The Vertical Man Revisited
“We must honor while we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.”
W.H. Auden
A good friend of mine posted a c…
The Town Scryer
Human-Powered Flight: The Helicopter
I don’t know what it is about human-powered flight that fascinates me so. Maybe it’s because I first heard the legend of Icarus when I was very young. I know that I am not alone in this though, else there would not be things lik…
Is It Safe?
In the nearly eleven years since the events of September eleventh 2001 the United States has embarked upon somewhere between two and seven wars, depending on how one defines one’s conflicts in this brave new wor…
Whale-Eating Sea Gulls
Sea gulls off the coast of Argentina have lately taken to taking a bite out of Southern Right Whales when they breach to take on air. This opens a wound for them to tear a few chunks of meat from before the whale submerges. The…
Once More Into The Voting Booth, Dear Friends
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor p…
Not a Light, But a Place
I remember that day in July of ’69 so well. Grandmother had passed barely month before and I thought it a great pity that she had missed that moment when Mr. Armstrong first set foot upon the moon. She had told me of torchlight parades for McKi…
Trickle Down Immigration Reform
This being an election year there will soon be a lot of bleating about “Illegal aliens”*. There will be calls for ID checks on suspicious (brown) people ala Jan Brewer’s Arizona. There will be calls for bigger walls and more armed men …
NASA Does a Class Act
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The landing site of the Rover “Curiosity” has officially been names after the late Science Fiction author, Ray Bradbury.
The Twitter feed from Curiosity read “In tribute, I dedicate my landing spot on Mars to…
Pub For Sale, Pig Included
Be warned though, this little piggy likes a pint.
Pyangana’s Pub is on the market with an asking price of $800,000 (Au) or about $840,000 US. It come with a fair sized tract of land and the pub’s pig, Pinky. Pinky is the Progeny…
Nightmare, With Angels
Looking at the drought withered corn belt and the shrinking polar ice cap on the net while we wait to vote on GMO labeling in our food my mind keeps turning back to a poem by Stephen Vincent Benet.
Nightmare, With Angels
by Stephen Vi…
