Crypto-Catholics - Sun Worshippers at the Winter Solstice?

Every year around Daylight Savings Time in the fall and the time change leaving it in the spring I notice that the sign shines so brightly through the stain glassed window at our church, Immaculate Heart of Mary, that whole sections of the pews are unoccupied because parishioners would be starring straight into bright sunlight only partially filtered by the glass. I have a long term project to map those areas of the church but I need to get in there...

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Snow chairs, pillows and blankets

Snow piled up 17 inches high makes interesting "snow chairs"The snow on the rocks in the creek makes it look like snow pillows have been placed gently in the creek.Snow blankets cover the rocks near the waterfall on Shellpot Cre...

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GR8 FOOD license plate in Pennsylvania

I have seen this Toni Roni truck twice this week on the way to work. It's got it all, an appropriate personalized license plate, GR8 FOOD, a slogan with a double entendre, and a franchise offer so that you can be a part of the experience.Anybody want to go into business with ...

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Waterfall on raging Shellpot Creek

This video confirms that after that night of rain that Shellpot Creek is almost as high as it has ever been this year.  It is interesting to watch and it roars when it is this hi...

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Shellpot Creek was a raging torrent this morning.

I would say that after that night of rain that Shellpot Creek is almost as high as it has ever been this year. It is interesting to watch and it roars when it is this high.I will try to post some video later. I have been trying to do so all d...

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Shellpot Creek is a raging torrent today

I think that after last night's rain that the creek behind the house is almost as high as it has ever been this year. It is roaring tod...

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Upstream of the waterfall on raging Shellpot Creek

Upstream of the water fall today was so high that the water draining from across the street down the ditch I had dug to the creek was held up. The creek isn't quite down hill today so the yard isn't draini...

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More video of the raging Shellpot Creek

I tried to pan the camera downstream of the creek so that you can see the extent of the torre...

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Waterfall on raging Shellpot Creek

I would say that after that night of rain that Shellpot Creek is almost as high as it has ever been this year. It is interesting to watch and it roars when is is this hi...

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Picking against the spread in football (is difficult)

This year I am participating in a football pool where you must pick the team that win against the spread for each week. It is much harder than picking the winning team because the spread is supposed to even out the betting money on each side is the wisdom of the crowd opinion of the score difference that has the favorite beating it 50% of the time and losing 50% of the time. I compiled the results up to week 12 of the current season.It hovers around...

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Ultra Final Jeopardy - an answer without a clue

Ultra Final Jeopardy is when you guess the final answer knowing only the category and not the clue. Last night the final category was "Political Nonfiction" and I immediately said "All the President's Men", because, what else could it be. Then the clue came up - This book begins "June 17, 1972, nine o'clock Saturday morning". What else could it be but a book, that book, about Watergate. I was very pleased with myself.I have gotten some other...

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Close up of the plastic flag

A closeup of the Plastic American flag by Amy Orr. Here you can really see the credit cards that make up the central plastic part of the desi...

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American Flag in plastic

An American Flag in plastic from the Amy Orr Plastic Culture exhibit at the DCCA. This piece is made of credit cards and flags. She carefully shows that the flags were made in Chi...

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Obama: Hope in Plastic

Obama: Hope in Plastic 2009 by Amy Orr at the Plastic Culture exhibit at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art. I hope that you can see that this copy of Shepard Fairey's copy of an AP photo is made of variously colored credit car...

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Ghostbusters with equipment at Philcon

These Ghostbusters at Philcon had really good costumes. These crappy treo pix don't do justice to the flashing lights, switches and the detail of these costumes.They were trading costuming and repurposing electronic toys hints with the Pennsylvania Jedi Society. I asked to take a picture since they had put the Ghostbusters theme into my he...

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Ghostbusters Truck at Philcon

Saw this Ghostbusters decked out truck at Philcon in Cherry Hill New Jersey tod...

