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21st Century Magritte

Fig. 1.

(Neither is this sentence a comment on your monitor’s display of some pixels or posphor-dots ordered in a JPG file of a digitally manipulated photograph of a blank sign obtained via txt2pic.com, which isn’t even a valid URL anymore. In fact, how do you know you’re reading this?)

Aside

“IN THE GOD V. CHANCE debate, some of us are having a long-view chuckle over consciousness’ inability to recognize and appreciate its own inevitability within the Universe it’s trying to understand. Sure, it’s not as dramatic or satisfying as shouting at each other, but it pays the bills.”

Life

Ol’ Thinkypants: Sales and Service

“PEOPLE’D BE A DAMN SIGHT more polite to each other in this country if they had to work a year behind a retail sales counter. At least, all my retailer friends think so.”

Life

Pithyism #809

WHEN FACED WITH A NEW Thing, it is often better to pay close attention to the Thing in question than to whether or not it fits your notion of Thingness. (N.B. This is not as obvious as it sounds.)

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Scrapheap Waters

THAT’S AN ANAGRAM FOR “EARTH Warps Space,” the latest news out of NASA. Put simply: In our 4th-dimensional universe, gravity runs downhill. Put less simply, http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/. Quoted lede: “Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity.”

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My Favorite Osama Bin Laden Rumor

…IS THAT HIS COMPOUND WAS built in the shape of what some would call “Greater Palestine,” with his house corresponding to the location of Jerusalem. (This comes to me from to the French website JSSNews, by way of YNet, by way of The Tablet, which latter is recommended daily fare.)

Fig. 1.

I stress that this is a rumor only (like the time in high school that I convinced someone that Ronald McDonald was portrayed by an African-American actor — which was repeated to me later in the day), and doesn’t really seem to fit with what we seem to know thus far about Mr. Bin Laden’s motivations. But as rumors go, it’s worth passing along. (AS A RUMOR.)