Two commemorations today.
First, and most important, this Veterans Day we honor the men and women who have defended our country, while the Commonwealth celebrates Remembrance Day. Specifically, we commemorate the end of the Great War, ninety four years ago today.
Second, we celebrate International Nigel Tufnel Day, who showed us what it means to go to 11.
- Two of my Duke classmates;
- Crystal Bowersox;
- Snow (which, in the last five minutes, has disappeared in favor of crystal clear blue skies); and
- An aggressive batch of chicken soup that, about an hour and a half ago, destroyed my laptop.
Three out of four is, all things considered, a good average.
Singer Kina Grannis has released a new video that used 280,000 Jelly Bellies and took her nearly two years to make:
As a plus, it's a catchy song with not one but two ear-worms in it. (Watch for the second one.)
A British plastic surgeon recently announced his findings after a months-long investigation of a particularly British institution:
It sounds almost like parody – a top consultant plastic surgeon spends three months studying models appearing on Page 3 of a bestselling British red-top newspaper. Later this month he reveals his findings: the mathematical proportions of the perfect breast.
This year [Patrick Mallucci, Consultant Plastic Surgeon at University College London and the Royal Free Hospitals,] conducted a three-month study to pinpoint the exact factors that make a woman’s breasts attractive. Titled Concepts In Aesthetic Breast Dimensions: Analysis Of The Ideal Breast, Mallucci’s study analysed the breasts of 100 topless models.
Thank you, Andrew Sullivan, for bringing this to the fore.
I'm in San Antonio on business. I brought The Rogue with me, and this week's Economist. Unfortunately, I finished both on the flight down.
Worse, I left my Kindle at home.
Fortunately, there's a Barnes & Noble just a short distance away.
Because what I really need right now is more books.
From reader DC, I present...Dog:
And for those who were never children, "Ralph" is the mouse with the motorcycle.
Forty five years ago today, Simon and Garfunkel released Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme. "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," "The Dangling Conversation," "7 O'Clock News"—you can hear the '60s happening right on your iPod.
Which is, in fact, what I am about to do.
The women's leaders, Ethiopian Ejegayehu Dibaba, 29, and Russian Liliya Shobukhova, 33, run past the 9 km point during today's Chicago Marathon:
7:58 am CDT today, ISO-400, f/5 at 1/400, 55mm, here.
At this writing Shobukhova is in the lead on a 5:17 pace with Dibaba 56 seconds behind her at the 30 km timing pad.
And she has followers:
Owing to the unceasing rain over the weekend, we visited a couple of museums while in Montréal, including the Musée des Beaux Arts:
My friend particularly wanted to see the exhibit on Jean-Paul Gaultier, the clothing designer whose work I only knew from The Fifth Element. I confess, I did not understand much of the work. This, for example, completely eluded me, though it looks kind of cool:
(That one comes with webbed pumps.)
That's the point of a museum, though: to get exposure to things you wouldn't normally encounter. Still, next time I visit Montréal, I hope to see the sun at least once.