Recent Comments

1. about 13 hours ago on WuMo

   Two inches here.

2. about 13 hours ago on Baby Blues

   Kenny is right, which generally puts him ahead of some AI’s. Crocodiles are reptiles of the Order Crocodilia , while lizards are reptiles in the Order Squamata. Forget cockroaches, Crocodilia are the real survivalists having survived multiple extinction events including the Anthropocene.

3. 4 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   They renamed Mt. McKinley back to Denali, the incredibly unique name that means “tall one”. So Trump renamed it back. When the Gulf of Mexico was named, Mexico spanned all the way to Louisiana. Since 1845, the American shoreline is longer than the Mexican one, which I assume is Trump’s justification. Whoever wants to can call it whatever they want. We say Germany, instead of Deutschland, the Netherlands instead of Nederland, Sweden instead of Sverige, Italy instead of Italia, France instead of La France, Hungary instead of Magyarország, and that one I totally get even though Hungary was originally considered an epithet. Let’s see, Japan is really Nihon. In its four official languages, Switzerland is known as “die Schweiz” (German), “Suisse” (French), “Svizzera” (Italian), and “Svizra” (Romansh), while its official name is “Swiss Confederation”. In South Korea, the country is referred to as “Hanguk” meaning “country of the Han”. In Arabic, Egyptians commonly refer to their country as “Misr” (مصر), which is the local pronunciation of the Classical Quranic Arabic name for Egypt, “Miṣr”. Greeks refer to their country as “Hellas”. So, all in all, what’s the big deal? This doesn’t even get into international bodies of water.Here’s a more detailed list of names for the Black Sea in different languages: Turkish: KaradenizRussian: Чёрное море (Čërnoje more)Georgian: შავი ზღვა (shavi zgva)Greek: Μαύρη Θάλασσα (Mauiri Thalassa)Bulgarian: Черно море (Cherno more)Romanian: Marea NeagrăUkrainian: Чорне море (Chorne more)Abkhaz: Амшын Еиқәа (Amshyn Eikwa)Crimean Tatar: Qara deñizAncient Greek: Πόντος Ἄξεινος (Póntos Áxeinos), meaning “Inhospitable Sea”Latin: Pontus Euxinus (hospitable sea), a euphemism for the earlier name Pontus AxeinusOld Iranian: *axšaina- (dark-colored)

4. 4 days ago on Luann

   There’s a terrific John Hughes movie “She’s Having a Baby” which treats this subject very accurately and hilariously. Having lived it, I can attest to the sentiment above. Our little plan, finally conceived only after we stopped trying, turns 40 this year. Ooof.BTW #1: Hughes had two films overlap – “…Baby” and “Trains, Planes and Automobiles” which features an epic journey home in time for Thanksgiving by Steve Martin with John Candy tagging along. The first misstep of the adventure is Martin losing a race for a cab to Kevin Bacon, dressed as his character from “…Baby”.BTW #2: Many experts now believe that the method shown above of timing the cycle may actually hurt the process, that by the time you get the signal, it may already be too late. Instead, try during the time least convenient to you and let the perversity of nature go to work. We tried to time it so that the baby would come in early summer at the latest, so the wife could have the summer off with the baby and our 6 year old daughter. Instead, after we quit trying, she gets pregnant in January so she has to spend the three last months working and carting around a giant belly. Stupid perverse nature.

5. 12 days ago on Close to Home

   No tariffs on coffee. The tariffs are being used for two reasons – to support essential US industries like aluminum and steel production, or in retaliation for other countries placing tariffs on US goods.

6. 17 days ago on JumpStart

   No Home Depot in Philadelphia?

7. 24 days ago on Arlo and Janis

   Grandkids are a lot more fun than kids. And they help out. Ours come over every two weeks to make the beds, which is a big deal. My son used to shovel his grandmother’s driveway and walk and both my kids helped out with shopping and such.

8. 26 days ago on JumpStart

   You canceled Amazon and WaPo – well aren’t you the plucky one. My best friend’s dad lost his legs at Tarawa, but your sacrifice leaves me breathless. I love Amazon. I spent $50 on gas and endless trips to the store to get an item which no one had. Then I spent 5 minutes on Amazon and had a wealth of options to choose from. I was able to get the item from a small manufacturer in Pennsylvania. I call it the infinite shelves of Amazon. Thousands of small manufacturers no longer have to send sales rep’s out to beg for a few inches of shelf space, particularly difficult in these days when places like Target have decided to cut back on inventory and sell much more expensive items.

9. about 1 month ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Before everyone starts virtue signaling HOW they would have behaved had they been Jefferson, I am reminded of the wise words of a historian (might have been Hannah Arendt) who said (I’m paraphrasing): “Everyone likes to think that if they lived in NAZI Germany, they would have been in the resistance, they would have sheltered Jews. If they had been Jefferson, they would have freed their slaves. Statistics, unfortunately, argue elsewise.”In fifty years time your descendants will probably be telling each other: “If I had lived then, I would have resisted cancel culture” just as members of my generation said: “I would have resisted McCarthyism.” Statistics, unfortunately, argue elsewise.

10. about 1 month ago on JumpStart

    Steve Barwick on Quora:

    I’m not sure about gold-coated candies. But in a number of countries, silver-coated candies are consumed orally, literally by the tons every single year.

    For example, in India, several times a year during certain festivals, as well as at weddings and at the traditional outdoor food bazaars, the people eat traditional Indian sweets.

    And these sweets are wrapped in a pure silver foil called Varak (or Varakh) that’s been beaten thin so it can be used to wrap the food – this, apparently, to help stop food poisoning pathogens from growing on the sweets which are often sold in outdoor food bazaars.

    These sweets are generally ingested silver foil and all by the Indian people. This has been going on for thousands of years in India. Just about everybody there does it. (See documentation here.)

    And there’s apparently never been any cases whatsoever of “silver poisoning” or harm from “heavy metal toxicity” from this traditional cultural activity.

    Indeed, the government of India has approved silver foil as a food-grade ingredient, as long as it’s 99.9% purity or better.

    In other words, the Indian government doesn’t limit the use of edible silver, but they do regulate the purity of the silver that can be used in food applications and eaten, allowing their citizens to eat only the purest silver possible!

    (See “Justifying the Need to Prescribe Limits for Toxic Metal Contaminants in Food-Grade Silver Foils, journal of Food Additives and Contaminants, 2005 Dec;22(12):1219-23.)

    As stated in the journal Materials Research Innovations, Vol. 11, No. 1, (2007) pages 3-18:

    “A recent paper by Das et al. provides the remarkable datum that some 275,000 kg [i.e., 605,000 pounds — ED] of edible metallic silver foil are consumed every year (in food) in India.

    No known adverse health effects have ever been recorded…