High summer, decent rains, garden roaring. Libby points at the Dahlias springing up from Patrick Porter’s generous gift. This is the first year we have grown Chinese long beans. Insects are everywhere. We keep our cardoon as an ornamental. This year we noticed that it is COVERED with insects, on virtually every leaf– not ones …
U and Non- U American Accents
Megan McArdle at the Atlantic has a post up on the all- but- vanished “Mid- Atlantic accent” of the old Eastern WASP upper class. This interests me because I remember it well, but I have the sense that it is virtually extinct. (Think George Plympton; William Buckley’s was a variant but very idiosyncratic.) Betsy Huntington …
Food and AR News
In Oakland you can have an actual farm, pigs and all. But in Chicago, the banningest city in the US (pigeons, foie gras, handguns), HSUS wants to compel you to cut off your dogs’ gonads. Of course they say it is a good thing. The Sportsman’s and Animal Owners Voting Alliance thinks differently: “The distorted …
Science Links
Darren has been posting a series of utterly weird and alien cetacean skulls. Try here and here and especially here for my favorites, but they are all wonderful. He also weighs in on the “Montauk Monster”. Despite the hysteria I though it was a canid; he convinces me that it is likely another small carnivore. …
NIMBY (except it isn’t your back yard!)
You’ve probably see this one: Man plants cars to stake claim on farm property. It’s funny, and it’s meant to be. But the larger issue surrounding it is not so funny. New suburban residential developments continue to invade rural areas, despite the higher costs of commuting that may ultimately make the McMansion an untenable concept. …
Another Antikythera Mechanism Study
Not quite two years ago, I posted on the Antikythera Mechanism, a Hellenistic Greek “celestial computer” dating to 100 BC, recovered from a Mediterranean shipwreck. It appears to be a metal gear-driven device that allowed the ancient people to track and predict astronomical phenomena. It was recovered from the wreck almost 100 years ago, but …
Friday Feeder Friend
Scrub jay.
And Thanks To…
Randy Edmond in Casa Grande, for the Steve Stirling novel and the Emmylou CD.
Blogger and Boletes
Last weekend we went looking for Boletus edulis in the San Mateos southwest of here. It was an amazingly bloggish crew– us, MDMNM and Miss A., Mrs. Peculiar who also blogs as The Pumpkin King (Mr. P. is guiding in the Grand Canyon); and non- blogger saluki fan, artist, architect, and polymath Daniela Imre, another …
Enjoyable/ Interesting Links
Prarie Mary sent me pics of a white eagle picked up in Colorado, and now Carel Brest Van Kempen has has blogged it, along with other white raptors. Some feather whiteness appears to be deleterious– it might not be a good idea to release it again. The fearless Annie D. somehow found these amazing octopus …