I haven’t heard the foxes for a good year now. The woods is still there but the owners sold it to a buyer who promised to cut down only the middle of it, you know how buyers promise things. No trees have been cut down yet but a lot of people have been tramping through […]
I’ve been making candied orange peel regularly for some time now and I say this fearlessly: I have nailed it. The second secret (the first is, never trust sugar chemistry), which I sensed only dimly when I first wrote this, back on May 15, 2014, is that the orange peels have to be thick and […]
From olden days of secrets, lies, conspiracies, Russians spies, bad things going on in a good world, and increasing numbers of people FOIA-ing the hell out of things, I bring you the case of a science historian going about his business of looking behind walls and under rocks and finding a story called Dead Atom […]
Our boy, Abstruse Goose, has gone missing again. We sympathize: anyone posting anything on the regular is bound to run dry sooner or later. (The exception of course is the People of LWON.) Anyway, luckily AG has left an archive of cartoons, some of witch turn out to be timely.
One day Erik and I were chatting happily about birds and birdfeeders, all sweet reason and collegiality. Then he said he’d found a squirrel-proof birdfeeder. And the conversation turned dark. Words were said in haste. We eventually calmed down enough to state our cases in a pleasant, civilized manner. [NOW WITH UPDATES. See below*] E: […]
The path I take in the mornings has a stream, Stony Run, running along one side. The path and the stream are in a tiny wooded floodplain you could throw a rock across. The floodplain and stream are more or less maintained by Baltimore city and by the surrounding community associations – “maintained” as in, […]
The last time I saw Dyson, maybe six months ago, I wondered whether he might be slowing down a little; on the other hand it was a Friday night at dinnertime, when all natural creatures slow down a little. This post first appeared October 7, 2013; it’s been updated here and there. I do seem […]
Are we making tactical nuclear weapons again? Tactical meaning “not strategic,” that is, not ones that take out cities and countries, just little ones that take out city blocks? So that we can get the jump on the the Russians before they can get the jump on us? Thereby invoking what the late, great Sid […]