Limericks in honor of Darwin’s bicentenary

The Spectator recently asked readers to submit limericks in honor of Charles Darwin’s bicentenary. Here are my three efforts:

The Darwin debate never ceases,
For he wounded the pride of our species
When he made you and me
Share the family tree
With those monkeys that love to fling faeces.


“Dear waiter,” said Darwin, “Please stoop
And observe what I happened to scoop:
Did you know you and I
Made ascent, like this fly,
From a bleak and unsavoury soup?”


Charles Darwin declared, “I’m in pieces!
Diversity’s best for the species,
But I have a dilemma:
My sole mate is Emma*,
And she’s one of my grandfather’s nieces.”

*Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgewood.

The winners are here.

Evolution limericks from OEDILF.

Time

Here are two self-portraits by Sofonisba Anguissola (about 1532 to 1625). In her remarkably long career she both received instruction from Michelangelo and gave advice to Van Dyck. The first self-portrait is from 1556:


The second is from 1610:

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The Vegetable Butcher

I found this illustration by M. Lauritano at the very absorbing deviantART site. The pictures there are set up so that you can embed them on your blog:

The Vegetable Butcher by ~mlauritano on deviantART

How to easily create a free and awesome screensaver

This is very rudimentary, but I didn’t know how to do it until recently. I expect that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know that there’s a free and easy way to make your screensaver display as slideshow of whatever paintings or photos you like. Here’s how:

1) Rightclick on your desktop
2) Click Properties
3) Click the Screensaver tab
4) Choose My Pictures Slideshow from the dropdown box
5) Click settings and select*
6) Click OK, Apply, and OK.

I recommend setting the size to the largest and stretching the small pictures*

Any pictures from you’re My Pictures file that you don’t want displayed can simply be moved over to you’re My Documents file instead. Go to Google images to find pictures to add to your collection.

I have about 800 photos and paintings that change every 20 seconds or so. I watch my screensaver while I listen to Pandora: it’s better than TV!