Focusing on form rather than content

April 15, 2026

In today’s (Wayno / Piraro) Bizarro, a bank teller focuses on how quaint it is that a bank robber has written his demand on paper (the way they did it in old movies), while disregarding the pressing threat of the robber’s gun:


(1) A quibbling triumph of details of form over the real threat of content (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

Faced with dreadful, uncontrollable situations, people sometimes take to fretting about some minor issue that is more easily remedied.

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More questions for anauralics

April 15, 2026

Following up on my 4/13 posting “A host of voices”, on

an enormous amount of variability in the way mental imagery and mental sounds work, in different people and for different purposes

focusing on auralia, on hearing sounds in the mind, and on anauralia, its lack (in a small percentage of people), in various contexts:

in silent reading, in the voice of an internal adviser, in recollected speech or music, in auditory hallucinations, in speech or other sounds in dreams

I had my University of Arizona colleague Heidi Harley as an exemplary anauralic (while recognizing that each person has their own profile of mental-percept abilities); what she can tell us is important, beause it appeared then, and still does, that there’s not much research on mental sound (or mental imagery), in perceptually deficient subjects (anauralics, aphantastics) or even in perceiving (“normal”) subjects (auralics, phantastics), though it looks like there’s an enormous amount of variability.

Now: two further contexts to consider.

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Things I didn’t know

April 14, 2026

Things I probably should have known, but didn’t, and have just recently discovered: one linguistic (on a pronunciation in BrE), one botanical (on the identity of a plant growing on the street a block from my house).

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Long Island, duck!

April 14, 2026

Today’s (4/14) Zippy strip has our Pinhead in conversation with a giant cement duck:


(#1) An anatine day in Southampton

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A host of voices

April 13, 2026

Following up on my 4/11 posting “Variability in our mental lives”, about (a)phantasia and (an)auralia, having to do with, respectively, visual and auditory mental experience and their lack: having, or not having, a mind’s eye or a mind’s voice. Almost immediately, it becomes clear that there’s an enormous amount of variability in the way mental imagery and mental sounds work, in different people and for different purposes.

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Triplefruit trail mix, the musical score

April 13, 2026

A couple days ago, with my helper Isaac, I was preparing triplefruit trail mix: a large pouch of commercial trail mix — of almonds, cashews, and (dried) cranberries — with added packs of (dried) blueberries and cherries. (A couple handfuls of this trail mix is then added to some granola — rolled oats with almonds, raisins, cranberries, and pecans — to make a bowl of my breakfast cereal, which is, finally, moistened with yogurt and milk. Fiber, fruits, nuts, probiotics, and yumminess.

Assembling the trail mix involves dumping the pouch of commercial mix and the packets of dried fruits into a large plastic container, fixing the top firmly on the container, and then getting its contents thoroughly mixed, by turning and shaking the container briskly, over and over.

Trail mixing is noisy, energetic, and surprisingly entertaining. You are moved to treat the stuff in its container as a percussion instrument, to sway your hips a bit, and to contemplate breaking into song. This time, Isaac and I had the very same inspiration:

Shake it up, baby … Twist and shout … Come on and work it on out

Oh yeah! There’s a musical score for trail mixing, and it’s glorious.

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The pleasures of Pittsburgh

April 12, 2026

From the Visit Pittsburgh site, for 4/12’s occasion, “How to Celebrate 412 Day in Pittsburgh”:

We love celebrating Pittsburgh every day, but 412 Day is an extra excuse to honor all things Steel City.

Whether you live in the 412 or outside of it (maybe the 724 or 814?), people far and wide come to Pittsburgh to celebrate 412 Day every April 12th. The city comes alive in fun festivities and Pittsburgh pride

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The coconut-oil temperature gauge

April 12, 2026

The background. In two postings on this blog.

on 8/9/23, in “The states of matter: coconut X”: the spreadable coconut fat (a semi-solid cream I use for daily treatment of my feet, legs, hands, and arms) melts (at around 77F) to to a free-flowing liquid; when cooled in the refrigerator, it’s transformed into a firm solid that you have to deal with in hard chunks.

on 3/20/26, in “Coconut X revisited”:

Today is March 20th, the first day of spring — the vernal equinox — here in the northern hemisphere. But also another day of record-breaking heat in the southern SF bay, set to soar once again to over 90F. When I went to oil my legs and feet at 6:30 am, it had already melted to a messy liquid.

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Variability in our mental lives

April 11, 2026

Variability in language — from person to person, and for any particular person, from context to context — is all around us. It’s a routine aspect of our mental lives, amazingly complex in its details, but in no way surprising as a phenomenon. Similarly for variability in factual and procedural knowledge: impressively intricate, but familiar.

But now it turns out that more and more of our mental lives is open to variation. As a way into the topic, consider an NPR Radiolab segment from 2024 that came by me on KQED-FM a while back, on the phenomenon of aphantasia.

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Z number

April 10, 2026

E-mail from Ellen Kaisse this morning:

I don’t know how I failed to learn this for 60 years or so but Purcell’s cataloguer is a Z person, Franklin Zimmerman. You probably have known forever, but thought I’d mention it just in case. How can someone who died so young have 860 Z numbers? And probably most are glorious.

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