Victorian Ruin Gardens

There was an era called Victorian. In England. Which is a country your parents may have heard of. Ask them. They had a Queen named Victoria who ruled for 150 years or so. Toward the end, around 1900, things started to fall apart. When ruin became a whole new esthetic. Hence Victorian Ruin Gardens.

So now we are recapitulating Victorian Ruin Gardens in Elsinboro, NJ.

We used to have a gazebo. I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for this marvelous moment to occur.

The gazebo is gone.

And the willow is back.

The Sad Last Chapter of Steven J. Goop

He had just published his latest book on Neo-NeoDarwinian Evolution, an excerpt of who’s crumpled (by whom?) manuscript is preserved for posterity below:

We know only bits and pieces of what occurred before Goop was scheduled to depart on a book tour. His security cameras did record a late night visitor to his home.

Subsequently, Goop’s battered, bullet-ridden body was discovered on the floor of his study. 

An enticing clue at the crime scene was the discovery of glass mounted oil portrait of Goop and a man who appeared to be the same as the late night visitor caught by the security camera, professional colleague and reputed friend Richard Dawkings. Two facts were suggestive. The painting included the butt of a revolver, and the glass over the painting had been hit, apparently, by one of the bullets that passed through Goop’s head. Coincidence or intent?

in the end there was insufficient evidence to bring a case against the prime suspect Dawkings, who insisted from first to last he had nothing to do with the murder.

There was some popular resistance to the police’s failure to make an arrest, most notably in the academic community. The occasion of the memorial service for Goop at Harvard, his alma mater, brought forth some angry public denunciations of Dawkings by name…

And that, sadly, is where the matter rests to this day.

The Brain of Donald Trump. Too Ancient for Postmoderns to get.

The modern archaeologists thought it was junk and shelved it.

Then somebody realized it was an ancient computer and set about trying to decide how it worked.

It was pretty fancy, all in all.

Layers of gears and spindles and bright orange stuff.

Stupid stuff said the MIT and NR guys.

Until it actually worked. Power for nothing and your tweets for free.