Recent Comments

1. about 7 hours ago on Frazz

   The Pantheon, which is indeed a remarkable structure, is more of a cylinder with a cap, unlike the wikiup.

   Of course, at least some of the snow for the igloo dome is removed from the space it spans, so it too has a cylindrical base

2. about 8 hours ago on Jim Benton Cartoons

   Or the CEO for UnitedHealthCare, where 32% of medical claims are denied, and their profits went from $67 billion in 2020 to $91 billion in 2023, and are probably going to be close to $100 billion in 2024.

   Delay, Deny, Defend … and if you anger someone enough, Die.

3. about 9 hours ago on Brewster Rockit

   Good thing it wasn’t a certain Martian named Marvin, or you’d be ducking and dodging for cover.

   (Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century)

4. about 9 hours ago on Stone Soup

   The current practice of “swatting” renders this not funny today. And yes, I know it dates from about 30 years ago.

5. about 9 hours ago on Lio

   He’s reading them a dead-time story!

6. about 9 hours ago on Dark Side of the Horse

   He’s just belly-aching to avoid belly-aching…

7. about 9 hours ago on Frazz

   Snow wonder?

   Actually dome shaped abodes have not been confined to igloos or the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller. The Apache Wikiup for example.

   Check out the Wikipedia entry on Wigwam.

8. about 23 hours ago on Non Sequitur

   From the opening to Heinlein’s “The Door into Summer.”

   Describing a house in Connecticut that the protagonist had lived in…

   The drawback was that the place had eleven doors to the outside.

   Twelve, if you counted Pete’s door. I always tried to arrange a door of his own for Pete—in this case a board fitted into a window in an unused bedroom and in which I had cut a cat strainer just wide enough for Pete’s whiskers. I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats—I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures.

   Pete usually used his own door except when he could bully me into opening a people door for him, which he preferred. But he would not use his door when there was snow on the ground.

   While still a kitten, all fluff and buzzes, Pete had worked out a simple philosophy. I was in charge of quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else. But he held me especially responsible for weather. Connecticut winters are good only for Christmas cards; regularly that winter Pete would check his own door, refuse to go out it because of that unpleasant white stuff beyond it (he was no fool), then badger me to open a people door.

   He had a fixed conviction that at least one of them must lead into summer weather. Each time this meant that I had to go around with him to each of eleven doors, hold it open while he satisfied himself that it was winter out that way, too, then go on to the next door, while his criticisms of my mismanagement grew more bitter with each disappointment.

   Then he would stay indoors until hydraulic pressure utterly forced him outside. When he returned the ice in his pads would sound like little clogs on the wooden floor and he would glare at me and refuse to purr until he had chewed it all out…whereupon he would forgive me until the next time.

   But he never gave up his search for the Door into Summer.

   My cat too!

9. 2 days ago on Working Daze

   The summer of 1967, I worked as an elevator operator (in a 3 story building). The offices there did have the transom windows. The elevator dated to 1907, so that tells the age of that building. Probably not many buildings after 1950 would have the transom windows. But also not many post-WW2 offices would have radiators in the offices.

10. 2 days ago on Working Daze

    Nice details, Scott! From the glass in the door, the radiator, the metal studs in the chair upholstery, the desk, the eyeglasses, hairdo, etc.