Maybe you too

Vladimir Putin was born in Leningrad and worked his way up through the KGB, training at the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute and rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Steve Bannon came from Norfolk, Virginia, went to Virginia Tech, Georgetown, and Harvard, got divorced three times. He’s a convicted conman. Elon Musk went to something called the Waterkloof House Preparatory School, which I have to grudgingly admit is pretty cool. I mean, Waterkloof. He grew up rich and currently is the world’s wealthiest human. So. What do I have in common with these three guys? Contempt for Donald Trump.

This may not apply to you.

If, however, you have a friend who needs to write on a weekly basis 100 words that are maybe a little bit diverting or silly or peculiar and they come to you asking for your input about where to get new ideas for their little essays you could do worse than to advise them to make it a regular habit to read about advances in science which not only will make them a better informed citizen of the world but will expose them to sentences such as “Moroccan fly maggot uses fake face on its butt to infiltrate termite colony.”

Ripped from the headlines!

I know there are a lot of things demanding your attention. Maybe you missed this science headline: “66 million-year-old fish vomit discovered in Denmark.” (In nearby Sweden they call that Surströmming.) So many questions. Did someone come rushing into the lab hollering “Guys! This fish vomit is 66 million years old!” and did someone else react by saying “Holy crap! That’s the oldest fish vomit ever! Yay!” Who did they call first? Is there currently somebody in some other lab looking sadly at their sample of what is now the world’s second-oldest fish vomit? And finally, who knew fish puked?

Pop Will Eat Itself

You might have hoped that Walk Hard had effectively killed the entire celebrity musician genre, but this year something called A Complete Unknown is up for multiple Oscars. Timothée Chalamet plays Bob Dylan and no less an authority than the BBC says he “creates a thoroughly convincing avatar of Dylan." I say that only time will tell if his performance has the staying power of Tyrone Power’s star turn in The Eddy Duchin Story, but if this whole acting thing doesn’t work out for the young man he can always join the circuit that features Elvis imitators and Beatles tributes.