Thursday, April 27, 2006

I haven't quoted Nick Carr in way too long

So here is something from a recent blog entry:
The quality of any entry in Wikipedia, for instance, is ultimately determined not by how many people work on it but by how many talented people work on it. An entry written by a single expert will be better than an entry written by a hundred fools. When you look deeply into Wikipedia, beyond the shiny surface of "community," you see that the encyclopedia is actually as much, or more, a product of conflict than of collaboration: It's an endless struggle by a few talented contributors to clean up the mess left by the numbskull horde.

Heart warming story

A pair of brothers has been sending each other the same birthday card for 42 years.
Each time the now-laminated card is sent, the brothers add messages to it. The small messages combine to make a sort of abridged family history. When the writing space on the card was used up, the brothers began attaching hand-written notes to the card. Over the years, the envelope has grown in thickness, with six small note pages attached to the original.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

A Komodo dragon virgin birth

From the Pakistani Daily Times comes the joyful news that Sungai the Komodo dragon has given birth. The question, though, is "how did it happen?"
But Sungai laid the fertilised eggs before even meeting her British lover — and the last time she is known to have had intercourse was two years ago, with another Thoiry Komodo dragon called Kinaam. Thoiry founder Paul de la Panouse told AFP that there were two possible answers to the riddle.
As an aside, I'm amused at the Komodo dragon's rather gruesome method of killing prey, infecting them with the stew of bacteria in the dragon’s thick, copious saliva—bacteria virulent enough to infect and kill deer, goats, water buffalo and other creatures unfortunate enough to get bitten by the drooling reptile.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Beer bottle in bird's nest


Beer bottle in bird's nest
Originally uploaded by Alhazred.
Taken way back when. I suspect that the beer is Castle Lager.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Wonderful Arthur C. Clarke quote

that I hadn't seen before:
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert
Thanks AaronLawrence

truckkitty1


truckkitty1
Originally uploaded by Alhazred.
So cute! Mattress looks kinda grimy, though.

Postmark of the Day - Rio Grande District, Texas on 1 June 2018

Link to thestampforum post .