There is an article in today’s Wall Street Journal by Brendan Miniter about a plan by the State of Montana to allow limited hunting of bison who have wandered out of Yellowstone National Park. The bison carry brucellosis, a disease that kills domestic cattle, and they can’t be allowed to mingle with cattle herds in …
More on the Airman in the Glacier
A couple of weeks ago, I posted this about the body of a WW II era airman found in a glacier in the California Sierras. The LA Times this week had more about the shipment of the body to a DoD forensics lab in Hawaii for identification, and the known names of the crew of …
Father Ayala against “Intelligent” Design
This is a good link (via John Derbyshire and The Corner), to Dominican priest and biologist Francisco Ayala’s latest demolition of “Intelligent” Design. I particularly like this: “But American folk-Catholicism has absorbed an anti-evolution flavor from the surrounding evangelical Protestant culture. When he taught introductory biology at UCI, Ayala had Catholic students as well as …
Jeanne d’Arc
I am by no means a sensitive new- age male, so occasionally I get hit with “How come you are always surrounded by strong women?” To me, it’s obvious. But there may be a second reason, or one that precedes rational analysis. My very small, very odd, private Catholic grammar school had a copy of …
Pretty Guns– the Continuing Series
This one is a high- quality modern version of the classic Colt 1911 by Kimber . It has some useful modifications like Tritium night sights and a better magazine, but the reason I have photographed it is the wonderful custom scrimshaw handles by Eagle Grips. The design is a composite– my drawing– of several Tokugawa-era– …
Writing– the Continuing Series
I have been reading RobertKaplan’s good Mediterranean Winter and came upon this good advice given him by Patrick Leigh Fermor, the still- living greatest travel writer of the Twentieth Century (and if he completes the third volume of his trilogy before he dies, an early contender for the title in the Twenty- first). Fermor’s advice, …
“We were dreamers, dreaming greatly…
… in the man- stifled town;We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.” Kipling, of course. I become blue, even depressed, when unable to get away to somewhere strange, cold, and unhospitable but for people, who may stuff you with sheep or drown you in vodka. Or maybe to a hot place …
A Right and a Left!
Strictly speaking, shooting terminology. But two recent online esays from rather left and libertarian right perspectives– granted, on two different subjects– seemed to have a lot to say to me. In an article called “No people Allowed” in Orion, Mark Dowie argues that some westerners and conservation associations, however well- meaning, are decreeing new refuges …
A Serious China Essay
This rather dark and soberly analytical piece suggests that we may not prevail over an ascendant China either by trade or by military might. Must reading both for hubristic foreign- policy types and WSJ- type optimists.. Recommended, as they say.
Senior Trip
A tart guest post by Libby, who also has been known to have strong opinions (are you surprised?) on the senior trip in our small town. Remember, most of our roads are not even paved! “Out here is seems to be customary for the graduation senior class to take a trip during the last week …