Book Discussion Prologue

At last night’s book discussion, I sat down between L, the moderator, and N, another attendee. Then the following exchange took place:

Me (just being a goofball): Wow, now I’m between a rock and a hard place.

pause

L: Hey!

N: Wait… which of us is which?

Me: I’m going to let you work that out between the two of you.

pause

Me: Wait, I’m between the two of you!

Fenestration

This morning, @joeyhagedorn tweeted that his word of the day is “defenestration”:

I was moved to respond to him on Facebook:

Used in a sentence: “A lot of wildlife habitat loss in the world is occurring due to defenestration.”

His response:

For that grammatically correct sentence, I wish to defenestrate you, mrawdon!

I later stopped by his office and observed that everyone talks about defenestration, but refenestration never gets any love.

It turns out the Urban Dictionary has a definition for “refenestrate”:

Sad to say, this exchange may have been the high point of my day. Sure made me laugh, though!

It’s Not Just About…

I’m always amused when I see the following slogan as part of Safeway’s Eating Right campaign. I recall something a friend said, that “It’s not just about eating kids, but about eating the right kids”. In this particular ad, the Tasmanian Devil really seems to underscore that notion. (Nom nom nom…)

The campaign’s been around for a while; I can’t believe this obvious joke hasn’t made the rounds among Safeway employees…

Eating Right Kids

John Scalzi Visits the Creation Museum

If you’re not a regular reader of John Scalzi’s blog, nip over there to read his hilarious report about visiting the Creation Museum:

  1. Start with the photographic tour on Flikr.
  2. Then read the accompanying essay, which features liberal use of the word “horseshit”.

It’s well worth the time to read through it all, especially the photo set.

(For more hilarity, visit the Creation Museum’s web site, too.)

Then you can enter Scalzi’s LOLCreashun contest.

In related news, the long-running PBS science program Nova last night ran an episode about the 2005 trial involving the Dover, PA school board which rejected Intelligent Design’s claims to be a rational alternative to evolution. I unfortunately missed the episode (hopefully I can catch it some other time), but Ars Technica has some additional info about the Dover trial’s impact on the ID movement and what the ID people are up to these days.

It’s too bad we sometimes have to take these people seriously in order to refute their silliness. It’s much more fun to just mock them like Scalzi does. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to decisively and finally win a battle against what amounts to rampant (if not willful) ignorance.