Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Around the Web...

Understated good taste is timeless. HT Tom McIntyre.

"It is a well known fact.." That the Virgin Mary was fond of spinach? That being eaten by hyenas doesn't hurt as much as you think? George Leonard Herter makes the NYT. I am still looking for some titles...

Detroit gives a new meaning to rewilding. HT R Arthur Wilderson.

It may have been too much to expect Michael Pollan, but did Obama have to pick a tool of Big Corn for secretary of agriculture?

Things were different back then, and not all THAT far back.

"Many years ago, my dad flew to Wisconsin on a hunting trip and carried his O/U onto the plane in a takedown case. He and the stewardess had the following exchange:

Her: “Is that a gun?”
Him: “Yes.”
Her: “It’s not loaded, is it?”
Him: “It’s not even put together.”

"Then, because it was the 60s and air travel was way better then, she probably brought him a martini. I can promise Dad was wearing a tie, too, because flying was a big deal and people dressed for the occasion."

Are men the weaker sex, or at least becoming so? Independent article here; Derb's take here.

Not the Onion: a faction in the Russian Communist party wants to purge Marx (because he was Jewish) and canonize St. Stalin.

Incredible discoveries of new animals in the Mekong Valley. This article is shorter but has a link to a PDF of the discoveries, well- illustrated. I would REALLY like to go to the Annamites or Yunnan to collect and photograph.

3 comments:

mdmnm said...

Re: "understated good taste"- at least with the bulino portrait you won't have any trouble picking it out from all of the other gold filled, jewel inlaid, take-down big game rifles on the rack!

Neutrino Cannon said...

I'm guessing that this wouldn't count as understated:

http://www.thegunzone.com/gaudy-mp5.html

-R.A.W.

Anonymous said...

Wow, thanks for the link to the re-wilding of Detroit. In the 1990's I lived in Michigan, worked as an environmental scientist and had several projects in Detroit and Flint. Even then, parts of both cities (especially Flint) were quite wild.

A little side-story, 14 years ago I met the man who is now my husband in a vacant industrial lot in Detroit. We spent the day walking over several wild, dilapidated, over-grown (and mostly contaminated) sites. Urban decay is, apparently, a more romantic setting than most would think. We married 6 months later.