Whole Foods in Hot Water

It’s somewhat chic now to trash retail grocer Whole Foods. Whether it’s about price or pretension, almost everyone I know has a gripe. Michael Pollan shared his beef in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, prompting this response from company execs. I’ve got a bone to pick with them, too, having lost to their expansionism the last good …

Read more

Father’s Day with Guns and Puppies

“The kids”, Peculiar and Mrs. Peculiar, came down from Santa Fe for Father’s Day. They played with puppies. And shot targets, and played with more puppies. Nikki shot for the first time– a shotgun, a .22 rifle, and two decidedly non- wimpy handguns– a Smith Mountain gun in .44, a Kimber .45 auto on a …

Read more

More Terrierman

Patrick Burns, whose exceptional blog we noted earlier and added to the Q. ‘roll, has recently added us. We…are…pleased. Burns has been “playing in the gutter” (that’s old school lingo for updating his nav-bar), and his blog now offers a good post archive. I spent some time browsing this morning and see, to my amazement, …

Read more

Prairiemary, Blackfeet and Fossil Legends

Mary Scriver e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago, telling me of a large and powerful mythic creature from Blackfoot legend known as a “water bull.” Mary suggested that it might have its origins in tribal memories of mammoths from the Pleistocene and asked what I thought. I replied that was possible, but also to …

Read more

Coso Rock Art Blogging

As I posted on here and here, the prehistoric people at Coso, up in Inyo County, were obsessed with big-horn sheep. I like this image of sheep in the rain.

Bird Rock Art Blogging

A prehistoric Chumash pictograph of a hummingbird. From CA-SBA-550 at Honda Ridge on Vandenberg AFB here in Santa Barbara County.

A Close Call

This post has it’s origins in an e-mail I sent to Steve, Libby, and Matt last Monday night. I have updated it, added some pictures that I took Tuesday evening, and included Libby’s reply that tells a similar story.I had a close call yesterday. In the afternoon I took the dogs hiking on the Jesusita …

Read more

Brown Eyes and a Taste for Steak

Heritability of food preference in children is the subject of a new study (in press with the Journal of Physiology & Behavior) by researchers with University College and Kings College, London. Wire service reports can be found here and here and the original article by Fiona M. Breena, Robert Plominb and Jane Wardle can be …

Read more

Three quick links

I am writing two articles today (and one is for free, proving me a fool by Dr. Johnson’s dictum), so time is limited. But I am taking a break, and you must see these. First, as I said Larissa is going to London. Here is her account of her trip to set things up, which …

Read more