A Large Regular

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- VDH on the 2024 Presidential Election. He fails to mention RFK Jr. and how his campaign could siphon off a significant amount of Biden supporters.

- You learn something new every day.

- Allman Brothers' Dickie Betts has passed aged 80. 

- The scaffolding is coming down off Notre Dame de Paris. The cathedral is scheduled to reopen to the public in December.

American and comedy icon Bob Newhart just turned 93 on Monday. He's a greatly underrated national treasure in my eyes.

He's also the consummate Chicago Cubs fan (great John Belushi story). 

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"The quest for good explanations is, I believe, the basic regulating principle not only of science, but for the enlightenment generally." - David Deutsch

"Nothing in life is to be feared it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." - Marie Curie

"I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head." - Theodore Roosevelt

"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth." - Daniel Kahneman

"We are the killer bees. Give us all your honey!" - John Belushi

"What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact." - Warren Buffett

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

It seems to me that the new PC culture infecting SNL means that current and future generations will never get the benefit of great comedy like John Belushi's Samurai Night Fever and other Samurai centric skits... Heh Heh... Going into the season Tom Brady was 20-1 to win the NFL MVP. After the trade for Antonio Brown and the Pats hot start Brady's odds are down to 5-1 (Pat Mahomes is still the favorite at 3-1)... This past week Hamza Bin Laden, son of Osama Bin Laden and high ranking al Qaeda leader was killed by the US military. You'd think this would be bigger story but the media has different priorities... The attacks on the Saudi oil plants did not really affect US oil prices (thank you fracking and energy independence) or impact our economy but I wonder what the impact the attacks had on China's economy. They are the largest importer of Saudi oil ($29.1 billion per year)...

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Ultimate Spinach would be a good name for a new cryptocurrency or a new strain of medical marijuana... They don't make athletes like they used to... Do female centaurs wear bras? Now that I've put that image in your head... Kids today don't know some of the simple pleasures in life - like rocking on through to Electric Avenue... They say that Saint Augustine did something very bad as a youth and it was his guilt that turned him to Christianity. There's no way though that what he did was worse than the re-make of Murder on the Orient Express... For the record I did not order the code red. You're goddamn right I didn't... "A million Marines could not take Tawara in a 100-years," a Japanese Admiral shortly before the US Marines took Tawara in three days... According to the Bible, Noah's Ark would have been about half the size of the Titanic. Good thing Noah didn't hit any icebergs...

John Belushi would have turned 70-years old today.

My heart thinks of what might have been. Though my brain says there's no way he would have made it to 70.

The Not-So Killer G's

We are the killer bees. Give us all your honey! - John Belushi from a 1976 SNL skit

My buddy Bill pointed out to me that 7 of the 15 players that Kansas City used yesterday had last names that began with the letter G. When he mentioned that to me I made a crack about the "not-so killer G's".

As I reflect I think a better crack would have been a Sesame Street slant of "this loss brought to you by the letter G."