is hell dead?

The Holy See is ensnared in something of a pickle this Easter weekend over an interview with Pope Francis that was published recently and claiming the head of the Catholic Church asserted that hell does not exist.

The Vatican did not deny the comment but instead said the hell quote can't be considered a "faithful transcript" because the reporter who conducted the interview didn't take notes.

So that sounds like they agree that he said something like this but perhaps not exactly like this. But then he's made other statements in the recent past about Satan and hell, so who knows what he was talking about.

And how does anyone - Pope or arc welder or florist -- really know if something mythical exists or not? You may believe something exists, but that doesn't mean it actually exists.

I honestly don't know if I believe in an afterlife. I guess you would call me agnostic. I like the idea and hope there is a pleasant afterlife, particularly if shared with my husband and family. But I'm far from certain.

I've often wondered if hell is actually a complete lack of an afterlife. Good people go on to some kind of positive afterlife. But evil people simply cease to exist. Your soul is voided and no more.

I think that would certainly be an equitable afterlife.

And on this note, Happy Easter!

robot cars

I have been reading about the fatal accident involving a self-driving car and a pedestrian in Arizona. This is the first reported fatality caused by a robot vehicle.

The goal of self-driving cars is to reduce fatalities overall caused by human error, negligence, distraction, etc. As the Arizona accident reveals, robot rides are not infallible, but presumably with time, they will become safer and more accurate than human-driven ones.

I was thinking of a workable solution for how self-driving cars can be tested on roads without risks to pedestrians. And it's simple -- allow robot driving only on limited-access highways and freeways where pedestrians are not allowed. When driving on highways and streets where pedestrians are allowed, then the human behind the wheel must drive like an ordinary driver.

I imagine the day will come when self-driving cars have their own roadways. Manually driven vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians would not be allowed, but for now, that's not a workable solution..

At the same time, I don't think development and testing of robot vehicles should be stopped or banned. It's a technology with life-saving potential, but right now, more rigorous and reasonable limitations should be mandated.

medieval sex remedies

I was reading another issue of my new favorite magazine last night and particularly enjoyed this short article about medieval sex remedies.

My absolute favorite was the one about wearing weasel testicles around your neck to prevent conception.

This raises so many interesting questions. Unless weasels were really common back then, how expensive were their amputated balls, considering the demand likely far outpaced the supply?

And how could you be sure that the weasel testicles you were buying were actually real and not, say, rat testicles?

The biggest question, of course, was how the hell did a practice like this come into being in the first place? I could understand ground up testicle powder as an aphrodisiac, but as a birth-control method? You'd also think people would come to realize pretty quickly that the "remedy" was completely worthless.

unintentionally hysterical

The four of us were in the car last night, and Joey picked up a history magazine from the library I had tucked under Tombo's toddler seat in the back.

Joey is now a little past four and loves to read anything he randomly finds. Tombo seems transfixed at anything Joey reads, no matter now mundane, from magazine ads to signs to cereal boxes.

Joey was doing a pretty good job reading some of the titles but stumbled on the more complex ones, which I helped him to sound out phonically. He then read one of the titles fairly easily: "The Tudor Family."

After a beat, he turned to Tombo and said "Tudor -- that's a kind of car. Tudor and four door."

My husband then laughed so hard he had to pull over to the side of the road to keep from wrecking the car. When he could finally catch his breath, he told me he had explained to Joey the other day about how some cars have two doors while others have four.

So I had to explain to poor confused Joey about homonyms -- two things can sound exactly the same but have completely different spellings with entirely different meanings.

the lady is a spy

I was reading an article offline about Gina Haspel, the current nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency. She's quite controversial because some are not happy about policy decisions in her past, but that's not what I'm writing about today.

What I found interesting was how almost nothing personal was known about her when she was nominated. The reason is simple -- she was a CIA spy for more than three decades.

If you check out her official portrait, she certainly doesn't look like Hollywood's idea of a lady spy. She looks like the village librarian or an elementary school teacher.

Of course, spies aren't supposed to look like stereotypical spies. They're supposed to look boring and nondescript. So when she was stationed inside an embassy, to the outside world, she would look like somebody's secretary.

The Washington Post recently ran an intriguing article about the history of lady spies in the CIA and allied agencies. Their contributions are little known to the public, but then again they'd probably like it that way.

