Tickling; Robots; Ghazal Poetry; Good Samaritan; Foreign Language Accent Syndrome

HOT... my poor plants are begging for water.  I thought that Hermine would give us a lot... but she decided to avoid us.  So, I gave them a bunch... but one set of plants looks pitiful.  I think it's some kind of flowers, but it's probably just weeds so that is ok.

Here are a couple of things I found in the New York Times magazine this Sunday:

Tickling

"Unpredictability is the key element of tickling, which is why you cannot tickle yourself." Says Malia Wollan.    Now.. just think about that! 

Intelligent Machines

Lots of information ... especially about the funny machine that seems to think for itself and against you.  You activate a switch on a box.... in a couple of seconds,  the top of the box opens a little, and a long finger (not Trump's) reaches out of the box, grabs the switch, and shuts it off; thereby closing the box.  Stasis has been achieved.

By the way, the word "robot" comes from the Czech word robota, which means "forced labor."  I didn't know that!



Strange Poem, at Least to Me

Matthew Zapruder says that a poem by Kyle Dargan titled:  Points of Contact is"a ghazal, a lyric poem, often sung, which originated more thatn 1,000 years ago on the Arabian Peninsula.  A repeating phrase is used at the end of each second line of a couplet."

Here a few couplets from the poem:

"Name one revolution whose inception was unlike a fist.
Factions disparate, then tucked together -- coiled like a fist."

"The heart is a one-man rave in the body's industrial district.
Blooddrunk and insomniac, it pumps toward sleep like a fist."

"Our universe's yet shattered mysteries fear the astrophysicist.
'Damn his galaxies-thick glasses, his mind, relentless like a fist.'"

I really like this poem, even though I've screwed things up by choosing a few lines rather than showing the whole poem.  Just think about the word pictures that Kyle paints:

the blooddrunk heart

his galaxies-thick glasses

From the Funny Times

Chuck Shepherd writes about the "weird,"  including the following:

Even Good Samaritans Must Pay

Derrick Deanda, passing a car crash, jumped out and rescued a man and three children trapped in the wreckage.  A paramedic arrived later and noticed that Derrick had cut himself when he broke the car window to save the family.  So, he bandaged him.  Later, the hospital sent Derrick a bill for first aid services rendered to him at the crash site.

Foreign Language Accent Syndrome

Two new cases of this weird "disease" have recently popped up.  One 50 year old Italian got hit in the head and now speaks "constantly in emphatic, error-prone French".... and a lady from Rosenberg, Texas, awoke from surgery "inexplicably speaking in a British accent"  especially since her prior version of English was a thick Texas accent.  There are about 100 people in the world who have this affliction.

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