Brian Jay Jones's Blog, page 37

Countdown to July

Apologies for the shortage of posts here lately, but I'm suddenly working under several deadlines.  All of them are really fun projects that I'm delighted to be working on, but it seems they all ended up being due at close to the same time. 

As if that wasn't enough to keep me away from the blog, Barb and I are leaving this week for England, where she's attending science conferences in London and Oxford.  I'm going along for the ride, but I'll also be getting a bit of work done for Project Blue H

Reorganized Chaos

I’ve been to two different Borders book stores in the last two weeks — one in Maryland, one in Pennsylvania — and both have been in a state of upheaval. Books are stacked on the floor. Some sections feature only bare shelves, while others are packed so tightly together there’s barely room to turn around.

And yet, I don’t mind the mess a bit, because it appears that Borders is shuffling itself around and reorganizing its layout to make things easier to find.  The biggest improvement? By far, it’s

Irving, Key, and the National Anthem

In last Friday’s Washington Post, columnist Michael Kinsley grumbled a bit about “The Star-Spangled Banner,” deriding it not only for being unsingable, but too full of warfare and unwarranted jingoism:

The melody is lifted from an old English drinking song. The lyrics are all about bombs and war and bloodshed — and not in a good way. By the penultimate verse, the song has turned really nasty: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” In the

…And Now A Word From Our Sponsors

Does it seem like commercials these days just ain’t what they used to be?  Maybe it’s me having one of those stay-offa-my-lawn moments, but teevee spots nowadays just seem too loud and too lame.  Man, I miss the days when commercials had to lure you in with catchy tunes, silly costumes, eager faces, and cheap giveaways.

Like f’rinstance…

Here’s one of my all-time favorite bits — albeit attached to a product I was never really a big fan of — and it’s a jingle so memorable that I still sing it today

There And Back Again

I’m back home in one piece — and while I was gone I missed the huge rain and windstorm that moved through the DC area late yesterday afternoon.  The only indication it had ever been here were a few wet spots on the driveway and a rather large downed branch in the back yard that juuuuust missed falling on the Jeep.

Anyway, New York was a great time.  I had a fun, interesting and animated lunch meeting with Several Really Neat People, followed by a quick trip through a Really Neat Place to see some

Off To The City

I’m getting ready to head up to New York tomorrow morning, so Jonathan and I can attend a lunch meeting with some really, really neat people.  It’ll be one of those mornings where I have to leave the house around 5 a.m. to catch the 6:30 train — and I debated whether to head up there today and stay the night but decided against it, based mainly on the costs of staying in the city.  Barb suggested that next time I stay in Philadelphia, where it’s a bit less expensive, then take the train from the

I Love This Place (Redux)

The other afternoon, I was outside mowing, vrooming back and forth on my riding mower across the swath of our yard that faces the state highway. Like always, I had the earbuds of my iPod Shuffle jammed in my ears, replacing the whirring of the mower with the throb of the Ramones, which was probably just as bad for my hearing.  After making countless passes across the lawn, I saw Barb standing on the front porch trying to catch my attention.

I cut the power to the mower, pulled the buds out of my

Wednesday Odds and Ends

Some random shiny objects I wanted to bring to your attention:

- I’m a few days late with this, but the latest issue of  The Biographer’s Craft hit inboxes earlier this week. Editor Jamie McGrath keeps it short, sweet, and always interesting:  this month features a piece on Olivia Gentile and her book on Phoebe Snetsinger, Life List: A Woman’s Quest for the World’s Most Amazing Birds, an update on the fledgling Biographers International Organization, a short remembrance of the late David Herbert

Stranded on Saturn: An Open Letter to GM

Dear GM:

I don’t understand a thing about bankruptcy, or what it means to file for Chapter 11 versus Chapter 7, so I can’t comment on your actual financial status.  Nor would I presume to tell you about business practices or pretend to understand whether you are truly worth the huge amount of tax dollars that we — make that I – am investing in you.

But hear me out here for a moment.  I’ve bought American cars my entire life, starting with a 1978 white Trans Am with a gas guzzling 434 horses under

“My Beloved Island of Manna-hata!”

The Wildlife Conservation Society has created a neat project on a topic near and dear to Washington Irving’s heart, and to mine.  It’s a history of New York, but with a twist — unlike Irving’s History of New York, which traced the rise and fall of the Dutch settlers, this one traces Manhattan’s ecological history.

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Mannahatta Project imagines what Manhattan Island was like only hours before Henry Hudson and his men set foot on the island 400 years ago, in 1609.