Saturday Smiles

I'm sure we've had faux deliveries like this

Friday Smirk

The lads interact with one of the latest AI gizmos, apparently this is a real thing, for $1.99 per minute you can in fact interact with "AI Jesus"! I can see the attraction for the gullible, at least this Jesus is real and actually answers your questions. 

Make it so..

Sad news this evening, Patrick Stewart died yesterday at his home in LA. Actor Stewart was well known for many things, classic theatre roles, Marvel movies and, probably his most pivotal role, Captain Picard in Star Trek (the next generation) both TV series and movies. Star Trek may be seen by many as pop corn TV but millions loved it and enjoyed the whole intellectual space and ideas contained within the many incarnations of it, it was more than just another TV series. Stewart was 86 (I hadn't realised he was that old) so I guess he had a "good innings" but a world without Captain Picard? The end of an era for sure, hopefully the media powers that be will consider re-running some of his work, particularly STNG, make it so!

Maple Memories

Back in 2011 we took our kids to Canada's wonderful West coast, flying into Vancouver we toured around venturing as far as Seattle in the USA, Vancouver Island and up to Whistler in the Rockies. It was a great trip with lots of wildlife viewing and adventure activities. On one of our nature expeditions we spotted a Black Bear, quite common in those parts but very exciting for city and town dwellers like us! I snapped the picture above from a rib in one of the inlets around Quadra Island, as the bear was foraging the shoreline for scraps (dead salmon probably) A majestic place to visit, we must get back there sometime!

Midweek Mirth

 

One of my favourites.

Margate Memories

 

Back in 2022 we took a trip down to the Kent coast to visit with some friends who live in Deal, we decided to make a weekend of it and stayed down there. On one of the days we took the train up to Margate for the day and visited the Turner Contemporary art museum there and had fish and chips on the sea front! It was November but the weather was glorious, and the light was somehow different, I snapped the picture above to show the strangeness of it. I can see why it was one of J.M.W. Turner's favourite places to paint, well, that and he had a mistress there apparently, I guess we're all human.

London Stories

While walking through Bloomsbury (London) the other week I spotted this sign on the wall of a rather regal looking building, I thought that it must be an old sign as Homoeopathy is something that's been long debunked. How wrong I was, a bit of subsequent Googling and I learn that this is indeed a hospital and belongs to the NHS! These days it has been renamed "the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine" (whatever that means?) and stopped providing NHS-funded homeopathic remedies as late as 2018! In my mind 2018 is many decades too late, think of all those mislead people sincerely hoping to find a cure for their ailments and being given this nonsense (i.e. sugar water) Sadly I think this place is still offering sugar water except these days it's in the form of things like acupuncture, hopefully the other things they do are based on a little harder evidence base.

I often wonder why people fall for this quackery, I guess if you're suffering and can't find relief then you'll try anything, but you really have to wonder why people don't question why this kind of thing is called "Alternative Medicine", after all if it actually worked reliably then it would simply be called "Medicine".

Italian Memories

Back in Summer 2017 we took the kids to Italy. We toured around Tuscany, arriving into Pisa, then to Florence and down to Chianti then back to Pisa and home. It was a great trip and the teenagers were just old enough to appreciate the cultural aspects as well as the beach and the swimming pool. We must return sometime, the wine, food and even beer were outstanding.