Customers! Oy! 4 Jun 2009 I used to run a service department so that’s why this site amuses me so much. Yeah, I know I’m probably fifteen years behind everyone else: The World: America’s Theme Park (Note: this takes place at our cafe in Kuranda, Australia.) Tourist: “Lady, how about we make a deal? I wanna buy this bottle from you.” Me: “Oh, sorry. We only have four of the blue ones and they’re not for sale.” Tourist: “So you’re telling me I can’t buy this?” Me: “Yes… I know it’s a nice bottle, but we do need it for the water.” Tourist: “Lady, I don’t think you understand what I’m getting at.” (The tourist pulls a wad of US money from his wallet.) Tourist: “I got REAL money here!” Humor Social evolution
Evolution Social networking is not new 26 May 2009 John Hawks mentioned a lovely article in the New York Times, interviewing an anthropologist, Pauline Wiessner, who worked with the !Kung bushmen in the Kalahari. She notes that they maintain social relationships across many hundreds (and in her case, when they found a satellite phone, thousands!) of kilometres. This means… Read More
History The meaning of Christmas 22 Dec 201122 Jun 2018 Tony Piro creatively borrows from Peanuts. Click on the picture to see the full comic. Tony has Linus give a fairly standard view, that Christmas is based on prior religious traditions. He carefully avoids making Linus repeat the “Christmas is the birthdate of [insert deity or religious figure]” view, which… Read More
Evolution A casual disregard for facts 22 Aug 200818 Sep 2017 A little while back I linked to Sahotra Sarkar’s review of Steve Fuller’s Science versus Religion. Now Fuller has put up a defence at the Intelligent Design website, Uncommon Descent, under the gerrymandered image of a bacterial flagellum (if you want to know what a real flagellum would look like… Read More
“Trust me. I’m a metaphysician”: Customer: “Well, I don’t know what it is I always get. My daughter usually gets it for me.” […] Me: “…was it ‘coffee’ or ‘not coffee’? Customer: “Hmm…I believe it was both.”
Ha! Even nice Americans can be rude that way. I remember the couple that hosted me as an exchange student complaining about people not speaking English when they came to visit México.