Another in the continuing series. “I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can’t be …
Apples and Genetic Diversity
Ever since reading Michael Pollans’s wonderful The Botany of Desire I have been fascinated by Kazakhstan’s wild apple groves, the “Eden of Apples”. There might have been, at least until recently, more genetic diversity in a Kazakh grove than in all of North America. Such groves are threatened by the suburban sprawl around Almaty. Following …
Most Unlikely Career Path
Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, the brilliant guitarist who gave the pre-jazz version of Steely Dan (still in all incarnations my favorite Seventies band) its edge, is now a sought- after analyst on terrorism and defense. And he is self- taught!
…and the Bad
They have some for- real heavy duty capital- F Fascists. The Moscow Times (link may have expired or need registration) reports on one: “Last week the ultra-nationalist newspaper Zavtra ran an interview with Vladimir Kvachkov, who has been charged in the attempted murder of Unified Energy Systems CEO Anatoly Chubais. In the interview Kvachkov, a …
The Good In Russia
We forget sometimes that Russia, though not “like us” is not the Russia of the cold war. In The Corner (you’ll have to go into the archives for the whole post but I’ll put most of it here) Iain Murray writes: “My friend Paul Robinson attended the reburial ceremony for White Russian heroes Ivan Alexandrovich …
Ridiculous but Wonderful
A knitted, anatomically detailed, digestive system.
The Chumash, Swordfish, and Rock Art
The swordfish (Xiphias gladius) occupied a prominent role in the religion of the prehistoric Chumash, a coastal and island people of Southern California. I have posted about the Chumash before here a few times. Living near the Pacific as they did, the Chumash believed that the ocean and the land were complementary worlds and that …
More On “Daddy Kills…”
This reply from Roseann Hanson of the Alpha Environmentalist sheds some more light in a dark corner:Since Matt wrote that he hadn’t verified the comic book and the website – and, like him, I was hoping it was fake – I went to the site http://www.fishinghurts.com/ that’s listed on the cover of the comic. Lo …
Waiting for Condor
Steve and I chuckled over the LA Times article that appeared with this beautiful photograph. The entire piece is centered around a field trip by a group of birders to see condors – which never show up – giving the whole thing sort of a “Waiting for Godot” quality. Generally it does give a pretty …
Message from the Frontier
Every phone call from New Orleans is of interest. Andrea, first introduced in this post, surprised me yesterday with a call from the Garden District where she now lives and plans to stay for a couple years at least. It’s not the same place she remembers, says Andrea, having moved to the city just weeks …