Nine years ago I made a godpole and put it into a forest. Two months ago I vanished.
Aesop, Fables 380 Perry (tr. Laura Gibbs, with her note): Xanthus, Aesop's master, said to him, 'Can you tell me why we sometimes look at our own shit after we go to the bathroom?' Aesop replied, 'A long time ago the son of a king indulged in all kinds of luxurious foods. As a result, he spent a lot of time in the bathroom. And once he spent such a long time sitting there that he forgot what he was doing and crapped his own guts out. Ever since, anyone taking a crap bends over to make sure he…
by Gideon Marcus The Hits Keep Coming Larry Niven is one of science fiction's new superstars. First published just seven years ago, he's a contemporary of other Young Turks like Chip Delany and Ursula LeGuin. Unlike them, his work shows few of the flourishes of the New Wave, yet it stands quite apart from the … Continue reading [July 20, 1971] All the Myriad Ways, by Larry Niven → The post [July 20, 1971] All the Myriad Ways, by Larry Niven appeared first on Galactic Journey.
George Graham, professor of philosophy at Georgia State University, has died. The following obituary has been provided by the Department of Philosophy at Georgia State University. George Graham (1945-2026) After a long illness, George Graham died at his home in Birmingham, Alabama on July 2, 2026. After earning his BA in philosophy from Fordham in 1967, George went on to earn his MA from Western Ontario in 1969 and his PhD at Brandeis in 1975 under the supervision of J. Van Heijenoort. During…
Behind the glass of the Natural History Museum in London rests the skull of a lion that once prowled—not across the sun-baked mountains of North Africa—but within the stone walls of medieval London.This is the skull of a Barbary lion, Panthera leo leo, one of the magnificent great cats once found across the Atlas Mountains and coastal forests of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Barbary lions
You know the old 40th Tank Battalion of WWII from this amazing period Kodachrome, showing the outfit’s M-4 Shermans lined up in a snow-covered field, near St. Vith, Belgium, just after the Battle of the Bulge. M4 Shermans in temporary position near St. Vith, Belgium, fire on enemy positions beyond the city. 40th Tank Battalion. 7th Armored Division.” Date: 24 January 1945. Salis, U.S. Army Signal Corps photo 111-SC-199467 Constituted 13 January 1941 in the peacetime Regular Army, the 40th…
The Italian Navy has declared its stockpile of Cold War-vintage 9mm Beretta burp guns that are surplus to its needs and is actively seeking to part with them. The Italian Defense Industries Agency (L’Agenzia Industrie Difesa) recently announced it is accepting bids for 16,165 assorted Moschetti Automatici Beretta, or MAB, submachine guns. Brig. Gen. Massimo Boschetto detailed in a tender announcement that the guns are located at three naval bases, Taranto (7,512), La Spezia (8,404), and Augusta…
The 1,200-ton HMS Saxifrage is the last of 112 Flower-class corvettes constructed during WWI, the last of 366 Q-Ship “Special Service Vessels” from the same conflict, and only one of three remaining British warships from the era. IWM SP 1650 After the war, she then spent a full six decades, from 1922 to 1988, as a floating Royal Naval Reserve drill ship, HMS President, including training gun crews during WWII. Britain’s sea soldiers in training. Men of the Maritime Royal Artillery are now being…
I wrote about this small bridge in the Boston Public Garden seven years ago, when I took these pictures, but it turns out I have more to say about it. It’s a wrought-iron chain suspension bridge, constructed in 1867 with a wood deck and altered in 1921 with steel beams an a concrete deck. The modern deck beams, of course, could have easily been made strong enough to carry the load without the chains. And for all I know, they may be. I suspect that the original design had a “live” deck that…
A visitor to today’s recently restored Waldorf Astoria might be dazzled by the Art Deco design, the luxurious lobby, and the ghosts of all the actors, inventors, and heads of state who made it their temporary home. What that visitor might not realize is that “the hypen”—as the hotel was called before the hyphen was officially dropped in 2009—got its start as two separate but neighboring hotels, the Waldorf and the Astoria. And both hotels were born out of a bitter family feud waged in the…
