Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Building a Nest

Originally uploaded by m00nbugg.

I went out to clean the pond this morning and really annoyed some male robins who’d been hanging out there.

I’ve seen these guys before, just romping around in the shallows, splashing themselves and, on occasion, each other.

I wonder if they’re a batch of last summer’s nestmates…they seem so contented to be spending time together.

I wonder if they have a robin-sized yellow Hummer concealed maybe underneath the azaleas…

Spacetime and springtime on the kitchen counter

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

Frank got home late last night from Texas–McMurry University gave him a really neat present, a wooden box with a compass and watch inside it. Or, as Frank explained it to me “Space and time.”

Where should I photograph this cool little toy? As it happened, on the counter next to our sink one of many small grocery-store spring plants was in fresh bloom. Then I decided the stoneware casserole with a dragon on top of it would make another good addition to the photo.

Ahh, multitasking. Can you see from this photo why Linda Stone thinks it’s not such a good idea?

Assuming that all ye who enter love old Mac games, like

• Mouse Stampede (like Centipede but with little tiny mice)
• Oregon Trail
• The Secret of Monkey Island

Bonus linkage:
Photos from the Harvard Bookstore’s Harry Potter party.

Thanks to Amity for today’s URLs, and may a good summertime keep being had by all!

When computers get their own drivers’s licenses–which OS would you like to see behind the wheel?

Team Banzai’s autonomous car uses 3 Mac Minis, fully loaded with OS X. Microsoft has fine slogans (”Where do you want to go today?”) but I hope I’m not sharing Route 95 anytime soon with a car whose “driver” could be zombie-jacked by a Windows spam-spewer in Russia.

Kudos to NASA! (Hey guys, why not hire me to do your graphics?)

+ = ????
Via the new King Kong blog, Andy Serkis has jumped out of his Gollum suit and hopes to direct Johnny Depp in his next movie.

Gollum directing a movie–imagination boggles, yesss, my preciousss, it absolutely boggles.

Frank’s Polish grandmother, aka Grandma Wilczek, compressed a powerful primal force somewhere in her 5-foot-tall frame. Her wedding portrait, lugging an armful of lilies as long as her arm, dominates one corner of our diningroom.

At 19, in Poland’s disastrous post-World-War-I years, she fled her home town, Galician Babice. On Long Island, she met Frank’s Polish grandfather–a six-foot-tall blacksmith from Warsaw, who gave us all the last name that means “little wolf.”

I’ve enjoyed watching Frank get in touch with his Polish roots (and vice versa), but today’s
PIASA party takes the cake (or at least it takes the chrusciki and/or paczki).

“PIASA” stands for “Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America,” emigre scholars who maintain a wonderful archive of Polish lore here in NYC.

A good time was had by all–and I flickred some photos.

Steven Pinker calls it “uptalk.”

Young
Californians’ uptalk (sentences that sound like questions)
is no more pusillanimous or noncommittal than Canadians’
habitual “eh?”

Carcharodontosaurus saharicus
Middle Cretaceous- 100 million years old!
Kem Kem Valley, (Tafilalt) area near Taouz, Morocco

Maxilla and Mandible, Columbus Ave between 81st and 82nd Streets.

Would your living room look better with a six-foot long one-hundred-toothed replica crocodilian skull on display? Sure it would…and for a mere $5,900, BoneClones.com will make that dream come true:

Sarcosuchus imperator (flesh eating crocodile), nicknamed Supercroc, lived during the Cretaceous period (65 - 144 MYA). With an estimated body length of 40 feet, and a skull over 5 1/2 feet long, Supercroc is one of the largest crocodiles that ever walked the Earth.

It is believed that Sarcosuchus was an ambush predator capable of killing large dinosaurs that wandered too close to the water’s edge. The Sarcosuchus’s unusual bulbous snout is thought to have given it a greater ability to smell prey and make louder sounds… Shown here with a human skull for comparison. Individual tooth also available, KO-156. Please see our Dinosaurs and Fossils, and Reptiles catagories.

They also make lots of fake skulls for forensic classrooms… Ewww-factor very high, but fascinating. Thanks to Amity for the jaw-dropping linkage.