find Shelley, of Cuckoo Chanel. I absolutely love her header design. You know I have a thing for paisley and [...]

The season finale of the A&E series Longmire aired this week. cable/satellite seasons are so short and it’s such a long time between seasons. Maybe half a dozen episodes, ending with a spectacular cliff-hanger and then you have to wait ten months to find out what happens, by which time you likely won’t even care [...]

A little over a week ago I started seeing advertisements, on whatever cable/satellite channel we were watching, for standup comedian W. Kamau Bell. Well, we had never heard of Bell before but the bits they were playing in the commercial looked funny so we set the machine to record his show. We watched it yesterday. [...]

And I can promise you that NASA has done more for each of you, directly, than a banker ever has or will. — here The cost of this relentless drive to perform at unrealistically high levels is a generation of kids who resemble nothing so much as trauma victims — there Why should I vote [...]

Here’s an excellent article about the history of the modern Olympic games. Very interesting. The Games have always been imperfect but the idea (and the ideal) has always been noble. That might be the best we humans can do – to have noble ideas and to strive for them. So let’s not be cynical about [...]