Recently in Whimsy Category

The other day I was talking to my neighbor about the election.

Her elderly mother is in a nursing home so she obtained an absentee ballot for her.

"She's voted in every election that she could, so I thought I'd just let her pick for herself. I read off the list of nominees and she picked Bob Barr.

"I think she mixed him up with Bob Barker."

That's not a bad reason compared to some that I've heard over the years.

Anyway, Bob Barker and Bob Barr are, of course, very different.

One's an American game show icon who has become a laughing stock in his old age, and the other is Bob Barker.

Craig Ferguson usually answers two or three emails on his show each night. So I sent him the following:

Craig,

Scientists tell us that there are 60 billion neutrinos striking every square centimeter of the Earth each second.

Do you believe that? And does it worry you?

--JT

I wonder if he'll answer...

I just realized, I haven't watched any of the Olympics coverage.

Hmmm...

I'm reading Dan Koeppel's excellent book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, so I'm in a Chiquita Banana kind of mood.

Note that in the original jingle of the mid-1940's, Chiquita Banana claims that because bananas like the climate of the very tropical equator, "You should never put bananas in the refrigerator."

This was nonsense, of course, and the company knew it, given that bananas had to be shipped to this country in heavily refrigerated vessels.

But it was a good way to boost sales...

Driving back to Philadelphia this afternoon on the Schuylkill Expressway, I noticed the vanity license plate of the car in front of me:

VERDICT

Probably someone in the legal community, but I'm really curious as to who it might be.

I enjoy well-executed illusions like this one...

The BBC has the amazing video of the flying penguins.