I imagine many people wonder if they would have the stuff to be a clandestine operative, and I've wondered that, too. Spies in real life are not like they're depicted by Hollywood. They spend most of their time trying to convince other people to reveal their government's secrets.

I suspect I could perform this aspect of an covert agent's work quite well. I was a successful exotic dancer, and part of the secret to that work is convincing men to part with their money so that I would do private dances for them, so I had to act like I really cared about them even though I didn't.

What I don't think I could handle about covert work would be acting calm under extreme pressure. If everything was going well, I'd have no problem maintaining cover, but if I thought a hostile agency was on to me, then I don't think I could pretend like nothing was wrong.

And if I was picked up by a hostile agency and threatened with torture, I think I'd crack pretty quickly. Just the threat of pain would do it -- they could hold an whirring electric drill an inch above one of my knuckles and I'd sing like a birdie.

true necrophilia romance

Chances are when you were in high school you read the William Faulkner short story "A Rose for Emily." I know I did and, once you've read the story, you can't forget it.

Well, move over Miss Emily because this true story makes her necrophilia seem mild in comparison. If you wrote this as a short story, people would say it was too unbelievable to seem realistic.

I'm wondering how long it took Carl to come up with this whole plan. Did he think about this for two whole years before stealing Elena's corpse?

The fact that the body's skin was "mended ... with wax and plaster" makes me wonder how much of the "body" was actually originally Elena and how much was a reconstruction. The stench must've been horrendous.

I love my husband, but if he dies before me, his corpse is not coming home again no matter what. Sometimes there's a fine line between romance and obsession, but I'm confident I'll always know where it is.

de rotterdam

The building seen below (enlargement) is called De Rotterdam and is located in the city of the same name.

I will admit I know little about physics, so maybe that's why the twenty-story cantalevered portion jutting out on the right side scares me. That looks to me like it would put an awful lot of stress on the still superstructure inside the tower.

I remember reading somewhere that the biggest problem at Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Fallingwater was the stress caused by the various cantalevered portions. The problem has been remedied, but not without a great deal of anguish and expense.

Sudden structural collapses are not unknown, as was seen recently in the Florida pedestrian overpass. I remember seeing a video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse when I was in middle school, and although different engineering issues are at play compared to a cantalever, the disaster nonetheless reinforces the idea that something which looks big and solid isn't necessarily so.

Nonetheless, I'd love to go to the Netherlands and look at the building and the rest of the city as well. Rotterdam certainly looks like an interesting mix of old and very new.

karma windfall

This is absolutely incredible. A biker wipes out and accidentally rolls under a semi that's travelling at full speed on a freeway. The motorcyclist somehow rolls completely under the truck and out the other side to safety with only the most minor of injuries. The Force was definitely strong in that dude.

chilling

I found this article to be blood curdling. Just-released video footage shows Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter who gunned down hundreds and killed 58 people, spent his final days and hours like an ordinary casino visitor, snacking and socializing and gambling, before he went on his murderous spree during which he also killed himself.

The fact that he was so casual, so relaxed, makes me wonder if he thought he would survive his planned carnage. The fact that he could eat suggests to me he had no conscience.

I know his autopsy revealed he had no serious brain injury or disease. But an autopsy cannot reveal if someone is mentally ill in almost all cases. Something clearly was wrong with him to cause him to do what he did.

What makes this video particularly chilling to me is how someone so ordinary could be harboring such evil, dark desires. That means anyone you encounter in the course of your day could also be a ticking bomb like this.

big brother mark

I've been reading various news items about the exploding controversy swirling around Facebook in the last few days, stemming from a British company's secretive "data scraping" of personal information on 50 million American Facebook users.

My first reaction was: this is why I all but stopped using my Facebook account years ago.

I actually still use Facebook on occasion, but not the account in my real name. Because of the site's insistence that members use a real first plus last name, I simply use an extremely common one: Mary Jones. A website search page shows there are about a quarter million Mary Jones on Facebook, not to mention even more John Smiths and the like.

I did this when I started thinking about social media after all the NSA controversy a few years ago. What real value is there to putting your private information in public for anyone around the world to see and use without your knowledge?

This would be like me parking my car in a public parking space and then leaving my personal journal open on the dashboard for any passerby to see and read. Why would anyone in their right mind do this? So why do much the same thing on Facebook?

