Duane “Dog” Chapman of “Dog the Bounty Hunter” fame has just been released on bail after an arrest on foot of an extradition request from Mexico. They want him on a charge of illegal detention: apparently he chased a criminal to Mexico and caught him there. But bounty hunting is illegal in Mexico.
The part of […]

Posted in Current events, Media 2 Comments »

Wow, more than a thousand fifteen hundred of you have been in since Glenn put up that posting. Welcome!
For those of you curious about what’s going on around here at the moment: a precís –

First of all, the usual blogging. Tales of travel, cats, food, the home life of a writer married to another […]

Posted in Current events, Home life, Online life 1 Comment »

From an article about the deploying of the International Space Station’s new solar panels: one astronaut is mentioned…
…Christopher J. Ferguson, another Navy captain, who is on his first shuttle mission and is a member of the all-astronaut rock band Max Q.
The all-astronaut rock band??!!
Where do they play? Where can a geek(ette) buy their CDs? Someone […]

Posted in Astronomy, Current events, Travel 1 Comment »

Or the second planette. (Or dwarf planet, or planetoid, or whatever-the-F we’re calling the Small Guys Out Past Neptune this week.)
Anyway: the planet formerly known as Xena is now Eris. …Which makes so much sense, given recent events. And her moon is Dysnomia. (Which I would otherwise have pegged as the word for […]

Posted in Astronomy, Current events 3 Comments »

I am a big fan of Benvenuto Cellini’s. Okay, maybe it sounds a little strange to say that, at this end of time: but the man’s personality is an endless fascination to me. He was an exquisitely talented painter and sculptor who worked for popes and kings, a contemporary and acquaintance of Michaelangelo and […]

Posted in Current events, Graphic and plastic arts, History No Comments »

So CopperCon was a blast (as was the heat in Tempe: like a blast furnace…). Met many cool people, and had a super time. Had time to touch base with our fellow GoH, the excellent (and very busy!) Marc Scott Zicree. Ate the terrible Jack In The Box tacos for breakfast twice. (Don’t ask what […]

Posted in Conventions, Current events, Fantasy and science fiction, Home life, Uncategorized No Comments »

Here’s the roundup at BoingBoing. Succinctly titled: “Not guilty, just inconveniently brown.”
Technorati Tags: cellphones, security

Posted in Current events 2 Comments »

– was my response when I woke up this morning to hear our old buddy David Moore from Astronomy Ireland on RTÉ’s morning news show, talking about a story that the tapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing had been mislaid.
Needless to say, the story’s all over Google News at the moment, in many permutations […]

Posted in Astronomy, Current events, Media 1 Comment »

Just (via Blog of a Bookslut: thanks, Jessa — ) came across this Telegraph article about — let’s call it what it is — signing envy. An ugly thing, especially if you catch yourself at it.

Never having been at this end of the whole book-festival process, it hadn’t occurred to me that book-signing is a […]

Posted in Conventions, Current events No Comments »

Fascinating. But is this just profiling gone askew? In this climate, you have to wonder…
(See also this news story for more info.)
Technorati Tags: cellphone, mobile

Posted in Current events No Comments »

The Independent has turned Comet Swift-Tuttle into Comet Swift-Turtle. Twice.
(Not only a typo, but an oxymoron…! Nice going, guys and gals.)
Oh well. Hope it clears up a little so that we can see the Perseids…
Technorati Tags: astronomy, science, Perseid, meteor shower

Posted in Astronomy, Current events, Home life, Ireland, Note to self 1 Comment »

Took them long enough. (eyeroll)
Of course, the real joke is that the fries are actually Belgian in origin. (The WWI US “doughboys” who discovered them had simply wound up in a French-speaking part of Belgium.) The best evidence of this provenance — not concrete, granted: the dish is too old for that — can be […]

Posted in Current events, Food, restaurants and cooking, History, Humor 1 Comment »