Joy Adamson
One of my earliest television memories — sad, I know — was the movie Born Free. Based on the book of the same name by Joy Adamson, the movie chronicled the two botanists who raised an orphaned lion cub and then released it into the wild. I haven’t seen the movie in many years, and perhaps I should, because as I child this movie was astounding. Yes, it probably won’t be as glorious as I remember it — just look at all the Star War geeks who hate Episode 1, 2 and 3 —, but who wasn’t touched by the story of Christian the Lion a year or two ago. Adamson was sadly murdered in Kenya on this day, January 3rd, in 1980.
Off The Margin
As always you should have read Krugman today. •I wonder if this story will end up on ABC's new show, Homeland Security USA. •
Forty-three reasons why President George W. Bush will not be missed. "If polarizing the country, wrecking the economy and turning the world against us was the goal, then the No. 1 entry is painfully obvious: 'Mission accomplished'," writes Thomas F. Schaller in the Baltimore Sun. •
Can't wait to see Star Trek or the 6th Harry Potter in 2009? The London Times lists the top 50 blockbusters for the upcoming year. •
Nanodiamonds may show that a comet slammed into North America creating the ice age that is known as Younger Dryas reports The Los Angeles Times. Younger Dryas occurred over 12,000 years ago and may have led to the extinction of American camels, the short-faced bear, the giant beaver, the dire wolf and the American lion. •
The battle in Gaza is affecting more than the people on both sides as Israel gears up for an election on February 10th reports The Christian Science Monitor. •
If you think health reporting has been a little off, you are not alone. Susan Dentzer, health correspondent for PBS' The NewsHour, writes in The New England Journal of Medicine, "I believe that when journalists ignore complexities or fail to provide context, the public health messages they convey are inevitably inadequate or distorted." h/t Scientific American. •
How many lies and misstatements does Amity Shales get to make before she never is published again. I point to this doozy, "But there is significant evidence that the very arbitrariness of the New Deal made the Depression worse." from The Washington Post. •
Shade grown coffee which is grown "under a canopy of multiple tree species, not only harbor native birds, bats and other beneficial creatures, but also maintain genetic diversity of native tree species and can act as focal points for tropical forest regeneration," reports ScienceDaily. •
The details of the deaths of the Columbia crew have been released by NASA and are reported on by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy. •
The selling of Florida's Alligator Alley has not gone through at least temporarily. Gina Downs, director of the Naples' Citizens Transportation Coalition, writes off Gov. Crist's attempt at privatizing Florida public roads. The Op-Ed appeared in the Miami Herald. •
"Mmm, chicken soup," sounds like something Homer Simpson would say. However, Gail Jokerst, in the Christian Science Monitor, writes about her love affair with chicken soup or avgolemono or an Italian version or a Polish version — well, you get the picture. •
"When the economy catches a cold, the poor suffer pneumonia. When the economy catches pneumonia, as this one has, poor people are reduced to emergency conditions." Boy, can Jesse Jackson turn a phrase. Jackson writes in the Chicago Sun-Times' Op-Ed page about the need to do something for America's poor in these devastating times. •
Liberals only like America, writes Joel Stein the Op-Ed pages of the Los Angeles Times, while Conservatives truly looove this country. •
This is more than freaky as John Lennon speaks from the grave in support of the One Laptop Per Child campaign, the Times of London reports. •
I don't know who is crazier, Igor Panarin for thinking that the US will split up in four different countries by 2010 or the Wall Street Journal for reporting on it. •
Patternicity is "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise," writes Michael Shermer in Scientifc American as he examines Frank's Box — "The system consists of a random voltage generator, which is used to tune an AM receiver module rapidly. The audio from the tuner (raw audio) is amplified and fed to an echo chamber, where the spirits manipulate it to form their voices." •
As you prepare for your New Year's Eve partying, National Geographic goes around the world to find the many different hangover helpers. •
NewScientist.com lists their top ten articles about evolution from trees to natural selection and from viruses to the peppered moth. •
David Broder writes that "congressional Republicans, whose shrunken ranks are increasingly dominated by right-wing Southerners who care not what their stance does to harm the party's national image." And this is a bad thing? •
Some 50 years ago, the Baltimore Colts journeyed up to New York City to battle the New York Giants for the NFL Championship. In The Washington Post, William Gildea writes about the game that "elevated pro football to national attention and married it to television, where it now thrives." •