Mark Zuckerberg and his minions don't want you to do this because they're our friends. They want to monetize us. Well they can monetize somebody else, thank you. You want to monetize me and my family, you pay us for that privilege and you ask our consent first.

This is why I prefer anonymous places like Discord, Disqus, Reddit, and blogging if I want to interact online. No one knows who I really am. I'm not leaving a digital trail that people decades in the future may harvest without my knowledge or permission.

I thought this op-ed was interesting and timely: "I ditched Facebook in 2013, and it's been fine." Everybody should do this.

Facebook uses and harvests people to make money. We shouldn't let them do that without sharing the loot.

upskirt rights

I happened to see this article referenced online in a discussion forum with some comments about how the individual ought to be thrown in prison.

What happens in this particularly suspect's case is not yet known because he has not yet gone to trial, but a quick Google search finds that his First Amendment defense has been allowed by some other states' supreme courts. The defendant sounds like he has some personal issues and is emotionally addicted to photograph unsuspecting crotches, but is this a crime? I'd argue not.

My $0.02 is upskirting should be a civil, not a criminal matter. Why should public dollars be spent to prosecute and incarcerate some poor fool who gets his jollies making grainy underexposed images of women's panties? If an upskirt fanatic had to cough up $25,000 or $50,000 in damages plus legal costs, that might be more likely to tempt him to find a new hobby than if he's prosecuted.

Upskirt freaks have been around ever since digital photography became common. This is not a problem that's going away. Criminal courts should not be cluttered up with these issues. Take it to civil court.

Quite honestly, I could care less if someone photographs my crotch up my skirt. I have no idea if it's a criminal matter in Australia, and if I saw a man trying to surreptitiously snap my snatch, I'd try to embarrass him in response. Excuse me sir, I think your zipper's down in a loud voice might do the trick, but then I'm not the timid sort.

The world has far bigger problems than harmless pervert with cameras.

the power of pelf

I love discovering powerful, short words that I've never seen before. Why use a long word when a short, powerful one will do better?

Twice in the last twenty-four hours in two different sources, I have encountered the word pelf, something that I never recall encountering before. I had a sense what it meant because of the context, but I turned to the dictionary to make sure.

In a nutshell, pelf is the noun for ill-gotten wealth. Bernie Madoff was a very wealthy man in the last years before he surrendered to the FBI; however, nearly all of his wealth was from having run the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

Of course, if a very small person is wealthy because of a successful criminal career, he would be called a pelfing elf.

pure evil

I heard about this news on the radio here in Australia yesterday: two health workers vaccinating children against polio in Pakistan were murdered by Taliban militants, while others were seriously wounded and still others are missing.

A horribly debilitating disease, polio is still a crisis in only three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. Health workers -- who are volunteers from foreign countries -- have been targeted and murdered for several years in all three countries because people posing as health workers vaccinating for polio collected blood several years ago in order to determine Osama bin Laden's location.

So the murder of perfectly innocent health workers trying to help children is some kind of fucked-up payback for the manhunt directed at one of the modern era's most despicable murderers. And this retribution, of course, is all being done in God's name.

One could be tempted to use this incident as an attack on Islam, but of course murderous thugs wrapping themselves in religion is not limited to one faith alone. Millions of the innocent were murdered by the Third Reich in the name of religion and not one of the perpetrators was a Muslim.

Few of us in the Western World have any exposure to polio victims. The only memory I have was an older man who was one of my grandfather's patients who I would see occasionally when I visited as a child.

He had been infected as a small child shortly before World War II and developed all the classic symptoms and dehibilitation. As an adult many years later, when he was my grandfather's patient, he could walk but only with great difficulty and leg braces.

Nonetheless, he was one of the kindest people I have ever met. He livid a monk's life, however, and never married or ever even dated because he was ashamed of his disability. I asked my uncle, who still lives in the same town as my grandfather did, if the polio victim is still around and he confirmed that he was.

There is a man whose entire life was changed because of a disease for which no vaccination existed when he was infected. To condemn a child today to that kind of heartache and disability in the name of religion is nothing short of pure evil.

burning questions

I saw this on a Tumblr page and then forgot where I found it. I'm mystified -- is it food or a knickknack?

