For eight days anyway. See you on the May 3. Be well…
We returned from Carson City late last night and transferred a sleeping boy to his own bed. He has turned out to be a very good [as in patient and not fussy] traveller.
Audrey’s presentation and poster at the Nevada NASA Joint Conference were very well received, she won a prize and a monetary award for her poster and networked up a storm. At an archaeological conference, you might get a 10% discount at the organization booth as swag in your registeration packet. Part [part!] of the swag at this NASA conference was a matte black bullet Fisher Space Pen. (Maybe I could change directions for the Ph.D.…)
On the job front (which I haven’t mentioned because nothing has shaken loose) I’m starting a stint with Far Western Research Group and will be at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah for two 8-day field sessions starting on Monday. I had hoped to avoid time away from Audrey and Ian, especially since she has her Ph.D. proposal defense and comps coming up, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. Baby needs new shoes, Daddy doesn’t want to have the house repossessed. What’s an archaeologist to do? :^)
I think I owe just about everyone I know email replies or updates on various things and I have no idea when I will get to clear out that backlog. I apologize for that.
All three of us are going to be out of town while Audrey attends the Annual Nevada NASA Joint Conference on Thursday April 21st and Friday April 22, at the Carson City campus of the Western Nevada Community College. This is all part of the Nevada Space Grant that Audrey recieved for this school year.
Don’t mess the place up while we’re out, OK? Kitty, I’m talking to you…
Digby is in his usual fine form. Today on the latest Time Magazine cover. I was trying to excerpt and It would have just been wholesale theft, so I would recommend returning to the source.
It has become clear to me that we are frogs being slowly boiled to death. And the media are enjoying the hot tub party so much that they are helping to turn up the heat.
Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn’t. For instance, he doesn’t say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn’t say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn’t say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn’t put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn’t, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.
Moore says conservatives are liars and they are corrupt and they are wrong. But he is not saying that they should die. There is a distinction. And it’s a distinction that Time magazine and Howard Kurtz apparently cannot see. …
This will not be noted many places, but Ned Heite, 64-year-old former Delaware state archivist, archeologist and local Camden, Delaware historian died on Sunday. He was a frequent poster on ARCH-L, where I have lurked for a decade. I only knew him through his postings, but I will miss him.
“We ask questions of the dirt,” he said. “I don’t trust people. I trust the dirt. The dirt is always truthful.”
John uses Acme Mapper to point to his childhood home, which is a stone’s throw [provided you can throw a stone 13 km] from mine. The Google Map for my childhood home just sucks, so I recommend Acme Mapper for your rural Kansas mapping needs. (fast radio voiceover: ”not affiliated with Acme Mapper”)
[March 2008 update] For whatever reason I revisited these links. Based on some changes in street layout and school improvements, I would have to say that the Acme mapper aerial data is at least 12 years old (ca. 1996). I do not have a good answer as to why I did not notice this earlier. Please temper my previous recommendation accordingly.
I just got back from Tonopah where the Nevada Archaeological Association’s annual meetings were. I went up on Friday and came back tonight (Saturday ~2100). A good time was had by all that attended.
Something I didn’t know was that the town of Tonopah was used in The Last Picture Show. The convention center we met at had a movie one-sheet hanging in the foyer and I stopped to ponder why. I looked at the buildings on the poster and walked quickly outside. Sure enough. I read on the IMDB site that they filmed it in Wichita Falls, Archer City and Olney, Texas There was no mistaking that the street on the poster and the street outside were one and the same… One of the store signs on the poster even has ‘Tonopah’ in the name. They must have very selectively chosen the few camara angles they used or put Archer City in the background, as there is way too much relief around Tonopah to pass for Texas.
Yes, it is a depressing, dying little town. I don’t know that I would be proud of being one of the towns used as the setting for that movie.
The spring bloom is going great guns once you climb up into the Joshua Tree community (Yucca brevifolia) with a dense carpet of yellow and white flowers (probably Desert Sunflower Gerea canescens and Dune Evening Primrose Oenothera deltoide) blanketing the flats and bajadas.
I have to admit, I thought the release timing of the contents of the First iPod was a bit curious. Coming on the heels of Schiavo and other manifestations of far Right strangeness, it seemed (to me at least) to be a move to humanize the President, especially since those approval numbers are sliding.
So, I poked at the wole idea a bit over the past couple of days, but nothing really coalesced enough to be worth inflicting on any except friends, who tend to humor me. [“I’ve got a condition. I get confused sometimes.”] I think Billmon puts it better than I would have. Plus, there are some terms like “F-you Boys” and “Bible fedayeen” that are new to me that will get reused. In conversation, at least.
I never knew My Sharona was anything but a vacuous pop song.
[edit: YA spelling error]
Just down the road at the Silverton Hotel and Casino - Speaker Series ~ Newt Gingrich.
I really have nothing to add…