Paul McCartney To Serenade Space, Astronauts

Sir Paul McCartney will become the first artist to broadcast into space with a live-link from his Nov. 13 concert in Anaheim to the cosmo-astronauts on the International Space Station. The former Beatle will awaken the two 'nauts with his "Good Day Sunshine".

Details are reported in articles in Australia's Herald Sun newspaper, and the latest wires page of the Moscow Times (page down for article).

Tags: NASA, space station, Paul McCartney, Beatles

Endangered Florida Fern Sighting

My job took me walking through a complex of old pastures and woodlands yesterday, in search of a couple of sinkholes (someone has to walk in the woods and natural areas for a living, and fortunately, I’m one of them).

One sinkhole was expansive, and lined with massive old red bay trees and a broken ring of vertical limestone cliffs that reminded me of medieval battlements.

The stone walls were covered with liverworts and individuals of 4 fern species. One fern, Thelypteris reptans, was represented by just 10 individuals on the east-facing walls only. The fern is an endangered species known in Alachua County from only a handful of locations at most. It was most satisfying to see this rare denizen of the sinkhole region of west-central Florida.

A lone red buckeye was growing on a dry slope a few meters down from the upper perimeter of the large depression. I collected one of the buckeyes as a memento. I’ll start my own tree for the yard at home as a remembrance of the walk and the rare fern discovery.

Tags: Florida, ferns, endangered species, sinkoles, buckeye

Ivan Turgenev (1818 - 1893)

"Turgenev received by the mysterious decree which marks out human vocations the gift which is noble beyond all others: he was born essentially impersonal. His conscience was not that of an individual to whom nature had been more or less generous: it was in some sort the conscience of a people. Before he was born he had lived for thousands of years; infinite successions of reveries had amassed themselves in the depths of his heart. No man has been as much as he the incarnation of a whole race: generations of ancestors, lost in the sleep of centuries, speechless, came through him to life and utterance."

So uttered the Breton fisherman's son Ernest Renan at the trackside ceremony at the Paris Gare du Nord as IvanTurgenev's remains were loaded for transport to and burial in Russia, his home country.

Turgenev was born on this day, November 9, in 1818.

Henry James said of Turgenev, in 1903,

He was the most generous, the most tender, the most delightful, of men; his large nature overflowed with the love of justice: but he also was of the stuff of which glories are made.

One would like to know such a man, if one exists.

Tags: literature, Russia, Ukraine, Turgenev, quotes, Henry James, Paris

Carnival Of The Vanities #164

A red letter day for The Clog Almanac:

A previous post on this website was included in this week's Carnival of the Vanities, #164. All who visited this site are thanked herewith for their patronage.

Professors of Math 164 at Indiana University-Purdue University posed an interesting puzzle/problem challenging students to figure Homer's (Simpson) blood pressure. Can you solve it? (student ID required to post answer) Confession: I didn't even try. I'm done with college and colleges. And Math/Physics courses.

Tags: blog carnivals, aviation, Bush, IU, physics, Simpsons

Good News Bad News Backlash Same

Democrats prevailed in two key state gubernatorial races. Kaine and Corzine won in VA and NJ, respectively. California voters said NO! to Schwarzenegger initiatives.

The Kansas School Board voted 6-4 to support a science teaching curriculum that is skeptical of evolution, flying spaghetti monsterism, and other theories of origins of the universe and Man. Names of the individual board members and their votes are found in this article from Bloomberg. Be sure and check out this great post over at Pharyngula.

Time for the words "voter backlash"to begin ringing around the echo chambers of the media and blogosphere.

Technorati tags: politics, evolution, intelligent design, California, Schwarzenegger

Bram Stoker 1847 - 1912

Irish author Bram Stoker was born on this day, November 8, in 1847.

Abraham Stoker probably never dreamed that his Dracula would spawn an industry, revivify an ancient European folk character, and brand its likeness into the consciousness of succeeding generations of readers, writers (and other trick-or-treaters), and moviegoers.

I've never been a fan of epistolary storytelling as used in Dracula. Journal entries, letters and other such devices generally come across as too contrived to me, especially in a gothic setting. But I admit to enjoying C.S. Lewis' epistolary Screwtape Letters as a young student exploring religious and moral ideas.

Technorati tag: vampire

Eternal Tags Of A Spotless Mind

Imagine a world where everyone you saw had a cloud of weighted blog tags swirling in the space immediately around their head. At a glance you could tell what that person most recently thought and blabbed about. Think of the ways society might be transformed:

1. You could either avoid a whole lot of useless conversation or engage in much profitable conversation.

2. Home and vehicle purchases, and dating, would be less daunting.

3. Politics and politicians would eventually edge towards true transparency.

4. You’d know where you stand with your boss and co-workers, and vice-versa.

5. You’d know how long you’re relegated to the doghouse after that love-spat.

6. Self-reflection would only require a mirror.

7. Those infernal poker games might end sooner, or might even go away finally.

Technorati tag: Tags

Those Saucy FSM-ists

Wicked funny, this.

British Kids Don't Know A Potato From What?

