There’s a well-known phenomenon of how preteen girls get interested in the supernatural. I was like many of my peers, except for the caveat that I was raised by scientists, so I was always looking for the likely explanation. One time at Girl Scout camp, I saw a bunch of girls doing a trick where they would (with…

I witnessed a vehicle flip about 300 feet in front of me on a freeway once. Hit my emergency lights, slowed down and stopped, and observed a whole lot of other people do the same. I had my kids in the car, so after noting the number of people out to help, I pulled out my phone and the EMTs were there within five…

One thing I’ve been told to be aware of in an emergency situation is that you should not become the next victim. In the case of a roadway-based accident, that means staying out of the slide path if at all possible. (Things to know for the future! You can’t change the past with 20/20 hindsight.)

The CDC used the sixty years of data from the measles vaccination to determine that a serious adverse reaction risk is one in one million for the vaccine. (That would be a true “vaccine injury” including actual damage.)

There’s a comment on a friend’s FB page that sums it up perfectly. Regan MacStravic: “Spokane — where even the black people are white.”

Funny, my dad taught me to drive a manual transmission... but my mom is the one who taught HIM. (Actually, she taught him to drive, period. Everything was manual at that point.)

I’m very pleased lately that two of the announcers in rotation for my college basketball league are female—and that nobody is commenting on that, only that they’re good at their job. I saw one on the TV the other day and she was wearing dangly earrings and everything and nobody gave a damn.

A “how do you drive” story counterpoint—my boss asked for driving reports from the DMV so that we would be allowed to drive company vehicles. I am allowed to drive company vehicles because my report was spotless. His (male) cousin is not, because he has a tendency to rack up the points.

Watership Down, actually. It was my favorite book when I was eight years old—yes, nightmare fuel and all—and I read it back-to-back for a long time. I picked up a copy for myself when I was in college and still re-read it from time to time. Obviously there are a lot of parallels that I missed when I was eight (hello,…

Um... this looks pretty typical. Does this mean my cats are batshit crazy? (The one that squeaks likes to attack corners...)

Back in 2005, we got a crossover called the Ford Freestyle. which basically looked like the unholy cross between a Ford Explorer and a station wagon. Seats six, gets 22mpg in-city (after 130,000 miles), has a turning radius smaller than the sedan we were replacing, a CVT (no-gear transmission) and... the nice part...…

The comics already had a name for him... Barton Mathis. So this is just bringing the silly because they can.

Oh, we just had a suspected measles case come through a local clinic a week or two back. Note that said mom just had a baby, too, so there are two people at risk. I just have one; you're not given your first MMR until you reach the first year in age, so I have one baby... and a kid in elementary school. Can you guess…

I actually know a mom who has not seroconverted for measles. She's had MMRs with each kid, but the blood titres don't show immunity. She finally told her doc to give up because it just wasn't working.

One problem I've seen a lot: rivers that diverge instead of converging. A big-name offender is the map in Dragon Prince, where the river splits into major channels. While that might happen in a delta area, it's far, far more common for several small rivers to join into a large one, the Atchafalaya aside.

Heidi!

Actually, my four-year-old's spirit animal *is* a honey badger. We got her a stuffed one from Wild Republic and taught her to say "Honey Badger Don't Care." (She is still four, after all.)

I think it's the difference between "could be" and "will be soon." It really felt as though we were just a few steps away from MAD. It does make me less worried now, because I have a very good memory and feeling that we're going downhill in some ways is still better than being 75% certain that you're not going to get…

I'm friends with some folk who are far too young to have been aware during the Cold War (one was even born when I graduated from high school), and they had a hard time understanding what it was like, being a kid knowing that the entire world might be destroyed one day. They didn't disbelieve it, but it's a hard…

She was sometimes called "Bald Grace O'Malley" (Grace being the Anglicized version of her name.) It's probable that she was called that because she cut her hair—"bald" not meaning total hairlessness when it came to women. ("Naked" also used to apply to folks in their underwear, which is why the word "nude" didn't use…