“The Double Life of the Slimy, Acrobatic Leopard Slug” Leopard slugs, a hermaphroditic gastropod commonly found under a wide variety of boards, rocks and flowerpots in New York City, has a mating ritual that would make Caligula blush.

“Ants March Differently, Depending on Direction” Desert ants change their walking motion to haul the remains of other insects, but still navigate unsighted toward home.

“Meet Luca, the Ancestor of All Living things” A single-cell, bacterium-like organism clinging to volcanic sea events may have been the forebear of every animal, plant and microbe on earth.

Those are reports from the New York Times this week of a few of the totally irrelevant studies that are going on these days and they are the reason I still have hope for the world we live in. You can look them up.

They are what give my conscience permission to prattle on about handkerchiefs and Kleenex or whatever. I am so grateful that some people are willing to devote their lives to irrelevancies, more important to our existence, to our survival than all those benighted souls (do they have souls? - I wonder where they put them) who concentrate on fighting, getting even, killing and destroying.

So I’ll go on prattling. I have lots of irrelevant things I want to think about with you.