... to amuse or appall...
Amuse and amaze: Annie D and a few others sent this incredible video of dolphins blowing and playing with "smoke rings" of bubbles. There are quite a few more out there on YouTube including one of belugas in Japan.
A bit of serious geekery from XKCD.
"Do not put..."
A sad note: Jim Crumley is dead. I didn't know him well but he was the writer's writer-- every writer I know loved his stories, written and in conversation. He was also one of those rare writers who kept constant track of what you were doing and always had encouraging words. I don't know why the movies haven't latched on to his tales. Fittingly, the last time I talked to him was over drinks in the bar at Chico Hot Springs in Montana, "immortalized" in the cult film Rancho Deluxe. It must have been at least ten years ago... hard to believe.
Finally, two quotes to think about. The first is from Jason Wilson, from the intro to Best American Travel Writing 2002 (in which I appear):
"The travel writing one finds in magazines too often suffers from a
reluctance to transcend the topic at hand, a reluctance toward digression of
any kind. I realize that some of this is the result of space concerns, but it is
still unfortunate. Anyone who reads travel classics such Gerald Brenan's
South from Granada or Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana or D. H.
Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia or Graham Greene's The Lawless Roads
knows that digression is a part of all great travel writing. In many ways, the
digressions are the story.
The second is courtesy of Chas:
"Ther is a saying emong hunters that he cannot be a gentleman whyche loveth not hawkyng and hunting, which I have hard old woodmen wel allow as an approved sentence among them. The like sayinge is that hee cannot be a gentleman whych loveth not a dogge."
(Anonymous, The Institucion of a Gentleman, 1555.)
I'm going out with the dogs. See you al when I get back.
3 comments:
Speaking of gentlemen and dogges, I thought you'd appreciate the juxtaposed images of this week's Nature cover (Laelaps link through my name). Chance or design?
That's HILARIOUS. My wife says design. But how did they get the candidates to pose.. just that way??(;-))
Re. the dolphins blowing rings, the Snopes article has some interesting things about the physics and production of bubble rings (though I never did grasp physics very well).
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/dolphinrings.asp
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