Well, if Reid can do it… First thing: I read one book at a time. This amounts to a fair stack by the end of a season, but it’s a serial adventure. The simultaneous readers—Steve, Reid, everyone else in my family—surround and amaze me. Yet I remain, tragically, monobiblic. So a “list” of books I …
Author: Matt Mullenix
Zebra Mussels and Natural Selection
Just a note: It seems a contractor has successfully eradicated invasive zebra mussels from a quarry in Virginia using massive doses of potasium chloride—toxic to mussels (not so good for death row inmates, either). After the evident die-off, live mussels were sent down in a sack to serve as aquatic canaries, and they promptly died …
More from the Pandemic Report
I couldn’t find a way to fit this into my previous post, but those who’ve been reading here and elsewhere about the USDA’s National Animal Identification System will see why this section of the flu report caught my eye: Educating Bird Owners We will expand our multilevel outreach and education campaign called “Biosecurity for the …
The Next Big Thing
Eighty miles inland and west of the epicenter, Baton Rouge took little abuse from Hurricane Katrina. The storm’s worst effects were felt in waves of people, hundreds of thousands chased, bussed, boated or airlifted from New Orleans and into our laps. Our emergency was mainly of supply and demand. Demand came first for food, fuel …
Digesting Good Literature
Our friend Anne Hocker and her friend Richard Louv (author of Last Child in The Woods) forwarded this quote today, a Querencia gem: Mark Twain* on writing, travel, animals and…good eats? “In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined …
New Group Against NAIS
I received this press release today from the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, a new organization seeking to stop the USDA’s National Animal Identification System and to act further—after this disaster is averted—on behalf of small farmers and private ranchers. To see the need and for a taste of the NAIS-brand of government service, note …
Total Eclipse
I better blog this before Steve does. One of our favorites, Pluvialis (aka Helen Macdonald), treats us yet again with a sample of her casual brilliance. She is back from a visit to catch the total eclipse in Turkey. No need to go there yourself; just read the whole thing. “There I am, sitting on …
How To Interest A Big Publisher
Society is not breaking down. Society is broken. I caught this bit at Yahoo news, about a college student who spent his spring break in Wal-Mart (or should we spell that, W@L-M*RT?). Skyler Bartels haunted the fluorescent interior for 41 hours in a row, watching movies, playing video games, eating from the snack bar and …
Reading Bourdain
I’m reading Anthony Bourdain as suggested in this post by Steve. Herein Bourdain, a classically trained chef with an eclectic, hair-raising resume, recounts an insider’s life in his trade. In this sense, Kitchen Confidential is like The Hungry Ocean by swordboat captain Linda Greenlaw. Or The Undertaking by—yes, undertaker—Thomas Lynch. Like Lynch and Greenlaw both, …
Modern Primitives
In an email exchange with Steve and me, Reid mentioned an essay he plans to write expanding on some of the themes from his good posts below. He may draw some comparisons between traditional hunting & gathering bands and today’s street gangs. It will be a good essay and we’ve already put in for an …