Not Drinking Dinosaur Piss

I was told, as a child, that no new water has been created since the Earth was formed. As the Firesign boys used to say, “Everything you know is wrong.” The Earth is a closed system, so we breathe the oxygen the dinosaurs did.

The water on the Earth today is conserved via the water cycle; additionally, hydrogen and oxygen are constantly recombining to create new water. Most scientists believe that water was brought to the Earth by the massive swarms of comets which hit the planet in its first billion years.

Tom Rush Observes Time

“It occurred to me in the middle of the night last night that, pretty much every time I opened an eye to look at my watch, the hands were overlapping. I then spent too much time trying to figure out just when that would happen. It was exhausting, and I gave up and went back to sleep. But this morning I went to my old friend, the Interwebs, and asked. (Now I see why it was exhausting!)  

“The hour and minute hands of an analog clock overlap exactly 22 times in a 24-hour day. While they seem to overlap at every hour interval, the minute hand moves faster than the hour hand, causing the overlaps to occur roughly every 65 minutes and 27 seconds, rather than every 60 minutes.”  

That works out to 12:00:00 Midnight, 1:05:27,  2:10:55, 3:16:22, 4:21:49, 5:27:16, 6:32:44, 7:38:11, 8:43:38, 9:49:05, 10:54:33. The 11 AM overlap happens at noon.”

I’m Chevy Chase And You’re Not

CNN showed a documentary about the famously testy comedian, including a present-day interview. This is a clear example of the TV version of a “hold for release obituary” (I have already written mine). It will take 10 minutes and a $5 pair of scissors (metaphorically) to cut this into a television obit. Certainly every news outlet that hasn’t refreshed their Chase obit will be dusting them off and borrowing footage.

My favorite Chase quote appeared in the late, lamented Premiere Magazine, which had a pull quote of Chase, reacting to a script: “Fuck it. I’m too old and too rich to be bothered.” And that was 40 years ago.