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Author: James Brush

James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.

Weekend Hound Report: Strategies for Walking

November 28, 2005 • • 3 Comments

With a large tip of the cyber hat to Ironicus Maximus whose Friday Hound Blogging is one of my favorite traditions, and in the interests of being organized, I now commence with a regular feature: The Weekend Hound (or Cat or Hounds and Cat) Report, wherein the adventures of my furry friends will be related. If it seems odd to start a weekend feature on a Monday, then you’re probably more organized than me.

Phoebe and Daphne took their first walk together yesterday. Phoebe loves the idea of walks, but when the paw hits the pavement it really freaks her out (as described here). Daphne, on the other hand, is terrified and runs away when anything even resembling a leash begins to jingle. Sometimes, however, she is tricked by the large bipedal apes with whom she lives and as happened yesterday found herself out in public. My wife took Phoebe, I took Daphne, and we strolled down the street with each hound demonstrating her own approach to facing a dangerous world:

Daphne, who walks quickly knowing that it will be over soon, bases her strategy on the fact that if she walks fast They will not be able to get her.

Phoebe believes They can only see movement and so walks painfully slowly in the hopes that she will be mistaken for a large black and white rock.

When together, Phoebe likes to stay close to Daphne and so will actually pick up the pace. Last night’s walk, took only half the time that a normal walk with Phoebe alone takes, though we covered the same distance. I have resigned myself to the fact that Daphne will never like walks, but I think Phoebe will really enjoy them as she comes out of her shell as evidenced by the fact that she always wants to go.

[saveagrey]

A Dying Language

November 27, 2005 • • 3 Comments

Yesterday’s Austin American-Statesman ran this story:

NuSrvc2OffrGr8Litr8trOnYrFon
Loose translation: Get classic literature in text-message form

Ouch. Dot Mobile is selling its service as a new way for students to cheat avoid reading prepare for tests without having to dirty their fingers with Cliffs Notes. The service will initially provide plot summaries and important quotes from the likes of Shakespeare, Austen, and Golding without all the extra words, sentences and subtlety that only confuse students anyway.

Eventually Dot Mobile intends to offer the complete works of Shakespeare and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. CNN also had a story on this including an excerpt from Milton’s Paradise Lost which begins with, “devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war.” The various authors can be heard spinning in their graves.

Initially, I was saddened because I knew that the effect of this would not just be another way for students of literature to avoid reading it, but would also continue the ongoing destruction of the English language, but then in the section of the article offering interpretations, I saw and reflected on the advice Nick remembers receiving from his father in the opening of The Great Gatsby:

WenevaUFeelLykDissinNe1,
jstMembaDatAlDaPpinDaWrldHvntHdDaVantgsUvAd

I read this several times over and remembered that hez rite cuz itz lyk hez sain we all gotta b open n shit cuz who r we 2 judge.

River Out of Eden

November 26, 2005 • • Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, catching up on my Discover magazines, I read an interesting article about a Sir Richard Dawkins, described in the magazine as “Darwin’s Rottweiler.” Among other things, the article praised Dawkins’ gift for writing for the nonscientist as well as his adamant stance concerning the truth of evolution.

Hmmm, I thought, I’d sure like to read something by Dawkins. When I got home that night, my bookshelf served up one of its many gifts: River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins. There’s nothing like having a bunch of books I’ve never read, but I digress.

True to Discover‘s word, Dawkins’ writing is erudite and imaginative. The book is short (161 pages) and accomplishes its lofty goal of explaining the workings of evolution and natural selection at the genetic level. This being a popular science book, Dawkins relies on arm-chair logic to make many of his points, and he does so with wit, all the while conveying a sense of wonder at the natural world, whether he is describing the behavior of bees or the evolutionary functions of the eye.

I’ve read and heard ID proponents try to argue that the eye is too complex a thing not to have been designed by an intelligence, but Dawkins counters nicely:

Thus the creationist’s question-“What is the use of half an eye?” – is a lightweight question, a doodle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 percent better than 49 percent of an eye, which is already better than 48 percent, and the difference is significant.

From there he details a variety of eye-types in the fish, insect, and mammal worlds, all of which represent “eyes” that we might consider half an eye or less, from eyes that do nothing more than track movement or show a difference between light and dark to eyes as complex as birds’ eyes. Ultimately, he argues that an eye (or any other aspect of a creature’s biology) will be only just good enough for the purpose it is intended to serve.

Throughout the book, Dawkins defends the truth of evolution with a seeming twinkle in his eye and smile on his face. Dawkins clearly relishes sharing his love of the natural world as much as he enjoys shooting down anti-scientific positions making this a surprisingly fun book (unless, I suppose, you’re dead-set against evolution). The most memorable aspect of the book, though, is his discussion of ancestry, a poignant reminder that we are all related, all cousins.

