SeniorJunior

Back from Extinction, or Just a Curtain Call? Yesterday, just outside our courtyard gate, sitting on a rock and trying to soak up some fine fall New Mexico sun, a baby horny toad! I was stunned. So I grabbed my trusty Cannon and shot this. Imagine me at 20 feet long, puny human! With all the news about them disappearing, I hardly knew what to do next. So I just moved the little darlin' to another rock less in the way of our foot and dog traffic. Should I have put it in a terrarium? Taken it to a toad conservatory? Shipped it to TCU? Finally I decided because we keep a chemical-free environment here in the mountains (7300 feet) it would be as safe here as anywhere. And clearly its momma and poppa were doing OK somewhere nearby. So I'm thrilled. Those "horned toads" are really lizards , but to me they are little dinosaurs, and to have some roaming the homestead is an honor.

An honest Rather mistake Dan Rather's $70 mil lawsuit against CBS might be something of a biggie in terms of defining "the corporate media," it seems. I strongly feel this label needs defining, since the Right blithely labels the very same companies "the liberal media." (Talk jockey Rush Limbaugh calls them the "drive-by media," confusing all but hardcore dittoheads.) The most exhaustive review of the whole Rather/CBS/Whitehouse/Pentagon substance is in Salon today (Sept 27, '07) as Sidney Blumenthal gets after it in gate . He addresses the point that has seriously bugged me ever since the "W stiffs his National Guard Service" story was smothered under allegations of one piece of evidence being bogus, the memo allegedly from Col. Jerry Killian. That point is that the story about Bush skipping his duty was true and proven by many other pieces of evidence. In the context of the whole "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" dirty tr

Granted, not everyone loves brussel sprouts as much as I do. Truth is, this fellow will never become obese. Credits: Wife Dorothy the master gardener.

A young woman in good health caught a cold. She was a jogger, played tennis, biked and hiked with her boyfriend. In other words, she was more active physically than the average. But she caught a cold. Her eating habits were pretty much nominal American, some fast food, but not to excess. She was 5' 5" and weighed 130 pounds. Five years later she is obese, weighing 187 pounds. When she started gaining weight, she increased her physical activities and cut out most of the fast food. At 153 pounds she started giving up. Jogging became too hard. She looked ridiculous on a bike. Her growing hunger drove her to less healthy foods. All because she caught a cold. The specific cold virus she was unlucky enough to be infected by was adenovirus -36 . When America started porking up a few decades ago we started blaming our bad habits - with some justification. But TV, fast food, computer games, P.E. program cuts, et al aren't the entire problem, apparently. Check out this Science Ne

Just as W is asking for another $50 billion for the Iraq war (the Iran war buildup?), Gary Trudeau hits the old nail on the head again. Have a giggle - or a gasp - by checking out this Sunday Doonesbury.

[As perhaps you can tell, I don't vent about the Iraq war very often, but this just steamed me up to venting pressure.] With the inevitable stay-the-course message coming in the "General Petraeus" (NOT!) September report, we should all ingest and digest this news : Dang! With over two million Iraqis already displaced by the war, the "Surge" is making things worser faster . And there's all the news about the inability of the current Iraq government to ever heal the sectarian hatred... Well, just add a bunch of salt to the coming news of "progress."

Heartfelt letter: Representative Heather Wilson U.S. Congress, House of Representatives Washington, DC Dear Rep. Wilson This is from the Wall Street Journal 9.14.07. I hope you are one of the lawmakers working on this. We have to close all the loopholes in paying taxes, for the good of the country. • The Situation: U.S. lawmakers are examining a tax perk enjoyed by hedge funds. • Background: Many of these funds lend money like banks but, unlike traditional lenders, often don't pay taxes on the profits. • Consensus? While some tax lawyers say these transactions are proper, others argue that many variants are legally dubious. Hedge funds, which control liquid pools of capital with little regulatory oversight, are a growing presence in the lending business. They increasingly take part in lending syndicates with traditional banks, often indirectly, and also make direct loans, frequently to riskier or smaller companies that may have difficulty obtai