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Compact Car Only or unless you can't read

These spaces in north Wilmington are notoriously small, so they are correctly labelled "Compact Car Only". I can only conclude that adult illiteracy is still a big problem as the driver of this black pickup truck has failed to follow these instructions. The act is made more agregious by the fact that his tailget has one of those extensions on it, filled with sod, that only makes the truck even longer and more inappropriate for the space. If a...

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Creepy eyeball left over Halloween candy

Still encountering leftover Haloween candy like this creepy eyeball. It's creepy but I ate it anyway, because it was chocola...

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Fledging sparrows at the end of summer

Towards the end of summer we noticed that some birds had built a nest in the large flower pots that we have on our front porch, but never really saw any birds in it. In early September at the end of summer, all of the sudden the House Sparrows that had hatched were ready to fledge. I captured what appeared to be two babies and two parents during the first flight event. Ah, the wonders of natu...

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The Trouble with "V"

We watched the highly-anticipated "V" this past week. I must not willingly suspend my disbelief any more or have lost my senswunda because I couldn't watch the pilot episode (or most TV for that matter) without picking holes in the plot and science. I understand that science must be stretched to accommodate an ostensible science fictional show, but stretch it too far, or perhaps the character's in the show response to it and I think you start to...

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How often does the winner of the third game win the World Series after a split first two games.

As I noticed searches landing on my earlier posts about World Series probabilities, I noticed that fans are asking "How often does the team that wins the third game of the World Series win the whole thing". From history that chance is 68%, from a simulation in which it assumed that either team has a 50% chance of winning a game it is 65%. A better questions relates to the current situation going into tonight's World Series game. If the teams split the first two games, how often does the winner of the third game go on to win the series? In history,...

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How often does the first team to win a game win the World Series if they lose the second game?

After last night's loss of the Phillies to the Yankees the World Series is tied one game to one game. I thought that I could update the information from yesterday on the probability that the team that wins the first game of the World Series wins the whole series.Now the question is "What is the probability that the team that wins the first game of the series and loses the second wins the World Series?" A review of 100 years or so of World series data (plus looking at each series on wikipedia) shows that 50% of the time the teams in the World...

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How often does the winner of the first game win the World Series

The Fox announcers off-handedly mentioned after the Phillies first game win that the team that won the first game of the World Series has gone on to win the Series in the past six years. I wondered if this was an interesting statistic or an obvious one. If you think about it, once a team wins one game of the series they only have to win three more games, where as there opponent must win four to win. Winning the first game has an inherent obvious...

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Caterpillars

At the end of September, I noticed some large banded and spotted caterpillars finishing off the last of the parsley in the garden.There were about five caterpillars.They crawled up and down the stems denuding the plants of any leaves. When the y got the end of a stalk they would get confused and then turn around and start down again.I thought that these might be Monarch Butterfly caterpillars, but a search at this site revealed that these are likely...

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You are reading the polls and this chart incorrectly

TYWKIWDBI presents a chart aggregating polls from Pollster.com which seems to indicate that the Democrats and Republicans are losing voters who are becoming independent. Here is TYWKIWDBI's repost of the Pollster chart:That conclusion can only be made if you actually ignore the points (besides the fact the the X axis labels are lost). Pollster has plunked a solid line which appears to be the average of the data from all of these polls. That's...

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I SK8 license plate in Delaware

I think this woman skates, as evidenced by the I SK8 license and the SK8 sticker. The question is ice skating, roller blading, skateboards or roller derby. Roller Derby would be co...

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FAT license plate in Delaware

I didn't notice that the driver of this Toyota truck with a FAT license was particularly overweight. Perhaps FAT is meant as slang meaning go...

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Steampunk or wood punk old-fashioned Saw Mill running at the Upper Peninsula State Fair

I took these videos of the saw mill that they usually have running at the Michigan Upper Peninsula State Fair in Escanaba, Michigan, when we were there on vacation this past August. The saw mill runs using a power take-off (PTO) from an old steam engine driven tractor. All day long these guys cut huge tree trunks into usable lumber. I heard that people with lumber from their property sometimes wait until the fair so they can cut sawn boards from this mill, for authenticity's sake for their cabins or old buildings.The circular saw is huge, it...