In 2013, I created ancestor landing pages on this genealogy blog to summarize what I've written about specific ancestor families. You can see them arranged (alphabetically by surname) in rows below the title of my blog. This is great cousin bait as well as a convenient way of organizing blog posts to tell stories about my ancestral families. When I blog about an ancestor, I add a note and a link on the ancestor landing page that corresponds to that family. And of course having these names on…
In April 1939, the self-proclaimed King Zog of Albania [L lifted from commons.wikimedia] fled the country with the country's gold-reserves in his carry-on luggage. The power vacuum was filled by the Provisional Administrative Committee of Albania until an "army of liberation" arrived from Italy. The PACA issued a bulletin to its diplomats abroad including the advice . . . stop Listen regularly to Radio Tirana stop . . . which was moderately amusing because I did just that when I was learning…
As of noon today the UK will have had FIVE Prime Ministers in the last FOUR years. We just can't hang onto them any more. When I was 10, I'd lived through two Prime Ministers. When I was 20, I'd lived through four Prime Ministers. When I was 30, I'd lived through five Prime Ministers. When I was 40, I'd lived through six Prime Ministers. When I was 50, I'd lived through eight Prime Ministers. It all seemed fairly measured. When I was 60, I'd lived through thirteen Prime Ministers. That's five…
Click here to book At least once each Summer, I direct my steps eastwards from Spitalfields along the Mile End Rd towards Bow Cemetery, one of the “Magnificent Seven” created by act of Parliament in 1832 as the growing population of London overcrowded the small parish churchyards. Extending to twenty-seven acres and planned on an industrial scale, “The City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery” as it was formally called, opened in 1841 and within the first half century alone around a quarter of…
the target audience doesn’t realize this is the shopping addiction version of requiem for a dream hits every cliché branch on the way down
From The Traveler: One Man’s Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris, by Andrea Wulf (Knopf, 2026), Kindle pp. 51-53: At the end of 1770, the Forsters moved back to London, taking lodgings next to Reinhold’s old school friend Woide, who had moved to Somerset House Stable Yard near the Thames. On 13 December, three days after their arrival, father and son went to the Royal Society, the nexus of British scientific enquiry where, since its foundation in the 1660s, fellows met…
Erfrischender Zitronen-Kartoffelsalat mit Frühlingszwiebeln und frischer Minze! Der passt perfekt zum Sommer und zum Grillen! Direkt zum Rezept Beim Kartoffelsalat geht ein Riss durchs Land. Während wir fortwährend darüber streiten, ob ein guter Kartoffelsalat denn nun norddeutsch mit Mayonnaise oder süddeutsch mit Brühe angemacht wird (manche schwören auch auf ein Mittelding mit Schmand), vergessen wir ganz, dass es auch anderswo Kartoffelsalat gibt. Zum Beispiel im heißen Süden. Dort wird er…
It is hard to believe that this chair was designed almost a century ago. With its flowing cantilever silhouette and sculptural simplicity, the “Sitzgeist” looks remarkably contemporary. Yet Heinz and Bodo Rasch introduced it in 1927, the very year the Weißenhof Estate in Stuttgart became an international showcase for a new vision of modern living. […]
On 19 July 1983, a huge new dinosaur skeleton was unveiled to the media at the Natural History Museum. Plumber Bill Walker found a foot-long claw belonging to the flesh-eating beast at a clay pit in Surrey. Palaeontologists reconstructed it and dated the remains at 125 million years old, nicknamed ‘Jaws’ the creature would have been as tall as a double-decker bus, and could have run up to 20 miles an hour. On 19 July 2011 Robert Murdoch’s face was hit with a shaving foam pie thrown by a…
Was soll ich sagen: Als wir auf dem Gysenberger Weihnachtsmarkt Ende 2024 erfuhren, dass schon bald in der Herner Innenstadt eine Weinbar mit guter Küche eröffnen würde, waren wir gleich Feuer und Flamme. Aber das… Der Beitrag Endlich entdeckt: ZwoDrei Herne erschien zuerst auf Sternestulle.
