Zippin around ye olde Google Maps, I've discovered that our new house will be within two miles of both a big cat sanctuary and a meadery.

The latter could come in handy, should there be trouble at the former.

History

Simon Doonan looks around, adopts "an expression of extreme gravitas", and concludes that we've become stupid and shallow and that everything was awesome, way back when. How does he know this? Well, if you make a list of the people that smart people think about when they think about the middle of the last century, it's startlingly light on vapid pseudo-celebrities; smart people were famous back then! A golden age, for sure. But look at today: Kim Kardashian! She is famous ... for being famous. A trivial nothing of a person has captured our attention! Moral decay!

Why, back then...

Even if you loathed opera, you knew and respected Maria Callas and her commitment to her art...

Popular singer was popular for singing. Was she popular for anything else?

...to mention nothing of her commitment to dramatic black eyeliner and swallowing a tapeworm to get thin, allegedly.

Mmm. Gravitas.

Why have we shoved all today’s accomplished people onto the back burner? Yes, we have Adele, but I am looking beyond the popular-music realm to the broad areas of accomplishment alluded to above and asking where, fer chrissakes, are the glamorous neurophysicists? Where are the charismatic, overachieving innovators and inventors? Steve Jobs? A unicorn! A lone example. You are going to have to do better than that if you wish to upend my hypothesis.

Okie dokie...

• Bill Gates
• Stephen Hawking
• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Richard Branson
• James Cameron
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Elon Musk
• Jimmy Wales

Slackers. Slacking in obscurity. Nobody knows who they are.

If only we were as smart and serious-minded as those upstanding citizens of yore, those fine chin-strokers who didn't know anything about gossip, tabloids, sensationalism, shallow reporting or celebrity culture.

If only we were that smart.

Muppet Chalk Murals @ Sesame St

Update: A hoax?!? Come on world, entertain me!

Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives - for up to six hours after their death.

The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament.

It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women's rights of getting education and employment.

The 'farewell intercourse' law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament

Hmm.

Egypt's National Council for Women is campaigning against the changes, saying that 'marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country's human development'.

Hmm... IMO, the real issue is that it's disgusting. Besides...

The subject of a husband having sex with his dead wife arose in May 2011 when Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari said marriage remains valid even after death.

He also said that women have the right to have sex with her dead husband, alarabiya.net reported.

See, equality! If you want it.

Mail Online

Photographic Prints of Woman rejecting a plate of food

We are a stupid and overly-armed society.

The Newton County Sheriff’s Office is investigating why a couple was confronted at gunpoint by neighbors and then arrested and forced to spend the night in jail when they tried to move into the home they had just purchased, Channel 2 Action News reported.

The Kalonji family had just closed on a foreclosed home and were told by their real estate agent they should go over to the house and change the locks.

But when Jean Kalonji and his wife, Angelica, started working at the home, an armed man and another person who appeared to be the man’s son allegedly confronted them.

“He say to put the hands up and get out from the house, otherwise he would shoot us,” the husband told Channel 2.

Even better, the couple are recent immigrants from The Congo.

Here's a recipe for a quick simple Italianish chicken soupy thing I make once in a while.

It doesn't have a name. I call it "chicken basil bean stuff". I think I got like half of it from a David Rosengarten cooking show I was half-watching, one day, long, long ago.

• Two boneless skinless chicken breast halves.
• 2 cups of lo-so chicken broth
• Can of cannellini (white kidney) beans. Drained. Pinto or navy beans work, too - beans are beans. Hell, even chickpeas work here.
• 3 fresh Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped (a can of chopped tomatoes, drained, would probably work, too)
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• Clove of garlic, minced
• Lots of fresh black pepper
• Fresh basil. Ten leaves or so.
• Tablespoon of grated Parmesan
• Olive oil for sauteing
• Fresh spinach, chard, etc.. (optional)
• Cooked small pasta like acini de pepe or orzo (optional)

Heat some oil (2 tbsp?) in a big saute pan. Add onion, garlic, tomato. Saute on medium heat until the onions get soft and the tomatoes start to break down. Don't let anything stick or burn. Probably five minutes. Turn the heat down to simmer. Add the stock, stir it all up. Add the beans. Chiffonade half the basil and throw it in. Add a good dose of black pepper (1/2 tsp or so). Let that just simmer for 20 minutes or so. I want those onions to get nice and soft - I hate crunchy onions.

While that simmers, salt and pepper, and then grill the chicken. Be sure to get lots of nice dark grill marks. I use a grill pan, on the stove. Once cooked, set aside.

Once the soup has a nice... soupy look to it, chiffonade the rest of the basil. Add it and the Parmesan to the soup. Stir it all up, give it all another minute or two on the heat. Add water if there's not enough liquid. Taste it; add salt / pepper if needed.

Slice the grilled chicken into bit-sized pieces.

The optionals: In each of your bowls, add a couple of spoonfuls of pasta and a small bunch of spinach.

Soup goes into the bowl. Chicken goes on top. Put more Parmesan on top, if that's your thing. It's not my thing, but it's what Mrs likes to do.

Anyway. It's dead easy, and smells awesome: none can resist the smell of sauteed onion, garlic and tomato. Then the basil gets involved. Then the grilled chicken. Then more basil! Then Parmesan! Then someone will open wine!

How to Extract DNA