I was hoping MathTourist blogger was a young boy

Disappointed, yet again

Landsailing

Obsolete furniture

A chair for a deformed woman with very short legs and a very long torso? No. But that is what I would think at first glance, since I come from a time when this sort of shape is always the shape of a chair, and chairs are for sitting in.

Actually it is a "prie-dieu," furniture for the posture of kneeling, with a ledge to put your folded hands upon in prayer.

Death by Elephant

" The intelligence, domestication, and versatility of elephants gave them considerable advantages over other wild animals such as lions and bears used as executioners by the Romans. Elephants are more tractable than horses: while a horse can be trained to charge into battle, it will not willingly trample an enemy soldier, and will instead step over him. Elephants will trample their enemies, hence the popularity of war elephants with generals such as Hannibal. Elephants can be trained to execute prisoners in a variety of ways, and can be taught to prolong the agony of the victim by inflicting a slow death by torture or quickly killing the condemned by stepping on the head."

Elephant in this drawing doesn't look too happy about its job.

Also, note:

"Being crushed by captive elephants is also a major occupational hazard for elephant keepers in zoos and circuses;^[29] since the 1990s, this has led some such facilities to replace free contact between elephants and keepers with "protected contact" where keepers remain outside the elephant enclosure.^[30]"

A net to constrain the brain

Reticle, derived from the Latin for "net". Refers to what is commonly know as "crosshairs." Werner Herzog pushed his table up against the wall and, facing its blank whiteness, drew a reticle to stare at while he worked on the script for Fitzcarraldo.

Is it frivolous of me to wonder if he drew a German #1, German #4, or an Illuminated German #4 reticle?

Kodachrome

Despite its tech know-how, Kodak wasn't quite nimble enough to keep up. Its executives "suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it," Harvard Business School's Rosabeth Moss Kanter told The Economist.

Nokia ikonografia

"actually, ballmer looks evil, elop looks like a dunce, and vega looks like he's from the wrong century"

This is your pastor and how he speaks of himself

Dr. Warren Lathem is the President of the Wesleyan Seminary of Venezuela which he co-founded in 2002. Lathem is the former District Superintendent of the Atlanta-Marietta District of the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church. He has pastored churches since 1972.

Never underestimate the desire for self-revelation. Even your pastor loves to blog about his bariatric surgery, his vitamin B-12 injections, his perfect grandchild. Counts his blessings during times of pain, chortles abashedly that taking two Ambiens makes him feel like a druggie. You're sure it has to be a caricature, but this is how people actually present themselves-- especially when they're old.

My household

"When you studied biology did you grow things on agar? Oh, well it's a kind of seaweed, it's a perfect medium to grow things on, and I have this book here called Fertility from the Deep--the guy who did his PhD thesis is dead now or something but this book is based on his research. And it really is a perfect medium to grow things. There's this woman she has made a complete kit that can sustain itself. It has fish in it and you have to put the fishfood in which is a pain in the ass, but after that the fish eat the fishfood and then they make nutrients for the plants and it's a complete closed system, you don't have to check the water or add chemicals to it or phd powder like you did when I was a kid. Hyponics. We all thought back then that we'd get rich growing food that way, it was a big fad back in my day. But then the government which takes the land away from small farmers made it so you can't do anything unless you're big Big BIG and of course these little farmers couldn't survive. Now we have all these foods with shelf life and of course those foods with shelf life don't have the proper nutrients in them and when they test our soil nowadays there's no chromium in it or those other nutrients that human beings need to survive and it's just a terrible terrible thing what's going on, the same stuff that I foresaw when I was a little boy. This guy grows the stuff using ocean water which is full of nutrients but did you know if we try to manufacture ocean water in a lab then the fish die in it? They can't survive in it. The government doesn't want us to be growing these foods full of nutrition. What do you think of this name, Taboo Talk Radio. Does that sound good? Or Banned Talk Radio. Forbidden Talk Radio. The Banned Radio Show for my new radio show."


"I can't believe that kid. You know we were the only ones who got up there to talk for him, I was the only one who got up there to be cross-examined even though I had chest pain from my darn arteries clogging up and that lady lawyer tried to make me look like a fool. She kept on asking me stuff like, 'What is your website?' and I should've been my own lawyer and said 'Objection: Irrelevant' instead of Tim. Poor Tim, he didn't know. We were the only ones standing up for him telling Tim, Oh this is a good kid he's innocent, he's worked with us for years and years, there's no way he would do anything like that. But no more help from us. You never can trust anybody. Money money money, money money money! You know they're not with us because they like us so much. I hope that kid goes to jail that fucking child molestor. He eats all my chocolates in the office and touches all my food and I'm scared I'm gonna catch AIDS from him. Those chocolates cost a fortune! They're my chocolates, he's got a pancreas he should eat his own fucking chocolates. He's a piece of shit, a fucking Sicilian. They're useless. They were excreted from the behind of a sick camel."

It work for us he said his mom will die, so he move back home to spend time with her. He said he can still do a lot of work for you, all the work you ask, but only by the phone and by email and remote login to the computer or whatever.

"I know why his mom is dying. I read all the books and now I understand. I read everything and now I understand. Did we buy that juicer from Costco?"

NO! I TOLD you we don't have the juicer yet. {blah blah blah, an eternity of sharp knife-voice description in the voice that chops you up miserable and stuck in this miserable chopping block of a life of Craig's 2-for-1 juicer deal blah blah blah in minutest detail} I TOLD you. Juicer, you can get juice from the Vitamix!

"No, it's a different kind of juice! I need the juicer. I need the pulp from the Vitamix but I need the juice from a juicer too. It is powerful stuff. I know why his mom is dying, because I did the research and they aren't using the juices right."

Please avoid sighing without thinking

The language of sighing for Others:

"What I love about Japan are the pockets of simplicity, grace, and ease of life, the moments suspended in time," writes FosiBear. "Here an elderly temple matron is quietly and gently raking scarlet maple leaves from the moss-covered grounds: an ode to a simpler life surrounded by exquisite natural beauty."

More kitsch of sighing:
"Just outside Recoleta Cemetery, the tango music played," writes agirlintheworld in the Dream Trip entry "Let's Dance." "I watched in guilty rapture as the couple swayed around the square. Tango, when done correctly, is so intimate. It makes the audience feel like a voyeur, a witness to something that they shouldn't be seeing, drawn in by the beauty of it all. This is what made me decide to move to Buenos Aires someday. Sometimes, life just needs to be danced away."

Not everybody sighs... sometimes a simple reminiscence instead:

"I remember being enchanted with the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris," funksoulbrotha writes. "The Paris of my imagination lived there, where children ran around, an old musician played an accordion, and oversize hedgerows made me feel like Alice in Wonderland."

Sigh-police also approve:
"While I was concentrating on how to photograph this giant biomass, a local father and son duo of musicians came over to serenade me," writes normans in the Dream Trip entry "The Musicians". "Their performance was distracting, so I gave them a few pesos and asked in my poor Spanish that they stop playing. They misunderstood and played even louder until I tried with more vigor and pesos to persuade them to stop. Receiving money to cease playing was beyond their comprehension; the boy's face melted into a look of frustration and bewilderment. My photo of his expression is more memorable to me than all the photos I finally took of the Tule Tree."

Cow needs more color

Pop color needs more color