I have fond memories of reading Moby Dick in high school. Our wonderful English teacher Miss Hillshire walked us through it, and introduced us to the concept of “megalomania.” One of the scenes that stuck most in my memory (maybe because it was right at the beginning?) was when Queequeg, a wild Polynesian harpooner covered […]
As part of our Re-Reading series: A survey for the elders – which books have you ‘reread’ the most? I’m not asking for favorite books or most compelling, but which books have continued to read again? UC#3 UC#3: Col. Red Reeder / West Point Plebe UC#3: The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran One of my all-time […]
UC#3 sparked our interest recently with this suggestion: A survey for the elders – which books have you ‘reread’ the most? I’m not asking for favorite books or most compelling, but which books have continued to read again? UC#3 KM and UC#2 Both KM and UC#2 are huge Harry Potter fans. UC#2 uses the first […]
[big thanks to UC#3 and all the Elders for today’s BLOTT. This series will span several days.] Elder KM Just the idea that there is a summary of The Subtle Art of Not Giving A #!@% for people who are too busy to read the unabridged version, says something about America. I’m not sure what […]
The Two Dollar Bill DALLAS, Texas — Thomas Jefferson is usually known as a founding father, author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States. He rarely gets any press for being on the two-dollar bill. But last week, his face got a lot of it after Heritage Auctions sold […]
Our readers may be familiar with the Drake Equation. Basically, you plug numbers into an equation to determine the probability of having friends and neighbors in the Milky Way. where N = the number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on the current past light […]
A concept brought up in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future is the 2000 Watt Society. With its emphasis on scientific accuracy and non-fiction descriptions of history and social science, the novel is classified as hard science fiction. – Wikipedia The 2000-watt society is a real thing. Much of the novel is […]
We’re preparing our 2024 Lenten menu, and the question of corned beef came up. [Michael] O’Leary will enjoy his corned beef on Friday with a clear conscience — thanks to a special dispensation from another Irish-American, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee. Dolan is among dozens of bishops — from Green Bay, Wis., to Arlington, Va., […]
Today’s addition of The Guardian interviews Heather Cox Richardson. HCR is held in the highest regard by WLBOTT, and has been given the honorary title WYNHO. [ed. note: nobody here remembers what WYNHO stands for, but we all agree it is a very good thing. UC#1 is researching.][ed. note: Ace researcher and archivist UC#1 replied […]
Well, I think I mentioned earlier that, after spending most of my retirement fund on a new natural gas furnace / heat pump we noticed our 2013 Honda CRV exhibiting a death rattle when starting cold. Actually, we noticed the sound a few years ago and the local Honda dealer replaced a belt or something […]