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Burton Cole

Wrap mind around new randonauting

Smartphone in hand, I trudge a path through a small, shallow swamp. I’m following the coordinates to an unusual, obscure and random location. The coordinates were provided by Randonautica, an app that encourages users to go on adventures. If you’re familiar with the global treasure hunting game geocaching, Randonautica has a similar feel, albeit with a sort of spiritual element and no tangible X-marks-the-spot treasure. Generating a truly random location seems an easy enough computational task for any well-designed smartphone app. But Randonautica is different. It’s not as ...

Keep an eye on your boots and toast

Welcome to another episode of “Animals Behaving Badly.” The guest stars on this week’s episode include international shoe thief foxes, a laundered snake and emus banned from a bar. Let’s welcome our first guest: * In late July, a fox in Berlin, Germany, was busted for theft — of ...

Memories were better before Youtube

“Remember that time you fell out of the tree in the cow pasture?” Cousin Ollie gasped in merriment — his, not mine. “You looked like a walrus scaling a cactus.” “I believe you refer to the time I saved the life of that poor, stranded kitty that you ignored.” Ollie hooted. ...

Apparently you can lose at the fill-in-the-blank game

Long-married couples have a knack for finishing each other’s sentences. Terry and I do that. It’s too bad that we’re never talking about the same thing when we do. You’ve seen those creepy couples. They’ll be all smiles and doe-eyed as they carry on coded cut-off conversations ...

Get ready to hurry up and wait

“Wanna hike through the woods?” “That’s a great idea,” my wife said. “Just give me a minute to gather up a couple things.” “No!” I cried. “We’ll never get there.” “Don’t be silly,” Terry said. “Once upon a time, when we decided to do something, we got up and ...

Science says men do stupid things to have good story

Never ask a man how he got that scar. Not because it’s impolite. But because he’ll tell you. Repeatedly. In glowing, gory detail after detail after detail. The only relief from total monotony is that the stories usually improve over the years — the alley cat morphs into a mountain lion, ...