"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Saturday, 7:20 am: the bikes are loaded in the back of the truck and we’re ready to head out for a morning ride (no, we don’t just ride in the truck – we drive to an agreed-upon meeting place, and then we ride the bikes). Here’s a photo from an earlier ride: Now doesn’t that make […]
My friends Darrell and Mary Anne took me on a garden train tour yesterday, an organized event where train nuts in and around Tucson put their outdoor G Gauge (G for garden, I guess) railroad setups on display. I visited three different homes; there were at least eight on the tour but I didn’t have time to […]
Because. Just because. I meant to post this photo back in December, right after we visited my kid sister Cecelia in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. She designs and paints tiles, and we hope to commission her to make a couple of tiles for us (you thought only rich people commissioned art!): Last weekend we dropped in […]
Why am I not surprised? . . . 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion. The report profiles the families and their businesses, which include the families behind Wal-Mart, Gallo […]
Is it time for a bad vein update? I suppose it is. The surgeries are complete and barring new vascular problems I should be fine. All told, I had three surgeries in three months: separate endovenous laser procedures on veins in my right and left thighs, and another operation to clamp off perforated ladder veins […]
During the last few days stories about armed groups shooting and killing illegal immigrants have begun to appear on TV and in local newspapers. Stories like this. Here’s another. The media seem determined to sooth us by describing these armed groups as “bandits,” perhaps rival gangs of immigrant smugglers fighting each other. As in this quote from an ABC […]
Enough with cat & dog blogging. Let’s talk about me! I found a new way to enjoy hours and hours of self-referential absorbtion . . . and you can do it too, at the Face Transformer. Here’s the photo I started with, my unaltered visage: My favorite is El Greco’s Bearded Man in Kitchen: The Botticelli […]
I thought I was reasonably on top of the Scooter Libby trial story. But Nicholas Lemann of The New Yorker threw me with this, in his most recent Talk of the Town commentary: What’s ultimately behind Libby’s trial is the Administration’s obsession with finding hard evidence for what it already believes. President Bush is often […]