All Purls. No Swine.
"The road to Hell" as they say, "is paved with good intentions." And so it is. A group of Hungarian scientists, faced with what's clearly a first-world problem--saving from extinction the fish responsible for producing the world's finest caviar--decided to tinker with the piscine gene pool, taking sperm from the American Paddlefish and using it… Continue reading From the Annals of the “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” Department
Oh, I don’t mean that in what’s now become the commonly-accepted sense of the word, as is regularly on display these days, or as described in The Oxford Dictionary: “A person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency.” I mean it in the more complex and… Continue reading In Praise of Scapegoats
It seems that it's about time for the regular pre-election "Let's Fix the High Cost of Healthcare Once And For All!" national political posturing extravaganza, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents, and present what I'm pretty sure is a unique and extraordinarily effective solution. I’ve alluded to this subject in a few… Continue reading How To Bring Down The High Cost of Healthcare: RWKJ’s Medical Plan!
I love it down here on the farm. Some days, not so much, it’s true. Mostly, those are the days when I start out with a handful of prophylactic Advil or Aleve, and then hie myself down to the barn for a day of shoveling, or perhaps sheep-shearing, or down the field with my little… Continue reading The Nesting Instinct
This isn’t a “Let’s Hate Leftists” thread. I have many friends who are considerably to my Left on the political spectrum, and some of them are very dear to me, although I think they’re wrong about almost everything. But the question above was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this headline:… Continue reading Could This Be the Difference Between a ‘Paper Wasp’ and Your Favorite Leftist?
In case you were wondering exactly what it is that rabbits do for entertainment during the lockdown, when nights draw in, and when they're sheltering in place, wonder no more! No. It's not that. Glory be. Get your minds out of the gutter. It's this. (What follows is filler: Apparently this post is too short… Continue reading And Now For Something Completely Different
Yes, I’m well aware that even the title of this post may be a Code of Conduct violation, not to mention a grammatical faux-pas of the first order (pace Winston Churchill.) Have at it, grammar police. But. “Lady in a Fur Coat,” a stray cat, was taken to an animal shelter with such acute and nasty… Continue reading Finally–A Pussy Hat I Can Approve Of!
He has many friends, lay men and clerical, Old Foss is the name of his cat; His body is perfectly spherical, He weareth a runcible hat. One of the dearest friends of my childhood, Edward Lear, passed away 132 years ago today, on January 29, 1888. Perhaps it’s because of him that I formed the… Continue reading Occasional Quote of the Day: How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!
Not that I want to be accused of speciesism, or any other sort of exclusivity thought pattern. God forbid. I have nightmares of one of you seizing the Ricochet microphone from me and having a meltdown a la “Blossom.” Heaven forfend. Those with birds, reptiles, tribbles, or any other sort of pets are welcome to… Continue reading Friday Food and Drink Post: Felix and Fido Edition
If Florence Nightingale were still alive, she’d have been 199 years old in 2019. She was born on May 12th, 1820, just a few short months after Mad King George (of American Revolution fame) breathed his last. By the time she died on August 13, 1910, George V (the current Queen’s grandfather) was on the… Continue reading Florence Nightingale: The Lady With the … Cats?