Live from the Black Forest…getcha wild boar streaming video here.
Some of you aren’t sure what this creature is.
The scientific name is Gallinago gallinago, as far as I can tell: whether this taxonomy is Linnaean, your guess would be as good as mine. The bird is famous for its swerving, dipping, wildly unpredictable flight — hence a marksman who could routinely hit one was called a “sniper”.
Marksmen or not, the cats seem able to catch them. Or at least Bubble is.
Busy busy busy, and not much time to blog. I liked this interview, though:
Gothamist interviews Clay Shirky
…Otherwise this past week has been spent (a) writing or (b) trying to write — two oh-so-different states — (c) catching up on reading other peoples’ blogs (mostly while in bed: O how I love wireless…), (d) cleaning the house and doing laundry, because guests are coming, and (e) getting furious about politics. Don’t inquire which politics, because that’s not information I share in public, and even at home I tend to keep it mostly to myself: of the five really serious fights P. and I have had over eighteen years of marriage, four started out as discussions of politics. This week, though, the general political climate has caused me to repeatedly stalk around the house sounding like Dick Dastardly’s dog: razzafrazza muttergrumble @#$%^&!!…
Meanwhile, it must be spring here, because all of a sudden the lawn in the back is full of dandelions. Where the heck do those things come from? Arrrrrggghhhh.
In wildlife news: the swans are nesting again. And yesterday morning I looked out at the back doormat and found there the head of a snipe. A snipe?? How the heck did Bubble catch one of those? They’re famously wily. (At least we think it was Bubble, since all the other cats looked surprised to find the head: not to mention the body of the snipe, out under the bird feeder. Bubble may be little, but she plainly had no problem carrying the snipe an eighth of a mile or so home from the pond out back.)
While wandering through I Want One Of Those.com, I ran across this.
It’s the “Buy A Piece of Real Estate Not On Earth” thing again, this time on the Moon. I have some history with this concept My high school astronomy teacher, the man who more or less poured gasoline on a love of astronomy which was already burning merrily, was a man named Robert Coles; he was a former chairman of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, serving in that capacity during the 1950s. For reasons I can’t now remember, he once gave me one of the original dollar-an-acre “Deeds to the Moon” as a present; this particular beautifully printed “deed” was part of a sales promotion which (if my memory isn’t completely broken) he told me had some connection to Seagram, the liquor people. (See the news story here, a Google-cached page from the Long Island newspaper Newsday, for a little more about this.)
The company is a different one this time. The Newsday story gives a little more information about the Lunar Embassy. Interestingly, they say they want to send some servers to the Moon 
and establish a “virtual presence” there. I seem to remember that this would be something you’d have to do if you wanted to gain control of the “.luna” toplevel domain. (I can’t resist linking to this while we’re on the subject…)
…And of all the things to run across… While googling to check out what Mr. Coles’ exact title at the Hayden was, I stumbled across this:
“NARRA[TOR]
Marge and Fred are going on a vacation. The date for their trip is 1993 and they are leaving for the moon!”
The Generic Radio Workshop, one of the few sources on the Web for “classic-era” radio scripts, has this transcript of a November 9, 1953 radio show on which Mr. Coles once appeared. It seems that WNEW Radio in New York had a weekly science show called “Out of This World”: here my old teacher talks about what it would be like to go to the Moon. I wonder if any recordings of the show exist…
It also turns out, to judge by this article from the NASA history archive, that Mr. Coles was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the connection between Willy Ley and Collier’s Magazine which resulted in their famous groundbreaking series of articles on the potential conquest of space. (Wernher von Braun is often credited for staging the symposium at which the Collier’s reporter got the idea for the article series. But he was only one of the guests. Willy Ley was the organizer, and it was Robert Coles who — when presented with the idea that such a symposium should be held in the US, as earlier ones had been in Europe — said, “The Planetarium is at your disposal.”
