In "NOM NOM NO NO"

Hey, Dan. I'm just guessin' here, but I'm thinking this as less about "hey, jerks, quit yoinkin' my artwork," and more about "you wanna use my pic on your homophobe homepage? try this one, suckaz!"

In "Hopefully, nobody we know..."

*points, sticks out tongue* naner naner naner!

In "Curious George: Lyme disease advice?"

Now I feel special.

Ticks will head for your crotch or armpits regardless of whether you were gettin' yer monkey on in the ferns. I got bit a few years ago. I found the tick while standing at the urinal -- at work, no less. I did end up getting Lyme disease, but it's not guaranteed that it came from that tick. I may have missed another one: at its smallest (nymph) stage a tick is smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

In "the idiot test."

It could be that you know that squares are also rectangles, or you could be colorblind. This test does unfairly imply that the colorblind are idiots. So, my apologies if that's your case.

See also the impossible quiz.

In "Thought Police no longer fiction"

At the risk of invoking the wrath of the copyright mafia, I wish to share with you a poem which gives me some comfort when I read news like this. "DO NOT BE ASHAMED" by Wendell Berry You will be walking some night in the comfortable dark of your yard and suddenly a great light will shine round about you, and behind you will be a wall you never saw before. It will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape, and that you are guilty: you misread the complex instructions, you are not a member, you lost your card or never had one. And you will know that they have been there all along, their eyes on your letters and books, their hands in your pockets, their ears wired to your bed. Though you have done nothing shameful, they will want you to be ashamed. They will want you to kneel and weep and say you should have been like them. And once you say you are ashamed, reading the page they hold out to you, then such light as you have made in your history will leave you. They will no longer need to pursue you. You will pursue them, begging forgiveness. They will not forgive you. There is no power against them. It is only candor that is aloof from them, only an inward clarity, unashamed, that they cannot reach. Be ready. When their light has picked you out and their questions are asked, say to them: "I am not ashamed." A sure horizon will come around you. The heron will begin his evening flight from the hilltop.

In "Quantum of Solace"

or bourne for that matter.

huh. it's sort of like the born series, but with different accents.

In "The Itch that wouldn't go away."

After walking in the Minnesota low lands yesterday, around a half dozen of the "10 thousand lakes," this makes me wonder if it's possible to entirely scratch off a mosquito welt in one's sleep.

In "How to build a rocket stove"

It must be difficult having "invented" a new stove. Everyone around you is probably going to be all "pft. fire. so? we've had that since -- what, a million years ago?"

I think Winarski's work does add something of value. Having built some hot little fires myself I'm going to guess that you used more than a handful of twigs to get there. The idea is to take your blue-core fire and make it hyper efficient, using a carefully designed chamber, and insulating with low mass, heat resistant materials. Perhaps most exciting is the how simple it is to make these materials from local clay and sawdust.

In "The Vatican goes Broadway!"

Is this just a one-off, or maybe it's the Pilate for a whole series!

In "It's some sort of natural disaster epidemic of late."

Correction. That pic is of LaFarge, but Viola was about the same.

I'm living in Minneapolis now, but I still have property and a trailer in SW Wisconsin -- I still call it home, and plan to come back there as soon as I can afford to build. I found out a tornado touched down half a mile from my place, knocked down some barns and sheds, no one hurt. But, three towns close to my home were under water this week, including Viola, which looked like this: I've been following it on the vernon county broadcaster website.

In "Curious Tax Man:"

*seconds waxboy*

In "Brother, can you spare me a dime nickel?"

Hey, this is really neat! I had no idea this art form even existed. I like the one with the comb-over towards the bottom left of the 4th link. I also like the monkey. [from the first link]Money may be the root of all evil... The quote is actually "... the love of money is the root of all evil." Coin and currency has less to do with it. This never used to bother me until I read Atlas Shrugged, parts of which consisted of long screeds arguing against this made up quote.

In "monkey want comix"

one more.

In "I'm off to see the whizz-bang .. "

"There is nothing to worry about -- the quantity of dark matter would be minute," said Sophie Tesauri, CERN's press officer. That's right, no need to worry about the minute amount of satanic, world-destroying, soul-destroying, radioactive-monster-creating, EVIL DARK MATTER released upon the world. OMFG RUN FOR YOU LIVES!!!

In "My Frog has no Lungs"

thank you, r88.

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