Night Line

Snowball Running

Dog Fight

Walking Tall

Puddy Tats

Driver's Seat

Penultimate Most Wanted

So, the puppers, Blanche Marie and Stella Sue, hate this squirrel. It's a hatred that knows no bounds and never diminishes. The squirrel is indifferent to the dogs and that's sad. How would you like it if your best efforts to scare away the unwanted by barking, jumping and terrorizing it ignored you and ran down the cable next to the house unfazed by the frenzy?

Most Wanted

Things I Took Away From My Mom

Literally things that I took. Not lessons I left home with, but stuff I walked out of the house with when I moved out.


[photo of ancient Babylonian calculator]

The calculator was made in Japan. Remember when little things were made in Japan? I think that in over 20 years, I've changed the batteries once.

I also walked out with my mom's only slip, and jewelry I didn't even ask if I could have. What a nice mom I have.

Red Squirrel Gray squirrel

There’s an article in the October 7, 2007, Sunday New York Times Magazine about the small, shy British red squirrel being overtaken by the big, brutish American gray squirrel. The gray American squirrels were brought to England as a novelty, but once the aristocracy got tired of them, they let the big bruisers lose into the countryside and the buggers have been causing havoc ever since. How American.

The metaphor of the delicate red squirrel representing traditional English values and culture that is getting overrun by the American behemoth (the gray is a better breeder and more adventurous that its British cousin) has been used before. There was an article, I think it was in Harpers, 15 years ago that used the red squirrel as a metaphor for English cinema. In a nut shell (ha!), films like Brideshead, Enchanted April, Remains of the Day, Howard’s End, and Sense and Sensibility show the Britannia that exists in our imaginations. The stories these films tell are from other centuries with no shadow of the post-colonial, multicultural, you-are-being-videotaped Big Brother England of the 21th Century. The English movies of the red squirrel kind are your basic Merchant/Ivory fare.

Though I can appreciate a Die Hard and an Independence Day, there's nothing like spending quality time with a classic “red squirrel.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/magazine/07squirrels-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin
Squirrel Wars, by D.T. Max, 10/7/07

God Crying

Breakfast of Champions

I wonder how the dollar is doing against the yen?

The Last Frontier

NASA has a photo of the day that can be widgetted on your home page. F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S-!

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

A Series of Unfortunate Mistakes

Mistake #1
Going to bed too early. After an exhausting week, I wanted to read in bed at 9PM. Of course, after a few pages, I fell asleep, as did my partner. We woke an hour later. It was maybe 10 o’clock at night.

Mistake #2
Not admitting that we were awake. That way, we could get up, make coffee, and watch movies snuggled with the dogs in the living room all night. No, we tried to go back to sleep. You may remember that every night is movie night at my house. After listening to an hour and a half of the worst Doris Day movie, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” I gave up, put on my glasses, and watched the last ½ hour of ice skating while generation-wide and family-wide misunderstandings were cleared up in time for the happy slay ride to “The End.” It was painful.

Mistake #3
Dogs in bed. The dogs have taken to sleeping with me. Not my partner, but me. The other side of the bed is free for arms and legs to stretch and move from one side to the back and to the other side without encumbrances. The dogs want to sleep with their mum. I have a dog at my head--on a pillow mind you--having dreams of chasing evil squirrels. She dream barks and dream runs all night. The other dog is at my feet stretched out lengthwise not vertical so I have to curl into a ball on the edge of the bed.

This is not pretty and I'm not making those mistakes again. At least not numbers one and two.

Chatterbot

I’m listening to Professor Dumb-Ass on the normally excellent podcast of Scientific American, “Science Talk.” This smart scientist spent four months corresponding on-line with a computer program. He thought it was a hot Russian babe but it was a computer program called a chatterbot. A chatterbot is a conversation agent. That sounds Russian. The scientist admitted to being fooled because he's a “predator looking for a mate.” In other words (and his words), if he didn’t think there was the possibility of sex at the other end of the “conversation,” he would have picked up the vague answers months before and known it was a chatterbot.

What future was this guy going to have with this Russian babe? 1) if she was real, which she was not, she would only be looking for a way to get out of Russia; and 2) once she was out of Russia, she’d dump this nerd for a hunky Cowboy.

You don’t hear women scientists saying, I need to enhance my breasts because I’m so thin, there isn’t enough fat in my body to make desirable breast to attract a mate. We don’t use the prime directive to excuse bad behavior. In fact, there’s no evolutionary excuse for smart women making dumb choices.

That brings me to evolution. Homo sapiens that we are, we have not adapted to our environment to survive. That’s what Darwinian theory is about. Species find a niche, adapt, and thrive, or they don’t adapt quick enough and die out. Unlike other species, homo sapiens have made our environment adapt to us, and we won’t necessarily survive. So, what we know about how the world works is limited.

The fact that most men—in white America anyway—are attracted to skinny women instead of the best breeders, i.e., women with large hips and big breasts, makes the entire “I’m looking for a mate to procreate because that is the prime directive of all species,” bull. If that were true, the system would be foolproof. And what I see is proof of fools.

http://www.sciam.com/

Packer Backer

Organic Power

Priviledge and Scandal

I’m reading a fun book that I got at the L-I-B-R-A-R-Y. Privilege and Scandal: The Remarkable Life of Harriet Spencer, Sister of Georgiana, by Janet Gleeson.

The allowance that a rich married women got to spend, even if she brought the money to the marriage, was called “pin money.”

18th-century women called their periods, "the prince."

Someday my prince will come and someday my prince will go, forever.

Still In Love

Library Card

An old lady and her old husband came into the library. She had a cane and hobbled to the counter. Her husband picked up a plastic-covered magazine and took a seat.

“It’s my lunch hour, but I saw you and wanted to say hello," said a man in a wrinkled dress shirt pulled tight across his chest as he came out of the back office. “I haven’t seen you in awhile.”

“That’s mine there.” She pointed to two books bound with a rubber band and a slip of paper stuck in the top of one of the books.

“Carl!” She said to her husband. “Carl!”

He was deaf or ignoring his wife, but Carl sat looking at the magazine.

“Carl! I’m done.” She said and waved her cane around to get Carl’s attention. “I have my books.”

Carl looked up and said, “I have to put the books in the car before I get you.”

“I know,” She said.

This took some time.

The librarian went back to his lunch and the library was empty and quiet again.

Will You Marry Me?

No more schoolteachers marrying stockbrokers in the New York Times society page this Fall. No, these are heavy hitting news producers, lawyers and doctors. One in particular made me swoon. An Oxford educated ballerina who worked in the U.S. Attorney’s office until she got married. Oh, before getting her masters in economic and social history at Oxford, she graduated with honors from Harvard and then got a law degree from Yale. And she’s beautiful. What does her husband do? Who cares?

Must See Movie

If you see one movie this Fall, see Once. It will startle, delight, surprise and move you.

The one complaint I have is that they have a terrible webpage, but it's a terrific movie. http://oncethemovie.com/

[Shakey cam alert. Sorry Mom, you'll have to skip this one. It made me a little woozy.]