Today I Learned

Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner, via Wikipedia.org Wile E Coyote  is one of my favourite Looney Tunes characters. I love the wonderfully absurd plans he comes up with in order to catch the Roadrunner. These range from such simple things as pulling the pin from a hand grenade, then throwing the pin, to ridiculously complicated, Rube Goldberg-like  plans (often with blueprints) that fail spectacularly. A common element of many of these plans is some product from Acme Corporation .

Mumble, from Happy Feet, via YouTube.com It seems obvious in retrospect. Look at the way penguins walk, then watch Happy Feet , and tap seems like the inevitable style for a dancing penguin. But maybe that’s just because of the masterful dancing (via motion capture) by the amazingly talented Savion Glover  (who was also co-choreographer). For any not familiar with him, Glover got his start on Broadway at age 11, appeared on Sesame Street in his teens, and was called “possibly

Escalator, via Wikimedia Commons Whew! So, I CAN spell. I was worried. On the 1-Nov-2025 October Recap  of Cybersecurity Today, I heard something I found very interesting, and decided to look for more information. On investigation, I discovered that the panel consisted of host Jim Love, David Shipley of “Boer on Securities”, and Laura Payne of “White TOK”. Uh, no. Obviously AI-generated, so I dug a bit deeper. David Shipley is actually the CEO (or “head of the pack”) at Beauc

Nachtmahr (“The Nightmare”), by Johann Heinrich Füssli TIL that the German translation of the word “nightmare” is “alptraum”, which led me to the wonderful painting above. While “ alp ” is the German cognate of the English word “elf”, the creature in question bears little resemblance to the Tolkienian Elves most of us are familiar with. Instead, they appear to be more closely associated with the vampire, or incubus, and attack sleeping people, either by giving them “elf dream

Pac-Man Fever, by Buckner & Garcia, via Wikipedia A Pac-Man song? I should not have found that surprising, but I did. Originally called...

Star Trek Title Sequence – Original Pilot – via YouTube Probably everyone has heard the iconic line: “Space: The Final Frontier.” I hear...

42 and Douglas Adams – Numberphile, via YouTube I suppose it’s not surprising that I’ve mentioned The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy...

Life of Brian – “I’m not”, via YouTube Even though I’ve seen it about a dozen times over the years, there’s always something new to learn...

Recently-calibrated reference dog “Consciousness consists of morphogenetic fields of quantum energy. ‘Quantum’ means a redefining of the...

The Knife performing at Melt! Festival in 2013 Connections are fun, and humans are very good at making them. Let’s start at the end, and...

elconomeno@email.com , CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Once upon a time, there was a hacker called “XXXX”. Really! Well, sorta. This is a...

Tux, the Linux Mascot, via Wikipedia This is Tux . He is a penguin. He’s also the official mascot of the Linux kernel , which is the...

Artificial Intelligence, via Wikimedia Commons “People grow through experiences, if they meet life honestly and courageously. That is how...

Cover art for “Apt.” by the artist Rosé and Bruno Mars, via Wikipedia When I first heard APT , I thought it was great that there was a...