Photos of readers

Well, here’s a new feature: photos of readers as they go about their everyday lives. If you want to be part of it—and this will hopefully be ongoing—just send me a photo of yourself doing something interesting, even if it’s just you at work, petting your cats (you do have one, don’t you?), or just […]

“What a Fool Believes”

I’m tired, the ducks are squabbling, and I now hear that the local pair of Canada geese are breeding on top of the Chemistry building and, when the goslings hatch, they’ll all be moved to the pond by the Fish & Wildlife people. We don’t need no stinkin’ geese. Life is stressful. Here’s some music […]

God Only Knows

About a year ago I put up a post listing what I saw as the four best songs by the Beach Boys, though some readers responded that they couldn’t stand the group. While I agree that many of their songs are forgettable, I still maintain that they made some very great rock music, and that […]

Animals reacting to music

I like to end the work week with animal videos, and here’s a delightful 5½-minute series of animals reacting to music. Note the music-loving kittens at 2:43,  Paul McCartney vs. the locusts at 3:08, the concertina-loving cows at 4:19 and the green parrot at the end who, hearing the Titanic theme, plays “king of the […]

Yet another music expert and critic says that today’s popular songs suck

I’ve long argued that today’s music sucks, well aware that for saying this I’ll be accused of being a curmudgeon who simply likes his generation’s music and can’t make way for the innovations of the new kids. My response to that accusation is threefold: that there are no groups today that even begin to rival […]

NYT disses Maroon 5’s Super Bowl show as not sufficiently woke

For a while I’ve been saying that liberal media like the New Yorker and the New York Times are turning into HuffPost, with their biases seeping into their reporting, but few people agree with me. I used to look to the Times, for instance, as a beacon of objective reporting, with a Leftist editorial slant […]

Musical flashmobs play Bolero and Waltz of the Flowers

UPDATE: If you click on this video link, you’ll go to a whole playlist of musical flashmobs (h/t: reader Malcolm) _____________________ I found these videos on YouTube and thought they were cool. Both involve classical musicians showing up in public venues to play familiar but lovely songs. In this first one, the Orchestra of Opera North […]

Flowers and fish

First we have some photos from a visit to the University of Hawaii’s Lyon Arboretum, not far from downtown Honolulu. I can’t identify the plants, but some are native and some are not. Readers are invited to weigh in. First, the source of Hawaiian plants. It wasn’t until about 20 years ago that I learned […]

PCC(E)’s favorite holiday songs

Yes, even though I’m an apostate Jew, I still like a few Christmas songs, and I’ve put them below to celebrate the beginning of my personal holiday. All three songs were written fairly recently—since 1962. This is a lovely one by Sarah McLachlan and a children’s chorus; it even includes an antiwar message, included in […]

Misheard song lyrics

Shappi Khorsandi, comedian and previous president of the British Humanists, tweeted some misheard lyrics: I’m in shock. Let’s play the Mondegreen game. I have JUST realised that it’s not ‘Lets hit the B square’ what’s the actual lyric? pic.twitter.com/jMS8DeHNPT — Shappi Khorsandi (@ShappiKhorsandi) December 20, 2018 I suspect that the lyric she was thinking of, […]