The BBC has an audio feature entitled David Attenborough’s Life Stories in which David Attenborough reports about sundry natural history topics. I heard one on local radio about Komodo Dragons and found another on the Web about Archaeopteryx. As usual, Mr. Attenborough’s writing and speaking command attention. Fascinating stuff.
It appears that the BBC site only makes them avialable for a limited time. The page for the Archaeopteryx segment says “Available since Friday with 5 days left.” It’s not clear to which Friday the text refers, especially because it gives a date in late August. I couldn’t find one about the Komodo Dragon, though; he starts with references to a 16th-century author cataloging the types of dragons, not including the Komodo Dragon, and then proceeds to provide a many-minute long account of Komodo behavior (e.g., feeding) and biology (parthenogenesis).
Because it appears to me that the shows are not archived, I recommend repeated trips to the site to check on what’s available there. I need to construct an agent that will go download them for me periodically. Meanwhile, perhaps I shall create a calendar entry that reminds me to check.
O.K. I’ve enabled the ratings feature of WP. This is a very (underline, bold, italic) risky step for me. If both readers rate items as having one star…well, I’m in trouble.
Maybe I don’t want to know how happy people are with these posts. To rate a post, one must go to the page showing only that post, not the “front” page.
A few months ago, I thought that the anniversary of the Apollo mission would be a good reason for a post. So, I drafted one and scheduled it for the day 2009/07/20 when people first stepped onto an extra-terrestrial object. Of course, as anyone who follows the news knows, there are lots (should I make that bold faced?) of reports about Apollo 11 these days. My planned post turns out to be minor blip. Sigh. My misjudgment. See, for example, my pointer to the marvelous “We Choose the Moon.”
Anyway, the post’ll appear soon. And I can laugh at my foolish presumption.
Still, ain’t it amazing that this anniversary is upon us? In a few 100 years (if humans have avoided destroying our local planet), the Apollo 11 flight will surely be a signal marker in Earth’s and Humankind’s history. We Choose the Moon is a fine resource.
I’m hoping a literate (or even an illiterate) person somewhere can tell me who said something like this:
We need more talk about poems and less talk about poets and poetry.
I may not have the quote exactly right, but that’s the sense of it. I’ve searched extensively, but unsuccessfully. I remember that Henri Coulette mentioned the idea in class one night. In my fuzzy memory, I thought W. D. Snodgrass (or “S. S. Gardons”) might have said it, but I am not sure.
Although I disagree with him about many issues, I applaud former Vice President Richard Cheney’s answer at a National Press Club appearance 1 June 2009. As the following clip shows, Mr. Cheney said that “people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish.”
As I’ve noted before, I object to government interfering in marriage, which is essentially a religious matter. It seems to me that the state’s (i.e., the government’s) concern is granting licenses for two people to form a special type of corporate-like partnership in which the two assume joint responsibility for care of children, financial matters, and so forth. Precisely because that function—licensing these mini-corps—is a governmental role, in the US form of government it is inappropriate for the government to discriminate among classes of people who may obtain those licenses. Beyond concern about insuring that those who obtain licenses are informed and making applications freely (i.e., they are mature and know what they’re getting into), government cannot say “only Blacks can get these licenses” or “only red-heads may have licenses.”
Some people who forms these legal mini-corps (“civil unions”) may choose to have a religious ceremony connected with the licensing. The state has no authority over those ceremonies. It can’t say that people should dress in a certain way at the ceremony, that only certain people can speak at the ceremonies, or that people may say only certain words. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, though they would not be eligible for the legal benefits of government-sanctioned mini-corps, those religious ceremonies can be held by people who don’t even have a legal license to form the union. Shoot, parties should be free.
The major problem, in my view, with this entire debate about gay marriage is that legal and religious interests have historically been intertwined, and we need to separate them. An essential feature of the US government is captured in “separation of church and state.” Marriage mixes the two. Let’s determine what parts are legitimately functions of each and partition those functions. We need to sunder the licensing of the mini-corps from the party sanctioned by dieties.
A post on Science-based Medicine (one of my regular reads; is it over there in my list of frequently visited sources?) concerns me. PBS local stations apparently are running sham science shows. Under the head line “Shame on PBS!,” Dr. Harriet Hall, one of the authors for SBM wrote this:
I used to have a high opinion of PBS. They ran excellent programs like Nova and Masterpiece Theatre and I felt I could count on finding good programming when I tuned into my local PBS channel. No more.
It was bad enough when they started featuring Deepak Chopra, self-help programs, and “create your own reality” New Age philosophy, but at least it was obvious what those programs were about. What is really frightening is that now they are running programs for fringe medical claims and they are allowing viewers to believe that they are hearing cutting edge science.
Yuck. Having not watched TV for most of the past 25 years, I was anticipating (maybe not eagerly, but anticipating) having the opportunity to tune into PBS shows on the fancy new TV we plan to install in the new house. Mayhaps I don’t want to hook up that new TV.
Hoppy birdthay to James Joyce, who was born on this day in 1882 in Rathgar (IR, UK). As a literature major during my undergraduate days, I was fascinated by Mr. Joyce’s works. I was, of course, fascinated by the interior monologue, even though I was toying with rejection of the influence of mentalism. I was also quite in the thrall of his play with words and sounds, even though I didn’t have the foreign language chops to understand some of it.
That pleasure in the words returned recently. Over the course of a few days last winter, I reread snatches of Finnegan’s Wake aloud while pedaling a stationary bicycle in the basement of the Tom Mountain house.
One event that I’d like to attend some time in my life: Bloomsday, 16 June, in Dublin.
I recently read Bill Bryson’s account of his childhood, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. In this one of his many books, Mr. Bryson recounts what it was like to grow up in Des Moines (IA, US) in the 1950s and early 60s. Although he is the age of my younger brother, Mr. Bryson’s childhood years span many of the same times of my own childhood.
As with many of his books, I guffawed repeatedly and enjoyed many of the memories of my own childhood that were evoked by Mr. Bryson’s recollections of kids gathering in neighborhood groups, television events, childhood mortifications (I had few), daytime World Series games, chaise longues, anti-communism, and etc. Fortunately, I never imagined myself to have superpowers. Sadly, though, I didn’t get to sit beside Ernie Banks and pass him baseballs for his autograph. Still, I had a lot of fun in my childhood.
Visit the Web page devoted to the LTTK. If you’re among the boomers, you’ll likely enjoy at least… lots of this book.
Stupid me
Published 16 July 2009 Amusements , Birthdays , Memo to me , News , Notes and comments , Science , Technology , Thanks for reading Leave a CommentTags: anniversaries, Apollo 11, earth, environment, humor, moon, space, space travel
A few months ago, I thought that the anniversary of the Apollo mission would be a good reason for a post. So, I drafted one and scheduled it for the day 2009/07/20 when people first stepped onto an extra-terrestrial object. Of course, as anyone who follows the news knows, there are lots (should I make that bold faced?) of reports about Apollo 11 these days. My planned post turns out to be minor blip. Sigh. My misjudgment. See, for example, my pointer to the marvelous “We Choose the Moon.”
Anyway, the post’ll appear soon. And I can laugh at my foolish presumption.
Still, ain’t it amazing that this anniversary is upon us? In a few 100 years (if humans have avoided destroying our local planet), the Apollo 11 flight will surely be a signal marker in Earth’s and Humankind’s history. We Choose the Moon is a fine resource.