"The 43rd president is going home with less remorse and fewer regrets than my grandchildren express for spilling their cereal," writes Ellen Goodman. That about sums it up. •
Charles Dickens fondness of his childhood memories when Britain was at its coldest is probably the reason we all dream of a white Christmas as reported by The Times of London. •
Nigel Jones at Historynet.com, interviewed Berthold Stauffenberg, son of Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who tried to assassinate Hitler. Jones weaves the childhood memories with the failed plot to kill Hilter for an interesting read ahead of the new Tom Cruise movie. •
The Spotted Owl won the battle against loggers, but it may be losing the war, this time its foe is the Barred Owl as the Smithsonian Magazine reports. •
Paul Krugman notices that "it is striking that the worst of the crisis [unemployment] is hitting states that largely didn’t experience a housing bubble". •
Garrison Keillor writes about what happens when you decide not to do what you are told, oh, I don't know, maybe like flushing the toilet in an airplane while you're sitting on the can. •
Not only did the final episode of Seinfeld suck, it was all wrong as well — you don't have to help someone who is in need of aid. (Supreme Court of California Opinion) •
A Cowboy Meltdown
By nemski at December 30th, 2008It was a tough day in the nemski household on Sunday when the Philadelphia Eagles spanked the no-heart Dallas Cowboys. Why was it tough with me being an Eagle fan? When T.O. went from Philly to Dallas, my son’s football allegiance went with Owens. I tried everything from mocking to threatening to move the boy out into the garage, but nothing worked. So, what’s a father to do? I embraced my son’s choice. This October, nemski and nemski-lite went on a pilgrimage to see the Cowboys play — it was great fun even for a Philly fan. (It was only my second time watching a professional football game live.)
Let me fast forward to late Sunday afternoon. It was the first half and the Eagles were soundly beating the dreaded Cowboys, but as an Eagle fan I was taking nothing for granted. I have seen the Eagles (in particular, the coach Andy Reid) blow too many leads in the second half. But then the Cowboys decided to self-destruct. Yes, my boy was quite sad, but still hopful, that is until his uncle called to razz him. And then the tears, the buckets of tears. The boy stormed off to his room and the crying continued. He wanted to burn all of his Cowboy jerseys. He wanted to disown the Cowboys.
Father mode steps in at this time. As much as I would like him to forsake the hated Cowboys, I now need to nurture this love of the Cowboys even more. My boy needs to knowthat being a fan is more than just enjoying the winning, it is surviving the losing. And as a Philadelphia sports fan, I am pretty experienced in that.
Photo Credit: “Dallas Cowboy Helmets” by Mr. Hernonymous
Beagle 0.5.0
By nemski at December 30th, 2008Much has been accomplished, but there is still much work to be done. The home page design is going well and has been lots of fun to do. I’m still learning about positioning with css. I still have to add the following sections: photo, video, music and a small feature list as well as work on the fonts. I’ve been able to build a single page, but a lot much needs to be done with that. Comments are now working, but the archive page isn’t. Anyway, it is what is.
Photo Credit: “Beagle in the Grass” by marlana
Reading List
By nemski at December 27th, 2008Okay, after Christmas my reading stack has gotten way out of hand. The stack is not in any particular order but here it is: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, What It Takes: The Way To The White House by Richard Ben Cramer, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Political Power by Sidney Blumenthal, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincolon by Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Buddha Said . . . by Osho, The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and The Great Depression by Gene Smith (I am almost finished this book), The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt I by Arthur Schlesinger, What Evolution Is by Ernest Mayr, The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin (without the On), and The Founders on The Founders: Word Portraits from the American Revolutionary Era editied by John P. Kaminski. By the bedcstand is Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope.
Beagle 0.1.0
By nemski at December 23rd, 2008Some of you might be stopping for a free drink or just to look around . . . and you’ve noticed that it looks kind of bleak around here.
What you are witnesses is my first attempt at building a theme for Wordpress. The theme is called Beagle and it is what I would call beta — though it is functioning.
Currently the theme only includes two pages (index.php and style.css), though neither is much too look at. The index page has some very basic Wordpress php code and the style sheet only has the Wordpress theme information in it. Still a long ways to go with a lot too learn, especially CSS.
Photo Credit: “mom’s two beagles, phoenix arizona 1968″ by freeparking.