Tag: Things of beauty

Art, music, whatever

Contrarian

Nature

You should never plant a sandbox tree. It is too dangerous to have around people or animals, and when planted in isolated areas it is likely to spread.

Why is it that a warning about this murderous tree makes me want to plant a circle of them around my house?  (Found via the Knuckledragger, thankee.)

Seriously:  who needs those loud, messy (and illegal) Claymore thingies when you can get Mother Nature to provide this little party?

Sandbox tree fruits look like little pumpkins, but once they dry into seed capsules, they become ticking time bombs. When fully mature, they explode with a loud bang and fling their hard, flattened seeds at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour and distances of over 60 feet. The shrapnel can seriously injure any person or animal in its path. As bad as this is, the exploding seed pods are only one of the ways that a sandbox tree can inflict harm.

They even look  badass:

Is it just me, or does this look like a spiked collar around the neck of an angry Rottweiler?  It speaks to me, and what it says is:  “Mess with me, motherfucker, and I will kill you.”

Want.

Afterthought:  in the interests of Saving Mother Gaia, we should plant a ten-mile deep line of these bad boys along our southern border;  I mean, who can be against reforestation?

Then And Now #468

Drive Time

Seems as though Bugatti has made a one-off for some rich fart, based on the classic Bugatti “Atlantic” of the 1930s:

Leaving aside the price of the thing (which is of course insane because Bugatti), Loyal Readers will not be surprised as to which model I prefer.  Both look like Batmobiles, of course, each for their respective era (assuming Batman was around in the 1930s, which he wasn’t), and both have amazing power (once again, for their respective eras).

I’d bet that the older one is easier to park, though, simply because the modern one looks like a bloated sow by comparison.  And in a real-life setting, the Atlantic looks even more toothsome:

Stunning

Beauty

If you like gorgeous photographs, look at these.  My favorite is this one: it’s a detail, not the full thing (which wouldn’t have fitted on the page).

The last time I saw lighting like that, it was in a Rembrandt painting.  The photographer is Chris Fletcher, who apparently first picked up a camera in 2011.  (I’m not an envious type by nature, but there are limits…)

Paradise

Funny Stuff, Good Stuff

Saw this pic at Timewaster‘s place the other day:

Clear out a couple dead trees to accommodate a little .22 range, add a clay thrower to the end of the pier, and Kim’s a happy bunny gunny.

Oh, I forgot:  also, a Ma Deuce to keep gummint agents ummm large predators errrr pirates  at bay.  That’s what I meant… pirates.

Snow Scene

Travels

The area where The Englishman lives (the Vale of Pewsey) is indescribably gorgeous:  green fields, woodlands, endless rolling hills, and through the middle runs the Kennet & Avon Canal.

Now I often poke fun at Teh Brits for going into a DefCon1 Panic Attack when a few flakes of snow float down and render their roads “impassable” (in Wisconsin, these conditions would be known as “late September”).

But when snow falls on the Vale of Pewsey’s Kennet & Avon Canal, you get views like this:

Compare and contrast the same canal in summer (this pic taken near Devizes, not Pewsey itself):

No trip to Britishland should be considered complete without a drive through Wiltshire.

Old And New

Drive Time

I see that Honda’s trying to make a go of the wonderful NSX again.  For a refresher, here’s a sample of the previous generation (+/- 1995):

…and the reincarnation thereof:

To probably nobody’s surprise, I think I prefer the lines of the older one:  more understated, yet still beautiful — especially compared to the supercars of the late 1990s, e.g. the Lambo Diablo and Ferrari 355:

In fact, given that the Ferrari 355 is generally regarded as one of Maranello’s most beautiful designs, I would suggest that the 1995 NSX compares quite well in the looks department.

The new NSX seems to have gone more towards the dramatic lines of the Diablo (and of most modern supercars, for that matter), which is fine, I guess.

(Note that I’m not talking about performance, here:  the 2019 NSX has well over 500hp, the 1995 a mere(!) 340hp or so.  Yet I would suggest that for the average, or even above-average sports car driver, 340hp should be more than adequate.)

I just prefer performance cars to look understated rather than being schoolboy racecar-poster types.  Once again, this should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody.

And of course, when it comes to reliability, I expect that the new NSX will have a mean time-between-failures rate (MTBF) measured in geological time units, just like its predecessor.  And its competitors won’t.