The Silk Road Trilogy translation, of course. I’ll be away with no computer for the last couple of days before the deadline. But all but 600 and a little dollars of the needed $15,000 has been raised, and it would be a shame to miss when we are this close…
Author: Steve Bodio
Lauren In Kazakhstan
Lauren McGough is in Kazakhstan now, studying, handling birds, shooting a VEPR (thanks Darrell) at marmots and eating them, running hounds bred by Kostya (who bred our Taika) and of course drinking vodka (it’s mandatory). She is in the Alatau in the southwest, where the mountains end and run down to the Caspian Basin; fascinating …
Gratuitous Asian hounds again…
We have taigans as well as tazis and Arab salukis in NM. (courtesy of Shiri and the other LB) They still seem exotic. Taigans and tazis and salukis are relatives; all are Silk Road dogs, and, whether you think they came west or east they followed those tracks. Only 5 days to go, with about …
Only six days left…
..to fund the Russian life- Kickstarter Silk Road trilogy translation project, with $4300 to go, or all is in vain. I think Q readers may make up a majority now! Consider digging in a second or even a third time– we are!
The Purebred Thing Again
Great post on the “Closed Studbook” debate on Jameson Parker’s Barking Backward blog here. I replied at length and thought it might be worth double posting here; this is an edited version so go to the original for more. Hear, hear! The closed studbook paradigm is a recipe for genetic impoverishment and disaster. I have …
Rude scary poster
From Annie Davidson. My preferred caption is: “So Feduccia: explain to me again how birds aren’t dinosaurs…” More on the “controversy” (not very, actually) here.
Fenton, Light
James Fenton is a serious poet and has written some chilling ones (Tom McIntyre remarked that being in Cambodia in the bad days might give you a rather chilly view of human nature). His new collection Yellow Tulips: Poems 1968- 2011 (available only from the UK so far) has plenty of those, and melancholic and …
Cool Bug
A South American treehopper sent to Q by Jonathan Hanson, who writes: “… It was posted by a herpetologist (and virtuoso violinist) friend of ours, Robert Villa, on Facebook. The description offered by a friend of his who has collected them was: ‘It is a treehopper, Cyphonia trifidia ; cicadas lack the pronotal expansions along …
Second Quote of the Day
I doubt I will ever buy a Purdey but I have always shot beautiful guns, as good as I could wrangle. I have never hesitated to buy fine guns, good books or for that matter art or even good custom shirts. This thoughtful unsigned post from the excellent Mannlicher Schoenauer rifle site gets to the …
New Damascus Steel
Purdey has reinvented Damascus, using a process I don’t even pretend to understand. From Michael Yardley’s site: “Powder steels have around twice the fracture strength of normal steels. The molten steel from the refining furnace runs into a nitrogen-filled vacuum chamber. In the chamber powerful gas beams atomize the alloy into a fine powder. The… …