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DOTHAN, AL, November 23, 2012 — Now that Thanksgiving is over, and while the biggest dining experience of the year is still fresh on our minds, it's a good time to discuss table manners before the next holiday meal.
How you choose to eat when you are alone, whether you abide by Emily Post or eat on the floor with your favorite pet, is entirely your business. How you eat around other humans can have severely adverse effects on their digestive functions.
When I was growing up my grandmother was the final arbiter of all things at the table, and she seemed to have some kind of unpublished list of rules we had to live by. She didn't care if we used the wrong fork or had the water glass on the wrong side of the plate, but God help you if you overloaded the fork or slurped the water. I never really did figure out why having my elbow on the table was such a sin, especially since my grandfather was allowed to do it, but I got used to hearing "Ricky, Ricky, well and able, take your elbow off the table." Yes, I was called Ricky as a kid. Don't spread that around.
I tried to teach basic table manners to my own kids and did fairly well until they hit their teen years. All of a sudden, somewhere around age 13, they started holding forks and knives like shop tools and didn't really eat so much as just directed food in the general direction of their mouths. I related my grandmother's expression that "manners are the oil of society," but that was too lofty and didn't make a dent. I would just get a response of "uh huh" over a mouth full of escaping food scraps. Dinnertime became more of a feeding frenzy than a time for socializing.
I translated my grandmother's saying to teen talk: "totally gross, I'm gonna hurl chunks!" They seemed to understand that and I got some temporary relief from their feral habits. At least I was able to again reach for food without fear of losing my fingers to gnashing teeth, but it wasn't a permanent fix.
Real order didn't return to my dinner table until they grew up and left home. They have since found partners who eat much the same way they do and I generally decline offers to share meals unless I have a good supply of heartburn tablets with me.
The whole topic of manners seems to be very touchy these days and many people consider etiquette to be a violation of their personal rights. I'm not sure I see the logic there, but to avoid major controversy here are the top ten things anyone can do to prevent causing an involuntary gag reflex in a dinner guest or someone at the next table in a restaurant.
Everything on this list was assembled after years of living with teenagers.
* Turn off your cell phone and no texting at the table. If you feel a need to text with your dinner partner you are excused from the table to go for professional help.
* Use a napkin, not a sleeve, your arm, the back of your hand or the tablecloth to wipe your mouth. Don't lick your lips or pull things from a beard and pop them in your mouth. There are additional rules for guys with beards by the way.
* Do not talk with your mouth full and keep all food inside your mouth. Take human bites and chew thoroughly to avoid choking. Teeth are the first defense against stomach aches and intestinal discomfort.
* Bodily functions such hacking up phlegm, blowing your nose or releasing gas or air from any orifice is definitely to be avoided. If you have to clean your ears or cut your nails, especially toe nails, that all must be done away from the table.
* It is generally safe in our society to assume that no one will steal the food off your plate, so eat more slowly. Taking your time also lets you find bones before you swallow them.
* Don't dissect your food. Dinner is not biology class. If something looks wrong, quietly push it to the side and don't shout out "hey, there's some kind of booger thing in my beans!"
* You should generally try to attend to all bathroom needs prior to sitting down for dinner. If you find you still need to leave the table, you do not need to provide details on what you are planning to do while away. There is no need to report details afterward either.
* Learn how to hold and use silverware. A fork is used for solid foods, a spoon for very moist or liquid foods, and a knife is for slicing not chopping. Utensils are less intimidating to dinner guests when not waved around in the air while talking.
* If you need an item from across the table, ask for it and say "please." Do not lunge across the table like a football player trying to intercept a pass.
* When you are finished eating do not scrape your plates or stack dishes on the table. Do not lean back on your chair, loosen your belt, unbutton clothing, make weird sounds or put your feet on the table. If you are finished and want to leave the table, just say "excuse me." If you are a parent try not to respond with "there is no excuse for you."
It's about time to bring back basic table manners both at home and when eating out – and yes that goes for you too, Santa. I know you're on a tight schedule, but nobody wants to see your cookie crumbs and milk stains first thing on Christmas morning!
(Be sure to get the Backstory and more at Rick's blog site www.ricktownley.com)
This article is the copyrighted property of the writer and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media. REPRINTING TWTC CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.


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Halo 4 both familiar and fresh
When Halo 4 gets into the hands of gamers on November 6, it will mark the first time that a major release in the franchise has been developed by a studio other than Bungie. The former Microsoft subsidiary created the universe populated by Master Chief and a collective of alien races, known as the Covenant, bent on the eradication of humans.
343 Industries, a division of Microsoft Studios that was originally set up to manage the Halo franchise and now makes video games, has been working on Halo 4 for three years. Vancouver native Josh Holmes, who is the creative director for all things Halo, explained that the new game honours what made that first game, released in 2001, so special.
"There's a real spirit of heroism that is at the center of Halo," Holmes told the Georgia Straight at a September press event held near 343's studio in Kirkland, Washington. "The very fabric of the lore of the universe is that humanity will ascend to something greater.…So heroes should be willing to sacrifice themselves in service of humanity, because in doing so they are preserving humanity's ability to ascend."
It helps that gamers step into the guise of a genetically and technologically modified soldier who is able to survive against all odds. Halo 4 takes place about five years after the events of Halo 3, which ended with Chief going into stasis and telling Cortana, the artificial intelligence who has been his constant companion, "Wake me when you need me."
The story in the new first-person shooter is as epic as ever. Master Chief finds himself on an alien world confronting both the Covenant and a new enemy, machine-based life forms known as the Prometheans. But in Halo 4, that adrenaline-fueled adventure is juxtaposed with the more intimate, personal story of the relationship between Chief and Cortana.
In a separate interview with Bonnie Ross, studio general manager, and Kiki Wolfkill, executive producer for the game, Wolfkill elaborated: "In some ways, she reflects the more human side of Chief. And in her needing to deal with what is a very human condition, which is mortality, I think it brings some things out in him that maybe you haven't seen in the games before."
Ross said that a main theme of Halo 4 is choice and consequences. In previous games, she explained, Chief has been a pawn of the United Nations Space Command. "But he's never really had to make his own decisions.…He's on his own, now, and I think…he has to make some hard decisions."
In addition to the single-player campaign, which tells the story of Master Chief, Halo 4 also includes a multiplayer mode called Infinity. It provides a connected story and context for both competitive and cooperative multiplayer gaming. Players create a Spartan IV soldier deployed on the UNSC Infinity, and can customize and improve that character in either of the two multiplayer modes, including the more traditional, competitive War Games.
Spartan Ops, the cooperative multiplayer mode, will be put out episodically, for free, after Halo 4's release. Each week, a new computer-generated animated short film will debut along with five missions that are meant to be played with friends. 343 won't say how long Spartan Ops will be delivered, but the speculation is that 10 episodes, amounting to about 12 additional hours of gaming, are likely.

subset: commoncrawl


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New American Standard (NAS) | New International Version (NIV) |
1 In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, "Thus says the LORD , 'Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.' " | 1 In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, "This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover." |
New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, California. All rights reserved. (New American Standard Version - Holy Bible) | Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide. (New International Version Bible Online) |


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I had the best vacation with my family at this condo which is RIGHT on the ski slope on Burke Mt. My kids had a blast! The condo was big and comfortable for 4 adults and 5 kids, plenty of room for us all. The new hardwood floors are beautiful. The kitchen is well equipped, and there is plenty of seating (14) in the kitchen/dining area. The back yard and deck are spacious and are truly ski on/ ski off, was so convenient for us all to stop in for breaks/ snacks/ lunch/ hot cocoa/bathroom, etc. The views from the condo, down the mountain, are spectacular! The beds were comfortable, and the linens and towels were plentiful. Firewood was stocked when empty. The owner, Tim, was pleasant to work with, and was very responsive. I look forward to renting this great place again next winter! Thanks for sharing your home Tim & family!
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The condo is beautiful, immaculate and nicely decorated. The kitchen had everything we needed. The view through the giant windows is to die for. Did not stay during ski season but can easily see where you would ski in and ski out. Great for hiking (what we did). We would not hesitate to stay here again and would recommend to friends.


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Just before the siesta
This photo was shot on film. Taken by disdis with a Holga 120 CFN (available in our Online Shop) loaded with Fuji Provia film (available in our Online Shop) in Liendo, Spain. These tags describe this photo: summer, disdis, holga, 120, fuji, square, flowers, friends, flores, verano, cuadrado, amigos, toys, juguetes, garden, and jardín. Date: 2011-07-01. Time: Afternoon. This photo can also be found in the album Toys & siesta.Please login to get more out of this site
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This is a syndicated post from ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome. [Read the original article...]
The Vatican has given its official approval to a worldwide association of exorcists. L'Osservatore Romano revealed Tuesday that the International Association of Exorcists has received canonical approval from the Congregation for Clergy. The decree was signed on June 13th.
The group is made up of 250 priests f…


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College Kids® Sacred Heart University Bowtie and Straps Toddler T-Shirt
Item code: 14522045Spiff up any pants with this bow tie toddler campus t-shirt. Toddler t-shirt combines natural fabric with after-five style to create a look that opens doors. Short sleeve t-shirt features a fun graphic of suspenders, and a bow tie with the school logo screen-printed on the front.