Day 8, the “middle day” in Nagoya. No new kyujo to report. On Nakabi, the Kyokai displays its new Jonokuchi wrestlers. If you’ve been under a rock, or ignored the maezumo coverage earlier this basho, this cohort includes Eisei, a recruit in Minato-beya from Leeds, in the UK. In Jonokuchi, Kakizoe, son of Ikazuchi-oyakata, is … Continue reading Nagoya 2026: Nakabi
From The Traveler: One Man’s Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris, by Andrea Wulf (Knopf, 2026), Kindle pp. 27-28: George Forster was ten when he went on his first expedition. He was a slender boy, small for his age, but what he lacked in physical strength he made up for in tenacity during the five months that he and his father travelled through Russia. In charge of collecting and identifying plants, the ten-year-old would wander off alone, eyes wide open, searching for…
Admiring Grand Central Station – New York, New York I visited Grand Central Station several times during my NYC trip last year. It’s such a wonderful architectural space with the old-world grandness that is rare in the United States. I shot the station as I passed through, but also made dedicated photography trips there. Early on, I was testing the Fujifilm X Half to see how well it might work in comparably dim lighting. The essence of the Fujifilm X Half is a tiny, go-anywhere camera with fun,…
Nach Muhammara geht es gleich weiter mit der nächsten Mezzeköstlichkeit, die supereinfach in der Herstellung und in den Zutaten ist. Joghurt - natürlich der Gute mit 10% - , Möhren und Zucchini, das war es schon beinahe. Zutaten & Zubereitung 200 g Möhren, geschält gewogen, grob geraspelt200 g kleine Zucchini, mit Schale grob geraspelt (wenn sie größer ist, vor dem Raspeln der
“the graveyard is without walls” the cemetery of the corner cityblock, sat in a sunken land that sloped down from the sidewalk, it did not have walls. blanketed by tall trees, the canopies covered the citylights, a single streetlamp i thought, was the full moon instead. the canopy branched out to the streets, fallen leaves fluttered and skittered back in the sunken block.
In the 1781 publication of two Coptic fragments of the “Life” of St Colluthus, the preface begins by describing how the pages reached the hands of the owner, Francisco Borgia. It then continues by printing the entry for St Colluthus from volume 3, pages 105-6, of the “Menologium Graecorum”. Borgia prints only the Greek text and that full of ligatures. I was, indeed, unable to read it. The “Menologium Graecorum” was the title of the first edition of what is today referred to as the “Menologium…
Fully illustrated, this lively study tells the story of the forces fighting for Montcalm and New France during the struggle for Canada in 1754–63.During the French and Indian War, the defenders of New France were led by the redoubtable Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, whose initial battles with the British and their allies in 1756–58 culminated in the momentous clash on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. In this lively study, Robbie MacNiven examines the various forces led by Montcalm in Canada at a…
St Anne's Square King Street King Street Market Street Market Street New Cathedral Street Exchange Square Exchange Square Exchange Square Summer in the City, and it is full of tourists. I can't believe Northerners would dress like some of the people in town today.No flat caps, but I was pleased to see a bobble hat being worn, even if it lacks an actual bobble. Lunch on street furniture is new to me, and I can see the appeal now that I've seen it done.
Orginal post: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks William Smith1 was born in North Carolina about 17782 and died probably in Rutherford County, North Carolina 11 September 1858.3 Although, the administration of his estate states he "departed this life about the month of October 1858."4 He married Edna _____. She was born in North Carolina about 17832 and died probably in Rutherford County, North Carolina in September 1854.5 He appears to have resided in North Carolina for his entire life. His birth place…
Thus far this past week (see here, here, here, here, and here), we have done a deep dive into paragraphs 1 to 53 of Part #12 of the pamphlet “Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (Smith 1784, pp. 23-46). But I have saved the best for last: the closing paragraph of Part #12 (paragraph 54). It is here, in this concluding paragraph to Part #12 of his 1784 pamphlet, that Adam Smith pulls back the…
