Casual lunch at a casual dining restaurant, then gelato in the River Market. A nice stroll through the market and an easy ride home.
Here's something fun to do some weekend.Most people I know--even, in one case, a student I'm teaching this summer who is FROM there--would wonder, What would bring otherwise-sane people out there? To live, no less?I lived/worked in Liberal for about two and a half years, and it's true. At first blush, it appears that there is nothing but grass, sky and roadsigns in southwest Kansas.
But believe me, if you look more closely there is much more there. The tastes, textures and colors are there, but in much finer gradations than in urban areas. It's like comparing a subtle French-style wine to a bold-tasting Californian, or exploring the abstract and complex hues of a Mark Rothko.
I made a special point to switch from Letterman over to Leno last night to watch Carlin v. Coulter.
Taking a cue from comic genius Karl Pilkington, I bring you the latest edition of Monkey News:David Hammerstein is a Spanish Green who supports a Bill to accord rights to chimpanzees on the grounds that "their social and emotional needs are at the same level as handicapped people, small children, or the elderly and mentally impaired".Jones goes on to note the main argument of the other side is that 98 percent of the DNA of chimps and humans is identical.
That strikes me as a dangerous argument if applied in reverse and, although some of my best friends are primates, it is also entirely arbitrary. If chimps have rights, why not gorillas; if gorillas, why not monkeys; and if monkeys, why not mice or mynah birds? Certainly, all those creatures deserve respect - but where do we draw the line?
...the DNA responsible for powerful muscle proteins is also out of action in humans compared with chimps (to wrestle with our closest relative, whatever its rights, is always a mistake). A tea party organised by those African primates might also prove a risky experience, for they have a whole series of enzymes that detoxify poisons and allow them to eat plants that would be fatal to humans.Personally, I've always thought that chimps aren't very much like people. But there are some people who are very much like chimps.
In addition we are, compared with them, creatures of regrettably poor taste, for a whole series of DNA segments involved in gustatory experience have rusted away in Homo sapiens but survive in chimps. We smell, by the way, even worse.
Finally, we can start using the word gay pejoratively without the risk of being called a homophobe.HOW BRIGHT BECAME DULLNow, I don't mean to be gay about this whole thing. Don't want to belabor the point. But I can't wait to start calling all kinds of stuff gay.
- Believed to derive from Old French "gai", the Latin "gaius" or a Germanic source. Originally meant "carefree", "happy" or "bright and showy"
- From late 17th century acquired sexual connotation of "uninhibited by moral constraints"
- Gertrude Stein’s Miss Furr & Miss Skeene (1922) cited as first published reference to ambiguous sexuality
- Noel Coward pens tribute to dandies of the “gay Nineties” wearing green carnations in 1929 musical Bitter Sweet
- Used to describe foppish dress code, unattached men or bachelors until adopted by homosexuals themselves in 1960s
- Originally used as an adjective ("he is gay"), the word is adopted as singular noun ("I am the only gay in the village")
- Children and students use gay as shorthand for "rubbish" during 1990s
- Bloggers substitute "gay" for "boring" or "dull", reversing original meaning