If it's food, it's certainly a weird mashup. If it's a geegaw, then it could end up being an anti-diet weapon -- a paperweight shouldn't give people food cravings.

But why a baby sea turtle melded with a doughnut? Why do people like to anamorphize food? Why are turtle doughnuts okay but dog turd doughnuts are not? Anyone for a roadkill doughnut?

And why is doughnut also spelled donut? The same reason ketchup is also spelled catsup? If those misspellings are allowed, why are other logical misspellings forbidden, like tonite and alright? And what's the deal with misspelled versus misspelt?

I do ask a lot of questions. It makes my husband laugh on a regular occasion about how I can have so many questions about such mundane things. He said I should do a standup routine. Or volunteer to question suspects at a police station.

Lon Chaney was the man with a thousand faces. I'm the woman with a thousand questions.

Are you having a good Sunday so far?

compare and contrast

If this video was shown exactly as it appears to regular viewers of the channel in question, how would they react? I think the moral of this story is that news programs should present the news and leave their opinions on the editing room floor. Then there's no chance of getting caught with your pants around your ankles and your bare ass exposed to the wind.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day.

neanderthal doodles

I thought this article was fascinating about archaeologists who discovered cave art painted by Neanderthals more than 64,000 years ago, at least 24,000 years earlier than humans were painting on walls.

As you can see in the photo (enlargement), the painting has some kind of ladder structure with a pattern of tiny regular dots to the upper left of that. The linked article does not mention if anyone has figured out what this means, and none of the other articles I found online about this had any kind of explanation, either.

Now I'm sure the people behind the Ancient Aliens television series would have a handy explanation for what this is supposed to be, like some sort of creature from a far galaxy taking one giant leap down a ladder upon arriving on earth. Of course, just because something has a slight resemblance to a cheesy 1950s scifi movie prop does not mean it's proof of an alien visitation.

After I read this article, I was thinking that perhaps Neanderthals weren't a less intelligent and more brutal species than humans, as is often the presumption. Maybe it was the other way around -- they were gentle and smart, but the less intelligent and more brutal humans drove them to extinction.

venezuela

I read an article offline recently about Venezuela and also listened to a podcast on the same subject the other night while I was fixing dinner. I said to my husband later, "I wonder if Venezuela is a ticking time bomb that will soon explode and create a much bigger crisis than people now predict."

The more I learn about their country, the more I realize there's nothing really that isn't wrong there. They currently have an inflation rate of 6,000 percent per year. Food and other basics are in constant short supply and people wait for hours in long lines to buy the scant offerings.

The political system is crippled with rampant corruption. Politicians who aren't from the controlling majority party are muzzled, harassed, and outright arrested. Public dissent of all sorts is met with violence, arrest, and worse.

The economy is collapsing. Most of foreign trade is exporting oil, and the volatile market regularly causes crippling economic shock waves. Gross domestic product is plummeting.

The only possible realistic solution I've seen is for Venezuelan officials to peg their currency to the American dollar or the Euro. Of course, this would take an important power away from the country's corrupt government -- their ability to print endless supplies of money.

Something has to give soon. I have a strong sense what happens thereafter will be horrible and heartbreaking.

The massively long line seen below is people queueing for a chance to buy food in a supermarket (enlargement), a common sight now in Venezuela.

ear assault

When this woman decided she wanted ear gauges -- the disks inserted in her ear lobes -- I wonder if she considered that some day she would want to have that reversed. Did she price how much it would cost?

The sleeve tattoo is forever, but she can backtrack on the ears. However, that will cost her thousands in cosmetic surgery to make all evidence disappear, not to mention lots of pain and treatment time.

I also happened to find online a blood-curdling item about a woman whose pet snake got stuck in her ear gauge hole and she had to go to the emergency room to have it removed. Imagine if the creature panicked and started biting her like mad -- that would not be fun.

I think you would have to pay me at least a million American before I'd consider going through the whole rigmarole of progressing through larger and larger ear gauges until they were the size of jar lids. I'd wear them for a month, then you'd have to pay more $100,000 more for each additional month.

Any takers?

snap out of it!

I was reading this recent article in The Atlantic last night and it made me want to open the window and scream at the top of my lungs. Not that I disagreed with anything in the piece, but I reached one paragraph toward the end and was ready to explode at what I read.