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A seizure is the physical findings or changes in behavior that occur after an episode of abnormal electrical activity in the brain.
See also:
Secondary seizures; Reactive seizures; Seizure - secondary; Seizure - reactive
There are a wide variety of possible symptoms of seizures, depending on what parts...
Read moreFull Question:Can a migraine cause a seizure in a person that does not have epilepsy If so how, what do you do about it? If it happens... Read more »
Full Question: Can a Complex Migraine cause seizures to happen? Stacey. Answer: Dear Stacey, It's difficult to know what you... Read more »
Full Question: Will seizures and migraines cause any permanent damage to your brain? I had brain cancer 5 years ago and have had seizures... Read more »
Full Question: can migraines cause seizures, very cold hands, feet and a rapid heart beat? hi there, I'm a 27 yr old female. I... Read more »
At my last rheumatologist appointment, my rheum and I talked about the significant fatigue I had been experiencing. I would get up for a... Read more »
Source: HealthCentral Encyclopedia
Article updated and reviewed by Peter B. Kang, MD, Assistant in Neurology, Children's Hospital Boston, and Instructor in Neurology, Harvard Medical... Read more »
Source: ADAM Encyclopedia
A febrile seizure is a convulsion in a child triggered by a fever. These convulsions occur without any brain or spinal cord infection or other... Read more »
Source: ADAM Encyclopedia
All seizures are caused by abnormal electrical disturbances in the brain. Partial (focal) seizures occur when this electrical activity remains in a... Read more »
Source: ADAM Encyclopedia
Convulsions are when a person's body shakes rapidly and uncontrollably. During convulsions, the person's muscles contract and relax repeatedly. The... Read more »
Source: ADAM Encyclopedia
Drug-induced tremor is involuntary shaking due to the use of medication. Involuntary means you shake without trying to do so. The shaking occurs when... Read more »


text: In its first week as the only Chicago hospital drama in its time slot, NBC's ER lunged into the top five, destroying its newsmag competitors, ABC's PrimeTime Live (71st) and CBS' Eye to Eye With Connie Chung (81st). Moved out of ER's path, CBS' Chicago Hope rose from 69th to 38th, but still got killed by NBC's Seinfeld (3rd). The Peacock network has other reasons to celebrate: Its Markie Post movie, Someone She Knows, finished 5th on Monday, and while Frasier (8th) hasn't knocked Home Improvement from its perch atop the ratings, Kelsey Grammer's sitcom has been slowly closing the gap on Tuesdays. NBC's seaQuest DSV (44th), however, is merely treading water, splitting the Sunday sci-fi audience with ABC's Lois & Clark (42nd) for the second straight season.


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[61] Evaluation of the Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Pathway in Osteosarcoma
Ki Yong Na, Youn Wha Kim, Yong-Koo Park. Kyung Hee University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Background: The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway has been implicated in the progression of osteosarcoma (OS). Recent studies have demonstrated that inhibitors of MAPK pathway components have antitumor activity in preclinical models of OS. However, less is known about the prognostic value of components of the MAPK pathway.
Design: We evaluated the expression of pan-Ras, Raf-1, pMEK1/2 and pERK1/2 in 61 patients with primary localized OS and assessed their prognostic influence on event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OVS) using immunohistochemistry.
Results: The markers pan-Ras, Raf-1, pMEK1/2 and pERK1/2 were expressed in 7 (11%), 36 (59%), 36 (59%) and 30 (49%) of 61 samples, respectively.
Patients whose tumors expressed Raf-1 or pMEK1/2 had poorer EFS and OVS than patients whose tumors showed negative staining for Raf-1 (P=0.016 and P=0.045, respectively) or pMEK1/2 (P=0.017 and P=0.047, respectively). Patients whose tumors stained positive for pERK1/2 had poorer OVS than the group whose tumors did not express pERK1/2 (P=0.026).
Notably, positive pMEK1/2 expression was predictive of shorter EFS and OVS (P=0.024 and P=0.042, respectively).
Conclusions: Our study provides further evidence that activation of the MAPK pathway plays a role in the aggressive behavior of OS. In addition, our study suggests that further investigation of MEK inhibitors in OS is warranted.
Category: Bone & Soft Tissue
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 9:30 AM
Poster Session III # 7, Tuesday Morning


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May 2003
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A new brochure from Beckett Corporation provides information on the company's new condensate pumps, the CB15 and CB20 series, which the company says are designed to meet or exceed the toughest job demands. The new generation of pumps, the company says, is engineered to be user friendly with features like stronger motors, a reliable micro switch float mechanism, and the ability to mount the pump from either side.
Beckett Corporation
Canon Communications LLC . © 2008


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The Bigger Picture: Visual Archives and the Smithsonian
Posts tagged with: Women's History Month
Not "Just Another Doll": Two Orchids for Miss Stafford
Throughout March, we will be celebrating Women's History Month with photos in the Flickr Commons and a series of blog posts about women from the Archives' collections.
The stylish woman with bright eyes and an eager smile appears almost ethereally exuberant. By January 1937, when she posed in a flowered hat and sporting two orchids, Jane Stafford (1899-1991) was earning wide respect as a medical reporter, as a "typewritten bridge between the M.D. and the ultimate consumer." An earlier photograph, taken when she first joined the Science Service staff, sent a different message. That image may explain why one potential employer initially pegged her as "just another doll" - until she quickly, cleverly, and accurately fulfilled a test assignment.
Stafford had been born into a life of privilege (her father was a successful Chicago attorney) but she built a professional reputation with intelligence and hard work. At Smith College, she majored in chemistry and, after graduating in 1920, worked briefly as a hospital technician. Laboratory life offered first-hand glimpses of clinical medicine. Then, on the staff of the American Medical Association's popular magazine Hygeia, Stafford learned how to write for popular audiences and also acquired her lifelong love of writing.
When Stafford and her widowed mother moved to Baltimore (where her brother Edward was beginning medical training), she scoured the area for jobs. Fortunately, Science Service's medical editor had just quit. Stafford's chemistry degree, hospital experience, and intelligence outweighed any unfamiliarity with news deadlines. From 1928 until leaving in 1956 to work at the National Institutes of Health, she explored all aspects of medicine, from tuberculosis to toothaches. In the 1940s, she wrote about doctors on the battlefield, nutrition on the home front, and the "war on polio." As she explained in 1935, Science Service had few "taboo" subjects: they discussed venereal disease, pregnancy, "and all the glands and hormones." Although the organization's director "did not like the word 'intestine' and generally we avoid [the word] urine by calling it kidney secretion or excretion," Stafford assured former Hygeia colleague Mildred Whitcomb that the topics were always chosen by "scientific importance or news value."
Life for a female journalist was not all work, of course. Covering a medical meeting might include dinner with other science journalists or sampling local entertainment. After attending a bacteriology conference in New York City in January 1936, Stafford wrote Whitcomb that she had seen "three good plays": Dead End, Porgy and Bess, and Boy Meets Girl. That summer, Stafford and her mother vacationed in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware ("Nearby, quiet ocean resort, very charming, nice people, no crowds, cool and not too expensive. Had a pleasant time, swimming, bridge, dancing, reading, knitting and sunning. Came back with much suntan, and promptly had to write a story on that subject for Today Magazine.").
And the following month, Stafford confessed to Whitcomb that she had succumbed to the latest fad. "I am practically in retirement, socially, while reading Gone with the Wind–which I had firmly intended not to read. Entertaining book, but I still feel it is rather a waste of time to be reading it at all, though I don't know that I would do anything more profitable with the evenings it has taken."
As Stafford approached middle age, she retained her willowy figure and social skills. In 1938, Whitcomb wrote that a mutual acquaintance ("Mr. B") had seen Stafford at a meeting in Kansas City and reported that "you resembled a 'beautiful wild flower.' Your conversation, he said, was sophisticated but your dress belied it."
That combination of intelligence and style carried into the workplace. Even when Stafford was photographed in her office piled with textbooks, surrounded by the tools of her trade - telephone, typewriter, and advance proofs of medical articles - she wore a strand of pearls.
Related Resources
- Women and Science at Science Service, Smithsonian Institution Archives
Related Collections
- Record Unit 7091 - Science Service, Records, circa 1910-1963, Smithsonian Institution Archives
Diminutive but Determined: Mary Jane Rathbun
Throughout March, we will be celebrating Women's History Month with photos in the Flickr Commons and a series of blog posts about women from the Archives' collections.
How did a woman become a curator of Crustacea at the Smithsonian's National Museum in the 19th century? Historian Sally Kohlstedt wrote a ground-breaking article "In from the Periphery," in Signs in 1978 that identified the circuitous ways women entered science in those years. Since it was unlikely for women to be able to get Ph.D's in this line of work from prestigious universities, family connections, traditional female work roles, and volunteering were some of the ways women broke in to scientific careers. The Smithsonian's first full time female curator, Mary Jane Rathbun (1860-1943), used them all! The diminutive young lady from Buffalo, New York, lost her mother when she was only a year old and learned to make her way through life quite independently.
Mary Jane was not educated beyond high school, but had been interested in fossils since childhood. She first saw the ocean in 1881 when she accompanied her brother, Richard Rathbun, a biologist, to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and then to the Smithsonian's National Museum. For three years, she helped label, sort and record specimens, before being appointed a Smithsonian clerk. While Richard traveled frequently, Mary Jane took over the day‑to‑day duties of his office and set out to learn all there was to know about marine biology. She focused on the classification of decapod Crustacea, that is, shrimps, crabs and their near relatives, and soon amassed a large collection.
