Ivory-billed woodpecker rediscoverer Tim Gallagher has a sense of humor, even if his skeptics don’t. For april Fool’s Day he sent me this:
Pacelle speaks
Reader and borzoi breeder Rey McGehee finds some attributed wisdom from H$U$ prez Wayne Pacelle. “The life of an ant and the life of my child should be accorded equal respect.”— Wayne Pacelle, Associated Press, Jan. 15, 1989 And again, lest you think he spoke without thinking of the implications: The life of an ant …
Growing “Meat”
Artificial meat— or more acurrately “test tube meat” — rears its ugly head again. I suspect if this ever becomes a reality it will give AR people another club to beat us with. And can you imagine the esthetics? Notice they couldn’t bring themselves to actually EAT it.
“Creatures”
From the unique blog Laputan Logic (which I should blogroll) comes this group of– sculptures?– that move across the beaches of holland. I don’t know what to call them but I think they are wonderful.
Canine Forensics
The Society for California Archaeology is holding their annual meeting in Ventura this week. In conjunction with that, Connie and I attended a presentation last night from the Institute for Canine Forensics. This group trains and promotes the use of dogs to locate dead humans both of recent and long-buried vintage. It is an outgrowth …
Designer Grits
Just so we can be ethnically diverse here, I have to put up this companion post to Steve’s on risotto from earlier this week. He gets to honor his Italian heritage – I get to honor my Southern redneck Scots-Irish heritage. This LA Times article says that grits are starting to move into high-end cuisine …
Aussie Speak
A young lady who works in my office is Australian, a transfer from our Melbourne office. She is a geologist; very bright, capable and funny. It is interesting to talk to her about her impressions of this strange country she finds herself in. Of course, the fact that her experiences here are mostly in California …
How To Interest A Big Publisher
Society is not breaking down. Society is broken. I caught this bit at Yahoo news, about a college student who spent his spring break in Wal-Mart (or should we spell that, W@L-M*RT?). Skyler Bartels haunted the fluorescent interior for 41 hours in a row, watching movies, playing video games, eating from the snack bar and …
Girls With Guns
The incomparable Tam, queen of snark and Mistress of Coal Creek Armory, deconstructs a breathless and idiotic piece on female shooters. “Why is it that when some bright spark in the marketing department at Apple, Cannondale, or Pontiac notices that slightly more than 50% of the planet’s population is setters rather than pointers, it gets …
Risotto and Rice Fetishism
Reid sent this LAT food column on risotto (which I still call “risott’ ” in the mountain dialect of my grandparents) for my comment. What did I think? Well, you’d certainly get a good dish if you followed the cook’s advice. But he sure takes it solemnly (not at all the same as seriously). I …