This is one of the freakiest videos I've seen in ages. It's the rescue of a guy at Niagara Falls. The guy is standing on a rock in about three feet of water in the middle of the river (above the falls), a few feet from the falls.

The video never explains how he got there. On watching it I was amazed he was never swept over the falls....

[link]

Hey, if you are the offended party and you're trying to forgive on Yom Kippur, does that also require interpersonal contact, like if you've hurt somebody? Do you have to go to that person and say, hey, you really hurt me but I forgive you?

People sometimes do that. It's a very good time to try to clear the air with a person you were not in good terms with, to try to reconcile fights and arguments, to start over, turn a clean new page, all that. It's sometimes called (um, other than "the terrible days") "a season of good will", and in many ways, people try to use this as a first-step and a making-it-easier part of the process of both forgiving as well as asking for forgiveness.

[Edit: oh, and there are rules, in case somebody doesn't forgive a person who asks their forgiveness, how much you have to try and how, and after that, it stops being the asking-forgiveness-persons's problem. You're sort of supposed to forgive, when sincerely asked to. That's part of the whole thing, too.]

Nilly's Yom Kippur posts always make me wish she had offended me in some way so that I could participate in her process.

That's a great idea.

Nilly, remember how you gush over pictures of Matilda and Dylan and Dillo and all the other Buffista babies and Buffista toddlers and Buffista kids proper, and how you remember all their birthdays and all our birth stories and always have kind and loving and insightful things to say about our families?

Well, for all your professed love of all our babies, I notice that you have never once gone to the trouble of getting a new visa, investing your entire life savings in an open-ended round-trip ticket to and from the US with connecting flights all across the entire continent of North America, and being constantly at the ready to abandon your teaching career and your family to hop on a plane at a moment's notice to soothe our babies for us when they wake us up at two in the morning. Does that seem right to you?

It's a darn good thing you went and posted that lovely, gracious apology that reminded me how lucky we all are to have met you even once, and to have you present in our lives even as pixels on a screen, or I might never have forgiven you for being one-seventeenth of a degree less than practically perfect in every way.

It's not posited as a method for killing humans, but it would be a horrible way to go [apiphobes, don't click].

Reality show casting call:

We’re looking for geniuses from all walks of life to become part of Sci Fi’s “Brain Trust” –– a super–smart swat team to tackle previously unsolvable problems. But we’re leaving global warming and world peace to the other guys –– the “Brain Trust” will solve the every–day, insidious annoyances that vex us all. What’s the most efficient strategy to snag the best parking spot at the mall? How can you make it statistically more likely that you’ll get some action tonight? SCI FI is going to put the best minds and most original thinkers on the case!

We’re looking for people from all disciplines and all walks of life –– from rocket scientists to backyard inventors to puzzle fanatics. The only requirements are ingenuity, a knack for out of the box problem solving, and an outgoing personality!

It's not posited as a method for killing humans, but it would be a horrible way to go

I don't think it'd work on humans, unless it was some mutant giant bees.

::prepares script pitch for SciFi Channel::

I dunno. We breathe much more specifically than that hornet. They'd just have to be specifically concentrated bees.

Reality show casting call:

Crap. I was all excited by this until I got to the last requirement.

D'ya suppose I could fake it?

They'd just have to be specifically concentrated bees.

Plus they'd have to know where our breathing weakness was.

So we're safe, as long as we're not infiltrated by bee spies.

I know it is stupid, but I can't help it.

Given studies like this one, I'm not so sure: Flu shots don’t save seniors' lives, study finds