As her brother moved into Smithsonian administration, Mary Jane continued to work at the museum, largely unaided. She was appointed second assistant curator of marine invertebrates in 1894 and after a mere 28 years she advanced to assistant curator in charge of the division in 1907! Appointment to a professional position was no small feat for a woman in the 1890s; it would be two more years before the United States Geological Survey appointed its first woman scientist. The fact that her brother was now Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian probably helped her cause. As historian Margaret Rossiter has shown, in the 19th century civil service jobs were classified by sex, that is, when announcing a vacancy, the supervisor had to indicate whether a man or woman was wanted for the job. Thus, most professional jobs were not open to women unless they were specifically announced with the woman in mind.
Before the Natural History Museum opened in 1910, Mary Jane worked in the Castle, often needing to go to the basement to work with specimens. The 4' 6" scientist would open the door to the winding staircase to the dark basement and stomp her feet repeatedly to scare away the rats, and descend carrying large trays of specimens. She was rarely daunted; indeed, she was so devoted to her work that, during a flood, she commuted to work via a rowboat. She reportedly brought her lunch to work every day so as not to lose time for research, and by the end of her career, had written an impressive 166 articles and books.
Even though she was the Smithsonian's first paid fulltime woman scientist, in 1914, Rathbun resigned her hard‑won position so the salary could be given to her protégé, Waldo LaSalle Schmitt. She was named honorary curator and continued her research at the museum for another twenty‑five years, completing her monumental four volume series on the crabs of America. These volumes were even used by Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989) of Japan, a skilled collector and an avid and lifelong marine biologist, to identify his collections. In her last years, Mary Jane's memory began to fail her, but she still enjoyed working with her crabs. Schmitt would pick up his mentor in the morning, bring her to the museum and set a tray of unsorted crab specimens in front of her which she would happily work on all day. She'd return the next day and start work on the same tray again. The diminutive but determined carcinologist worked daily in the museum until five years before her death at the age of 82, leaving a well-curated collection, her extensive carcinological library, a bequest of $10,000 for further work on decapod Crustacea, as well as an impressive list of published contributions to science.
Related Resources
- A Brief History of the Invertebrate Zoology Department, by Dr. Fenner A. Chace Jr., National Museum of Natural History
- Richard Rathbun: The Smithsonian's Renaissance Man, by Amy Ballard, Unearthed blog, National Museum of Natural History
Related Collections
- Record Unit 7256 - Mary Jane Rathbun Papers, 1886, 1886-1938, 1886-1938 and undated, Smithsonian Institution Archives
Women's History Month: Celebrating 6 years!
Happy Women's History Month! We are delighted that this is our sixth year, even though we've been celebrating throughout the year, every week with our Women in Science Wednesday series. We have several activities planned this year. With this post, we are launching a set of 70 new images from the Science Service, a science news organization. Included this year are some old and new faces; Rosalind Wulzen a physiologist who discovered a factor that protects the joints of mammals from calcification, Maud Wrinch a mathematician known for her work on the protein structure, and Hazel Katherine Stiebeling (below) a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutritionist who helped to develop the daily allowance standards and the first woman to receive the Distinguished Service Medal given to federal employees. The entire collection can be viewed here and in the slideshow below.
Throughout the month, our archivists and historians will write in depth posts about some of the women in our collection, so please follow along. Finally, on March 18th, we will host a Wikipedia edit-a-thon with the goal of better representation for women scientists on Wikipedia. Join us remotely or in person as we complete this to-do list. A big thank-you to Marcel LaFollette who conducted the research to write captions for the women and men of the Science Service collection, and to all our staff and YOU who help to make these women better known.
Related Resources
Related Collections
Link Love: 3/29/13
- It's that wondrous time of year again in D.C., the cherry blossoms are popping! (via Smithsonian Retina blog)
- Continuing the theme of Groundbreakers this Women's History Month, The National Museum of American History uncovered this story about a Latina woman, Loreta Janeta Velazquez, who disguised herself as a man in order to fight in the Civil War. (via O Say Can You See)
- The Library of Congress updated its Chronicling America website with 800,000 digitized, historic newspapers from Indiana, North Dakota, Arizone, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Texas. (via Infodocket)
- Google Art Project just added the first artworks from China; 50 pieces from the Hunan Provincial Museum in central China. (via Infodocket)
- Ever wondered what happens when you drop your library box into the returns box? Meet the Robo-librarian from Seattle. (via Infodocket)
The Life Behind the Photograph
Throughout March, we will be celebrating Women's History Month with new photos to the Flickr Commons and a series of blog posts about women in science from the Archives' collections.
Context matters. Tell us the "who, when, where, and why" of a photograph and suddenly (like an unexpected inheritance) the image acquires abundant meaning and intellectual capital.
In 2012, the Flickr community helped the Smithsonian Institution Archives establish such context for a previously unidentified image of Norwegian biologist Kristine Elisabeth Heuch Bonnevie (1872-1948). Once we knew the "who," then we could easily add the "when, where, and why."
In 1911, Bonnevie had been elected as the first female member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, an event so momentous that it was praised in the New York Times as a "triumph" and "another advance for women." The following year, Bonnevie became the first woman to be appointed as a university professor in Norway and in 1916 was made director of the newly established Institute for Human Heredity in Oslo.
Ida H. Stamhuis and Arve Monsen have argued that supportive colleagues played a role in Bonnevie's success. At a crucial venture, the historians note, Bonnevie's supervisor even dared to confront "the woman issue" directly. In the conclusion to a recommendation letter, he declared: "That the suggested applicant is a woman should not be an obstacle to her employment. Rather, it seems to me, the fact that it is still far more difficult for women than for men to reach an independent position in society, in itself urges us to make this choice."
By the 1920s, Bonnevie had become active in international science and politics. In 1922, she served as an organizer (one of a few women in that role) of the Second International Congress of Eugenics and, that same year, became (along with physicists Marie Curie and Albert Einstein) an organizing member of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, part of a League of Nations effort to encourage collaboration in the sciences and humanities. She began regular visits to the United States to lecture to university and public audiences. During one such trip, she spent a few days at Vassar College, telling a reporter for the Vassar Miscellany News (October 26, 1932) that the worldwide Depression had increased the importance of the League of Nations effort: "in this time of impassable economic barriers there [is] more need than ever for cultural understanding between nations."
Such sensitivity to political and social contexts distinguished Bonnevie's life and career. After World War II, she was honored for organizing food deliveries to the Norwegian underground during the Nazi occupation. And the prestigious Kristine Bonnevie Lectures in Evolutionary Biology pay tribute every September to her worldwide scientific legacy.
The photograph of Bonnevie in the Smithsonian Institution Archives had no accompanying material and its obverse inscription was difficult to decipher. Now, however, we know that this was one of several photographs of scientists taken by journalist Watson Davis in Geneva, Switzerland, in July 1926, when he covered a meeting of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.
At the Geneva meeting, Davis and biologist Vernon Kellogg had attempted to persuade Bonnevie's committee to support establishment of a European "Science Service" modeled on the successful American organization. Only "by making the new results of the intellectual part of the world part of the general thought-stream of a large part of mankind," Davis wrote, can "civilization be raised and maintained consistently upon a higher spiritual and intellectual level." The smiling, sprightly scientist that Davis photographed that summer, in fact, exemplified just such ideals throughout her career.
Related Resources
- National Library of Norway flickr photostream, includes images of Kristine Elisabeth Heuch Bonnevie
Related Collections
- Record Unit 7091 - Science Service, Records, circa 1910-1963, Smithsonian Institution Archives
- Accession 90-105 - Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970s, Smithsonian Institution Archives
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Another media/establishment instant darling. This guy bears watching… but not voting for. Yesterday, we watched as former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman attempted to take on the mantle of Ronald Reagan, announcing his candidacy from the same place… in front of the Statue of Liberty, where Reagan announced his 1980 presidential run. Ronaldus Magnus this guy is not. Not even close.
His speech was bland and milquetoast. It was accommodationist blather, full of cup-half-empty assertions of how this country has lost its greatness. He then went on to remind us of our manners, and how he at least would maintain the high ground throughout this campaign. He loves and respects our president, just as he knows Barack Hussein Obama just loves this li'l old country to death, doncha know?
Okay, Governor or not, RINO platitudes or not… this man is no Conservative. The Lame Stream statist press is holding him up as their darling. It's the same routine all over again.
Republican history has shown us repeatedly that we win when we stick to Conservative principles, and we lose when we stray into the area of 'moderate' Republicans. Beware the chosen of the party establishment. These bozos are working as hard against Conservatism and the Constitution as they are the opposition… maybe harder.
Harsh, you say? I think not nearly harsh enough. These so-called party kingmakers are in for a heads-up confrontation with the Constitutional Conservatives. Remember the magic formula… 60+20+20. The Conservative movement is comprised of 60% Republicans, 20% Independents… and surprise, surprise, 20% Democrat. It's a huge, very powerful coalition.
We need leadership that is not afraid to attack Barack Obama on a personal as well as a policy level. Black, white or 'other', he's only a man… and not a very clever one at that.
Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis
© Skip MacLure 2011
Since we received some queries last week… I'm back! Last week was one of 15 hour days for me. It's just the nature of the business I'm in. I liked the way Dee answered one comment from an affiliate: "It's just too hard to put on his writing head after all those hours". Pretty apt description.
It's proven really difficult to impress upon the establishment types the dire necessity of tackling the Mexican issue as a matter of party policy. You cannot separate the border issues from the economy… nor can the 20 million plus illegals, feeding like leeches from the veins of American taxpayers, be ignored any longer. The asinine assertion that we can't remove these law breakers… felons by any American legal definition… is just so much bull bleep.
As has been shown in the past during any period of stringent enforcement, they repatriate themselves. Don't try to sell us the sob stories either. How would a citizen of the US (or any other country) fare if caught sneaking into Mexico, or anywhere else in Central or South America? They don't exactly roll out the welcome mat down there.
Witness what's occurring in Arizona as we speak. Thousands of illegals are leaving under the impetus of the implementation of Arizona's immigration enforcement initiatives. Unfortunately, they're heading for States where the goodies are still being ladled out, like California, whose really simple-minded state legislature has just voted to allow in-state tuition for illegals and the children of illegal aliens in the California university system.
The State of California has an unfunded debt liability of over 40 billion dollars. We see the Governor of California lying outright, in order to gain support for his union welfare tax increases.
Illegal aliens cost the state over 10.5 billion dollars annually, and they pay an additional one point four billion dollars every year to incarcerate 20,000 more illegals. The state is broke. It's a disaster looking for a place to occur. California state lawmakers should be removed for malfeasance in office. It makes one wonder if California voters will ever break the shackles of union/state imperialism. Other states tell a similar story.
It's imperative, then, that whoever we put forward to carry the Conservative banner has a firm grip on the subject of illegal immigration and the intestinal fortitude to recapture America for Americans.
The strength of the so-called Tea Party groups has been that they are entirely the expression of the American people. They are a direct result of the danger that the country is in. It is a popular movement, driven by the will of a people who have been pushed to their limits by an oppressive regime dedicated to an alien way of life which imposes their doctrine of tyranny over every aspect of our lives.
The Patriot Movement has emerged as the heart of the Republican Party, with 60% of Republicans stating that they are Conservative. A not surprising additional 20% of Independents identify themselves as Tea Party members… bad news for the De Marxists who virtually had the independent vote to themselves in the 2008 election cycle.
This oft buried factoid has Democrat planners really concerned over the 2012 Presidential elections… it's the independent voters who most often determine the course of any tight race in America. As if that wasn't enough, they're saddled with what looks like the least saleable second-term President in US history.
I predicted, even before Barack Hussein Obama was elected, that the burnish would soon fade off his shiny armor and his charger would turn to a jackass. Being right has little satisfaction when in the last two and a half years this neophyte emperor has overseen the loss of over two million American jobs and the deliberate assault on the American economy on a multitude of fronts. We all see it, we all feel it. The American mind is focused like a laser.
The Tea Party and the Independents have one more decidedly unpleasant missive for the DeMarxists that they'd just as soon you don't know… and you won't see in the slavish leftist media. There's another block of Patriot Tea Party members comprising another 20%. These are Democrat votes, caught up in the Constitutional Patriot wave which is sweeping the nation. These are disillusioned Patriotic Democrats who cannot abide what has become of their party and others for whom the name Obama has become anathema.
It's the so-called Reagan coalition, born again out of the heart of America.
With the closing of California highway 405 for repairs, the mayor of Los Angeles is suggesting that residents evacuate the region to avoid being stuck in their homes.
But with that area of the country infamous for its gang violence, do authorities intend to assure homeowners that during their absences steps will be taken to prevent their property from being looted or to prevent squatters from seizing homes outright?
The road is no doubt in need of repair.
Social planners are also no doubt looking at this as an experiment to see if denying infrastructure access could serve as a viable strategy to voluntarily depopulate an area authorities no longer want contaminated by human habitation.
by Frederick Meekins
Wonder what the food fascists advocating dietary asceticism scarfed down as children. As anyone that has sat through an evangelistic missionary testimonial knows, those griping the loudest about your errant ways are usually the ones that could make a sailor blush before they came to religion.
A Chicago school's policy of controlling what students eat is an example of the threat posed to human liberty by public education. Sad thing is many private educators are just as eager to usurp parental authority. Compounding that, if schools are religious, they'll then compile lengthy theological justifications why you are not a "good Christian" if you don't have a smile plastered across your face regarding the handed-down decree.
If babykillers insist that the government should keep its laws off the body of women wanting abortions, who in the name of Hades are these civil servants to tell anyone what they can or cannot eat for lunch? Students forced to eat food they don't want should toss it in the trash in defiance or preferably hold mass puke rallies and refuse to clean up their own regurgitation.
If educational authorities are granted control over what we eat in the name of protecting us from ourselves, where does this intervention end?
Do education flacks have the authority to tell parents what they may feed their own children in the confines of their own homes?
With each passing decade and generation, it seems the areas central planners claim jurisdiction over continue to expand and the areas over which we exercise jurisdiction and personal preference continue to contract.
A short while ago, parents would have never put up with bureaucrats telling them what they could and could not feed their children. Now the principals at schools where these kinds of policies are being implemented claim no parents have come forward to complain about them.
Thus, once today's young skulls full of mush, as Rush Limbaugh calls them, become acclimated to such detailed micromanaging of their existence at such a young age, expect that kind of command mentality to manifest itself in an array of other issues.
Think you know what career change might make you happy? Sorry, you can't change your job because credentialed government technocrats have determined you are in the position that optimizes their vaunted multi-year plan.
It might be that human liberty and large scale enterprise may not be as closely related as they have been perceived to be in the minds of those that would consider themselves as anti-statist or individualist conservative in their ideological orientation. Already, a number of businesses forbid employees from smoking in the name of keeping health costs in check and I have clashed before with those that think that corporate prerogatives take precedent over those of the individual to such an extent that private property should be forfeit to whatever party has the larger bank account.
So what is to prevent multinational conglomerates as interested in managerial social engineering as they are in raising a profit from forbidding employees from bringing their own food to work? Students already conditioned into this during their school years will think nothing of such a policy as it is extended into the workplace.
It has been said that an army travels on its stomach. Likewise, those seeking to enslave a once free people realize that the surest way of doing so is not so much through grandiose parades and theatrics but by rather by conditioning the individual to seek the approval of the state in the most mundane and personal of matters.
This is perhaps the most sickeningly insidious part of Obama and the Congressional Marxists plan for you, America. Transformational change, indeed. Changing your life and the lives of everyone you know. The DeMarxists are fully well aware that their messiah, their golden boy, is a blank pistol. They know that with every passing day the prospects for an Obama second term become more tenuous.
It's getting harder and harder for the White House and the Democrats in Congress to convince anybody that Obama's fiscal and economic policies are anything but an unmitigated disaster. Trust me, they can see the train wreck coming as well as we can. They may be delusional but they're not stupid… in a slimy sort of way.
Remember how the DeMarxist House behaved right up to the very day the Republicans took over on January 4, 2011? They continued to shred the rule of law and the Constitution right up until the bitter end. That they did this, in full light of the knowledge that the overwhelming number of Americans were adamantly opposed to their illegality, should tell you all. They don't have the majority party any more, and their hold on the Senate is slim… and after 2012 will most likely be non-existent.
What is occurring, and at a fantastically rapid pace, is a multiple agency rush to regulate away our Republic outside of the purview of the people's Congress, outside any jurisdiction and, in most cases, without any oversight at all.
If they can forever (as they see it) embroil us in an endless progression of regulation, bureaucracy and servility to nameless, faceless government tyranny, America as we know it will cease to exist.
The time is now. We have to move on this now. Contact your representatives and tell them to cut funding to as many of these regulatory agencies and bureaux as possible.
There is a new project that I have turned my hand to, that has come to occupy a bit of what little free time I have available.
There is a feral cat that has taken up not far from me. She had a litter of kittens there, four of them. Here are two of them.
I called around last week to find try to find a no-kill shelter to take the kittens to. They will likely be split into two different shelters.
I will take the mama kitty in to get spayed in two weeks, paying for it out of my own pocket.
She's really not as friendly as she looks here.
They are living underneath an old trailer. Not enough room for me to crawl under.
I laid down some plastic, and spread out some old clothes on top of it to make them a bed. That way, they will get used to my smell.
On the weekends, these cats drink bottled water and eat sausage and sardines. But they have a rough go of it ahead of them.
Animals I care for, because we have a responsibility to them. I call this "good stewardship."
People I can only help, but not care for, as they have a responsibility to themselves. I call this "maintaining the fence," ie non-encroachment.
Animals have very few rights, while people have many. Were people to desire the degree of caring which I am obligated to provide to animals, then those rights must first be forfeited.
But I would prefer to strip no one of their rights, nor do I desire to encroach upon another.
Believing such a thing prohibits me from being a liberal in any way.
Amsterdam is an area that depends upon the flow of vacationers into such places as the local coffee shops, several of which sell weed. However, the java shop marijuana trade will soon come to an end, states the LA Times. The right-wing party of the Dutch government has instituted a new law that will ban the sale of cannabis to foreign visitors and severely limit residential access to the "soft" drug. Source of article - Law bans marijuana sale to foreigners in Dutch coffee shops by Newsytype.com.