River Out of Eden is an engaging book that provides a wonderfully lucid counter to the unscientific claims of the (embarrassingly antiscientific) Intelligent Design movement. It’s also a good book just to remind us of the many wonders of the natural world.

Thanksgiving

November 24, 2005 • • 1 Comment

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

It’s so simple: family, friends, food, football. I love that there’s barely any commercial aspect to it. I love that it’s a secular holiday that people of any faith and any political stripe can appreciate. I love that so many businesses aren’t open on the Friday after Thanksgiving (retail being the exception, but I prefer to avoid that nightmare altogether). Thanksgiving is the one day of the year set aside to just chill. Unless, of course, you’re cooking, but then that’s what the next day is for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Hacking Blogger for Fun

November 23, 2005 • • Leave a comment

This post is mainly a shout out (link) to those sites I’ve found useful when tinkering with my blog’s code. Lately, I find myself succumbing to a strange addiction: seeking out Blogger hacks just to read them and try them out for fun, sometimes incorporating them and sometimes not, often fixing what ain’t broke. Overall a great way to learn about HTML and CSS, about which I knew nothing prior to starting this blog.

One thing I wanted to find (because Blogger doesn’t yet offer it) is a categories method for archiving posts. I found Blogger Hacks – The Series on Freshblog, which had many a suggestion, and after experimenting with several methods involving services such as del.icio.us and Technorati, I went with the manual method described on theatre of noise primarily because I like the simplicity of it.

The randomly changing images of greyhounds and a cat that appear beneath my profile come from a small alteration and change in the placement of the javascript code provided by immeria. I also used the code in its intact form for the randomized blog description.

The other Blogger drawback is lack of a trackback system. After some tinkering I figured out how to get Haloscan’s trackback feature without the comments since I like Blogger’s comments. Making the trackback link look like part of Blogger involved playing a bit with the CSS tags and learning how that works. It’s probably not that big a deal, but it made me happy to figure out the logic of it on my own.

Appearing on The Armadillo Podcast

November 22, 2005 • • Leave a comment

I’ll be appearing on an upcoming episode of The Armadillo Podcast, which describes itself as a:

Weekly podcast of ostentatious interviews of Austinites famous and infamous, known and unknown, with the sole intent to convince my good friend Galia, an Israeli woman living way out in California, to move and live with us here in the land of the weird and the home of the armadillo. 

I am honored to be representing Austinites unknown in Steven Phenix’s valiant effort to convince Galia to move to Austin. It should be posted on Friday so check back there (or here) for more info.

A Morning Run

November 21, 2005 • • 3 Comments

Sometimes you just have to stop running and look around. This morning, jogging under a crisp November sky, I couldn’t help but stare up at the stars shimmering brightly overhead. Jogging in a southwesterly direction, I had ample time to become engrossed with Sirius and Orion, my winter favorites.

This morning, the stars virtually popped out of the clear black in a way that makes me feel humble and lucky and aware all at once. It’s ironic that we so often miss these things that are so immense and jaw-droppingly awesome without really paying attention to what we’re actually looking at.

I remember from university astronomy classes many years ago that in the case of Orion, I was looking at a place where stars are forming. It’s hard for me to imagine anything more profound than that considering that the totality of everything we know and are exists only because one particular star formed.

Wanting a closer look and a chance to really see what I was seeing, I checked out some Hubble images courtesy of NASA’s GRIN Library and found these (which you can click for more learned info from NASA):

Orion Nebula - Courtesy of NASA

Reflection Nebula - Courtesy of NASA

Just knowing what’s out there even though it isn’t visible stirs the imagination. It’s as thrilling as looking up in the direction of Cygnus X-1 on a summer evening and knowing there’ s a black hole there even though you can’t see it. Just knowing it’s there, all there, all happening indifferent to our presence, is a pretty amazing – and strangely uplifting – thought.

Slow Greyhound

November 20, 2005 • • 1 Comment

When I take Phoebe for walks, I notice that she gets freaked out whenever we try to turn around, cross the street, go off the sidewalk into the woods, or do anything other than walk straight ahead.

If we go in a giant circle, finally coming back around to the house, she’s usually fine. If I try to coax her into crossing a street or turning around, it takes a great deal of persuasion. I can’t help but wonder if this is the result of prior training. She was a racer (not exactly retired, more like fired), and I’m beginning to suspect that the idea of turning around or running off the track, in this case the sidewalk, is anathema to her. She just can’t bring herself to do it.

So we walk along the sidewalk track each day, so slowly that passersby must think she’s the slowest greyhound in the world, which may be why she didn’t last in the racing world.