Obligatory weekly photo by Shiri: Lane, I know Rissa is related to yours, and Tavi is more distantly as well.
Month: August 2012
USAF MiGs
Here’s a short but interesting piece from Aviation Week on the 1980s US Air Force program that flew a variety of Soviet MiG fighter aircraft (that had been obtained through a variety of means) both for performance evaluation and in an aggressor role against our aircraft. The money quote serves as the title: “We didn’t know …
Humpbacks
The UK Daily Mail has a set of rather spectacular photographs of a pod of humpback whales feeding close inshore among a group of boaters, kayakers, and paddle boarders off the California Central Coast. Whatever they were feeding on, it’s obvious the pelicans wanted to get in on the action, too. The Daily Mail says …
Real Swordfighting Wasn’t Like What We See in the Movies
Hardly surprising, as I believe most of the modern public has its ideas on the subject conditioned by the conventions of fencing, which has conditioned the minds of movie stuntmen. The author of this article has made the study of Medieval and Renaissance manuals on swordfighting and a re-creation of their techniques his life’s work. …
More Ink
My New Hampshire friend Dr Hypercube, who is a blogger, falconer, Steampunk dandy, fine shotgun nut*, breeder of tropical frogs, and fellow aficionado of Central Asian art, sent me another great tattoo, a tiger, from Rudenko’s Frozen Tombs of Siberia (anyone know where to get an affordable copy?) If I ever get a tattoo at …
Happy Tazis
The kids are smiling as they get in shape for fall. Pics by Shiri of course…
Tattoos, Griffins, Dinosaurs, and Indiana Jones
Our friend Sari in Finland sends this link to some tattooed mummies in the Siberian Altai. Here are a couple more from that tradition, from (I think) a bit further south. These are mythical “Griffins”, but are probably based on fossils like the Protoceratops, found in Mongolia in the 1920’s by Roy Chapman Andrews, the …
Trotting Rhymes & Old Languages
It seems to me that any culture that had horses has “trotting rhymes”, bits of doggerel chanted by parents as they bounce a toddler on their knees. My folks had one in English (“Trot trot to Boston, trot trot to Lynn..”), but the one my siblings and I remember was “Italian”. The quotes are because …
On Her Way
Lauren, en route to the US from Kazakhstan, stopped at dog-in- law Mark McBride’s in Scotland to visit him and his accomplished working pack (he is also a Kazakhstan hand). Next Oklahoma, then Magdalena…
“Johnny UK” in New Mexico
As promised; ’99? 2000?