Banning sale of weed to visitors 'tourism suicide,' say critics
The policies on cannabis in the Netherlands makes several want to visit. The young and curious go just for that reason. The Netherlands decriminalized "soft drugs" in the 1970s. This is when java shops for instance Mellow Yellow started to appear everywhere. There are 750 espresso stores, 220 that are in the capital city of Amsterdam, in the country.
The Daily Mail reports that now members of java stores have to get one-year "dope passes" if they want weed still. Each espresso shop is only allowed to have 1,500 members.
There are many individuals upset about the new regulation. There will be millions in marijuana revenue lost from the new law. More than likely, Dutch residents will sell weed underground for additional to vacationers, which is a huge concern.
Selling illegal narcotics will be stopped
While the weed business at Dutch coffee stores has been legal for a while, the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice recognize that marijuana isn't really the only drug changing hands. Authorities are hoping the new law will curtail the sale of "hard drugs" that are illegal including GHB.
A public statement was made by the ministry. This addressed the lost revenue concerns:
"We attract other types of tourists apart from drugs tourists."
Starting at the end of the year
Currently, Dutch border towns like Maastricht and Terneuzen already restrict the sale of cannabis. By the end of the year, the new policy will go into impact for the southern provinces of Limburg, Noord Brabant and Zeeland. Next year, the ban will blanket all of The Netherlands.
Coffee shop culture in Amsterdam (Warning: Adult language, drug references)
Daily Mail
Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice
Los Angeles Times
It's something deeply embedded in the American psyche. There's an innate stubbornness Americans have in the face of adversity. These last three years have forged a new breed of American… much tougher and much, much more skeptical.
America has watched as its own sworn leadership has turned upon us, leaving economic chaos and destruction in its wake. Policy after policy, specifically designed to kill jobs in the private sector and foster an ever more dependent population.
If you want to see what the Marxists here have in store for us, if you want to see Obamacare in action, look at Great Britain. I have friends who believe that there won't even be a Britain in another twenty years. Look well, America… this is what happens when a country loses the will to live… this is the face of socialism. It's not a happy face, and it's not a very pleasant way to live, either.
We've gotten a really scary look into what it would be like, in that this last three years have been the darkest economic times we've had since the Great Depression. We keep hearing all of the Obamanoids telling us how the recession ended last summer. I don't think so. All I've seen it do is get worse. More people losing jobs, more foreclosures, more businesses forced to close. Makes you wonder why they're not calling it a depression… silly me.
What is going to be real trouble for Democrats in general, is that now the American people have had a good opportunity to educate themselves about just exactly what has gone on since 2008. Well, let's just say it's not Bush. That excuse worked for about two weeks.
No amount of leftist polling can hide the fact that the numbers are plummeting for Barack Hussein Obama and his DeMarxists in the Congress. Every single thing this bunch has done has been, and is, an unmitigated disaster. It's one of the reasons the left is so strident about the Republican presidential candidates they see as the greatest potential threats.
Americans are smarter and tougher as a result of this unnamed depression. The DeMarxists are going to find out just how tough and just how smart.
Campaigns are dropping like flies recently. Mitt Romney, the fair-haired boy of the Republican establishment, is off to a decidedly slow start, fostered mostly by public reaction to a couple of very unpopular policy issues. And now, the entire top tier of Newt Gingrich's campaign staff has quit… fifteen in number, as I heard it.
Who's next? Can't blame Sarah for any of this, though the Palin haters would probably try. As I recall, Newtie hasn't been very kind to Sarah Palin, himself.
I've tried to analyze what it is about Sarah Palin that causes this visceral reaction amongst the left, hard left and loony tunes et al. The fear part I get. You see, the left sees in Sarah Palin, and correctly I might add, the potential destruction of the Democrat party… at least, as it exists now.
They know what I, and an awful lot of people just like me, know… that Sarah Palin is as solid a conservative as they come. Not only that, but she's one hell of a lot smarter than almost all of the cretinous backbiters who've been taking shots at her, and really cheap shots at that, from the safety of their keyboards.
I can't remember when anyone has been so viciously and unjustly vilified. The Republican RINOs hate and fear her because they know she would mean the end of their status quo sinecures… and a lot else around Washington, to boot. And yes, she can easily defeat Obama.
Rick Santorum has entered the fray with a powerful message of fiscal responsibility and a return to a strong constitutional governance. He sounds good, folks. And, his message is starting to resonate.
We're getting rumbles out of Governor Perry of Texas again. For those of you enamored with him, I suggest you go on the net and read what his own constituents have to say about him. If it walks like a RINO….
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What people were overheard saying on the London Underground … Thanks Ann for the link. hehe.
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Tag Archives: Humour
Being out on the road as much as I am, I've seen my share of bone-headed plays on bicycles – cyclists shooting through busy intersections against the lights, undertaking heavy goods vehicles that may or may not be about to turn left, and spinning along misty streets in the pre-dawn grey wearing sombre clothes and not a single light or reflector – but seldom have I seen anything more exuberantly bone-headed than the little tableau I witnessed this morning from my kitchen sink as I cleaned out my coffee pot, post-ride.
As I glanced out the window I saw a grey-haired old man – and how he came to be old, I'll never understand – spinning along the footpath at a brisk rate, bareheaded on a ratty hybrid, one hand on the handlebars and a cigarette dangling lazily in the other. Distracted by an urge to draw on his cigarette, he hit a tree-root lump in the pavement and the whole bike did a somersault with him on it, mid puff. It was the damnedest thing. It was positively cartoonish. The aerial display ended with the guy sprawled on the pavement, the bike on top of him. I stepped out to see if he was okay, but he was already on his feet, a bit scuffed up and scraped and moving rather stiffly but clearly keen to get on his way. First things first though: he fired up another smoke to replace the one he mashed out on the pavement, then he slung his leg over the saddle and set off down the footpath once more, steering one handed, cigarette in the other, dangling by his side, just as before. It takes all kinds to make a world, doesn't it?
The Lighter Side of The Road
How good it feels to be home again and back in the saddle after my unexpectedly prolonged sojourn in northern Norway. I spun along the seafront this morning in fine fettle, chuckling aloud in sheer good humour as I recalled a very funny story one of my readers contributed as a comment to a recent piece I'd written about bicycle maintenance (see here). It just sort of popped into my head out of the blue and made me laugh – and keep laughing, not laughing at the guy but laughing with him, a laugh of recognition, and all the heartier for it. It's not every day you see a cyclist giggling to himself as he spins down the street and my seeming nuttiness drew concerned frowns from couple of joggers on the footpath and a rather dour middle-aged lady who was walking her dog.
I tried to mould my face into something more sombre and dignified, but it didn't work for their quizzical glances only served to remind me of another funny story – this one from a couple of years ago when I rode the Lôn Las Cymru, the Welsh national cycling trail from Chepstow to Holyhead. It was autumn, late in September, a cool grey blustery day, awash with rain, and I was riding along a seafront promenade – just as I was today – except of course it was a Welsh seaside town, not an English one; a place called Barmouth.
I'd ridden the eight miles down to the sea from Dolgellau earlier that morning along a wooded railway path that shadowed the Mawddach River to its mouth on Cardigan Bay. It had been a pleasant ride, moody in the rain, with the sandy desolation of the estuary on my starboard side and the pewter-grey line of the bay up ahead.
I'd crossed into town on the railway bridge, swung through high streets, past the cavalcade of tacky seaside amusements, all shuttered up and gloomy in the autumn chill, and headed north, hugging the coast, with hopes of raising Caernarfon by the end of the day. As the rain gathered pace, though, and a fresh line of squalls blew in from the bay I suddenly found myself giggling uncontrollably at the thought of the two Bertie Woosters I'd met over breakfast at the B&B I'd stayed in the previous night back in Dolgellau
These two toffs had driven up from London in a soft-top roadster for a weekend jolly in the country, two days of zooming through the autumn leaves, top down, touring the postcard-pretty Welsh lanes. But somewhere along the line – they thought it had been while they were eating lunch at a quaint old rustic pub the previous afternoon – some clown nicked their roof.
Neither of the lads noticed the theft until later that afternoon, when the rain started. When they pulled over and went to hoist the canvas, they discovered it wasn't there. Rather rueful now, they'd been obliged to drive through the cold shower, soaking wet, in search of the nearest B&B, which happened to be in Dolgellau. The family who ran it lent them a tarp to cover the cockpit overnight. But that wouldn't answer for the wet drive back to London – and they said they absolutely had to be there today, Monday morning, rain or shine. And of course Monday dawned raining – and raining hard. I heard their whole sorry tale over my bacon and eggs that morning, as I sat in the bay-windowed breakfast room where they were fortifying themselves for the ordeal ahead.
The problem was one of aerodynamics, one of them explained to me, in his perfect cut-glass Wodehousian accent, as he marmaladed his toast. If they'd had a modern convertible design of the bonnet coupled with the rush of wind would have swept the rain up and over the windscreen as long as they kept their speed over forty-five miles an hour. But with an old classic like theirs, well … he'd let the words sort of hang there, chewing his lip and gazing thoughtfully out the rain-spattered window, lost in imaginings of his own.
It was two hundred and fifty miles to London.
