The fine line between extinct and imaginary

By now we all know there was never any such thing as a Brontosaurus. It turns out what they had back then (about 150 million years ago) was the Apatosaurus. We were calling it the wrong thing all along. Just think. If you'd have time traveled back there and seen one of these honking great quadrupeds ambling along chewing contemplatively and smelling like a thousand compost piles, and you had hollered, "Yo! Brontosaurus!" it would have just kept right on walking. And you'd have said to yourself, "How rude." But no. You were just calling him out of his name.

in re: bananas

If you should inadvertently break the peel on two bananas at once, you pretty much have to eat them both. Avoid this by buying single bananas, available because people often seem to want exactly one banana fewer. Selecting several single bananas instead of a bunch also lets you create a ripeness spectrum, so every day when you go for a banana, one will be just about perfect. Because if you let bananas get overripe, the only thing you can do is say to yourself, “I'll save these for banana bread” for about three days, and then throw them away.

Tragic

I'm sitting in an airport. I've been awake since four. Remember being 17? Me neither. But I recall well-meaning adults saying, "It's not the end of the world." But, yeah it was. Normally, when we say the world is falling apart we mean our social or cultural infrastructure has revealed itself to be transitory and mutable. That's bad enough. But it's when the surface of the actual crust of the world gives way that we feel really betrayed. We take it personally. Well, personally is pretty much the only way you can take anything.

Fat Monday

Science! A new study from Cardiff University finds a linkage between Happy Hour-type cheap drink promotions and pub violence. Researchers at Mississippi State University believe that it may be possible to substitute natural materials such as manure for artificial fertilizers. And a report out of Madison, Wisconsin concludes that huge lagoons full of pig feces tend to release noxious gases into the atmosphere. Whatever. They still deserve their right to collective bargaining the same as the rest of us. Except down here, in the right-to-work south. Hey. What's the difference between Scott Walker and Muammar Gaddafi? Gaddafi has loyalists.