Here's the paragraph portion in question that caused me to erupt:

Nearly three-quarters of Americans born before the Second World War assign the highest value -- 10 out of 10 -- to living in a democracy; less than a third of those born since 1980 do the same. A quarter of the latter group say it’s unimportant to choose leaders in free elections; just shy of a third think civil rights are needed to protect people’s liberties. Americans are not alone; much of western Europe is similarly disillusioned.

What is wrong with my generation? I feel like Cher in that scene from Moonstruck when she smacks Nicolas Cage and yells: "Snap out of it!"

I've written about this topic before, yet it never fails to make my blood boil. I don't understand people who think this way.

Democracy is one of humankind's greatest achievements. Democracies foster relative peace, prosperity, and happiness. Yes, no democracy is perfect, but don't just shrug it off and say "well, maybe a dictator would be better."

Humankind advanced technologically concurrent to its democratic advancement. Plebians in dictatorships do not advance society. They don't have the resources, prosperity, leisure, and education to make important new discoveries.

I don't know what is failing in society that's causing so many people to develop such ass-backwards ideas. Education? The media? Government?

I'm still mystified where all these people are who think it's okay to dump democracy. Bligted areas? Rural regions? The South? Something is causing this monumental imbalance of common sense.

the human species

I am currently reading this book, which is very interesting, although the author does wander off track on occasion. Written by a woman raised in what was then the Soviet Union, the book is much more a social history of Russia since the 1917 revolution than just about how the oppressive government of today came into being.

In one chapter, she writes about the Great Terror, which occurred from 1936 to 1938 when some 600,000 people were executed, most for highly dubious reasons. This was not ethnic cleansing because those condemned were represented by all faiths, races, and social classes, with many of them being government officials of various ranks.

This was terror for terror's stake.

Many if not most of those executed were never tried for their alleged "crimes." They originally were arrested after being denounced by someone in secret or because they were politically inconvenient. And these were not violent or even real crimes -- they were vague, subjective claims like "bourgeois provocateur" or "capitalist apologist."

Most charged were sentenced to death without ever seeing a courtroom. While all death sentences had to be reviewed by a party official, this frequently involved someone simply signing the front a condemned prisoner's file without even opening it to read the contents. Anyone with a signed file was then executed within hours or days.

The notorious dictator Joseph Stalin personally signed more than 44,000 of these files. The NKVD (precursor to the KGB) even organized competitions to see who could sign a stack of files in the fastest. Senior NKVD officers would take stacks of files on train journeys for signature to fill the time -- imagine being an innocent traveler on a train and unknowingly watching scores of people being condemned to death as a fellow passenger signed file after file in silent monotony.

It's mind boggling to realize that the same species which created the Sistine Chapel and the Hallelujah Chorus could also create such monumental brutality.

killer bacon

I like bacon but don't eat it because I avoid foods with high levels of saturated fat. My super fitness conscious husband never eats it and swears it's satanic, so I never buy it nor serve it.

Articles like this are all the more reason not to eat it -- not only is it too fatty, it's potentially carcinogenic, as are many types of processed meat. It's not the processing part that's so dangerous, but the actual ingredients in many processed meats.

I guess because I had healthy eating ingrained in me by my MD parents since I was a small child that I do not covet unhealthy foods. Others see a tempting food product but I see it more like meth -- it might be fun to consume but then you pay the price later. I can't get past the little voice in my head screaming Danger, Deadly Substance whenever I'm tempted to put something unhealthy into it.

So read the item if you want another reason not to eat bacon. But if you're a bacon addict, this is probably not for you.

almost armageddon

I regularly borrow a British publication called BBC History Magazine from our library system here. It's definitely not a scholarly journal and, instead, intended for general readers.

I find the articles fascinating. Many focus on British or European history but other parts of the world are regularly covered too, but to a lesser degree. I like how the pieces focus on lesser known aspects of history.

A recent issue included a shorter but fascinating article about five little-known incidents in post-World War II history where the planet came perilously close to all-out nuclear conflict.

Each of these incidents could make a thriller novel or movie or both, but I don't think the threat of nuclear annihiliation could be main element of jeopardy, because the audience will already know it didn't happen. But an urgent plot wrapped around a central character or two, playing out against the backdrop of the real event, could make a compelling story.

