We don’t need no steenking penguins!!

..so Reid writes to Matt and me: “Have either of you seen ‘March of the Penguins’? It is a big hit here – projected to make more money than Michael Moore’s ‘Farenheit 9/11′ but as far as I can tell it is some magnificent footage of penguins with the most sentimental, lachrymose, maundering narrative with …

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Prehistoric Contact Between Polynesia and California?

I want to thank Steve for extending the invitation to guest-blog here. I have been a great fan of his since reading Querencia in 1994. I make my living as a professional archaeologist and I was delighted to find we have common interests in that field upon discovering this blog last month. Our resulting fun …

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More Evo– Guest Post

My friend Dr. John Burchard is a distinguished scientist, teacher, and researcher. His various interests include cichlid behavior, classical guitar, and falconry. He probably knows more about salukis and primitive sighthounds than anyone alive. He studied at Princeton, did postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute, worked under Konrad Lorenz,taught in Nigeria and worked for …

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More Evo

Steve Sailer has another irresistible post up about selection, Darwin, ignorance, etc. that should offend everyone from creationists to “Gouldian” Marxists. Sample (he is talking of the necessity of taking all your antibiotics): “The good news is that there are no Creationists so dogmatic that they preach taking only two days worth of penicillin on …

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Influences 2– Reply to Matt

Matt said: “You were a writer already into his own by the time I found that excerpt from “Rage” in the Smithsonian(?). But maybe you’d like to share some of your early unpublished work with us 🙂 and let us try to find the ghosts of Kipling and Hemingway in it? Maybe it’s not there …

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Influences Part 1

The subject of influences and finding one’s own voice is a big one, and I am going to have to think a lot about it. But let us make a start. My mother started reading Kipling to me– The Jungle Books– when I was about three, and they may be the reason I started reading …

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Kennewick win!

The Department of the Interior has reversed its position on the provenance of Kennewick, from siding with the Indians (i.e. that he could be identified with the present- day Umatillas– or any other tribe) to siding with the scientists, a victory for reason. Money quote, from the Society for American Anthropology: “The hearing brought several …

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Bad news for the Sage Grouse

As all news seems to be. The magnificent Sage grouse (now considered to be composed of two species, the Sage, Centrocercus urophasianus, and the Gunnison, Centrocercus minimus) is the biggest grouse in North America and perhaps one of the ultimate quarries for dedicated falconers because it is so good in the air as well as …

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Ultmate in cluelessness?

At least, a leading candidate: “The bureaucratic mind at work, from the WSJ Political Diary: “Before deploying from Savannah, Georgia to Iraq by a chartered airliner, the troops of the 48th Brigade Combat Team, a National Guard unit, had to go through the same security checks as any other passengers. Lt. Col. John King, the …

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Hello from Africa

Alpha Enviros Jonathan and Roseann Hanson have been off- line because they are in Africa learning to be guides from the Maasai. Just got a note, which I quote: “We drove two Land Cruisers all over the country. Roseann made other guides nearly drive off the road when they saw her. Then we went up …

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