Lisa Kadonaga

By coincidence, I was having a phone chat with an astronomer friend just before this article was posted -- he got to know Guy when they were in the PhD program at the University of Arizona. He commented that almost the first day they met, he noticed Guy reading a book of poetry.

𝗝𝗢𝗦𝗘𝗣𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗘 𝗥𝗢𝗦𝗘

I made fun of Christie Todd Whitman for confusing global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion during a press conference soon after she'd been chosen to lead the EPA -- but a) she didn't deny those things were happening, and b) she did buckle down and learn about the issues.

At least the AI acknowledged that toilets are popular household features. Though it seems to be going way retro (like this Roman home).
bsky.app/profile/tapi...

Colour illustration showing artist's reconstruction of a Roman kitchen. Credit: Connolly and Dodge, The Ancient City, p 148 AKG Images A woman in a long white dress is standing in a high-ceilinged room, with whitewashed walls and a barred window. There's a wooden rack over her head with a bronze cauldron hanging from it. There are pans hanging on the wall to her left. She's standing in front of a counter that's got niches on top for charcoal fires, with a couple of pots with legs simmering on them. Under the counter is an arched space for storing fuel. To her right is a wooden bench with a hole in it, that's actually a latrine. On the bench is a clay pot with a stick protruding from it. (I know from archaeology books that there's a sponge on the end of the stick, that's out of view in the pot. The sponge is their equivalent to toilet paper today, and the pot likely has water in it.)

Shades of this ancient Roman kitchen (apparently they'd pour down the dishwashing water to "flush")

Minus the huge influx of money for education (building schools and hiring faculty all the way up to postsecondary to accommodate the boomers) -- and then the sci/tech surge as Sputnik kickstarted the Space Race)

This whole thread is well worth the read (along with the side-trip into "reality-based community").
And to think that the right used to sneer at leftists for "subjective nonsense" and "getting carried away with postmodernism"

I still remember Rummy's "freedom's untidy" [sigh]

Naughty Bananas! I think he'll forgive you, though. I hope your garden grows back quickly.

"Ghillar Michael Anderson is also an astronomer, senior Law Man and elder of the Euahlayi Nation in northern NSW.
Anderson says while astronomical knowledge was passed down orally and through art, travelling the songlines was also long in play as a teaching tool."
@niiyokamigaabaw.bsky.social

Wishing you a belated Happy Birthday!

Column: The Corporation for Public Broadcast is ‘winding down.’ What does that mean for public radio and TV? The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it is “wind-down” operations. What does this mean for public radio and TV?

I gave an in-depth interview with my hometown Chicago Tribune about what’s going to happen to NPR and PBS, and how cutting public media is part of a broader anti-democratic ideological project.

bsky.app/profile/jame...

This is often what happens in these cases where tech promises to ‘cure’ or ‘fix’ disability, they use disabled people for advertising and to raise funds, and then abandon them when they get bored with the tech/it’s no longer profitable or interesting to update or manufacture the tech in question

If the US government is counting on people around the world to help them with their agenda ... they should realize that this is getting attention in places like Canada. If they'd do this to allies who risked their lives constantly, who else would they betray?

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b...

Some of our relatives worked on an apple farm outside Brampton ON, and a couple of times a year we'd take the baskets and go out there to get apples. Northern Spy and Wealthy.

I remember some vendors at the Hamilton Farmers Market doing that too. The containers (including the wooden quart and bushel baskets) were only for display! Some farmers had their names stamped on them. I remember my parents got a couple of bushel baskets in the 1970s and used them for storage.

RIP Loni Anderson
www.youtube.com/watch?v=htB_...

I remember my father telling me that as recently as the 1950s, houses in the East End of Hamilton (a fairly large city west of Toronto, in Canada) had backyard outhouses, even though the homes had piped water.

You're very welcome!

YouTube video by oases88 Roger McDuff

I'll have to look for any mention of the Lighthouse singer (Roger McDuff). The document's on my other computer (currently out of commission, hope it can be fixed soon).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyg-...

A 2012 article in the same paper. "Safe" countries refusing to accept refugees, so they had to go back to Europe.
(And today, Canada's accepted very few people hoping to leave Gaza, not even students admitted to Canadian universities.)
www.jpost.com/features/in-...

This Week in History: 'St. Louis' forced to Europe | The Jerusalem Post Turned away by Cuba, US and Canada, German liner carrying over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Third Reich had no choice but to turn back.

Some of those "safe" countries refused to accept Jewish refugees so this ship had to return to Europe, and a lot of the passengers were murdered. As this 2012 article in the same paper points out.
www.jpost.com/features/in-...

It makes sense, given they seem to be made to a standardized size. Interesting that the early containers were conical (to help reduce squashing of the berries at the bottom). The guy who invented the Punnett Square in genetics used to claim that one of his ancestors had invented the current design.

I think this is a major problem with this administration in general -- they've got empty spaces in them that nothing can truly fill.

He probably would have heard about it eventually, though he was offline for the weekend because of the wedding etc.
He said he wished he didn't know about this -- I've decided I won't talk about about Trump policies for awhile to him, and I suspect I'm not the only one doing this for friends/family.

Trump Administration Suspends Federal Grants to UCLA, Affecting Renowned Mathematician Terence Tao and Research Institute - BigGo News The Trump administration has suspended virtually all federal grants to UCLA, including funding for world-renowned mathematician Terence Tao and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM). T...

I'm feeling bad because I was talking to an elderly physicist friend this afternoon, and mentioned what happened to UCLA research funding. My friend had just come home from someone's wedding reception and hasn't been following the news. He's friends with Prof. Tao and now he's really upset.

It's so cool that someone else is keeping notes on this too!
I've been meaning to summarize mine and send them to Tony, so he can put episode info on his most recent shows.

Later replaced by green pressed pulp containers, and more recently by plastic grid-like boxes. I've heard that the plastic ones are used by wildlife rehabbers, to hold baby birds (lined with paper towels so the hatchling can sit in it like a nest).