Category: Life

Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case – NYTimes.com: “With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents. The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character [...]

One Post Wonder: Great Friday-afternoon chuckle–blogs with only one post around the Interwebs, started by well-meaning (but possibly insane) people who didn’t keep with the program. For example: “Late to the SATs, got there all confused, couldn’t find the building over all shitty experience.” — (larrybird.blogspot.com) “woke up this morning had them stalking blues i [...]

You can mark this as one of the more exciting days of my life. Let me back up. I grew up in a household where one respected the Oxford English Dictionary. We had the condensed version, two enormous volumes with a special drawer to hold a magnifying glass with which to examine the shot-down copy. [...]

Interesting story in the New York Times this morning about gender role intrigue in an extremely isolated and rigorously traditional people in northern Albania: Albanian Custom Fades – Woman as Family Man – NYTimes.com: “For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a [...]

At work I’m wrangling with Drupal, which in addition to remarkable complexity, has doc pages like this: “In as much on our waiter attainment this service, then worthy to turn up with the help of this, that given tobe displayed in a time let it run the cron.php”. Yeah, the whole page is like that. [...]

Two more photos from the Steens trip, these taken with a borrowed Bronica medium format camera. You might say: “Oh, look at that cool tilt-shift effect on the hotel photo, where intriguing bits are displaying remarkably shallow depth of field.” Sadly, that’s a scanning issue. My film isn’t mounted, so when I put it in [...]

I was walking to the doctor yesterday when I became aware of being bipedal. I am an ape, my arms hanging, swaying. Hip camber. A birth canal of restricted clearance. I see myself walking, an X-ray motion picture of bones and joints. I remember the moment I decided I wanted to be a competent walker, [...]

A few more photo highlights of the Steens Trip: I urge you to go look at all of them on Flickr. Or, go play with them on a map at loc.alize.us.

It was my idea, after the kitten rescue and the leaving again, to show David Foster Flat Road, a gravel road leading west from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, almost chiefly because of its monotony. Get over the ridge, see, I urged, and you can see forever and forever of the same. I had driven [...]

We were leaving Frenchglen, leaving the Blitzen Valley, leaving Malheur, leaving Harney county, returning home to Portland. We’d gone about five miles. David hit the brakes and started backing up and said: “I think you’re going to like it…it’s wildlife. But. I’m worried, it’s by the side of the road.” Reversing. He stopped and I [...]