Category Archives: Weird

Technology and Society, Weird

Don’t Try This At Home

22 Comments

A six-year-old boy has floated off in a balloon in Colorado. I’m guessing no flight plan was filed with the FAA. This sounds like one of those “Honey, I shrank the kid” things. I’ll bet Mom’s not happy. Here’s hoping for the best.

But the story seems to be updated sort of weirdly. It’s not clear that he was ever in the balloon. Maybe he ran away after accidentally releasing it, afraid that he’d be in trouble.

[Late afternoon update]

Fortunately, it looks like my guess was correct. He was hiding, safe and sound.

General, Philosophy, Weird

An Existential Question

20 Comments

This is a sign I saw on the road from Las Cruces to Tucson.

Dust Storm Sign

So. What does it mean?

Is it a description of what might be? That there is a possibility of dust storms? Here, and now, but not other wheres or whens? Or is it (as we were reprimanded by our mothers or English teachers) simply an expression of permission for dust storms to exist? By whom? Our betters in Santa Fe, or Phoenix? These are state-sanctioned dust storms? And they’re not permitted elsewhere?

Or is it more of a Heisenbergian deal? That dust storms simultaneously both exist and don’t exist, and which is the case is determined only when one collapses the wave function by driving down the road to Lordsburg?

I’ll never know for sure, of course, but I can say that I never saw a dust storm on the trip.

Next up (or perhaps other things in between) — a road sign that I liked a lot more, on the American autobahn. There are a few things that the Germans got right.

History, Political Commentary, Weird

Birds Of A Feather?

13 Comments

A picture has surfaced that may depict Hitler playing chess with Lenin. There is cause for skepticism, of course:

Historian Helen Rappaport, who has just written a book called “Conspirator: Lenin in Exile”, said the etching was probably a “glorious piece of fantasy”.

She said: “In 1909 Lenin was in France and there is no evidence that he was in Vienna.

“In October he went to Liege in Belgium and in November he went to Brussels. He would have visited Vienna before and after that year.

“He liked the place and went there because he travelled around Europe on trains, but he wouldn’t have been there long enough to meet a young Hitler.

“He was also as bald as a bat by 1894 with just hair on the sides of his head.

“And when in exile he was not known as Lenin and instead used a number of aliases.

“The person believed to be Lenin in the etching may well have been one of his revolutionary or Bolshevik associates who was misidentified.

“It may even have been an Austrian socialist with whom he associated in the Second International.

So, maybe it wasn’t Lenin. That right winger Adolf Hitler was hanging out and playing chess with some other socialist.

Political Commentary, Weird

You Couldn’t Make This Up

34 Comments

Reportedly, in the telecon last week where the president informed the rabbis that he was a partner with God in matters of life and death (I think I know who he thinks the senior partner in that relationship is), the music on hold was Deutschland Uber Alles.

Hilarious.

[Update a while later]

Didn’t he say back during the campaign that determining when life begins was above his pay grade? I guess now that he’s gotten a promotion to be a co-God, he’s perfectly comfortable with deciding when it ends.