I'd listened with a straight face at the time, although it wasn't easy. An hour or so later, though, as I was pedaling through the drenching rain on the Barmouth seafront, and getting mighty wet myself, I found myself wondering how those two chaps were getting on as they motored back to the city along the M-4. And as I wondered, I began picturing, and picturing, I started to snigger and from sniggering… well, after that there was no stopping it. I laughed until the tears came, looking to all the world like the village idiot riding his bicycle with the pitchfork rain coming down all around him, stared at by motorists and passers by alike, gleefully warming myself before the bonfire of somebody else's vanities.
Higgs Boson Found!
Looks like it's time to break out the chocolates and celebrate – Higgs Boson has at last been found. For those of you who have never heard of it before or who, like me, thought Higgs Boson was a Norwegian rider on Team Sky in this year's Tour de France, this is the elusive 'God Particle' that has been so keenly sought by physicists since the 1960s. It is this ghostly sub-atomic particle, they say, that is responsible for giving objects mass – and that's bound to be splendid news for those of us chocolate fiends who for years have been blaming <em>Theobroma Cacao, the food of the Gods, for our various problems with mass and tight jeans. Now, thanks to the indefatigable work of a team of scientists at the Large Hadron Collider, a multi-billion pound facility deep underground on the French-Swiss border, we can shift the blame to where it rightly belongs – the Higgs Boson particle – and hereafter enjoy our chocolate with complete peace of mind, even on those days when we don't get out for long cleansing rides, or sit idle in small, cramped foreign hotel rooms, waiting for boats that never arrive, watching the Tour de France on TV…
The Wight Stuff
"Isle of Fright!" screamed the page-three headlines in the newspaper that morning announcing the discovery of a new species of 'vicious' flesh-eating dinosaur that had been found embedded in the 120 million year-old cliffs of England's fair and gentle Isle of Wight. Believing this walking nightmare to be the long-elusive great-great-grand-daddy of Tyrannosaurus rex, palaeontologists around the world were hailing it as one of the most significant dinosaur finds in recent years. An artist's rendition showed it striding, fang and claw, through the swampy landscape that characterised the area at the time, in the company of an iguanodon, a brachiosaurus, and an armour-plated polecanthus, other prehistoric beasties that had also once roamed the island.
It all made for a stirring read over the breakfast bacon and eggs. I'd always thought of the Isle of Wight in gentlemanly terms: yachting regattas at Cowes, America's Cup, Queen Victoria's summer retreat at Osborne House, and those fashionable 19th century seaside resorts where England's well-to-do used to go to 'take the air'.
It never occurred to me that the island might be a dinosaur graveyard as well, let alone that its Cretaceous sandstones were the final resting place for some of those very same prehistoric monsters whose fossils inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write The Lost World in 1912 – a novel that would one day provide the inspiration for Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. But so it apparently was.
And what's more, thanks to the wettest winter since 1659, landslides along the coast were exposing fresh new rock faces riddled with the bones and teeth of dinosaurs. Anybody could go looking and, according to the newspaper, just about everybody was. Anywhere below the high-tide mark was Crown land and therefore fair game.
This was a few years ago. I was new in England then. And as I read all this, beautiful vistas rolled out before me. I used to love reading The Lost World when I was a kid and always fancied myself as the Edward Malone character, the journalist who accompanies Professor Challenger into the prehistoric jungles of South America. And now here I was, in jaded middle age, twenty-some years into a real-life career in journalism, and with a geology degree to boot, and yet to go on a dinosaur hunt. That was about to change. Here was my chance, not just to go a-dinosaur hunting but to do it in the style of my most cherished boyhood daydreams: sling myself aboard my bike and set off down the street, jaunty and cavalier, my cap set for adventure. How many times had I played out that scene in my head. Now I could do it for real.
The Isle of Wight was less than a hundred miles from my doorstep, and waiting out in my garden shed was a doughty old English-built, black-and-cream tourer, propped against a load of rusty paint tins, looking hopeful, ready to go. Like Oscar Wilde I can resist anything but temptation. I threw a few things together and, like a character in a storybook, set off within the hour with a heart for any fate.
Professor Challenger's party began their adventures with an arduous journey by steamship to a dangerous South American seaport. I, on the other hand, had a long, wet and windy ride along the coast to Portsmouth, followed by a short but rather bouncy crossing of the Solent on the Wightlink ferry. I didn't mind the lousy weather, not for the first few miles anyway. The lashing rain and stormy skies gave a nice sense of drama and danger to the undertaking, but by the time I rolled off the ferry and onto the rain-slickened streets of Ryde, I was more in the mood for hot coffee than cold hardship.
I collected my thoughts over a latte in the steamy warmth of one of the cafes along the seafront, watching the rain streak down on the windows and looking over the brochures I'd picked up at the tourism office, across the street. The best thing to do, I gathered would be to head first for Sandown, five miles away, visit The Dinosaur Isle Museum and get my bearings.
I arrived late afternoon, near closing time, under a cold slanting rain. I browsed amongst the glass-cased exhibits and artists' renditions of what the island might have looked like in the bad old days of the Cretaceous. There were loads of fossil shells, ammonites, sponges, ferns, insects and chunks of petrified wood on display but they weren't what I, or anyone else there, was interested in. We were all of us gazing at the bones, teeth and claws of the scarier critters, most particularly the newly discovered Eotyrannus lengi.
As dinosaurs go, Eotyrannus wasn't terribly huge – about fifteen feet long, a mere morsel for T. rex, which could grow to over forty feet, but still more than double the size of those scene-stealing velociraptors in Jurassic Park. It sported rows of two-inch saw-edged teeth and nightmarish Freddy Krueger-style claws with which it could tear other dinosaurs to pieces. It was fast and agile and considered to be the most ferocious of any of the twenty or so species of dinosaur known to have inhabited the island. It had been found mingled with the remains of a plant eater – upon which it may have preyed – and surrounded by a lot of plant debris, leading to speculation that it may have been caught up in a flash flood.
I took this all on board, bought a where-to-find-fossils guide in the museum bookshop, and dropped another two quid on a waterproof geology map of the island. That night I sat up late in my B&B, in Ventnor, listening to the wind rattle the windows, and worked out a plan of campaign. Most of the new dinosaurs, including Eotyrannus, were being found amongst the crumbling sandstones on the cliffs near Brighstone, on the southwest side of the island. That was the place to be and where everybody was heading. There was even a small dinosaur museum that had recently opened up on one of the farms down there, where excavations were continually turning up interesting bones and where a team of palaeontologists had set up a booth to help amateurs identify their finds.
I marked it on the map. Early the next morning, after two-thousand calories of 'full English breakfast', I set out in the wind and rain for Brighstone, about fifteen miles away. I arrived just on low tide. Dismounting at a likely looking spot, I wheeled my bicycle down onto the beach, then propped it up against a rock face at the bottom of a cliff and started prospecting.
Everything I remembered about Cretaceous geology you could just about chisel on an aspirin tablet, but as a setting for windswept drama you'd have to give this spot high marks: a romantic old smuggler's coast, lashed by storms, with the hollow boom of the surf in your ears and the windows of some old brooding manor house gazing down from the wooded heights nearby.
I pecked around for the better part of two hours without finding anything more interesting than a few faint impressions of shells and some squiggles in the rock that could have been anything. By then the weather was closing in and the tide was on the rise. I was daydreaming about lunch and hot coffee when I turned over an oblong lump of rock and realised, with a start, as I was about to put it down again, that it was shaped uncannily like a butcher's bone – a tibia, to be precise. The hairs on the back of my neck began to tingle. I hastily brushed off the sand and grit. It was unmistakably a fossil, and its resemblance to the top part of a thigh bone was positively unnerving.
It was big, too; not as big as the ones I'd seen in the museum, but plenty big enough to satisfy me. I cast my eyes greedily around to see if there was any more to this skeleton, but it seemed as though the surf must have messed it all up, because this one chunk was all there was. But that was enough. I hoisted it up and, with a furtive look up and down the desolate beach, to be sure that I was alone with my treasure, I lugged it over to my bicycle and lashed it onto the rear rack with a length of shock cord I'd brought along, just in case. Five minutes later I was on my way, wobbling down the road to the farmstead where the palaeontologists awaited, eager to show off my weighty prize. This had to be seen by experts.
The rain was coming down harder now, with raw gusts blowing in from the sea. They skittered the bicycle some on the wet and slippery road, but the cold and wet couldn't touch the inner me – warmed as I was by the glow of discovery, and of course the effort of lugging a sizeable chunk of Cretaceous-era relic along a hilly coast and into a stiff breeze. As I pedalled along I tried to imagine the fearsome creature whose leg bone I had found. Maybe it was a young Eotyrannus, a new and vital piece in the unfolding evolutionary puzzle. Maybe it was a bit of a completely new and still more vicious predator. Maybe … but who knew. It could be anything.
I found the farm I was looking for. Despite the atrocious weather the yard was filled with cars; I wasn't the only one scouring the slumped cliffs that morning, looking for fossils. Inside the barn a knot of people in oilskins and gumboots were gathered around a table, waiting to show their finds to the resident palaeontologist. He was busy sorting through the bucket of stony curios brought in by a local woman. I sidled up, listening in, my altogether heftier specimen concealed by my dripping cape.