This native Idahoan can't pass this factoid by: Over 1/3 of British children aged 8-14 are ignorant of the fact that chips (i.e. *french fries*) are made from the lowly potato, according to a survey by the British Heart Foundation. Some major spud-wrenching is clearly called for.
Technorati tag: England

"But I Didn't Bet On Baseball" : Pete Rose Jr.

CNN has learned that Pete Rose Jr., son of the legendary hitter Pete "Mr. Hustle" Rose has pleaded guilty to distributing the steroid GBL to minor league teammates, and that he may face jail sentencing and hefty fines.

You mean to tell me that there is steroid abuse outside of the big leagues? Please don't make me lose faith in the American sport that claims as fans such highbrow persons as George Will and certain recent SCOTUS nominees.
Technorati tag: Baseball

While Paris Burns He Dreams Of Fishing

Autumn days here in north central Florida make you want to be outside walking around and doing, or better, fishing. I need to take my fiddler, fellow corkscrew collector, friend Tom up on his offer to go speckled perch fishing on Lochloosa Lake. Tom insists that we use only our fly rods, which is fine with me. Likely as not I'll try some sort of weighted streamer that suggests a minnow or a big leech and do a lot of downwind casting, which means coils of line inevitably getting cozy with the flotsam in the bottom of the boat, just when a fish is on. When the specs are biting, you always have a fish on and too much line piling up on your shoetops.

Sometimes, however, its nice to just hang a Beetle Spin jig off the end of a long cane pole, lay back, and let the breeze laze you across the lake while you variously scan the shore, watch the clouds, read poetry aloud, inspect your fingernails, or stare at the age spots on the backs of your fishing buddy's hands.

Life doesn’t get much better than that.
Technorati tag: Fishing

United in Death, November 7

The Clog Almanac’s intermittent series United in Death continues with this list of notables who all died on a November 7th:

1980 Steve McQueen – American actor
1978 Gene Tunney – Heavyweight boxing champion
1962 Eleanor Roosevelt – First Lady
1913 Alfred Russel Wallace – British Naturalist
1910 Leo Tolstoi – Russian author of War and Peace

Recommended Reading During A Bird Flu Quarantine

"And while a good many people adapted themselves to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives as before, there were others who rebelled and whose one idea now was to break loose from the prison-house." From The Plague, by Albert Camus

Existentialist Nobel Laureate Albert Camus was born in Algeria on this day, November 7, in 1913.

It occurs to me that his novel The Plague might be interesting reading in the event that we find ourselves quarantined and bored during an avian flu endemic.

The Clog Almanac invites suggestions of additional titles to add to what I'm going to just go ahead and call "my flu library". If enough of you reply, I'll post a list of your selections at a later date.
[Thanks to Dustbury for the link.]
Technorati tag: Bird Flu

The Current Future Of Liberty

Dan Gillmor is afraid for the future of liberty as he watches our "liberty being tossed overboard one law at a time" by "a secrecy-manic administration that is absolutely contemptuous of individual rights". This in response to a Washington Post article that explores the ramifications of the administration/FBI's hundredfold-increase use of national security letters to monitor the phone calls, correspondence, and financial information of people like you and me.

Scary. *Read the whole thing*, as they say.

Codrescu On New Orleans

Treat yourself to a visit to the latest from the inimitable Romanian-American Andrei Codrescu at The Exquisite Corpse, where currently (#14) resides the text of New Orleans Deja-Vu, as read by the author/poet/screenwriter/commentator in many markets on National Public Radio this past Friday.

Money quote, selected from so many in the piece:

The secret of New Orleans is that it has never depended on the kindness of strangers: it has always held its psychic wealth secret in the night.

Don't you just wish you could speak with that accent and think and write with such pathos and insight?

Canadians Remember 1918 Flu Epidemic

Elderly Canadians recount memories of the 1918 Spanish flu that killed over 2000 in Toronto, in this article by Louisa Taylor of the Toronto Star.

France Afire - 15 Cities And Counting

Les crimes d'incendie have now spread to 15 French cities, including Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Rouen, and Orleans. Follow the previous link to John Little's update at Blogs of War.

Mysterious Bush Effect Identified in Latin America

Where goes Bush, these are soon to follow: Increases in military presence and arms sales, and decreases in development and humanitarian aid. Frida Berrigan and Jonanthan Wingo call this phenomenon the "Bush effect" in the title of an article published yesterday by the World Policy Institute.

US military spending in Latin America is 34 times greater than in 2000. The authors explore how the increases in US military aid are parsed among individual Latin American countries.

HIV: As If Being Poor Wasn't Enough

A new UCLA study shows that poor uneducated HIV patients are more likely to die than their richer, more educated counterparts.

There's still reason for alarm because the groups that are most likely to get infected are less likely to get treatment and are dying at much higher rates. We need to look at improving care and find ways to help the low socioeconomic status population, and we would recommend more resources being put toward those groups,

said Dr. William Cunningham, Professor of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the UCLA School of Medicine, in an article published in the November 2005 issue of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.

This is not new news.

Copernicus Remains Found?

Polish scientists believe they have found the remains of Copernicus beneath an altar in the Cathedral of Frombork, Poland. Copernicus Sashimi has a blog with links to Polish language sources.

You remember Mikolaj Kopernik, who developed the heliocentric theory of the universe. However, it was a only a theory, like evolution. But also true, nonetheless.