Some years ago, I posted Perfect Albums, which listed some music albums where I loved (not just liked) every song on the album. In my experience, that’s an exception to rule. Typically, I find an album has a few songs I love, a few I wouldn’t put on a playlist, and the rest are various shades of likeable.
Much longer ago, Folger’s Maxwell House coffee had the slogan, “Good to the last drop!” Caroming off the idea of Perfect Albums being rare and special, it occurred to me that TV shows that were “good to the last drop” — good throughout their run — are also rare and kinda special.
So, I made a list of some winners. And notable losers.
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8 Comments | tags: Black-ish, coffee, Elementary (TV series), Lucifer (TV series), MASH, The West Wing | posted in TV Tuesday
We’ve just now reached that point in Earth’s orbit known as Summer Solstice (June 20, 2024, 20:51 UTC, 3:51 PM local time). Welcome to summer!
I’m dog-sitting my pal Bentley until Saturday, so my attention is elsewhere than blogging right now. Hope you’re all having a good summer!
Leave a comment | tags: Solstice, summer, Summer Solstice | posted in Life
I was raised by a book-loving dad who passed on to me both the love of reading and the love of books. (He also passed on a love of maps, but that’s a story for another post.)
One of my dad’s lifelong goals was to publish books, and by a round-about path he ultimately accomplished that goal. As an old TV commercial has it, “And I got to help!” He began with a printshop that eventually grew to a (very, very) small boutique book publishing shop. We did maybe half-a-dozen books.
So, a love and respect for books has long been with me.
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5 Comments | tags: Agatha Christie, ebooks, Lawrence Block, Libby, library, reading | posted in Books, Life
I’ll be dog-sitting my little pal Bentley for a couple of weeks starting Tuesday, so I thought I should get this month’s edition of Friday Notes done early. By the time Bentley leaves, I’ll have only one Friday left in June.
Of course, big news at the end of last month. Guilty on all 34 felony counts. A whole new level of strangeness in politics. Even bigger news comes next month with sentencing. Will a President serve while serving time?
That it’s even a question we need to ask is astonishing.
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16 Comments | tags: deism, infinite temperature, John Baez, moon, morals and ethics, prayer, project management, realism, Substack, theism | posted in Friday Notes
It’s happy hour and you and a friend go out for drinks. The bar is serving a new drink that catches your eye, and you both order one. They’re served in martini glasses (which are upside down hollow cones) and look quite tasty (see picture).
More to the point here, the glasses look acceptably full. Not a lot of “headroom” between the top of the drink and the top of the glass. Your friend, a mathematician, bets you they can pour all of your drink into their glass without spilling a drop.
Should you take that bet?
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6 Comments | tags: cones, fun with numbers | posted in Math, Wednesday Wow
One of the more interesting sermons I heard during my last bout of churchgoing involved the notion that prayer wasn’t necessary because God knows what’s really in our hearts. Per the dogma of Christianity, that’s actually a true point. (Albeit perhaps a surprising one for a pastor to preach.)
It points out a key distinction between theism and deism. In the former, most religions, God is personally involved with us and hears our prayers (God’s responses have always been a different matter.) In the latter, God is not personally involved and doesn’t.
On the other hand, some see prayer as merely a form of meditation.
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12 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, belief, deism, Dualism, faith, prayer, Spinoza, theism | posted in Religion, Sunday Sermons
Bye-bye, TARDIS, bye-bye!
It’s TV Tuesday and time for another episode of channel surfing over what I’ve been watching on the TV machine. Speaking of which, I kind of miss channel surfing. It was fun seeing what else is on. (It’s how I stumbled on Little Big Town, now a favorite band.)
People with my (take your pick) interests, background, point of view, do not find most modern fare favorable. I’ve gone on about that plenty in the pages and years of this blog.
And that’s mostly what this post is, so caveat lector.
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6 Comments | tags: Doctor Who, Grown-ish, Jack Reacher, Leverage (TV series), Netflix, Star Trek, three-body problem | posted in TV Tuesday
In the Science Notes post published last Friday, I didn’t have room for the last article that caught my eye in recent issues of New Scientist. This article was, I thought, a bit different from the others and seemed to require its own post.
Firstly, it has a meaty heft and ties in with an old post of mine as well as some notes I have for a post I thought to call Stillness Redux (in reference back to that old post).
What’s ironic to me is how what the article offers as possible anodyne for modern life is very much the life I’ve lived since I began navigating my own course across life’s seas.
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11 Comments | tags: Science Notes, silence, stillness | posted in Society, Sunday Sermons
It’s Friday, and I have Notes, but they’re all Science Notes, so while this post (and any others of similar ilk that may follow) is in the spirit of Friday Notes, it comes from a different direction. Science from right field, so to speak, rather than the usual oddities from left field.
These Notes were originally meant as reminders to mention some cool science things to friends over burgers and beers (or whatever). But rather than tasty morsels for the few, why not for the many? (Or at least for a few more.)
So today, Science Notes (and some reactions):
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1 Comment | tags: AI, aircraft pilots, Black Labrador Retriever, burning iron, cosmology, dogs, Parker Solar Probe, positronic brain, Science Notes, toys | posted in Friday Notes, Science
In the last post, I mentioned a simple logic puzzle that I’d stumbled over while wandering around the interweb. Start with four glasses, in a row, all upright. The goal is, through a series of moves, to turn them all upside down. On each move, you flip three of the four glasses — up if down or down if up.
The goal is to end up with all four glasses upside-down in the least number of moves possible. It’s not hard to find the solution by trial and error, but it turns out there’s an underlying trick that not only solves it but solves it regardless of the number of glasses (where each move flips N-1).
Bonus: these solutions even look pretty — or at least symmetrical.
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11 Comments | tags: fun with numbers, logic games, logic puzzle | posted in From My Collection
Logos con carne 