Actually, this interesting NY Times story on a cat DNA study says that it appears cats domesticated themselves somewhere in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago. But anyone who has ever been owned by a cat knows the truth.
Month: June 2007
From Steve
I’m still having SERIOUS server problems. I just can’t load big sites like Daren’s, Carel’s, Pluvi’s (well, I can if I am willing to refresh for a half hour or more and if it doesn’t disconnect– which it does literally hundreds of times a day, some times three or four times a MINUTE!) I also …
Petrified Forest
Today’s LA Times tells the story of Clyde Friend, who has discovered a forest of petrified trees on his property in an undisclosed location near Yakima, Washington. The standing trees were apparently engulfed by a lava flow about 15 million years ago, and now are preserved in a basalt hill covering an area of about …
Mammoth Figurine
Isn’t that just beautiful? It’s a 35,000 year-old figurine of a mammoth carved from mammoth ivory. Der Speigel reports that it was recovered from the site of Vogelherd Cave in southwestern Germany along with several other ivory carvings, including one of a lion. Click the link to see more pictures, including other views of this …
New Dog Book
Steve’s friend Ted Kerasote, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, has a new one at B&N I could not resist. Merle’s Door, Lessons from a Freethinking Dog, is parts memoir, polemic and canine biography. It is also an unapologetic love story and, I admit, a tear-jerker there toward the end. Merle is a mostly-lab …
Mirror Image
Hat tip to Arthur Wilderson for this story, a write-up about a remarkably similar phenomenon in England to what we’ve been discussing over here lately: nostalgia for free-range children who spend their days outdoors. Good title, too: Rearing Children in Captivity At the school gates of Birchington Primary School, on the Kent coast, a group …
Going On About Helen
I’m going to break a small confidence and relate a thing Steve said to me in the privacy of his kitchen. I was going on about Helen MacDonald, drunk after our detour to the Golden Spur and full of good meat from the Bodio larder. A point at which, in other words, I was babbling. …
Looking for that Pot of Gold
A thunderstorm just before sunset Monday night gave us this big double rainbow as seen from our deck. It and the pyrotechnics of the storm provided dinnertime entertainment for us and Mr. & Mrs. Peculiar (Jackson and Nikki) who we were delighted to have as house guests. The sunset wasn’t too bad, either.
Frozen Dead Guy is a Hot Commodity
The Denver Post ran this oddball local story today. In the small town of Nederland in the mountains west of Boulder, Bredo Morstoel, who died in 1989, lies frozen in a metal coffin, awaiting the day when medical science has advanced enough to revive him and fix the heart ailment that killed him. Morstoel’s grandson …
Why We Blog II
Well, I guess it’s my turn. It may sound a little strange, but at least to some extent I blog because I was invited. Though I had read blogs and commented on them for ages, I really had no idea of doing it myself until Steve asked me to post here. Now it’s hard to …