…The things you discover by accident. Robert Coles was not just a kindly guy who let me run the school planetarium after hours. He was a whole lot more. But I’ll probably always best remember him for the wicked twinkle in his eye when he handed me that deed and said, “Who knows, this might be worth something someday…”
In this morning’s Globe and Mail: “A paper published today in the journal Science records the discovery of a cat that may have been a pet, buried 9,500 years ago in a Neolithic village on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.”
This is of interest particularly because cats weren’t native to Cyprus: the people who settled the island in pre-Bronze Age times had to bring with them all the animals they needed…or wanted.
“The body of the eight-month-old kitten was in its own burial hole about 40 centimetres from where a human body had been laid to rest with polished stones, axes, ochre, flint tools and 24 seashells.
“The head of each body points the same way.
“Jean-Denis Vigne, the scientist from the department of ecology and biodiversity management of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris who excavated the site…said it’s clear from the position of the cat’s body in relation to that of the human and from the burial rites it underwent that a “special friendship” existed between them that ran through life and afterlife.”
…As I type this, Beemer’s asleep in the living room window, Goodman’s asleep on the couch, Bubble’s asleep on the other couch, and Squeak is asleep on a chair in the kitchen, waking up occasionally to keep an eye on me when I come in to do something.
It’s nice to be part of a tradition…
From Variety this morning: (Subscription link, sorry: alternately, see this link at Superherohype.com…) “Robert Rodriguez’s resignation from the DGA has jeopardized Paramount’s development of its tentpole pic ‘A Princess of Mars.’ The problem: As a DGA signatory, Par is required to employ only guild directors.
“…’We are in discussions with Mr. Rodriguez and are trying to come up with a solution,’ said Rob Friedman, vice chair and chief operating officer of Paramount’s motion picture group.
“Rodriguez’s recent move to leave the DGA was triggered by his desire to co-direct “Sin City” for Dimension Films with Frank Miller, who created, wrote and illustrated the three-book graphic novel series on which the “Sin City” pic is based.”
The article goes on to quote the DGA on their reluctance to allow “co-director” deals, which is the source of the problem. Sometimes they do allow it in “exceptional circumstances where two individuals have demonstrated an ability to reflect a singular vision through previous directing experience…”. But the key words here are “have demonstrated…”.
The resignation situation apparently arose because of the nature of the deal between Rodriguez and Frank Miller: Frank would not allow the “Sin City” project to be optioned for film until Rodriguez guaranteed him the opportunity to co-direct (a stance for which I feel strange sympathy, though I don’t know if I’d take matters that far on any literary property I own save one). The DGA probably refused to issue a waiver because Frank had no previous directorial credit.
Anyway, let’s see what happens now…
This is a lot of fun. Wishful thinking of the best kind…
It’s going to be fascinating to watch the figures and see if anything like this starts happening here:
“Every year Helena, Montana, counts how many people suffer heart attacks. Every year the number stayed about the same — until the city banned smoking in workplaces, bars and restaurants in 2002.
“Instantly the number of attacks among Helena’s townspeople plummeted by more than 40 per cent.
“Today, the British Medical Journal publishes a study that claims to be the first showing that cutting exposure to second-hand smoke prevents heart attacks immediately, and on a large scale….”
…Obviously the data need to be corroborated from other sources. But Ireland is going to be a great testbed for the numbers, as the ban doesn’t seem likely to be rescinded.
“In 1977 the British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement in honor of the tenth anniversary of San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semicolon-shaped islands. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian’s phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot… ”
(chuckle) …What joy. I wish I’d seen this site a few days ago.
I’ve had Mars on the brain for some weeks now, due to events shaping up for the “Young Wizards” book which will follow Wizards at War. But mostly I’d been thinking about the two rovers.
Now, though, this turns up…
I don’t know whether to be delighted or scared. There are soooo many things that could go wrong.
Yet miracles do happen…
For those of you who might want to look in and see what’s going on, feel free to stop by: from now until 8 PM today (US Eastern time), you won’t have to register.
“A new guide to ‘the land untouched by modern dentistry,’ published in Britain on Thursday, lists some of Molvania’s highlights, including its nuclear reactor with genuine 1950s-era cracks, and magnificent zoo with 1,000 animals, all crammed in one cage.”