I'm not sure which interested me the most about this item. It came to my attention as it mentioned Sir Arthur C. Clarke, one of my favorite writers. But the subject of polymaths also interested me. Then there's the name of the blog. I mean, can you go wrong with a name like Keeper of the Snails?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here's what I've read since the last report:

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris

Letter To a Christian Nation, Sam Harris

Job: A Comedy of Justice, Robert A. Heinlein

In progress:

The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins

Old Man's War, John Scalzi

The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

On deck:

1776, David McCullough

The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson

I don't usually rattle the tin cup, but if any of these books (or the CDs or DVDs in the sidebar) catch your fancy, follow the link directly to Amazon to purchase them and I get a small commission. There's also the Paypal and Amazon tipjars.

I'll be sticking to my at-least-three-posts-a-month resolution and hope to have more new material sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Thanks for your continued patronage.

Posted by: JohnL at 07:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Greetings faithful readers. Sorry for the thin gruel served up around here recently.

When you don't have original material, what do you do? Borrow!

Here's a Rush lyric that has some significance to me these days:

Open Secrets

It went right by me
At the time it went over my head
I was looking out the window
I should have looked
At your face instead.

It went right by me
Just another wall
There should have been a moment
When we let our barriers fall
I never meant what you're thinking
That is not what I meant at all.

Well I guess we all have these feelings
We can't leave unreconciled
Some of them burned on our ceilings
Some of them learned as a child
The things that we're concealing
Will never let us grow
Time will do its healing, You've got to let it go.

Closed for my protection
Opened to your scorn
Between these two directions
My heart is sometimes torn.

I lie awake with my secrets
Spinning around my head
Something that somehow escaped me
Something you shouldn't have said
I was looking out the window
I should have looked at your face instead.

Well I guess we all have these feelings
We can't leave unreconciled
Some of them burned on our ceilings
Some of them learned as a child
The things that we're concealing
Will never let us grow
Time will do its healing, You've got to let it go.

I find no absolution
In my rational point of view
Maybe some things are instinctive
But thereÂ’s one thing you could do
You could try to understand me
I could try to understand you.

From 1987's Hold Your Fire, an album that I was too immature to appreciate fully when it came out. Now that I'm about the same age Neil Peart was when he penned those lyrics, I completely understand where he's coming from. Nice nod to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in there, too.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:24 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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So, in addition to posting at least three times this month, I have also managed to exercise quite a bit more, alternating a 45-minute weight workout every other day with at least a 30 minute aerobic outing (jog-brisk walk).

I've also done more reading this month than I typically did last year.

Here's what I've read:

• Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, Eric Nylund


• 1632, Eric Flint


• 1633, Eric Flint


• The Essential Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, and Fragments, Epicurus (my new favorite Greek philosopher!)


• Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, Stephen Jay Gould


• Together with the current issues of Analog, Architectural Digest, and National Geographic.

On deck: I'm planning to tackle some Nietzsche (in German and English), re-read some Heinlein, delve into some more historical fiction, and maybe peruse Dawkins' The God Delusion, but I'm open to suggestions. As you can tell, my tastes are quite flexible.

Update: I forgot to mention that I also finished re-reading Fallen Angels in January, too. Interesting with the climate "science" meeting going on right now. Maybe Niven, Pournelle, and Flynn's weather prediction won't come true, but it's clear that they have some deep insight into human nature, especially the politics of state-funded science.

Posted by: JohnL at 08:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Only three entries last month. Gotta fix that.

I hereby resolve to post more than three entries per month in the coming year. After all, I used to post almost three a day.

Other resolutions:

Exercise more, with greater intensity. Eat better. Read more.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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My most recent absence from regular posting results not from the normal laziness around here, but rather from a week-long cruise in the Western Caribbean with my wife that lasted from September 3-10. More on that soon, with pictures.

I don't have much to say about the 5-year anniversary of 9-11 that hasn't been stated better elsewhere. Lileks got it best, I think:

If 9/11 had really changed us, thereÂ’d be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead thereÂ’s a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we donÂ’t. And we donÂ’t seem interested in asking why.

On to the usual lighter subjects...

Update: The Heinlein quotes I post here usually have some meaning related to either the specific month or my particular mood at the time. For example, July's featured a quote about liberty, appropriate to mark the month of America's philosophical birth via the Declaration of Independence. August's resulted from some recent encounters with unintentional but depressing rudeness. Not to embarass my wife, but this month's was directly related to my anticipation of the cruise, which we took without kids to mark our 15th anniversary (which actually took place in July; but the deal with her parents was that they would babysit for a week once the kids were back in school -- so we waited). I am happy to report that the quote was perfectly accurate, although we also found time to play cards.

