Michael, Today is the nicest one we’ve had all week. On Mon it was foggy, on Tues it rained, on Wed it was smoggy, cloudy and hot, on Thurs it was beastly hot and as humid as a Hungarian steam bath. But today we have a clear blue sky, pleasantly warm temperatures, and light breezes. […]
Michael, Here I am in intriguing Beijing, after an exhausting flight across the Pacific. Luckily I had a window seat and good companians–an Aussie couple named Carole & Dan Walker, recent immigrants to California. Dan was wearing a Hawaiian style shirt with California icons (lawn mowers, barbeques, etc). He watched all 4 of the in-flightmovies, […]
Mike, You might wonder if I’ll be able to live up to my promise to connect to the blog from Beijing. But I have good reason to believe I’ll be able to. The meeting organizers seem to be very web cognizant, as evidenced by the VR tour that they provide from the COSPAR-Beijing web page. […]
dejr mikkl its hard to write on this drajjtd hungarian keyboard with my left hand bound to my body. all the english letters`are crammed onto the left hand side, with the right side filled with accents, graves, circumclefs, tildes, umlauts, superdots,carets, and various sorts of wiggles and whatnots ;-). enjoying gulasch, paprikas, and wonderful orgel […]
Dom: “Hello” Rakkity: “Hi Dominic, I’m calling from the emergency room.” Dom: “What?!” Rakkity: “I just wanted to tell you I won’t be able to play racquetball tomorrow morning.” Dom: “What happened?” Rakkity: “Well, I was playing racquetball with Patrick and Katie this afternoon, and when I returned the ball I ran into the wall […]
The painters of our house were very diligent in painting every single thing, including a broken, battered, and flaked-up 60-year old screen door on the side of the garage. I attempted to buy a new door, and was elated to find a $20 screen door at Lowes. But got a kick in the face by […]
Michael and the mainecourse wizards of poetry analysis, I’ve been dissecting this interesting poem about Astronomy, and think I understand the first three stanzas but not the fourth: When The Smoke Clears The mind, that rambling bear, ransacks the sky In search of honey, Fish, berries, carrion. It minds no laws … As if the […]
Excerpted from Living Dangerously, by Joe Simpson “Do you think it’s safe?†“Sure, solid as rock,†Ian said confidently. “I gave it a few good kicks and it didn’t move.†“Suppose you’re right.†I could see nothing suspicious about the pedestal. We had climbed past dozens of them all day. An hour later, as Ian […]
Dave says that his foot was caught briefly under a thwart as the canoe rolled over, but he twisted his body and pulled away. I didn’t see either of them at the time. It was like being caught under a wave at the Huntington Beach pier. High white foam and overpowering currents drove me down […]
rakkity About a month before hurricane Flora hit the Chesapeake, Dave Berman and I had laid plans to run Mather Gorge in Great Falls Park, and there was always the concern in the back of our minds that the remnants of Flora were still flowing down from the VA and WV highlands, keeping the Potomac […]
(editor’s note: Potomac Death Wave arrived on my desk today, as promised. I’ve decided to hold it off until tomorrow and instead finish with France) Hi Mike, The French do seem to have a “thing” about towers. From the bottom, Meudon solar Tower looks like a flying saucer balaced on a stick–an anomalous structure in […]
Cher Mainecourse, Yesterday a few of us solaire guys braved the heights of Meudon’s (100-m) solar tower to get an unparalleled view of Paris. In one of the pictures you can see a tethered balloon near the Tour Eiffel that goes up and down every hour or two. (As if the blinking lights on Le […]