Saturday, 28 October 2006
One more travel day, this time via planes not a Honda, and I’m out in NM, where the fading sunlight illuminates terrain like this. I’d write more, but I’m off to the hot tub to look at the moon!
Best news of the day: the Botanist is sprung from the hoosegow and sounds pretty darned good over the phone!
Friday, 27 October 2006
It is not unusual for a real object to be flanked by its shadow and perhaps also its reflection. Mostly, we can be clear which of the three is the “real thing,” but, then, the shadow and the reflection are both real, too, although they’re more ephemeral than iron.
This moose is among my earliest memories. We kids liked to put the antlers, a separate piece, on backwards (facing forward), but this bothered Mom and she’d have Dad glue them in at the proper orientation, but after some effort, we kids would separate the two pieces again, and the cycle would begin anew.
BTW: Please do not confuse the iron moose with the Iron Horse, a huge sculpture near the Oconee River south of Athens.
Saturday, 7 October 2006
This was my post-sunset reward, as I headed up for my second visit of the day to the hospital. He’s out of ICU, and everything’s looking good. But keep your fingers crossed….
Wednesday, 4 October 2006
Predictably, taking a photo while piloting a vehicle during rush hour traffic at dusk yields poor-quality images. Here’s the Michigan Capitol, view to west down Michigan Avenue. Such as it is!
Friday, 29 September 2006
Remember those not-so-cute ducks from last spring? (This one’s for you, rmj.)
Several webbie pages of interest: jcb sent me a link to this page, on information aesthetics. Really. Information display to the max. And on that page, I found a link to this page, which has a nifty changing map of nations, states, and empires across the Middle East over the last 3K years. Makes me think my black-and-white Word tables are—well ,I admit it, I knew it already—borrrrrrrr-ing.
Thursday, 7 September 2006
Yucatán Peninsula: cenote at Chichén Itzá.
When I first started this blahg I should have mentioned Antipixel, the blog of a terrific photographer who’s Australian and living in Japan while working as a web coordinator. His images are amazing and his words are thoughtful and lovely, and Antipixel has to be added to the list of blahgs that inspired me originally, and continues to do so. Take a look at this photo of trees and moss and green-ness on the island of Yakushima (never heard of it; looks gorgeous!), at, get this, a kilometer above sea level! You can even download a higher-res version for your desktop—I did!
Saturday, 2 September 2006
Though higher education is now a near-universal aspiration, researchers suggest that close to half the students who enter college need remedial courses.
—from Diana Jean Schemo in the NY Times.
Translation: how can you teach freshman classes in, for example, anthropology, if the incoming students can’t read, write, do simple syntheses of what they’ve been assigned?
Answer: you can’t and you don’t. You compensate by not requiring college-level performance (e.g., no writing assignments). Why anyone would chose to pay college prices to learn high-school level material mystifies me.
Sad truth: nearly half the incoming students will not graduate.
The real question: when those that do graduate receive their diplomas, are they still behind? Or are they truly competent? Heh—guess we know the answer to that!
Monday, 28 August 2006
Fremont troll, Seattle.
How did I miss this story, out since Tuesday!
A car built by JCB has broken the diesel engine land speed record after reaching 328.767mph (529km/h).
And here I thought jcb was downstairs designing books and studying Python! Hrrrrrumph! Live and learn!
Thursday, 24 August 2006
Today it is the rage to use this to make a graphic version of the links on your web page. Mine’s above and here’s ababsurdo’s.
I wonder if the recipes are the little grey bunch at the bottom…?
And don’t ask me what tag clouds are….
Sunday, 20 August 2006
Charleston Lighthouse, Morris Island, SC, ca. 1863, by J.R. Foster (Accession #1994.91.52)
Our Smithsonian has a slew of historic photos online for perusal and inspiration. This photo isn’t a bad place to start, or you could begin with all the flashy intro stuff here. Beware the visitors’ keywords, although the Smithsonian’s own keywords are inconsistent, too.
Here’s the Washington Post’s take on the photo web site, courtesy of a $500,000 gift (half a million smackers; I’m in the wrong biz!), and more info….