The woman's seemingly shapeless lumps turned out to be rather interesting: a piece of vertebrae from an iguanodon, a bit of armour from polecanthus, and a piece of bone from an unidentified, but undoubtedly flesh-eating, monster. She was so pleased. I had mixed emotions, myself. My own find looked so much more impressive and bone-like, and was so much larger and grander that I hated to spoil her moment.
"Yes?" said the palaeontologist, looking up at me through his half-moon spectacles.
I stepped up, smiling apologetically to the woman whose find I was about to trump, and hefted my great fossilised tibia onto the table. "I found this near the bottom of the cliffs a few miles from here," I began, striking just the right tone of self-important modesty. "…and I was wondering if it might be of interest."
His eyebrows arched impressively. "My goodness! You brought that all the way here on your bicycle?"
I nodded an affirmative, and flashed a smile around the room. Anything for science, my good man.
"Hmmm." He groped for words. Then he found them. "I'm afraid that what you've got there, young man, is a rather heavy chunk of flint, with a large fossilised sponge at the end of it."
It took a few seconds before his words sunk in. I had been prepared to hear that this thigh bone might not actually have come from Eotyrannus lengi, and in fact might not even have belonged to anything carnivorous at all, but had instead been the thigh bone of some harmless moss-nibbling thing – but a sponge? What kind of a sick joke was this?
"Yes, indeed," he continued, as he examined it more closely. "It's a sponge all right. And rather badly eroded at that."
"Uh-huh." I could feel my face flush. Eyes were on me. "Of course it is. I knew that. I was just hoping you could tell me what kind of a sponge, what species. I'm most curious on the point."
He shook his head. "I'm sorry. That's not really my area. But there is a palaeontologist here who could probably help you. She's at tea just now, if you care to wait."
I stepped smilingly aside, nodded knowledgeably to the crowd, easing backwards away from the table then waiting until he (and they) were busy poring through a bucket of someone else's more interesting specimens before slipping out the door.
I abandoned Spongiferous rex discretely behind a fence post, together with my career as a swashbuckling dinosaur hunter. I saddled up, pushed off and pedalled onward through the rain, sneezing by now, another thirty miles back to Ryde where I caught an afternoon ferry to Portsmouth and the mainland. Conan Doyle could keep his blessed Professor Challenger and Edward Malone and the whole lot of them. The more I thought about it – and I had much time for thinking the next day on the long and dreary ride home – I liked Sherlock Holmes better anyway. Perhaps Dartmoor next time.
The Wheels of Chance
It was a tram driver's strike in Melbourne back in the early Nineties that got me riding a bicycle again as an adult. I was living in Elsternwick that year, an old bayside suburb in the city's inner, and catching the ting-a-ling tram down Glenhuntly Road each morning to a fairly dull job writing features for a lightweight, parochial and oh-so-earnest Sunday broadsheet.
I didn't own a car but relied on shoe leather and public transport to get around and so when the tram drivers' union announced out of the blue one afternoon that their members were going on strike from midnight, and the bus and train drivers agreed to down tools in sympathy, I found myself stuck for a way in to work.
The twelve-mile round trip between home and office seemed just that bit too far to walk and you could grow a beard trying to catch a cab in Melbourne during the rush hour in those days, any rush hour, let alone one during a transport strike. As I sat at my desk that afternoon pondering my options, the cheeky idea popped into my head that I could always try riding my bike.
I still had a bike, a relic from college days that I hadn't ridden in ages but had somehow never quite had the heart to get rid of either. As far as I knew it was still in working order, buried somewhere deep amongst the clutter in the garden shed. The more I thought about it, the better liked the idea. It might be fun, an adventure, and certainly a more spirited response to being strike-bound than throwing up my hands and begging a lift from car-owning colleagues.
When I arrived home that evening I found my old bike and dragged it out of the shed, feeling a little reproachful at its sorry state, all grimy and saggy-looking from years of neglect. This had been quite a decent bicycle once, bought with a whole summer's lawn-mowing earnings back when I was still daydreaming of cycling adventures in Asia, Africa and South America.
This here would have been just the thing to take you wherever you wanted to go, or so the man at the bike shop had assured me: the Gemini World Randonneur. It was the company's expedition model: pine green with silver mudguards, fifteen speeds, pannier racks fore and aft, braze-ons for three water bottle cages, drop bars with bar-end shifters and powerful cantilever brakes for sure-footed braking for those times when you were descending tricky mountain passes with a load of gear lashed on the back.
Unlike the other bikes on display in the shop, this one ran on twenty-six inch tyres, rather an old-fashioned size in those pre-mountain-bike days, but one which was plenty common in the Third World, meaning I could source spares wherever my wanderings took me: from the Bolivian altiplano to the market bazaars of Samarqand. It was that which sold me on the model. I loved that touch of practical worldliness and savoir faire. It spoke of foresight and planning, seriousness of intent, and set my rugged World Randonneur apart from those tame suburban road bikes you saw tooling around the campus.
But as they say about buying novels, you don't buy the book so much as the imagined leisure time to read it, and so it must be with expedition bicycles, for the way things panned out I never actually rode it anywhere more exotic than the Lebanese takeaways along King Street in the student ghetto around the University of Sydney. I never even put enough miles on it to wear out the original set of tyres. Those same old Michelins were still clinging to the rims all these years later, soft and flabby and grimy with age.
I rummaged around some more in the shed, found my pump and set to work inflating them. Surprisingly enough, the things held air.
They were still plump and firm the next morning, too-disconcertingly so, for by then I'd begun to have some second thoughts about the wisdom of all this. A good many years had passed since I'd ridden a bike, and then it had been mostly just tooling around the University of Sydney campus or riding the bridle paths in Centennial Park on quiet Sunday mornings, not jockeying about in the mean streets of a big city rush hour, let alone one in the throes of a transport strike.
Having those mouldy tyres deflate overnight-not an unreasonable expectation-would have given me a convenient 'out', the force majeure that would have allowed me to back away from my brash plan to cycle into work and still keep a measure of face. But the tyres remained firm and the weather outside was gorgeous, a perfect spring day. I had no excuse except timidity for calling it off, and pride forbade that.
And so after breakfast, with my heart in my mouth, I wobbled out into the maelstrom of the Melbourne rush-hour, my office clothes folded into a bundle and tied on the rear rack. I headed for the city as a motorist would: straight up the main stem, along the fast and furious Nepean Highway and St Kilda Road.
It was a harrowing ride, peppered with what seemed at the time to be many near-misses, but half an hour later when I rolled up to loading dock at the newspaper building, flushed with effort and the exhilaration of danger, I was kind of sorry to see the morning's adventures draw to a close.
All that day I found myself thinking about the homeward journey with a heady adrenalin-charged stab of eagerness and apprehension. I made it home unscathed, and feeling victorious, and the next morning's commute wasn't nearly so fraught. The first-day awkwardness was gone. I felt more assured out there, accepting as a matter of course the stream of cars and their wing mirrors whooshing close by my elbow. Along with this confidence came a certain quiet satisfaction at having taken matters into my own hands, a sense of having reclaimed some part of me that had lain fallow for years without my being aware of it. As I bowled home that evening along the margins of the Nepean Highway, I found myself marvelling that I hadn't done this earlier.
The trammies went back the following day, but not I. I stayed out and with the money I saved from not buying tram tickets I tricked up my old tourer with a brand new flashing red taillight and a snazzy rear-view mirror. I bought myself a pair of padded shorts and cycling gloves as well, a citrine-yellow riding cape for rainy days, and a pair of sturdy waxed cotton panniers to keep my office clothes clean and dry-all the stuff I'd need if I was going to make these daily jousts with life and traffic a regular thing.
Over the coming weeks and months I came to know the city streets in the intimate way only a cyclist can. By that I don't just mean where the potholes were or the misaligned storm drains, but the pulse and mood of the place, the thousand-and-one vignettes and details that pass unnoticed when you rattle by in a tram with your nose in the paper.
Morning commutes were my favourites, when the day was fresh, bright as a newly minted penny and full of promise. As you might with music I varied my journeys to suit my mood. Sometimes I'd find myself drawn to the old Edwardian fun pier at St Kilda, where Greek and Italian fishermen sat up all night with their squid lines and thermoses of coffee. I'd ride out to the kiosk at the end of the pier, lean my bike against the decorative iron railing and just stand there and watch the city wake up and greet the day, the upper flanks of the Rialto Tower catching the early morning sunshine, and the distant sparkle of traffic streaming over the Westgate Bridge, and the big Tasmanian ferry steaming up the bay, fresh in from its overnight run across the moody waters of Bass Strait.
Other times I'd veer inland and follow the Yarra River into the city through the Royal Botanic Gardens and Alexandra Park. Or if I were in a gritty inner-urban frame of mind call in at the South Melbourne markets, just off Cecil Street, and lose myself for an hour in its cheerful ethnic bustle and the heady redolence of ripe fruit and fresh fish and scorched Asian spices. I'd buy a handful of dried peaches or a couple pieces of baklava and nibble my ad hoc breakfast while I wandered amongst the stalls, soaking up the ambience and marvelling at all the lives lived out beyond the periphery of my own. It was like being a kid again, this roving around on a bicycle, taking the worm's eye view. I'd forgotten.
As summer bloomed and the weather became warmer and finer, I found myself toying with the idea of playing hooky sometime; taking French leave from work and swanning off down the Mornington Peninsula for a day of stolen sunshine and piny breezes and fish-and-chips on the beach among the pretty little seaside holiday towns down there.
