just smile and nod

I’ve been studying Spanish online now for probably 6 or 7 years and if you compare my progress to how much Spanish a newborn in let’s say Madrid would have picked up in those same 6 or 7 years, I’m not doing a very good job. Still, when I hear people talking among themselves, I can sometimes get the gist of it, not so much knowing the language as being comfortable with just sort of barely vaguely understanding what the topic is, which might be the more useful skill. It’s pretty much how I get by in my native language.

If you're very lucky

You may at some point find that you have become a retired person, meaning that when you wake up in the morning you are not expected to show up anywhere at any particular time to do any particular thing. And, during your retirement you may occasionally take a trip to visit with friends and family and simply be in a different place. Okay. But visiting with friends and family and enjoying their company and eating delicious food can wear a person out. In consequence, you may find that you need to take a break from being on vacation from retirement.

(or Cetancodonta)

Just to be clear: The Pygmy Sperm Whale is a distinct and separate species from the Dwarf Sperm Whale. That’s not to say they are not closely related; they are, being the only two members of the genus Kogia in the charmingly named suborder Whippomorpha. Starting with naturalist James Hector, who was kicked by a horse at Kicking Horse Pass, science actually lumped them together as a single species for 120 years, as if to say, “All members of the genus Kogia, the toothed sperm whales, look alike to us.” One can only imagine how hurtful this must have been.

The Crux of the Matter

Fluffy Landing is the name of a place in Florida. It could just as easily be the name of a very fit woman of a certain age who runs a stable. But let’s forget Florida for a minute. Ohio contains two places with the absolute most dreamiest place names ever: Ashtabula and Elyria. And get this. A cast s-shaped one-piece bicycle bottom bracket and crank assembly is called an “Ashtabula crank,” while Arthur Lovett Garford, who was born in Elyria in the year 1858, grew up to invent the padded bicycle seat, a crucial development in the history of cycling.

Contingent Logicalism

I believe that each of us has the right and possibly the duty to found our own school of philosophy and give it a cool name and then argue in its defense until our inevitable demise. We should seek acolytes in the full knowledge that they will fall out with us over some arcane point and repudiate our teachings when founding their own school. Everything we accomplish in our lives will then be consigned to the ash heap of history, where old ideas can be scrounged up for free and hot-glued together in the form of new and startling insights.

A terrible thing to waste

We don’t need to add states. We need to subtract or rather consolidate them. Like, fold up Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin into one. If Rustbeltiana was a single state, it would be about 248,000 square miles in area, comparable to Texas (around 268,000). And it would have a lot more people than the Lone Star state, maybe 49 vs. 39 million. (It would also have 7 Major League Baseball teams.) Then, for neatness, we should simply give Michigan to Canada. In general, I have found Michiganders to be very polite and cautious people who would fit right in.

Trying times

The way I see it, a human life can be divided into four stages. Stage one is where you try to get your bearings and figure out what the hell is going on here. Failing that, you move on to stage two as you try to prove to an uncaring world how very very special you are. During stage three you try to make yourself useful. Stage four you try to make yourself comfortable. An extended attachment to stage one has produced some of the most wonderful things our species has ever done. Too long in stage two makes monsters.