merelygifted

Just learned my old friend Bob passed away Monday. He had a well-regarded French restaurant in NYC, and he covered the walls with old photographs of his friends and himself from our punk days in 80s Detroit. He told me that at least once a week someone would point at a particular photo and ask an employee, "Who is that?!" The employee would plead ignorance, and have Bob come out from the kitchen. They'd ask him, and he'd tell them, "That's my old friend Christine. She was a poet in an industrial band. She really is something else." I thought it was very kind of him to let me know that I was still blowing minds, and in NYC no less.

I'd got the silly silver wig when the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus was in town.

Walker 'stunned' to see ship hovering high above sea off Cornwall | Science | The Guardian

There are only so many polite words that come to mind when one spots a ship apparently hovering above the ocean during a stroll along the English coastline.

David Morris, who captured the extraordinary sight on camera, declared himself “stunned” when he noticed a giant tanker floating above the water as he looked out to sea from a hamlet near Falmouth in Cornwall.

The effect is an example of an optical illusion known as a superior mirage. Such illusions are reasonably common in the Arctic but can also happen in UK winters when the atmospheric conditions are right, though they are very rare.

The illusion is caused by a meteorological phenomenon called a temperature inversion. Normally, the air temperature drops with increasing altitude, making mountaintops colder than the foothills. But in a temperature inversion, warm air sits on top of a band of colder air, playing havoc with our visual perception. The inversion in Cornwall was caused by chilly air lying over the relatively cold sea with warmer air above. ...