In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. Now, heaven knows, anything goes.
Good authors too, who once knew better words, now only use four letter words writing prose. Anything goes.

There. Don't say I never sang you a song!

Take the "A" Train has got to be the best song ever period. If aliens came to earth asking what music is, you should play Take the "A" Train for them.

And that concludes the musical portion of tonights ramble.

Whim of the moment: I should learn to ride a unicycle! Seems like a good idea at this time!

Here is a sentence that can be used to help you remember Pi to 14 digits. "How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics." The number of letters in each word is the next digit of Pi: 3.14159265358979

A poem of lost positives:

Gloss

I know a little man both ept and ert.
An intro-? extro-? No, he's just a vert.
Sheveled and couth and kempt, pecunious, ane,
His image trudes upon the ceptive brain.

When life turns sipid and the mind is traught,
The spirit soars as I would sist it ought.
Chalantly then, like any gainly goof,
My digent self is sertive, choate, loof.

The Oxford Book of American Light Verse
David McCord (1897-)

I am amazed by some of the humblest artifacts of our culture, that astound me for their complexity and the way they are produced en masse, as if effortlessly. Cigarette lighters. Ball point pens. Both are really pretty complex little devices, and yet we churn them out by the gazillion. And cigarette lighters also contain highly flammable, explosive material -- safely. When was the last time you heard of one exploding? I never have -- I think they don't explode! All this and they are so cheap too. You can get a lighter for like a buck right? (I don't smoke, it's been years since I bought one) And you can get multiple ball point pens for a buck! It really is amazing.

Assuming I can remember them for the next 40+ (I hope!) years, these are going to be my dying words:
"Ok, now I'm going to lay perfectly still for as long as I can!" "Watch me now! Are you watching?"

We should have compulsory military service in the United States. Being well past the draft age, I know this is easy for me to say. But I say it because I think if we were all exposed to the threat of dying while fighting for our professed ideals, we would be forced to a better and more clear understanding of what those ideals are, which are really worth fighting and perhaps dying for, and more importantly which are not. It may take several generations of compulsory military service to bring all of us as a people to this better understanding, but after we have it we will have a clearer idea of what we are doing in the world. I speculate that with our clearer understanding, we may still fight wars like World War II and going after Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, but we more importantly may choose not to get involved in ill-defined and poorly thought out actions like Vietnam, Somalia, and Iraq (in 2003). We need a clearer understanding of what is important to us, as a people and a nation, in order to stop acting like a confused giant in the world.

There is the Army College plan. This gets a lot more people into the military than would otherwise join up, hopefully giving them the perspective I speak of. But it's far from everyone.

On a perhaps odd patriotic note, I've always liked the way the words "United States" look.

Look at them: United States

I mean, leaving aside for the moment everything they stand for, I just think they look good! There is a kind of symmetry, perhaps because both words are six letters, I dunno.

I think this is my favorite!

Ok, just one more!

A picture worth exactly 23 questions

There are a lot of people in the world. The breakdown is fascinating. Did you know the United States is a distant third in world population behind India? Did you know Indonesia is a close fourth??

Ok, I'm done.