Americans, faithful and secular alike, are tolerant of others, despite the strictures of their own beliefs, according to Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Their report, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey “reveals a broad trend toward tolerance and an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict the doctrines of their professed faiths” according to The New York Times. Are we finally going to heal the wounds of the ‘culture war’…?
This bright morning finds me at the kitchen table with a plate of eggs scrambled with a freshly diced tomato, a pan-grilled chicken apple sausage from Biancini’s market, a mug of freshly-brewed Peet’s coffee, a cocktail of ten pills (Lyrica, Keppra, Altace, fish oil, vitamin D3, a ’senior’ multivitamin and Alleve), a glass of water and my new Kindle reader, with its overnight download of the Sunday New York Times. KFOG’s ‘Acoustic Sunrise‘ is providing the soundtrack – Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt – over the kitchen speakers.
As I fix breakfast and eat, the Kindle periodically launches its screen saver, presenting frontispieces from 19th century books and other pretty engravings well-suited to the Kindle’s 4-bit, black and white electronic ink display.
So far we’ve read the Times’ account of the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed by a CIA officer named Deuce Martinez (an officer who refused torture training) and an article about the stalling of agricultural progress in India, without having to wrestle with the Sunday Times’ legendary bulk (the unbundled paper version awaits my paper-preferring spouse’s return from Kansas). An article on small, desirable, ecologically-correct houses is next. The morning stretches pleasantly ahead…
Here’s a lightened, cropped version of the lower image in the post below, showing no Sol-20 type clumps in the shadow, but clearly showing the ‘mystery blob.’
Re-reading a couple of MPL press releases makes me believe that additional digging was done in the trench pictured on Sol 19, resulting in the images of Sols 20 and 24, showing the now famous ‘disappearing clumps.’
There are also enough differences in the details of the trench itself to make it likely that additional digging explains the disappearance of the blob. But we had fun ‘digging’ through the images… photo courtesy NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona/ Texas A&M University…
Ice clumps on Mars? The recent announcement, first spotted on the MPL Twitter blog reports that the small grayish clumps visible in the lower left of the trench in the photo marked Sol 20 above, have disappeared by Sol 24, a discovery that is consistent with water ice sublimating into the thin, very dry Martian atmosphere.
My question is, what happened to the larger whitish clump visible in the picture, left, snapped on Sol 19, according to the MPL site. Stay tuned for some digital forensics on the Sol 19 image… photos courtesy NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona/ Texas A&M University…
Spotted this Smart ForTwo at the Menlo Park Caltrain station when I returned from physical therapy this afternoon. Gotta say that, other than a bicycle, this is probably the best way to get to CalTrain. My Escape Hybrid is good, too…
Sweet spouse Linda was kind enough to walk with me this morning, despite my very slow pace. Trainer Heidi Engel has been encouraging me to walk longer distances without my cane, and this was my longest jaunt – a half mile.
A deer and her fawn greeted me as I made my way along a dirt path through Palo Alto’s Arastradero Preserve this morning. I was much anticipating this, only my third visit to the Preserve since cancer struck. The park’s flora is now in full, gold-and-green summer dress.
Stanford, or maybe Santa Clara County, may think it’s their stop sign, but I think of this as my stop sign. It happens to be almost exactly 