Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert A. Heinlein, the great American science fiction writer who died in 1988. His influence has been so great in so many areas that there are tributes to him all over the web this week. Here’s a good one and another short one from John Derbyshire. …
Quote of the Day
Steve’s internet access problems are still preventing him from posting. He e-mailed to ask if I could put this up for him. Steve is a fan of the books, print journalism, and on-line work of John Derbyshire. Derb is also a fan of Steve’s. I read his great review of Eagle Dreams long before I …
2Blowhards on Hobbies
We are pleased, as Her Majesty says, to be mentioned again at 2Blowhards! Steve’s post on bully whippets made the latest round of blogrolling by team member “Michael.” This regular feature (called Elsewhere) is something I watch for at 2BH, sure to provide a captivating sample of the Web in lighting-round format. Tagged to the …
Future Trends and More Merle
This blog may bend the boundaries of our Querencia, but I’ll try to wrangle it back around. According to AP, “The Pew Research Center survey on marriage and parenting found that children had fallen to eighth out of nine on a list of factors that people associate with successful marriages…” The survey charted other trends, …
Cats Domesticated Humans
Actually, this interesting NY Times story on a cat DNA study says that it appears cats domesticated themselves somewhere in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago. But anyone who has ever been owned by a cat knows the truth.
From Steve
I’m still having SERIOUS server problems. I just can’t load big sites like Daren’s, Carel’s, Pluvi’s (well, I can if I am willing to refresh for a half hour or more and if it doesn’t disconnect– which it does literally hundreds of times a day, some times three or four times a MINUTE!) I also …
Petrified Forest
Today’s LA Times tells the story of Clyde Friend, who has discovered a forest of petrified trees on his property in an undisclosed location near Yakima, Washington. The standing trees were apparently engulfed by a lava flow about 15 million years ago, and now are preserved in a basalt hill covering an area of about …
Mammoth Figurine
Isn’t that just beautiful? It’s a 35,000 year-old figurine of a mammoth carved from mammoth ivory. Der Speigel reports that it was recovered from the site of Vogelherd Cave in southwestern Germany along with several other ivory carvings, including one of a lion. Click the link to see more pictures, including other views of this …
New Dog Book
Steve’s friend Ted Kerasote, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, has a new one at B&N I could not resist. Merle’s Door, Lessons from a Freethinking Dog, is parts memoir, polemic and canine biography. It is also an unapologetic love story and, I admit, a tear-jerker there toward the end. Merle is a mostly-lab …
Mirror Image
Hat tip to Arthur Wilderson for this story, a write-up about a remarkably similar phenomenon in England to what we’ve been discussing over here lately: nostalgia for free-range children who spend their days outdoors. Good title, too: Rearing Children in Captivity At the school gates of Birchington Primary School, on the Kent coast, a group …