on extraterrestrial life

The 3 most likely reasons aliens haven't visited us yet (in no particular order):

•They've heard about us and don't want to mess with us.
•Their technology is inferior to ours. They might not have even invented the wheel yet.
•They possess very advanced technologies but their governments aren't generous enough in terms of astronomy research grants. Most grants go to humanities professors who wear oxford shirts, tartan ties, loafers and are often heard accusing their colleagues of plagiarism and attribute their own dismal prolificacy to a concern for originality when in fact they have familial problems. Which is another way of saying they have irreconcilable differences with their wives who take a morbid pleasure in bringing up in their quarrels that "Such and such's husband makes x times as much as you do". Parenthetically, x in this context is typically upwards of 4 and can even be as high as 10 if the professor in question is 45 or above.

on 'ctrl+c'

It dovetails beautifully with 'ctrl+v'. Some people hold that if it weren't for 'ctrl+v', 'ctrl+c' could have never come this far. Let's be fair, though; it is what gets everything going: before you do 'ctrl+v', you have to have done 'ctrl+c'. Those who have a low opinion of 'ctrl+c' are in dire need of indoctrination by someone who knows the importance of context, or in layman's terms, the notion that nothing exists in a vacuum.

'ctrl+a' is another handy shortcut. Its downside is that in some cases it merely yields a mess that needs editing or undoing. Speaking of undoing, 'ctrl+z' is indeed handy, isn't it?

on persimmon

Why are we disgusted by mushy fruits? It may be that those of us who didn't develop the sense to avoid a fruit if it is mushy got eliminated in the evolutionary process. That is, natural selection favored those of us who were disgusted by mushy fruits for the straightforward reason that they act as a conduit for microbes.

I was peeling a persimmon the other day and realized it is much harder to peel a mushy one than one with a firm, smooth surface. I then pondered for about two hours and a half how I could link this to human evolution and concluded evolution has nothing to do with this.