I'm Just Saying.

I won't bother to reprint one of the latest little pop
science news stories making the meme rounds.

Let me imagine that the following is suitable for any debate using behavior of animals in nature to support any advocated human behavior in society. I'm not getting all caveman flame by any means. However, I do wonder does this mean anything that shows up in nature is appropriate for some analogous behavior in human society, or only ones that seem sensible to the people looking at it? How is that different from the majority or the most vocal doing what is right in their own eyes? If we get to claim support from this natural phenomenon, does not anyone else get to claim support from any other natural phenomena they find that support their opinion on some issue? To be entirely fair, I do think God should be credited and charged with the saves and the losses in natural disasters: I just don't think it is rhetorically useful to cherry pick part of an evidence while discounting similar evidence that doesn't fit the position. At that point, just say you're right and events in nature don't justify nor condemn anything in human society.

When metaphors don't work

A line in a song says, "Open the eyes of my heart..." Now, I've mentioned this somewhere else, but that metaphor (which I believe does work, and I'm willing to stipulate so here) made me think of one that I feel should work when you look at the comparisons involved, and yet it doesn't.
   "Sprained ankle of the heart"--certainly sprains ache and hearts ache. And the way that sprained ankles can keep paining you for months or years after the initial injury fits how an heart ache can do. So it seems to me that it should work as a metaphor, but it just doesn't. It' lacks that "Aha!" moment that the best metaphors have. Maybe, you could have a working metaphor if you just referred to "sprained my heart," but I'm still not convinced. It would have the immediate relation to "break my heart." So, like you can sprain a joint or break its bone--sprained ankle, broken ankle--you could have "sprained heart," "broken heart." I'm just not sure if that works or works enough.

Come see the Tugginc screening of The Exquisite Corpse Project!

 It's funny how one thing can lead to another. I was practicing finding, checking out and reading on line magazines from the library's Zinio service. This is work related, because I have to be able to show patrons how to do all the steps and get it downloaded to their tablet, ereader, or smartphone. And let me tell you, it's complicated to annoy even me, so you can imagine it's not  going to be, shall we say, "intuitive" for many patrons fresh on the Internet.
  Anyway, I was looking at Mental Floss, which is one of the available free to check out and keep magazines on the library's collection of Zinio magazines. While looking at the pages, one of the letters to the editor said something about pg 64 in a previous issue. Page 64 was a link, and I clicked it to see if it would take me to the past issue. No such luck. What it did do was take me to page 64 in the current issue.
  While that was not a useful link to see what the letter writer was referring to, it was a page that had a small article about The Exquisite Corpse Project, which is a movie based on a parlour game with a twist. From the article (on pg 64 of the July-August 2013 issue of Mental Floss): A segment called The Rules done by Ben Popik and his sketch comedy group might go like this--pick 3 of the worst experiences in your life, write a sketch based on them, you have 5 minutes, start NOW. The article says that the results were usually (always?) horrible, but watching the process made it great and funny.
   For The Exquisite Corpse Project, Popik asked his former comedy team to write 15 pages of script after seeing only 5 pages of the script section before the section each member was to write. According to the movie webpage, they'd only agree if he committed to making the movie if they scripted it that way. He did; they did; it's out there.

Page 64 of Mental Floss (remember when we were there?) included a link to a blog where one can download the movie (for $5.00). At the blog is a link to Tugg or something that has a make a reservation for a movie theater showing link If you're near Portland, Oregon, in time, it'd be great to go. (Plus they need 43 more reservations to actually have the screening take place there. Search for other screening appearances if PDX is too far away. But the venue is really cool!
Join me at this @Tugginc screening of The Exquisite Corpse Project!: Join me at this @Tugginc screening of The Exquisite Corpse Project!

Evidence of Yet Another Disorder--ADDD

The names have been hidden to protect the guilty.
Perhaps the corporate sponsor was 3M.

This is the cover of a Summer Reading Programs brochure which details the different programs and dates and times on a separate page for each of the library branches in the system. The cover as seen here, and the nearly alphabetized pages by library branch inside, illustrate a newly identified disorder:
Attention to Detail Deficit Disorder.