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Risk of H1N1 flu vaccine blown out of proportion, and bringing out the crazies

My response to the bad science and statistic going around about getting the H1N1 flu vaccine. Due to this tweet. From 7 reasons to Avoid the Swine Flu Vaccination especially for Children:She starts with this crazy disclaimer:I do not vaccinate and believe there are many many good reasons for that choice. As a mother of four grown children I faced the decision as a parent, which can be very difficult in our vaccine culture. I have four very healthy children, young adults, who have never been vaccinated. They do not have the allergies, asthma or...

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Preserve us from previous homeowners - three inaccessible electrical junction boxes

Someone please save me from previous homeowners. I, of course, always follow the electrical code and do perfect work whenever I do any electrical work in any of the houses that I have owned, but those guys that owned the houses before me, what do they know?We are renovating the second floor bathroom and are to the point where the floor is up, and the walls that had tile on them are out (all done by Lynn, it is really her renovation), which gives...

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Lascivious Croatian Chicken beckons to you from the spit

A picture didn't do justice to the lascivious movement of the chickens slowly turning on the spit at the Michigan Upper Peninsula State Fair back in August, so I captured a video. Watch how the chickens turn and each flap of a wing or kick of a leg as they turn seems to beckon you to eat more delicious rotisserie chicken.This booth had Croatian chicken, which appears to be spit rotisseried chicken, but with extra spices and a crispy skin and I am sure extra fat and butter somehow cooked into it. It was so good that we had it for lunch that day...

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LCROSS to crash into the moon on Friday morning

Howard reminds me that LCROSS is scheduled to impact the moon on Friday.Astronomy Service Slooh Will Let You Watch The LCROSS Impact Live On October 9 at 7:30am EDT."The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite will hit the moon to created a crater 14 meters in diameter and 2 meters deep. The resulting analysis will help assess how large bodies will damage planets along with an assessment of current water levels in the moon. Plus it involves...

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Nice parking job

The inconsiderate driver in the black SUV parked their car across the line in a double parking space so no one could park in front of or behind them. Very jerky considering the parking lot was full to capacity as it was during a children's consignment sale.Not to be deterred the person in the red car parked in the space in front of the jerk anyway. I can't really blame them as I thought of parking there myself. What I really wanted to do was park...

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Pink Floyd fan in Delaware

This PKFLYD license plate in Delaware declares the owner to be a true fan.I just want to know, which one is Pi...

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New website design

I am thinking of doing this to the website, what do you think?The new honest hypocrite.(via MattHearn.c...

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AQUMINI license in Delaware

Not sure what AQUMINI is supposed to stand for on this Delaware license plate but I have never seen a Q on a Delware license before so I captured it in a photograph.This license also declares it self to be a centenial license plate 1909-2009, but I am not sure what centenial it is celebrating, maybe of the DMV.Speculations from the cro...

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Venn diagram of Baseball team names and origins

This fascinating diagram of Major League Baseball team names groups them together by type and origin.There are more links with the origins of the team names at FlipFlopFlyBall.com. The name origin of "Phillies" is obvious, but did you know the Detroit Tigers are names after the Detroit Light Guard military unit, known as "The Tigers." So they are only named after an animal because what they were named for was named after an animal.(via Neatorama,...

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Magenta Screen of Death?

I have heard of the blue screen of death, and like everyone I have, very rarely, had my computer reset suddenly, but has anyone ever heard of the magenta screen of death?Every so often my computer screen suddenly goes blank and shows one color like this, one time it was bright green. The hard drive light blinks still so I suspect that the computer us still working but the video output is broken. Turning the monitor off and on doesn't fix it, and...

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