Just so we can be ethnically diverse here, I have to put up this companion post to Steve’s on risotto from earlier this week. He gets to honor his Italian heritage – I get to honor my Southern redneck Scots-Irish heritage. This LA Times article says that grits are starting to move into high-end cuisine …
Author: Reid Farmer
Aussie Speak
A young lady who works in my office is Australian, a transfer from our Melbourne office. She is a geologist; very bright, capable and funny. It is interesting to talk to her about her impressions of this strange country she finds herself in. Of course, the fact that her experiences here are mostly in California …
Sixteenth Century Spanish Ship in Florida
The Navy has found what appears to be a Spanish colonial ship that could date as early as the mid 1500s. It is very interesting as it is located somewhat inland covered by 75 feet of sand. The Navy is moving its construction project to avoid the wreck.
The King of Baby Carrots
Robert Grimm, president of Grimmway Farms, who did more than anyone else to popularize baby carrots, has died of a heart attack in Bakersfield. I had no idea how big a business carrots are until I lived in Kern County, where Grimmway is the largest private employer. It also came as a shock to me …
Lost Airman Laid to Rest
The WWII airman found frozen in a Sierra Nevada glacier last October is being buried in his hometown in Minnesota today. I posted on this several times, most recently when his identity was announced last month. The New York Times has an interesting piece with much detail on how the DoD forensics lab solved the …
Sadie Discovers the Pacific
Dogs love the beach. Mine have been telling me that for years. So after we got our new Australian Shepherd, Sadie, we knew we had to take her down and introduce her. It was great for her to go with our Lab, Maggie, who could show her the joys of the rotting kelp, stinking crab …
Our Minds are in the Pleistocene II
Jackson Kuhl attempts to take on his fellow TCS Daily contributor Max Border’s assertion that humans have an instinct for egalitarianism due to our long period of evolution in band societies, something that I posted on here. Kuhl does us a service by pointing out a quote from one of my favorite archaeologists, Kent Flannery …
Overhunting in Prehistoric California
I want to thank Chas Clifton at Natureblog for reminding me of this story with his post. Jack Broughton, an archaeologist at the University of Utah, has conducted a detailed analysis of faunal remains from the Emeryville Shellmound. This was a significant prehistoric site in the San Francisco Bay area. The turn of the century …
Clive’s Tortoise
News comes from India that a tortoise believed to be 250 years old has died in a zoo in Kolkata. A good “paper trail” exists to document this long life span as the animal was the pet of Robert Clive (1725-1774) British military commander and founder of the British Empire in India. We know that …
Random Beach Art
I think a lot of art-oriented people live around here. While walking at the beach where we sighted the infamous driftwoodman, we saw some new installations the other day. This one was rectilinear. This one incorporated several holes. The dogs were convinced there were gophers down in them and I had to shoo them away …