Ken Adam, my father- in- law, died yesterday at 87, at home, surrounded by his loving family. He had a long and adventurous life. Among his achievements were many pioneering climbs in Yosemite. To quote from Steve Roper’s A Climber’s Guide to Yosemite: ” Although as long ago as 1886 Hutchings, in reporting the relatively …
Oh all right…
… something cool. This is a photo of two aboriginal hunters with matchlock rifles and a Laika dog in the Tunguskaya region of Siberia in 1926, part of a great archive compilied by Russian census takers in 1926 (you can “back” into the larger archive). As my friend Vladimir Beregovoy, who sent this to me, …
“Spleen” by Beaudelaire
I’m like the King of some damp, rainy clime,Grown impotent and old before my time,Who scorns the bows and scrapings of his teachersAnd bores himself with hounds and all such creatures.Naught can amuse him, falcon, steed or chase:No, not the mortal plight of his whole raceDying before his balcony. The tune,Sung to this tyrant by …
Human Nature
I promise to snap out of this mood sooner than later, but I believe in celebrating the bracing effects of gloom as well as the good things. In that spirit, a quote from Rose Nunez at No Credentials: “What history really teaches is that people are indeed nasty; that Hobbes was righter than Rousseau, and …
China in Zimbabwe
An article in the NYT on the new bonds being forged with China by Zimbabwe’s megalomaniacal dictator Robert Mugabe contains many things to give us pause. Remember those farms confiscated from white farmers that were supposed to go to the “people”? Well, “…China won a contract last year to farm 386 square miles of land …
Durians
From the Oxford Companion to Food, a bit of doggerel from Horticulture. It helps to know that Alfred Russell Wallace was extremely fond of the stinking fruit. The durian–neither Wallace or Darwin agreed on it. Darwin said ‘may your worst enemies be forced to feed on it’. Wallace cried ‘it’s delicious’. Darwin replied ‘I’m suspicious, …
Atlantis??
Frankly, if this were any lesser journal than Nature I’d be VERY skeptical. But…. “In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in Plouzané gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar. “The top of this …
Rich Writers?
And while we are on doom and gloom– where does the idea that writers are rich come from? 2Blowhards sent me to Conversational Reading’s post on Writing and Money that has some true and funny things to say on the subject. “They had their names on the cover of a book, thus they were wealthy. …
Pessimism and gloom
The indispensible Derbyshire found this quote from Macaulay on Dr. Johnson that perfectly describes the pessimistic cast of mind, which I think he and I (often) share, and cheerfully offers it up for our inspection: “A deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature and …
Killer ‘Pillar
A caterpillar from the forests of Hawaii that eats land snails. Libby wishes we had some in our garden, where the escargots have run rampant this year. Hawaii is full of strange and unique creatures– see here. One can only wonder it was like before humans came– and no, the aboriginal Hawaiians were no better …