Every year, my personal physician wants to drain blood out of me for testing. I oblige and the results, so far, have been excellent. On the other hand, my visit to the phlebotomist — the one who draws my blood — makes me ill at ease. Since I’ve never been a diabetic or a junkie, jelly popping needles into my blood vessels isn’t something I’m comfortable with. It’s not that…
The other day, my cousin Wayne — who, by his own admission, is a very religious man — told me I’d go to hell because of the language I use. He was half serious and half right. I do use language that could get me in trouble. Let me explain. The podcast broadcast you’re listening to is designated as “explicit” on iTunes. One definition for the word “explicit” is “precisely…
I’ve waved it, hung it, and ran it up a pole. I’ve “pledged allegiance” to it — to freedoms that include the right to criticize and to think freely. The American flag is a symbol of my government — a fabric rectangle, red, white, blue, stars and stripes — the representation, but not the foundation, on which we stand. Anyone can fly the flag and anyone can hide behind it.
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Mike, and Mahler talk about Jack Dorsey’s crypto crash, compound eyes, catalytic converters, sinkholes in Alaska, In the Night Kitchen, Barnes & Noble, guns, ganja, typeface prohibitions, Loch Ness, and so on.
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Mike, and Mahler talk about invisible art, trophy animals, the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker, saving water, your father the rapist, the San Bernardino County sheriff’s marijuana pay-off, forged COVID cards, the Santa Ana Police copyright infringement trap, bull testicles, and so on.
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Mike, and Mahler talk about the Drunken Monkey, Darwin’s notebooks, laying eggs, Monkey Queen redux, the BirdBot, a river’s liver, marine snow, houses out-earning humans, child marriages, wired baseball, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, meatballs, and so on.
I like crows not because of James O’Barr, Brendon Lee, Carlos Castaneda or Irish cock and bull mythology. It’s not because of the crow’s “nevermore” reputation, their association with a staged dark underworld, either — a spooky crow profile unfairly earned during the plague, when crows plucked the eyes from the dead. As well they should. It was good eating — food on the run. Eyes of corpses are hassle-free…
The 2010 Applied Brilliance Conference in Ojai, California featured talks on Resilience and Revolution. Among the presenters were Adam Gazzaley, director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of California; E.C. Krupp, Director of Griffith Observatory; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, electronic artist; Mark Kingwell, author of the national bestseller Nearest Thing to Heaven; Saul Griffith the Chief Scientist at Other Lab; and Nathan Callahan, who spoke on The Open Air Museum,…
A sleepy-eyed early-morning riser retrieving the morning paper in her bathrobe stands bow-legged, slack-mouth stunned. A driver of a Toyota van brakes abruptly to a stop — blocking an intersection. Ignoring my 7 a.m. walk through central Irvine, the group lopes down the middle of the street (one with a sideways glance). In close formation, their tongues dangling, they pass the community clubhouse, the pool, the tennis courts and the…