Posted by: JohnL at 08:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Stephen Green, the "Vodkapundit", has returned from an extended hiatus during which his co-blogger, Will Collier, did a great job of filling in. But Steve is a blogger with a unique voice that stands out in the cacophony of the blogworld.

Go welcome him back.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Don at Mixolydian Mode points out a great directory of dinosaurs at the UK's Natural History Museum.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Fred Kiesche at The Eternal Golden Braid is a blogger I read regularly (usually daily). But I didn't learn until recently that he was in New York City on 9-11 and in a subway train under the South Tower when it came down.

His account of the day is simply gripping.

I hope he someday has peaceful dreams again during thunderstorms.

Posted by: JohnL at 08:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The first rule of blogging is to update your blog regularly. But a funny thing happened when I stopped following that rule. My daily traffic doubled and has remained in the supra-500 hits-per-day range for the last 7 months or so of reduced posting. While many of my visitors come looking for airplane or science fiction babe pictures, they usually stick around for a few minutes at a time, which indicates to me that they like what they see.

My strategy may not be so flawed, based upon this article from Marketing Profs: Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore.

Thanks to Agent Bedhead (new resident on my blogroll) for finding this nice rationalization for laziness around here.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:40 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I hope all of you had a safe and happy 4th of July.

Below the fold, one of the great documents to emerge from the Enlightenment: more...

Posted by: JohnL at 09:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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RP came up with a great nom de blog today that could equally apply to me: Sporadicus.

It's not that I don't have anything to write about. I'm just having trouble doing the actual writing. I think my blogging has hit some sort of existentialist crisis: is this all there is?

Aside from that, the wonderful wife and kids got me the complete First Season of 24 for Fathers' Day and I have already devoured the first four episodes (I've never watched the show before). For the next several days I will be spending prime blogging time in front of the TV instead.

So endeth another lame "why I'm not blogging" post. More later.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:14 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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One of the benefits of moving from time to time is the opportunity to go through old boxes of stuff. Last year's move unearthed an old box of pictures that I took with my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic 44. I had great fun going through the old pictures with my kids, including showing them some pictures of places that still exist (the Dinosaur statues in Glen Rose, for example, which they have seen in person several times).

Tonight I scanned the first few of what I expect to be many. I'll do a bigger post on the camera itself someday (I also have pictures taken with a Kodak Disc camera -- a film disc, not a digital disc and my mom's old Kodak Retina).

Your humble author, making himself the center of attention even then:

A successful fishing trip at Lake Lavon:

Colorful Colorado:

Posted by: JohnL at 04:36 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Michele Catalano's back, and though her current URL still contains "A Small Victory," she's changing the moniker of her blog to "Faster Than The World." Expect a new address in the near future. She has a co-blogger (aka "the turtle") and is narrowing her focus to rock music and muscle cars. Check it out.

I always did like her music posts best.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:04 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The Phantom Professor has a knack for writing something entertaining about the things she overhears. Yesterday's post about an overheard conversation in her health club was no exception.

(She's definitely got the male mentality figured out.)

Posted by: JohnL at 10:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Wow, I just passed the 200,000th unique visit to this site.

The visitor dropped in from Chicago looking for Captain Kirk images, and left looking at Tina Louise.

If you are an Ameritech user with an IP address that starts with 68.72, send me an email with the next 3-digit number in your address, and I will arrange to send you an appropriate gift.

Sorry that I have been such a negligent host around here recently. Thanks to everyone who continues to drop by for the airplane pictures, the SF babes, and the Heinlein quotes.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:03 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Here.

(The comments are classic, too).

(Via Catallarchy).

Posted by: JohnL at 07:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I meant to congratulate Buckethead on his new arrival (a baby daughter) a week and a half ago. This, in addition to RP's new boy child (previously noted here).

And April continues to be a fertile month: my younger sister gave birth to a son last Friday and some close family friends welcomed their first child, a son, on Sunday.

This on the heels of my wife's 40th birthday last Tuesday and my impending (38th) birthday day-after-tomorrow.

Posted by: JohnL at 07:27 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Go over to Random Pensees and drop RP a note of congratulations on the birth of Boy Child prime. The little guy missed sharing a birthday with my lovely wife by just a few hours.

Wishing them all the best.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:51 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Than to have a frontal lobotomy:

(Via Velociman).

Posted by: JohnL at 10:47 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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