Collected

-- "This is Qatar Airways Flight Made-Up Number, Doha to Bali. I am declaring an emergency."

"Roger Qatar Made-Up Number. What is your emergency?

"A passenger's wife just checked his phone and found out he was cheating, and she told everyone on the plane, so all the women want to kill him."

"Roger Qatar Made-Up Number. Two armored divisions will greet your flight upon landing."

"Make it three. The flight attendants are helping."

-- A makeup artist went into a store called Sephora last week and saw a display of eye shadow that had been ruined. She snapped a picture and posted it to her Facebook page, saying the makeup had probably been ruined by a child. Her post sparked much comment, ranging from agreement with her and triumphant claims that the commenters' kids are taught not to do stuff like that to parents pointing out that not every mom can afford kid care and sometimes kids get away and out of sight for a bit. The two things that struck me were 1) She actually never saw a kid do this, so she really has no way of knowing. And 2) I don't know beans about eye shadow, but when I hear an estimate of $1,300 worth of product being destroyed I picture much larger quantities. Maybe the real offense is how much showoffy pay for what ought to be everyday stuff.

-- A kindergartner asks science writer Maggie Koerth-Baker at Five Thirty-Eight what the world would be like if there were no number 6, and sparks some interesting speculation from some math professors. Turns out that things would be very different, and maybe some things -- like life itself as we know it -- might be actually impossible. So I'm all in favor of keeping six and all of the other numbers we have, even though I'm kind of keen on Koerth-Baker's suggestion about renaming 6 as splorfledinger.

-- You may or may not agree with Daniel Ritchie's review essay on the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Coriolanus here in The Public Discourse. I kind of like it, but I'm prone to thinking that more of our problems come from how we respond to things around us rather than the things themselves, and that's generally where he goes. Either way, it's something else that a 400-year-old play can resonate with political and cultural situations of today. Nice job, Bill.