Category Archives: Reading

“This Kenmore side-by-side refrigerator would be a great addition to any kitchen. Includes deep crisper drawers, wonderful door storage, and plenty of shelves for all your food needs. The freezer compartment has a slide-out basket in addition to door storage, so that you can stock up on freezer items and save your family money. This Kenmore refrigerator would be a great addition to any home.”

–Product description.  Kenmore side-by-side refrigerator.  Sears.  July 2012. Web.

“Today, in a special seminar held at CERN, the two collaborations operating large multipurpose detectors,CMS and ATLAS, presented new and convincing signals from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that could be coming from the Higgs boson.

This fundamental particle was predicted nearly fifty years ago in the framework of the Standard Model, the theoretical model that describes just about everything observed so far in the world of particle physics. Without the Higgs boson, this model however failed to explain how particles acquired their mass.”

–Pauline Gagnon. “New Baby Boson Is Born, Weighing in at about 126 GEV.” Quantum Diaries. July 4, 2012.  Web.

” . . .  state legislatures tend to move with the speed and agility of hobbled zombies; for instance, it remains entirely illegal for someone who has participated in a duel to hold public office in West Virginia.  Which unfortunately means that the Mountain State will never be governed by an Immortal from Highlander.”

–Brendan L. Koerner.”Dear Mr. Know-It-All.”  Wired July 2012: 26, 30. Quote on page 30.

“. . . Charles described an incident that had occurred in the bar when Hemingway and Fitzgerald were having a nightcap [at the Paris Ritz]. A beautiful young woman came in on the arm of an elderly gentlemen, and Scott sent a groom to fetch a box of orchids, which he then sent to the lady with his compliments. The young lady promptly sent the orchids back to Fitzgerald, who, in his moment of rejection, took one out and slowly ate it, petal by petal. Later that night, Fitzgerald returned to the bar, this time with the young beauty in tow. The bar regulars were very impressed and thereafter referrred to the maneuvers as ‘the orchid ploy’.”

–A. E. Hotchner. “A Legend as Big as the Ritz.” Vanity Fair July 2012:  132-146. Quote on page 141.

“[Benny, Jackson’s cat,] would walk into the living room, look around, and look at himself–literally take stock, his paws, his tail–and his bewilderment was palpable. It was as if Benny, bus driver and eternal bachelor, had hit his well-worn La-Z-Boy, tired from his ten-hour shift, eaten a Swanson’s Hungry-Man and fallen asleep, fork in hand, only to wake up curled in a donut bed next to a dying fern, his nose in his own ass. He walks out to the living room, trying to shake off a bad dream he’s already left behind, and freezes in realization: ” . . . a cat? I’m a freaking cat?”  The talk flicks of its own accord and he jumps.  He tries, unsuccessfully, to navigate a world with four legs, paws, and claws.  He takes a step, examines his new body.  He looks around the room from a vantage point he’s never experienced before.  He wants to get to a mirror pronto to see what the hell is going on, but the only one is above the bathroom sink.  With his left rear leg still obviously causing a problem, there was no way he was going to jump from the floor to the sink just so he could witness the horror.  He dragged the leg behind him and would often whip back in midstride and gnaw at it like it was an unwelcome visitor, grooming it obsessively like if he could just give it a bath it wouldn’t be so annoying.”

–Jackson Galaxy and Joel Derfner. Cat Daddy. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin, 2012.  Quote of pages 78-89.

“Walter Tschinkel may not have solved the mystery of the fairy circles, but he can tell you that they’re alive. Tens of thousands of the formations — bare patches of soil, 2 to 12 meters in diameter — freckle grasslands from southern Angola to northern South Africa, their perimeters often marked by a tall fringe of grass. Locals say they’re the footprints of the gods. Scientists have thrown their hands up in the air. But now Tschinkel, a biologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, has discovered something no one else has.”

–Rachel Nuwer.  “Mysterious Fairy Circles Are ‘Alive’.”  Wired News ScienceNow  June 28, 2012. Web.