I’ve had several inquiries as to the progress our new Aussie puppy Sadie, is making so I thought I would put up a few pictures we took on a beach walk a week ago Friday. She really is growing. She weighed 10 pounds when we picked her up in early February and now she is …
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Tulane Commencement
My alma mater, Tulane University in New Orleans, has just held its first commencement since the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina last year so damaged the school’s physical plant that classes were suspended for the fall semester. Two ex-Presidents, Bush and Clinton, delivered a joint commencement address. Not too shabby – but I’m not so sure …
Oldest Observatory in the New World
The LA Times reports the discovery of the oldest celestial observatory yet found in the New World, at the 4200 year-old Buena Vista site, north of Lima, Peru. This “frowning face” marks one of the solstice alignments that have been documented by Bob Benfer of the University of Missouri, atop a pyramid located at the …
Stop Me Before I Blog Again!
…. but I am just sitting around waithing for Chas and Mary and I keep finding cool things like this interview with Bill Buford, who recently wrote of his experiences learning to be an Italian butcher in the New Yorker: “One night Dario and I and my wife and his wife at the time went …
One More!
A friend sent me this NYT link to the so-called “Best novels of the past 25 years”. I was underwhelmed to say the least! It was full of Roth and DeLillo and had almost nobody from off the East coast. I wrote back to the group: “Huh. I’m a bit out of the mainstream of …
What I Am Reading
The latest in a very occasional series… New: Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade Odalisque by Neal Stephenson The Egg and Sperm Race by Matthew Cobb (The English title not the American one, a sort of non- fiction version of the Baroque Cycle only for biologists) Tamerlane by Justin Marozzi Not so new: East of …
Ranchettes
After hearing me rant about the proliferation of 5- acre “ranchette” subdivisions surrounding Magdalena, Mary Zeiss Stange sent me a wonderful essay she had published on the subject (in USA Today!). “Call it Homesteading 2004: You move to the country to escape the urban rat race, and a coyote eats your cat. On days when …
Just Desserts
Paul Domski sends this link to a story about the sentencing of some AR terrorists in England: “The family of brothers Chris and John Hall, who ran the business at Darley Oaks farm in rural Staffordshire, and their staff, were subject to firebomb attacks, had paint-stripper poured over their cars and bricks thrown through their …
Epidemic Updates…
The good: Bird Flu has not returned to europe on the wings of the returning migrants, contrary to doomsday scenarios. And the.. weird: Morgellan’s Disease, which sounds like bad science fiction– little fibers extending from the victims’ skin, pain, crawling sensations, psychological disturbances, with no known cause and no cure in sight. This appears to …
Dodos
Here is a good piece reviewing the movie “Flock of Dodos” that was made by a biologist turned filmmaker who tries to show that “Inteligent” design is wrong, but that pompous smugness may not be the best way to combat it. “Olson illustrates (and perhaps exaggerates) the evolutionists’ difficulties. In one of the film’s more …