What started out as a bit of whimsy, a wouldn't-that-be-fun sort of thing, evolved into niggling temptation, which in turn grew into a bold-faced dare: go on, be a devil, do it. I fought the good fight, but in the end the bicycle and its seductive freedom won out, and one sparkling Wednesday morning early in autumn, I bolted.
I phoned in 'sick' from a payphone in Frankston, one of the outer suburbs along Melbourne's southeast flank, and, with baited breath, recited the lie I'd been rehearsing since I veered off course twenty miles back: sore throat, headache, fever-one of those twenty-four hour things, no doubt I'd be fine tomorrow. It was the copy boy I spoke with. He bought my story with touching naïveté, and I rang off feeling mean and low and guilty-and elated and relieved as well, a heady cocktail of emotions. I'd been brought up well, imbued with a doughty middle class work ethic and had never before pulled a sickie, or at least nothing quite so flagrant.
Now the deed was done, the crime committed. Might as well enjoy the fruits of it, come what may. Which I did. I had a wonderful time.
It was lovely down the peninsula: plenty of warm cheerful sunshine, a creamy surf, and the bracing tang of eucalypt in the air. I did a spot of wine tasting at one of the vineyards I passed along the way, had an excellent lunch of fish and chips on a picnic table shaded by Norfolk pines along the beach at Sorrento, and discovered a wonderful ice cream parlour.
Later on, at a stylish café in Portsea, over poppy-seed cake and cappuccino, I pondered the remains of the afternoon. I had come a long way and had just as long a ride ahead of me to get home but I was feeling fit and besides, I could always bail out at Frankston, if I had to; catch a train back to the city from there if it was getting too late or too dark. With that as my fall-back net, I reckoned I could afford to venture all the way down to Cape Schanck, the wild, windswept headland on the seaward side of the peninsula, another ten twelve miles further south.
I'd never been there before. I'd understood it was beautiful, haunting in its loneliness with its weathered lighthouse overlooking the moody waters of the Southern Ocean. And so it proved to be. And on a midweek autumn afternoon I had the place all to myself, too just me and a few wheeling gulls and the hollow boom of the surf far below. I sprawled on the clifftop for a long dreamy while, well satisfied, gazing into the violet haze, letting my mind tinker with the notion that the next landfall from here would be Antarctica and, like a kid, imagining myself going there one day.
After a while a sense of lateness came over me. I don't wear a watch, but from the angle of the sun, and the increasing honeyed quality of the light, it was clear that afternoon was on the wane. Time was getting away from me. It was still a solid thirty miles back to Frankston and if I wanted to get there before dark (which I did, since I didn't have a headlamp) I'd best get cracking. And so with a wistful but contented sigh I picked up my trusty World Randonneur and pushed off.
Not many yards later I heard a hiss as my rear tyre went flat. An annoyance, to be sure, but hardly the end of the world since like any seasoned cyclist I carried a pump, tyre levers and a patch kit. I had the wheel off in a jiffy, and a few minutes later, patched and pumped, I was on my way once more. But not for long. Within thirty yards the same tyre hissed flat again.
I dismounted, a bit peevish this time, removed the wheel and peeled off the tyre, thinking that I must have overlooked a piece of grit or shard of glass embedded in the rubber, allowing it to re-puncture the tube. I ran my fingers around the lining, in a cursory sort of way and, feeling nothing, shrugged and chalked it up to experience and bad luck. Whatever was in there must have fallen out. I fixed the flat, replaced the wheel, put away pump and patch kit, and mounted up again. Less than a minute later I was standing once again in the tall grass along the roadside, hands on hips, glaring at yet another flabby rear tyre.
This was losing its charm. I cast my eyes around to see if there were tacks or thorns or something scattered on the road, but all I saw was the squashed remains of a brown snake that had somehow managed to get run over by the-what?-one car a day that came along this dead-quiet ribbon of bitumen. Lordy, how unlucky was that? Like getting hit by a meteor, or spontaneous combustion, or getting three punctures in less than a hundred yards for no particular reason. I shook my head at the improbable wonder of it all and gave him a sympathetic nod. "You and me both, brother."
I sat down on the gravel with a heavy put-upon sigh and peeled off the tyre yet again, this time giving the flabby rubber the scrutiny I should have given it earlier, much earlier, like before I ever left home. Remember, these were the same tyres I'd had in college all those years ago, the ones on which I was going to ride off to Zanzibar or down the Silk Road. Sturdy things, just like the man said. I'd been riding around on them in the city for months now without a flat. They'd remained plump and firm and so reliable that I'd forgotten all about them. But nothing lasts forever, certainly not bicycle tyres, and here on the lonely Cape Schanck road, in the fading light of an autumn afternoon and miles from anywhere, I made the belated discovery that my globe-trotting Michelins were finally, at long last, well and truly shot-beyond repair.
The front one was bad enough to be dangerous, but the rear had frayed through completely. I could patch that inner tube as many times as I liked, but with the tyre holed like that, the first stray piece of grit that came along would get in and puncture the tube again. What I needed was a new tyre or, failing that, at least some flexible, durable material with which I could line the frayed bits in the old one. I had neither. I toyed with the idea of using the snake but he was too far gone. The ten-dollar bill I'd frittered away on coffee and cake back in Portsea might have done for a make-shift tyre plug, but of course I'd spent that. All I had on me was coins and plastic, and this was one hole my VISA card couldn't bail me out of.
It was eight miles to Rosebud, the nearest town, over on the bay side of the peninsula. They might have had a bike shop there where I could buy a tyre, but I doubted it, not in a sleepy little berg like that-and, oh, the sweet irony of it all, if there was a shop they almost certainly wouldn't have a twenty-six inch tyre to suit my expedition rims; I needed to be on the Silk Road for that. But supposing there was a bike shop in Rosebud, and they did have a suitable tyre, it was still too late in the day to do me any good. They'd have long rolled down the shutters by the time I got there.
With luck I could probably scrounge something at a petrol station, a bit of rubber or plastic with which I could line the tyre well enough to carry on, but that would still leave me with at least a twenty-five mile ride into Frankston, at night, with no lights and dodgy tyres, and on the narrow, fast and busy coastal highway. Home by three o'clock in the morning-maybe.
A sickly smile crossed my face as I thought of everybody back in the office, packing up for the day right now, easy of mind, clear of conscience, looking forward to home and hearth, an evening of TV and off to bed. How I wished I was there. I could have been. Should have been, too. My inner Calvinist rose up with smirking glee: serves you right, bucko; here's the old cosmic payback for the lies, the shirking, and the theft of a day's pay: the absconder, undone by his own fecklessness, receives his richly deserved comeuppance in a long dark night of frustration, misery and danger, muttering curses, prayers, and mea culpas every inch of the way.
Not a bit of it. Instead I made my best discovery of the summer, a sublime truth that would sustain and embolden me through many a cycling adventure and misadventure in the years to come: God, it seems, truly does look after children, drunks and tramp cyclists. No sooner had I begun the heavy-hearted trudge to Rosebud when I heard the distant purl of a car engine, the first such sound in what seemed like hours. I turned, hope and presentiment rising within me, to see a battered old Holden top the rise. The driver slowed as he drew abreast then veered, as though on tracks, onto the shoulder a few yards up the road, his brake lights aglow.
It was then I noticed the bicycle rack on the rear.
A lanky young Catholic priest climbed out and approached with a shy, almost apologetic smile, as though he were sorry for having not arrived a little sooner.
"Hello, there!" he called as he approached. "Trouble?"
I nodded, staring as though I'd been addressed by a burning bush.
He cast an appraising eye over my bicycle and its threadbare tyres, sighed and shook his head. "It looks pretty final to me. How about I give you a lift to Frankston?"
I gave a feverish laugh, then sprang to life, eager to strap my bike onto that rack before this miraculous apparition could vanish. But car and driver remained wonderfully corporeal and an hour later I was standing beside my bicycle on the city-bound platform of the Frankston train station, homeward ticket in hand, my face radiant with the smile of a man who hears angels singing.
I was back in the city by a fashionable hour, sooner in fact than if I had never had any of that flat tyre business. I bought myself a new pair of Michelins at a late-opening bike shop in town and toasted the sweetness of my escape over dinner that night with a fine bottle of merlot from one of the vineyards I'd seen down there on the Mornington Peninsula.
But the dice of God are always loaded, as the old saying goes. That beatific smile I'd been wearing on the Frankston railway platform wasn't the only reason my face was radiant. When I swanned into the office the morning after, as neatly recovered from my recent malaise as though I'd been to Lourdes, I was sporting a beautiful set of tan lines around my eyes from where the sunglasses had been. The real moral of the story? Seize the day, by all means. Get out there. Lie, cheat and shirk if you have to. All will be forgiven. It is a big beautiful world out there, rich in possibility and ripe for discovery and Heaven knows there's no finer way to see it than from the saddle of a bicycle. But all the same, do not tempt the Lord thy God, as the Good Book says, for he clearly Hath a wicked sense of humour. So check your treads before you go, keep something in your tool kit you can use to plug a holed tyre if need be, and no matter what, always, always, always remember the sunscreen.


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21 Reasons "Harry Potter" Has The Most Dedicated Fandom Ever
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