If you're interesting in history, click through to the article and have a read. I emailed a copy of this to my uncle, who is now in his early sixties and a major history buff, and asked if he had heard of any of the events at the time but he had not.

twisted angel

This was posted on an online forum with the title "Licensed Tattoo Artist" (enlargement) The unasked question is -- licensed by whom? His grandmother?

There are so many bad things about this tattoo that it's exceedingly difficult to find anything good. I'm stumped. How about: at least her tits are symmetrical, so there's that.

Was the top of her head cut off at the same time as her right foot? And what is she holding in her right hand -- Chistmas lights?

This appears to be on someone's forearm, one of the most exposed parts of the body. So that means either a lifetime of embarrassment on any warmer day or a lifetime of long sleeves.

Or maybe the tattoo's owner could move to northern Alaska. Then it would be rarely seen.

endangered gynos

The LA Times is running an article about how male obstetrician-gynecologists are becoming an endangered species, particularly at some facilities. Less than one-fifth of those currently studying to be obgyns are male in the United States.

I feel sorry for them, but at the time time, particularly for the younger ones, they're sort of like the buggy shop owner lamenting all the cars whizzing by.

IMHO, the individual doctor matters much more than his or her gender. However, with all things considered, I would choose a woman over a man if I didn't know the doctor.

Every woman I know with whom I've discussed gynos sees a woman and prefers them and many prefer all their doctors be women if any kind of personal exams would be involved. In comparison, my husband would only see a male proctologist for his hemorrhoids.

When I had my second child, I was surprised when I saw one of the obstetrics nurses was male. He had a gentle demeanor and touch so his gender was not an issue. I didn't have a chance to ask him how he ended up in a field all but monopolized by women.

Medical exams require a patient to park his or her dignity in the waiting room, so it's understandable how some will request practitioners of a particular gender to help them feel more at ease. I don't think that's unreasonable.

cloned dogs

The New York Times is currently running an opinion piece arguing against cloning your dog. I didn't even know that pet cloning was already a thing ordinary people could do.

The author, a bioethicist, makes a number of interesting points. To clone a dog, she notes, more dogs are involved in the process other than the originating pet, and those "worker" dogs don't have loving homes and families. They're lab animals.

She doesn't touch on the fact that the cloned dog may not have the same personality as the source dog. Like people, dogs are shaped by their experiences and environments, so a cloned dog may have an early life much different than his genetic donor. As well, you and I change with time, so how the cloned dog reacts to us and our world may be affected.

I also think it's somehow morally reckless to spend a shitload of money cloning a dog -- at least $50,000 a pup -- when so many unwanted shelter canines in this world need homes. Our current dog didn't come from a shelter, but if we hadn't adopted it, pup would be surrendered to one the next day.

I love dogs and have been around them since I was tiny, but I've long accepted your dog will probably not outlive you. Enjoy your friend in the here and now and, when Fido shuffles off to his mortal reward, adopt another and fall in love with that one, too.

One dog never replaces another, but it can fill the vacancy. And your local shelter and rescue groups are the place to start your quest, not some laboratory.

oscar yawnfest

I did not watch the Academy Awards again this year. It plays live in the late morning and early afternoon here, so I had other more pressing things to do, given the show is so slow. From what I saw of the wrapup coverage, it was a snoozer with no big surprises.

The fashions interested me. Below, I collected a little gallery of my personal hits and misses for the evening.

I think Whoopi Goldberg looked fantastic in her Christian Siriano gown. She's on the short side and the thick side, so the dress flattered her, rather than making her look freakish, as some of her previous Oscar gowns have done. She was also wearing combat boots but they weren't really visible.

Jennifer Garner looked terrific as well in a royal blue Versace gown. Her dramatic hair and makeup nicely enhanced her face, making her look more womanly and less girlish. She reportedly was also wearing a million dollars of borrowed diamond jewelry that was, fortunately, understated and not garish.

IMHO one of the most striking looks of the night was teacher Breaion King, the subject of one of the documentaries, who waited until the last minute to find a dress. It's delightfully retro with little stole and jet lattice neckline.

Fashion critics generally praised Jane Fonda's Balmain gown, and she looks great for eighty, but I thought her dress was too stark and severe. The peaked shoulders seem like something from a 1970s scifi movie costume.

