ABSOLUTELY USELESS INFORMATION
(Not my own work, I regret to say, but, hey, we've got to share this sort of thing around)

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. (Hardly seems worth it.)

If you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb. (Now that's more like it!)

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet. (O.M.G.!)

A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.
(In my next life, I want to be a pig.)

A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
(Creepy.) (I'm still not over the pig.)

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
(Do not try this at home... maybe at work.)

The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
("Honey, I'm home. What the....?!")

The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
(30 minutes... lucky pig... can you imagine??)

The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
(What could be so tasty on the bottom of a pond?)

Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
(I still want to be a pig in my next life...quality over quantity)

Butterflies taste with their feet.
(Something I always wanted to know.)

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.
(If you're ambidextrous, do you split the difference?)

Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.
(OK, so that would be a good thing....)

A cat's urine glows under a black light.
(I wonder who was paid to figure that out?)

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
(I know some people like that.)

Starfish have no brains.
(I know some people like that too.)

Polar bears are left-handed.
(If they switch, they'll live a lot longer.)

Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
(What about that pig??)

I suspect that blogging is a bit like taking pictures of your first grandchild. You just about have a camera welded to your fingers for the first couple of years. Then the passion gets slowly less, and you take rather fewer photos, until, by the time you get to my age (62), you can go 10 years and never have your photo taken. So, in my initial enthusiasm for blogging, all sorts of stuff is likely to get recorded, but eventually, it might be refined into something a bit more coherent.

If you ask a kid what colour the sky is, they'll look at you as if you're crazy, and say something like, "duh; blue". And they'd be right - most of the time. But not this evening, when the sun went down, and the sky in the east faded to a pale, pale blue, and then into apricot. And floating in the middle of it was a big fat full moon. Now, that's eternity - people saw that beauty and mystery 10,000 years ago, and they'll do the same in 10,000 years time - that is, if we don't do something fundamentally insane in the meantime. Which is all too likely - are you reading this, Dubya?

Haiku No. 1

A moment of joy.
I can hear my friend calling
From behind the golden sunset.

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Sometimes I need some inspiration for my thoughts, so if I use a stanza from the Rubbaiyat, it will (should) at least keep me going for 75 posts.

I'm a morning person myself, and can function almost immediately after waking up - although I do better after the first cup of coffee. Mornings aren't the problem but sleep is. At least, getting enough so that I don't feel like a zombie by 7.30 in the evening is. And playing catch-up sleep is no great fun.

I love that idea of the sultan's turret being caught in "a noose of light". Can't you just see the sun rising behind the dome of some eatern palace with a shining halo all around a gilded turret? Beautiful.

"Truth is beauty, beauty truth. Tis all ye know on earth and all ye need to know".