Category: Humor and Silliness

Gender Apartheid

“In many countries, one category of human beings don’t even have the right to show their face – that’s apartheid, and it should be the social justice issue of our time.” — Bill Maher.

I enormously enjoy Bill Maher’s HBO show, particularly the segment on “New Rule.” Today I’d like to share this one. He has a wicked sense of humor, and I am sure that he has a great bunch of writers.

Naturally I don’t agree with him on most issues dealing with politics and economics. He’s a leftist and a “progressive”. I’m the opposite. But his social commentary is most of the time spot on. More than most commentators, he funny as all heck.  Continue reading “Gender Apartheid”

Bengalis Speaking Hindi

Bengalis have a wicked sense of humor — especially when it involves poking fun at themselves. I speak as if I wasn’t a Bengali myself. Truth is that I was born and brought up outside Bengal; so I can’t claim to be a true blue Bengali.

My siblings and I speak Hindi quite well. Our relatives in Bengal did make fun of our broken Bengali infected with Hindi words. Well, in turn we found their attempted Hindi to be hilarious. Continue reading “Bengalis Speaking Hindi”

Funny

“You’re T. S. Eliot,” said a taxi driver as he stepped into his cab. Eliot asked him how he knew. “I have an eye for celebrities,” he replied. “Only the other evening I picked up Bertrand Russell, and I said to him, ‘Well, Lord Russell, what’s it all about?’ And, do you know, he couldn’t tell me.”

— Valerie Eliot (her favorite story about her husband) Continue reading “Funny”

Porcupine Pie

Pictures and videos of cats and babies makes up for the socialist idiocy one comes across on the internet.

I like baby animals, the most favored being human babies. Human babies in animal suits are the best. So I share with you this picture of a baby in a porcupine suit.

I am not too sure about the suit. It could be a piggy suit — notice the snout and the hoofs. But then it has spiky things all over it. So it could be a porcupine suit. It looks like it to me.  And then this old favorite song popped into my head: Porcupine Pie by Neil Diamond. Continue reading “Porcupine Pie”

Magic is Fun

facecardsMagic tricks are fun. It could be because it is fun to be deliberately fooled and there’s the bonus we get when we figure out how and why we get fooled. I have spent long hours watching videos of magic tricks. An outstanding show is Penn & Teller’s “Fool Us” series. The format is standardized: magicians do their act, and then Penn & Teller have a shot at figuring out how the trick was done. If they can’t guess — if they get fooled — then the successful magician gets a trophy and gets to appear on P&T’s Las Vegas show.

Some of the acts are truly baffling. I marvel at the range of human creativity, talent and skill. It’s not mere harmless entertainment but it makes you think and learn something about human psychology. The art and science of misdirection is on full display. From it we can learn a lot about how not to get fooled when politicians, faux gurus and other charlatans chuck bullshit at us. Continue reading “Magic is Fun”

Planes

I like planes. My desktop background is invariably the picture of a plane. My favorite commercial jetliner is the Boeing 747.

Boeing 747 (Click on the picture to embiggen.)

Continue reading “Planes”

Open Thread — Ask me Anything

* Molly’s kitchen garden flowers

Been a few days since the last entry on the blog. To jump start this stalled system here’s an open thread. What’s on your mind?

The purple flowers on the left are from a friend’s kitchen garden in Westmont, IL. Click on the image to embiggen in a new tab. Below, just for fun, I’d like to present two quite unrelated videos. I imply nothing by the conjunction. I hope you get a laugh out of them. Continue reading “Open Thread — Ask me Anything”

Ask me anything – The disclaimers edition

Summary

Sky Map comes with no warranties! If you choose to use it to navigate the high seas and you hit an iceberg, it’s your responsibility. If you tell your kids that the bright thing in the sky is Jupiter and it turns out to be a UFO and you are subsequently kidnapped by aliens – not our responsibility. If your kids subsequently fail their science homework – not our responsibility. If it wipes all the data in your phone, including the photos of the UFO that were going to make you rich – not our responsibility. If it causes your phone to tear a hole in the fabric of space and time, OK – that one is on us. Any other calamities not listed above — not our responsibility. Don’t use it while driving or carrying scissors.

Continue reading “Ask me anything – The disclaimers edition”

There are 10 Kinds of People

Binary Numerals
Binary Numerals

A comp sci joke claims that there are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary numerals and those who don’t. Being a former computer science student myself, I find it tickles my funny bone. Continue reading “There are 10 Kinds of People”