daily weblogs

books

reference

java study group

web design

webinfo (links)

about

adventure

recipes

photos

about us

Taking the dog around the block, I saw a woman in an SUV consulting a rather large book of maps, so I knocked on the window of her vehicle. It turned out she was lost, and "needed to find the 10."

At first, I didn't really know what she meant. Don't we all? It turned out she was actually looking for the "Santa Monica Freeway, Eastbound," or as the sign at its western terminus clearly marks it, the "Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway." Does it say the same thing at the other end, in Jacksonville, Florida? If you know, please write in and let me know.

Say, speaking of Chris Columbus, I have been working my way through the beginning part of The Book of Privileges Issued to Christopher Columbus by King Fernando and Queen Isabel, 1492-1502 [buy at amazon] . by Helen Nader (editor and translator) and Luciano Formisano (philologist). It's great! What Formisano did, and you might think it obvious but no one had done it before, was to put in chronological order the many papers that Columbus carried around with him, giving him the authority to do what he did: sail to the New World and annex it for Spain. It's a fascinating picture of the powerful Spanish bureaucracy, and how the legal underpinnings and precedents were set for the voyages. I highly recommend it if you really want to know a little bit more about the world of Columbus.

If you don't wear your heart on your sleeve, should you wear your religion on the bumper of your car? Thank God or don't', there's always science.

In today's NY Times, there's a story on the the Jesus and Darwin fish often seen on car bumpers. They didn't put in a link, but you can actually buy these fish for your car at Evolvefish.com. They also sell buttons with charming yet puzzling messages like "Jesus would slap you silly." Actually, the button they sell has a message that's coarse and offensive, but this is a weblog with family values, so I'm not going to repeat the message here (just give the link -- don't click on it, kids).

Why the sudden upsurge in press coverage of the famous fish? (you can get models that say 'Alien' and 'Gefilte', too.) Perhaps it's because Darwin's birthday, February 12, is coming up tomorrow. Call me a heretic, but the fish I'd REALLY like to see is the Galileo fish.

Hey ony of my sisters is 50 years old today. That would make her my older sister, right? Happy Birthday, sis, you're one day older than Darwin!

It's chilly today in Los Angeles, I heard rumors of ice falling offshore of Santa Barbara. Big storm in New York City, but here in LA the effects of El Nino haven't produced a single big storm and its only all the way down to 46 degrees.

Meanwhile, back on the freezing east coast The ranting geek is scrunched up under a down comforter, and Uberchick has been joined by Tamara, who writes about a new kind of therapy. No surprises here, it involves credit card use. After the war, T, after the war!

Out here in LA, the Hollywood sign is still there.

Got a nice email from a savvy browser, saying the RubyJournal download link was broken but that he had managed to download it anyway. Now the link's fixed, thanks!

Again I looked out at the oilfield against a sunrise background of passenger jets landing at LAX, not so many as in the booming 1990's before the attacks on the world trade center and the ensuing economic recession.

I fired up the Minolta and took a movie. Because I don't have any video editing software you won't be able to see this mini-movie.(iMovie doesn't input the kind of quicktime my camera produces unless you convert it first using Quicktime pro, an odd thing for Apple to leave out of their system). But here's a single frame; you'll have to imagine the pump in motion. Oil well at sunrise.

Here we are only one hour into a February morning and without even thinking about the oncoming war a pall is cast over the month as the Space Shuttle Columbia, carrying the first Israeli astronaut and six others, has disintegrated 200,000 feet above Texas.

There are many reports from people who heard the boom, and even photos from an amateur photographer. The destruction was sudden and complete; it doesn't seem likely the cause will ever be known. Living in Los Angeles, we hear the sonic boom when shuttles land at Edwards Air Force Base, north of here. I am so sorry for the people in Texas and all across the southern US, that when they heard the shuttle's boom overhead earlier this morning, it was the end of the Columbia and the seven lives it carried. Since we don't watch television at home, I told my ten-year-old boy about the tragedy and we discussed it. He was as surprised as anyone, and could hardly believe it. One of his first thoughts was that it might be sabotage. We agreed that America needs to build some more shuttles, to replace the ones that have been lost. After he had gone off to his violin lesson later in the morning, I found a space shuttle toy next to the top landing of the stairs.

(click for larger view)