Interviewer: The thing is, I think if you wanted to go out and make a bunch of top-ten records you could.
Frank Zappa: Well yeah, but who wants to go through life with a small nose and one glove on?

How humid is it here? If I leave a box of matches on the portch, they become unstrikable.

Here is Gould’s non-overlapping magesteria.

The canonical attitude of scientists then and now—and the argument that finally secured our legal victory before the supreme court in 1987—holds that science and religion operate in equally legitimate but separate areas. Gould, p. 261

Secured our legal victory eh? I wonder what he would think now.

Just picked up another book from the Antiquarium, Life by Richard Fortey. When I took the slipcover off, I caught the unmistakable whiff of cigarette smoke. That’s a first.

Ironically, I have also discovered a tiny insect on the inside cover. About 2mm long, kind of resembles a centipede, but it has only sex legs, on the three segments behind the head, and a forked tail.

(A very short time) later: Just one paragraph in, and I don’t think I can finish it. I had forgotten what a good writer Gould was. It must have been a decade since I’ve read one of his books. Fortey, however, has a tin ear. Try out this stinker:

They drifted in their millions, swirling and beating against the dumb tides, concealing a purpose in contractions as instinctive as breathing, like protoplasmic lungs dilating and constricting in primitive obedience to the prompting of the currents. Behind the nearest iceberg arctic terns beat and hung in the air, peering down as I was, but with so much more precision, then darting to retrieve some living morsel from the sea.

I can’t help laughing as I copy that. There is no way in hell I am getting through this book. Any author that doesn’t have the sense to strike “their” from “drifted in their millions” is trouble. Isn’t this what editors are for? The best part is, that’s the second time in the first paragraph he did that–a few sentences earlier, copepods “beat their way in their thousands.” And that’s just the start: why are the tides “dumb?” Jellyfish concealing a purpose? I know it’s easier to criticize than actually produce some decent writing yourself, but please, just kill me now.

Terre Haute, IN

The Antiquarium of Omaha makes my list of great bookstores. Reading Gould’s Wonderful Life. Paleontology was actually my first love. I probably shouldn’t be this interested in the taxonomy of extinct arthropods. I feel dirty.

Mowing, mowing.

Omaha, NE.

Helping Niko move in for dental school. Omaha is actually pretty nice. I would have envisioned it as your typical decaying Midwestern city, ala Detroit, but smaller. The only depiction of the city I can recall is from About Schmidt, and it wasn’t very flattering. But under the Woodman tower is a pretty modern place, with all the comfortably familiar big boxes and yuppie infested Olde Town, with brew pubs and street musicians.

Still dealing with the neck pain that laid me up earlier in the summer. I have to sit ramrod straight all the time, including through the 9 hour drive. But I did get the opportunity to forget it, for a little while, when I stubbed a toe and nearly tore off the nail.