In "Braaaaaaaaaains"

Grass, crayons, paste, black ants, WD-40, BenGay, empty gelatin caps, film emulsion, cardboard, ink out of Mead eraseables, the list of regrets could go on...

In "A User's Guide to Time Travel"

Looking at the Tardis Type 40 technical specifications, I notice that the Tardis' databuss clock is operating at a cool 750MHz. Time travel galore, but no running Half Life 2 on it, I'm afraid.

In "Curious George: Don't you hate it when"

Actually, the Grammar peevists are a great sort of language-awareness idiot test. They are the obviously college educated, "we are now middle class 'cause we speak good and gotta protect that status" discursive nostalgics who have no sense of the history, lingustic grammaticality, or social functions of language. They are the gap-shoppers of language. They need to go dig their elitest noses out of their collective arses and get a few theories of lingustics and literacy, preferrably ones that don't begin and end in an autistic understanding of their own relationship with the language that defines them. As if "its" and "it's" really matters outside of signaling class/education status. n00bs. /puts on blast googles

Educated people who act like their own acquisition of standard edited English grammar and rhetoric somehow make their own words seem more relevant, or worthy, than people who haven't yet acquired the discourse features of privilege and power. That and cheap duct tape.

In "How many of these have you read?"

The American literary canon of today and the American literary canon of tomorrow. I score low on both accounts and feel doomed to educated middle-class cultural inferiority. Then again, I needed to read 650+ pages of Pierre Bordieu to be able to say that...maybe I don't feel that inferior.

In "To dog or not to dog, that is the question"

Aye Crackpot - ya've got a good heart and the monkeys have good advice. I'd like to throw in there that if the dog really is homeless and depending on your own home situation (i.e. kids, visitors, other dogs etc.) you can have a really nice companion even with a dog that was abused and has aggression issues. Either way, good dog karma for you.

In "Curious, George: Genius wanted"

"Chomsky?? Try Stephen Krashen." Both have soundly taken their knocks in language-related academic circles -- but of course are still reified as giants in their fields because everyone needs "authorities" to fall back to for a proper warrant. But seriously, what is the proper sense of the word of "genius"? Obviously not the historical mythologized "genius," like Newton or Darwin or Einstein? But what about the genius who is credited for discoveries to the exclusion of other people who contributed to them, or actually made them, like Gallo's "discovery" of the HIV virus, or do we mean Barbara McClintock, who was a pioneering giant in the foundling field of genetics and utterly marginalized by her male associates for decades before she was finally acknowledged with a Nobel Prize. Perhaps we mean people who are the favored elites of the media cult of personality - a George Lucas, or Rush Limbaugh, or Howard Dean. Ooooh oooh oooh -- what about that woman who has the highest IQ in the world and answers questions in the newspaper. Or those people who construct their own genius tests that no one else can even understand, and then pass them? I'm curious what exactly the criteria are here?

In "The forest of rhetoric"

The best site for classical rhetoric (IMHO) -- but as a non-classical rhetorician I can't help thinking it does a mild disservice to an understanding of what rhetoric means today. We are sooooo much more sophisticated :)

In "Vatican offers exorcism courses."

1614, isn't that the last "official" year of the Spanish Inquisition, the Vatican's primary means of persecuting those who needed "exorcised"? My keen monkeysense smells poo.

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