The Nature of Things

Robert Louis Stevenson was one of the most popular writers of his time, the Victorian Age, and he is still often quoted today.  Stevenson was a rather sickly person and, apparently, the thought of death was much on his mind. Several years before his death, he wrote this famous poem, part of which was eventually used as his epitaph. Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die,     And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea,     And the hunter home from the hill. Curiously, when the poem is quoted today, the person who is quoting it will often remember it as "Home is the sailor, home from THE sea." But in fact, in the original poem, Stevenson did not use the definite article to describe the place from which the sailor had returned. Later, the English poet, A.E. Housman ...

Okay, I'm not really a football fan. I'm more inclined to watch the Puppy Bowl than the Super Bowl, but I confess I love this. It seems that two of our long-time favorite Sirs, Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart are ready for some football - in all its forms. Sir Ian seems to be pulling for a Broncos victory and Sir Patrick is hoping for the Seahawks to win. Patrick Stewart          ✔ You gotta love those expressions! And even though I'm not really a football fan, as I've mentioned here before, I am a Manning family fan , so I'll be hoping that Peyton can prevail. One more time.

It is New Year's Day of the year 4712 in the Chinese calendar . It is the beginning of the Year of the Horse. So happy New Year! The Chinese calendar is an interesting way of perceiving and reckoning the passage of time. The month is determined by the phases of the moon. Each month begins with a New Moon, the darkest time of the moon's passage. Last night saw a New Moon and so today begins the New Year. Chinese New Year festivities are not just a one day or one night affair. They start on the first day of the month and last until the fifteenth, when the moon is full and at its brightest. Traditionally, the Chinese people might take weeks to prepare for and celebrate this holiday, and, in some places, they still do. One of the most interesting things - to me - about the Chinese calendar is the concept of naming each year after an animal and attributing to people born in that year the supposed characteristics of that animal. Those born in one of the Years of the Horse, for exampl...

The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly My rating: 4 of 5 stars This third entry in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series begins as a courtroom thriller. Four years before, Harry had killed a man believed to be the Dollmaker, a serial killer of women. Now the man's wife is suing  Harry for wrongful death in the case. She is being represented by one of the premier civil rights lawyers in Los Angeles, a woman who is not used to losing. Harry is being represented by a city attorney who is not in the same league with her. His chances do not look good. At the time Harry had killed the man, it was believed that he was responsible for the murders of eleven women, but at the beginning of his civil trial, evidence becomes known that seems to indicate that two of the later victims may actually have been killed by someone else. And now a third body has been found that follows the pattern of the other murders - a woman who was killed at least two years after the death of the Dollmaker. Th...

Some parts of the country continue to be hit by some pretty freaky cold winter weather. How can this be happening if global warming is for real and not a hoax as the right-wing deniers claim? Well, very easily actually. Here's a short film that was put together with input from several meteorologists that explains it all rather succinctly.

There has been a lot of comment about the letter from billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins that the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal thought was important enough to give space in their newspaper recently. Oh, you haven't heard about this? Well, in his letter, Perkins compared today's "progressive radicalism," by which he apparently means having the richest one-percent among us pay a fair share in taxes, to Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews.  Specifically, he made reference to the Nazis' attack on Jews and Jewish businesses known as Kristallnacht. The final paragraph of his letter seems to sum up his thought processes: This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?   Of all the comments that I have seen on this, I think it is best answered by Jen Sorensen in a cartoon in today's Daily Kos . (A cartoon does seem the m...

The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley My rating: 3 of 5 stars Alan Bradley's eleven-year-old (almost twelve, as she constantly reminds us) budding chemist/detective, Flavia de Luce, is a charming creation in one of the most innovative of recent cozy mystery series. In the sixth entry of the series, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches , Flavia is still charming, but the plot seems a bit contrived and strained, and by halfway through the book, I just wanted to get it over with.  Overall, I still rather enjoyed it - if I could give it two-and-a-half stars, I would, but since I can't, I'll opt for the more generous three stars - but it definitely was not one of my favorites. There are two related mysteries for Flavia to solve this time. First, who pushed the man under the wheels of the moving train in the English village of Bishop's Lacey? Or was he pushed? Did he simply stumble and fall? Second, the reason that all the village had turned out at the train station t...