The critics raced about Nicole Kidman's Armani Privé gown, but I was not a fan. The huge bow and rigid bodice look way too structural and sculpted, in my opinion. I also thought it was very unflattering for her too-slender figure.

So what do I know? I'm just some broad with an opinion. I disagreed with a fair number of the "hits" that some fashion critics raved about, but then maybe they were dazzled by the empress's new clothes.

hollywood legend

The New York Times is running an interesting article about an interesting lawsuit brought by Olivia de Havilland, who turns 102 this year. The piece includes some current photographs and she certainly looks great for her age.

Once a week, the children and I visit the woman who owns the house where we live. As I've written before, she's now in a care home and turns 97 this year.

I find it very interesting why some old people age well while others age terribly or die early. For whatever reason, de Havilland appears to be aging very well. Her sister Joan Fontaine lived to be 96.

I imagine a time will come when doctors and scientists understand more about why people who live similar lifestyles and have similar habits, not to mention similar physiologies, often live such widely spaced years.

My grandfather came from a large family, and his siblings' length of life are scattered all over the place. A few siblings, who were active, never smoked, and not overweight, died in their fifties, while others who smoked and/or were overweight lived well into their eighties. A few of his younger siblings, who are still alive, are now well into their nineties, although none of them were smokers.

I want to live to be really old as long as I am in relatively good health, not in pain, and have most of my mental faculties. I want the same for my husband. Hopefully medical science will have advanced far enough by then to ensure this goal for both of us.

duck shoe truck

I saw the picture below in a news story this week (enlargement) and thought it was pretty funny. If you know the L.L. Bean clothing and gear company, you'll know their trademark Duck Shoe - leather upper with a rubber bottom.

L.L. Bean will ship to Australia for free if you order more than a certain amount. Their Duck Shoe and related Duck Boot became very popular here a few years ago.

Right now is not the best time to buy from America, however, because of the exchange rate. In mid-2010 through the end of 2013, the Australian dollar was worth more than the American one, so kangaroo bucks went a lot further.

I still have my Duck Shoes I brought with me when I moved down here nearly a decade ago. I had to glue the soles in one place but otherwise they're still wearing strong.

killer cheesecake

A Russian immigrant living in Brooklyn was arrested this week for allegedly attempting to poison a lookalike neighbor with a laced cheesecake so that she could steal her identity.

As the linked article notes, she nearly got away with it, and also has a rather long history of being suspected of previous murders and murder attempts. This tale is nonetheless somewhat amusing, except if you're the victim, of course.

If this wasn't a true story, this would sound like a plot involving the character of Galina "Red" Reznikov, the somewhat crazed and imprisoned Russian chef in the hit TV series Orange Is the New Black, brilliantly played by Kate Mulgrew. I can just hear Red growling in her accent "I make her cheesecake to die for -- it nearly did."

I guess the moral to this story is: don't accept free deserts from twitchy neighbors.

the politics of stink

Researchers at an Italian university are reporting that, based on a recent and comprehensive study they conducted, people who are more sensitive to unpleasant odors tend to be more likely to support authoritarian leaders.

This is because "prejudices and political views can be influenced by a person’s desire to avoid disease and bad smells."

I am certainly an exception to this rule. I loathe stink and I loathe authoritarians. People who reek, rotting meat, raw sewage -- no thank you.

When I go out, I usually apply a little perfume to the back of my hands. That way if I encounter something that stinks -- or someone -- I can just hold my hand near my nose and that crowds out the stench. It doesn't always work, but it does work far more often than not.

are audiobooks "reading"?

I follow book forums on sites like GoodReads and Reddit and others because I find interesting new releases to read. And on every such group I regularly visit, this argument and variations seems to break out with regularity: if you listen to an audiobook, are you really "reading" that book?

As both a print reader and audiobook listener, I always want to shout: "who the fuck cares?"

I'm reading a longish novel now in print but also supplementing that with audio listens of the same book while I'm doing things around the house. I find both print and audiobooks equally enjoyable, and this way also gets me through the book more quickly.

Is this cheating to not read every last word in print? Why does this matter? If I'm enjoying the book -- which is both well written and well narrated -- then why do I have to please some purist and only read the print book?

What business is it of anybody else how someone enjoys a book? Why do they even think they have to weigh in on this topic? It's like arguing about the correct way to eat an Oreo.

Rant over.