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Feathersand wingsOh my! Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

I understand Will Smith smacked Chris Rock live onstage at the Oscars last night because Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife’s (Jada Pinket-Smith) hair.I guess without President Donald Trump to curse at and kick around it was inevitable that they turn on each other. Maybe we should just cancel the Academy Awards until we elect someone they all hate again.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

Good morning peeps,I know it’s spring for many of you around the country, but up here in the mountains, although it’s warm this weekend, spring is still but a dream off on sone misty horizon.I know I promised the story of my trip to the DMV but it will have to wait awhile. Truth is I’ve been dealing with vertigo and balance issues ever since my “mild” Covid incident at the beginning of January. While it’s likely “long-haul Covid” between it and the ongoing fatigue it is wearing me down. I have an appointment with an ENT specialist but it’s...

This is how I feel this fine Caturday:That’s not an aura, it’s a visual manifestation of a force field comprised of nerve endings that you don’t want to get within 6 feet of (it’s for your own safety). Here is an alternate, less disturbing, illustration. It’s a postmodern interpretation, somewhat amusing but the complete opposite of reality as everyone knows the pins should be the other way around. An ironic, postmodern cactus pin cushionIn other words, I don’t feel like being messed with today.But be sure to come back tomorrow when I will describe my recent trip to the DMV....

I can already tell this is how my day is going to go:So I’m leaving the commentary to you today. Don’t be left behind.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

I see that Madelaine Albright has passed, may she rest in peace. Hard to say what she was most famous for: being a holocaust survivor, a first wave feminist, first female U. S. Secretary of State or for the lame comment she made in support of Hillary’s bid for Presidential nominee: “There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.”The full quote was:“Hillary Clinton will always be there for you. And just remember - there's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other.”At the time she was hectoring young women for...

There has always been a strong belief amongst Nigerians in the old ways, including voodoo and black magic. There still is: The hunt for Nigerians who can change into cats.Belief in African traditional religions and its juju components are widespread in Nigeria, with many combining them with either Christianity or Islam, according to a 2010 report by the Pew Research Centre. Many Nigerians believe that magic charms can allow humans to morph into cats, protect bare skins from sharp blades and make money appear in a clay pot.Questioning supernatural capabilities is taboo in much of Nigerian culture.While this belief system...

With inflation running rampant and no power to do a thing about it I have decided to embrace it. Therefore, with the powers vested in me, I hereby declare the third day of the week to henceforth be known as Tiny Tuesday.We begin by bringing back the Mini-meal. This, as you may recall, was first popularized by our then FLOTUS, Lady M, known at the time as somewhat of a giant in the ranks of nutritionists . She single-handedly brought new meaning to ‘bite-sized’ food.Little did we appreciate at the time that this was just a drill for the real...

Of course it’s unlikely,but it could happen. That’s just how crazy the world is.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

Everything has its own class system, and where there is a class system there is going to be a struggle. Take puppet wranglers for instance, not to be confused with puppeteers, they sit at the very bottom of the puppeteering world. Puppet wrangling is an on-set position unique to Henson and Henson-adjacent companies like Sesame Workshop and the Muppets. It is a highly specific subspecialty that requires a varied set of skills, not the least of which is knowing how to build and repair puppets. There are only about 25 people in the world who work as full-time wranglers —...

Remember “Doug,” the huge potato a New Zealand couple found in their garden last year? I wrote about him at the time:Advantage: USA!…a charming little story out of New Zealand. It seems a couple found this huge potato growing in their garden. Since they didn’t plant it they’ve no idea how it got there. Colin explains that their gardening technique consists of “throw(ing) a bunch of cow manure and straw onto their garden and see what happens.”Come to think of it that’s pretty much how we got our potato, too.And we seem to be having the same trouble with our...

Hobbes was both right and wrong; it didn’t catch on for white boys, as they have been deemed to be chromosomally advantaged youth. But for boys of any stripe who choose to identify as girls, well, “chromosomally challenged” seems to work quite nicely.Swimmer Lia Thomas (nee ‘Will’) becomes NCAA's first transgender D-I champion in any sportIf we can’t deal with this sort of insanity how on earth do we expect to deal with real issues in this increasingly complex world? Answer: we can’t and we won’t.Time for a different tack.Title X legislation anyone? I say give them their own water...

The traditional St. Patrick’s Day greening of the Chicago river resumed this year, after being on cootie hiatus for the past 2 years.Aside from the past two, Chicago’s river has been died green (ironically, with orange dye) every year since 1962 when Major Daley the First made it a thing. I attended the parade and festivities several times in my yute; it was a fine city in those days. But speaking of orange, I found this little gem yesterday: via What IrksOr actually Team Green (The Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice). As the man said...

There is nothing as specious as a a pontificating politician. Take James-no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case-Comey for example; here he is preaching the benefits of “deterrence” to us. But the Jan. 6 investigation is mostly about something you might not think about much in your normal caseload: general deterrence. It is about sending a message—a shock wave of deterrence—so future Americans, whether misled by a lying demagogue or rightfully concerned about the loss of their rights, never again assault the institutions of government. That means that even those who “merely” trespassed by following the crowd inside must...

I finally found it - something that adequately illustrates life on planet Earth this past 18 months:I have nothing to add. Carry on then…I’ll be back tomorrow.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

Sick of the news? How about some sports? The NCAA just announced the March Madness brackets: it seems to me everyone’s still in it, no wonder it takes forever to declare a winner. He sits. He stays. He shoots. He scores!To bad we don’t have ESPN’s coverage of Barack’s bracket picking to look forward to anymore. That was always newsworthy back when being President was fun.But I’m pretty sure we discontinued the Presidential Brackets “tradition” once Trump was president.In other sports news: the major league baseball lockout is over! Yeah, I know: I didn’t know there was one either. But...

The Doomsday Clock was developed in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit founded by Manhattan Project scientists following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The group’s members included Albert Einstein and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic bomb - serious scientists – who wanted a metaphorical way to remind the public of the high stakes involved with nuclear weapons. All of which makes it difficult to take their current day counterparts seriously. The Doomsday Clock remains set at 100 seconds to midnight in 2022, unchanged since 2020. The current Bulletin of Atomic...

I don’t get it: Progressives bitched for four years (5, counting 2021) about President Trump “lying” about everything but they don’t seem to have a problem with their own flag bearer blatantly lying about a fundamentally and universally accepted rule of economics 101 - which is apparently no longer taught. Biden Complains That The American People Believe Increased Government Spending Causes InflationNot to overestimate the intelligence of the American people, but his accusation only applies to people over 50 or who otherwise managed to escape the current government education indoctrination system of public education and don’t believe Fake News.Still, there...

For example, I found something yesterday buried deep in my picture files that I don’t even remember saving. And now it turns out it might actually be useful, given the state of the world today: a nuclear bomb calculator.This circular slide rule describes the effects of a nuclear explosion on people…From 1962 onward, copies of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons had a pocket containing a Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer. Setting the indices on the front of the instrument for the yield of a nuclear bomb in megatons and the distance of its explosion in miles, scales on the front of...

Let’s play Carter-era Throwback Thursday again, that’s always fun. The clothes of course were smashing,but the politics even more so. Forty years from now I suspect they’ll be saying the same thing about the Biden era.Coordinated facemasks all the rageIf, that is, anyone talks about it at all.Just like it’s hard today to find people who openly admit to having voted for Carter (twice!), I’m betting there won’t be many Millennials who will admit to having voting for Biden.And for many of the same reasons. Biden is looking to break Jimmy’s records in taxes, inflation, interest rates and cost of...