...if a woman can't operate correctly in your presence, she probably likes you a lot. Most adult women can pour sugar into their coffee without completely missing the cup, walk without spilling liquid and dropping standard objects such as keys and sunglasses, and use scissors correctly without cutting things in half, when you're not standing nearby.
A Mallard by our pool!
One morning outside my window (which is right in front of the townhouse complex pool) there appeared to be two large sneakers sitting at the corner of the pool. As I stared, they both stood up - they were a beautiful pair of Mallard ducks! Over the next week, they cleaned out bugs and snails by day, and rested by the pool at night. Miss Mallard got on my nerves. Mr. Mallard was so gentlemanly and handsome, always letting her get the first and best snails, and she just ignored him, usually with a repulsive bit of snail hanging out of her beak. One day he was by himself - I knew she was like that!! He looked forlorn and very alone for about a week, and then last week he seemed to be recovering. Now at night, if I turn off the lights in my kitchen, I can see him splashing around in the pool, preening himself and looking happy and relaxed. In the early evening he quacks expressively and often, telling this or that dog what he thinks of their barking. I am glad he has found his voice, because he was pretty silent around Miss Mallard, that wretch! Here is a picture.
Handsome and modest Mr. Mallard!
(Later) My neighbor tells me he wants to get rid of the duck. Apparently, there is a health issue connected with avian bacteria that could get in people's and children's eyes if they go swimming, and the pool will have to be emptied, specially cleaned, and inspected by officials because of the duck having been in it. I am sad to hear about this because I really like the duck and he seems to be happy here. Plus isn't it good not to have snails? I hope he can be relocated to Vasona, where he will have a lot of friends.
"Looks like" does not equal "Is"
Observation on a mistake many people are making:
This is a mistake that is deeply embedded in our current cultural, political and scientific views at this moment. Considering how obviously it is a mistake, it is amazing how easily it is made.
Here are some examples I have recently heard:
A human embryo at an early stage looks just like a patch of cells/tumour/or a chicken or fish embryo, therefore that is what it is equal to (so, there is nothing wrong with killing it).
Non-embryonic cells, tumours, and chicken or fish embryos NEVER produce human beings at the end of their development. The mistake in this case (and its consequences), is appalling. Regardless of what it looks like it is clearly a human and that is clearly the mechanism by which humans, and nothing else, are made.
My hand looks like a fish fin, therefore my hand is the evolutionary descendent of the fin. This mistake cropped up in a conversation at work. A normally intelligent person had read a recently published book called "The Fish Inside Us". It is difficult to assess how much our complete cultural, educational and scientific acceptance of the theory of evolution disables criticism of the "looks like" argument. However, this person's ability to analyze or criticize had definitely been completely disabled.
My responses to this one are too many to verbalize efficiently without writing my own book. Maybe I should start on that. At the time I wanted to ask how the types of fish that did not supposedly climb out of the ocean could have failed to evolve to the degree that land creatures supposedly have - for one example, no sea creature that I can think of has anything like an opposable thumb, although surely even a tiny evolutionary development in that direction would have immediately been rewarded with spectacular survival rates, as the creature could both grab other animals for food and free itself from other predators. Ocean life stayed remarkably similar through all these alleged millions of years, a gigantic and obvious fact that seems on its own to disable a good bit of evolutionary premise.
I have just realized that both of these arguments are related to evolutionary premises, which are very much based on the "looks like, therefore is" argument. And there is a stunningly degrading irony at work resulting in the conclusion: Since the human looks like something less, it is something less. I was amazed that the person who read the fish book was obviously enchanted by the idea that he was essentially related to and created from something inarguably lesser and lower and more base, while rejecting the idea that he was related to and had been created by something unimaginably higher and better and more.
I have often seen, especially as the technique for creating them has become well refined, silk flowers that appear to be actual flowers even when closely examined, until you actually touch them. But once you touch them, you know for sure and you would never accept that the silk flower "is" a real flower. Why do we accept other "looks like" arguments without a similar instinct?
deborah64554
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