Archive for the ‘Elsewhere’ Category

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Snow Melts Back East

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Norman’s helicopters pose on a checkered tablecloth.

Norman’s helicopters pose on a checkered tablecloth.


It’s raining today so I’m cowering indoors, but Norman McKinstry, our East Coast Correspondent, checked in recently to remind me that we’re sissies when we complain about California weather.

Regular readers will remember Norman, an inveterate flyer who who recently celebrated his 85th birthday in Amherst, New Hampshire.

Here’s his breezy email:

Hello friend. Today is first time this year: NO SNOW ON GROUND around here. Been a rough, long, cold, snowy one! I bought 3 indoor helicopters as outdoor flying was impossible.

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Artificial Intelligence

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Racter’s opening screen, in glorious black & white.

Racter’s opening screen, in glorious black & white.


Commenters are to bloggers not as wigmakers are to bald people, but as flyers are to kiters — another impertinence in the same hostile sky.

I didn’t write that. Well, I did write that, but I copied the form from a beautifully-crafted sentence I encountered recently in The New Yorker. Adam Gopnik wrote the original, in an article about Samuel Johnson:

Critics are to writers not as doctors are to patients but as bearded ladies are to trapeze artists — another, sadder act in the same big show.

Template-based writing ranges from the prosaic — a weather forecast, an obituary, a greeting card — to the outlandish.

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A Different Wetlands

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

A sea otter relaxes in the sun.

A sea otter relaxes in the sun.

The day after my 1,000,004th birthday, my friend Lee Smith and I went to Moss Lading to take a boat tour of the Elkhorn Slough (“slough” is pronounced “slew”), a National Estuarine Research Reserve managed by the California Department of Fish and Game.

Like Baylands Park, Elkhorn Slough is a restored wetlands area. The 105 acres of wetlands adjoining Baylands Park are a largely dry marsh. Elkhorn Slough is much bigger and wetter: at 1,400 acres, it’s the largest tract of tidal salt marsh in California outside of San Francisco Bay.

Mammals we’re most likely to see at Baylands are ground squirrels, rabbits and gophers. In Elkhorn Slough, it’s sea otters, sea lions and bay seals. I’m sure there are many small mammals along the shore, but they’re hard to spot from a boat.

After buying tickets from the captain of the Elkhorn Slough Safari, we boarded a 27-foot pontoon boat — a box riding on a pair of floats — along with about 25 other sightseers. Our guide and captain was Yohn Gideon, a local naturalist and birder.

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Tasmania Time

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

The size of a small dog, it’s the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world.

The size of a small dog, the Devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world.


Dave North is standing upside down. Or maybe he’s sitting upside down.

He and Akkana Peck left last week for a Linux conference in Hobart, Tasmania. Akkana is speaking at the conference on GIMP, an Open Source alternative to Photoshop.

So they’re both inverted, relative to us.

Most of us know only one thing about Tasmania: it’s the home of the Tasmanian Devil.

The poor critters are endangered, plagued by a communicable form of cancer that causes facial tumors.

Before they left, Mike Nadler asked Dave and Akkana to check to see if water spiraled clockwise as it drained from sinks and bathtubs in Tasmania. He also asked Dave to bring back a Tasmanian Devil.

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Posted in Baylands, Elsewhere | 5 Comments »

Magic in the Air

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

The little helicopter is surprisingly easy to fly.

The little helicopter is surprisingly easy to fly.


When I was a child in New York City, I remember my fascination with sidewalk vendors who sold magical devices, crystals that would bloom underwater into fabulous alien shapes, wind-up tin toys that careened crazily across the concrete.

Sometimes my parents would indulge us, buying a tiny spring-powered dog or a tumbling acrobat or a monkey that climbed a string.

But when we got home, they lost their charm. They slowed down, they jammed, they didn’t work: they became normal, fallible and ordinary.

Twice last year I succumbed to the same sort of immediate enchantment, both times in AeroMicro, my favorite local radio-control goodies store.

The first spell was cast by the Vapor, a half-ounce wisp of an airplane designed for indoor flight.

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Posted in Elsewhere | 6 Comments »

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