Jim > Recent Status Updates

The visit included...a reception at Pleasant Home, where the Historical Society of Oak Park-River Forest gave a tour of its ( Edgar Rice) Burroughs exhibit, most of which is on more-or-less permanent loan from Jerry Spannraft, who likely has the world's largest ERB collection. Spannraft, 72,... has been... a fan since 1951... when his friend let him borrow a Tarzan book and he fell in love.

The battle lasted only fifty minutes, but it was a complete disaster for Burgoyne. The British were routed; they abandoned their guns, since most of the horses had been shot, and retreated...

"Be careful they don't send you to the Eastern Front," I said. It was a favourite prisoners' jeer at the guards...
He spoke a little louder...
" The Eastern front?" he sneered. "The war in the East is almost over. In a few days you will hear that Stalingrad is completely in German hands."
The others smiled and nodded.
"That's right," they said.
"Stalingrad will never fall," I said.

Summer is the time to be outside, when a park feels as familiar as a living room, and offers more room for living. Curling up with a good book in one of our three branch libraries is an excellent way to while the time, but the reading is just as good on a park bench, a chair in the shade--or even a hammock strung between two trees...

The green-skinned warriors grappled, boomed their cry, and came over the rail of the elf dragon. Skafloc ran to meet them, slipped on the bloody catwalk, and fell between the benches.

Witnesses have described the Snarly Yow as a giant black canine with a vivid red mouth full of sharp teeth. And there seem to have been a wide range of witnesses over the past couple hundred years, from pioneers, preachers, hunters, and farmers all the way up to modern-day Sunday drivers on what is now Alternate Route 40.

By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration--and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.

Out in the middle of a seemingly endless ocean...it was easy to believe you could hide from the Kawaharas and Bancrofts of this world, but that kind of hiding died centuries ago.
If they want you...sooner or later they'll scoop you up off the globe...Cross the gulf between the stars, and they can come after you. Go into centuries of storage, and they'll be waiting for you...

I leveled the Nemex at the lintel and shot out the robot's brain dome. .. the Nemex slugs smashed the unit to pieces. Sparks fireworked abruptly and the synth voice shrieked. The concertina octopus arms thrashed spastically, then went slack. Smoke curled from the shattered lintel housing.

We knew it was coming but we behaved inconsistently. We stocked up on supplies--just in case--but sent our children to school, because how do you get any work done with the kids at home?

....French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was able to demonstrate in the 1860s that microorganisms are the cause of infectious disease. In 1872 the German botanist Ferdinand Julius Cohn (1828-1898) published a three-volume work on these creatures. He was the first to call them "bacteria" (from a Latin word meaning "a little rod"....).....

He ( Andrew Johnson, military governor of Tennessee) wanted black recruits ( to the US Army) to be limited to doing manual labor in the army. This kept black men in an accustomed role...and sparing white men the sight of black men acting in what has always been considered an honorable position: that of warrior. Lincoln...needed blacks as fighting men, not just servants.

"...Physical punishment is wrong. Chimpanzee mothers distract their small infants from undesired behavior by tickling or grooming."

Anglos on horseback charged toward the wounded and the women, their hats pushed low over their faces and chaps billowing like bat wings. Guns gleamed in their hands. Rinches. Texas Rangers.

They (the Byzantines) had a new weapon, the secret of which was carefully guarded...(It came to be known as Greek fire or sea fire.) Being still experimental--the compound had to be handled carefully and kept out of the sun--it was used only in an emergency...close to Constantinople.

We heard him say, "Due to a sudden indisposition of Alan Howard, in tonight's performance the part of Oberon will be played by Patrick Stewart."
I knew exactly what was going to happen next. There was a groan from the audience and then a burst of aggravated chatter. Alan was very popular--who was this charlatan daring to take his place?

( By the end of 1943) The 3.1 million Axis soldiers in the East faced almost 6.4 million of the enemy; the 3,000 German aircraft were vastly outnumbered by the 13,400 they opposed; their 2,300 tanks could not match the 5,800 Soviet machines. During 1944 the gap continued to widen.

Most of the (German) army's 600,000 vehicles were with the armoured spearhead; the infantry were followed, like Napoleon's Grande Armee, by horse and cart. For all its modernity, the German army went into its war against the Soviet Union with 700,000 horses.

Then I told James and Simon to follow me.
They came at once, and now Simon begged me, please, to come to his house because his mother-in-law was sick with a fever.

"The gold?" Fenn said.
"Folks have been looking for gold since them Spanish con...conster...conquis...since them explorers was first here."
"You know the gold I mean." Fenn's voice lost that friendly tone.

From the Jews, through Christianity, they ( the British) had derived the idea of being a Chosen People. This attitude appeared during the last phase of British imperialism (1886-1905)...Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee of 1897 represented perhaps the peak of imperialism, and the role of its prophet fell to Rudyard Kipling,...By 1899 he wrote of "The White Man's burden"...

It may well be that (Indian King) Asoka was a statesman as well as a moralist. using his semi-divine prestige to enforce an ethical system which might hold his empire together. It remains true, nevertheless, that the Buddhist virtues which he attempted to spread by example-simplicity, gentleness, sympathy, vegetarianism, and kindness to animals-were lessons of permanent value and lasting influence.

"Sound battle stations, raise shields, charge all weapons." Vale didn't know if her ship would be able to survive another head-to-head fight with one Husnock vessel, never mind an entire armada.

The survivor (of the Rwandan genocide) is a Tutsi teacher...who survived only because he happened to be away from his house when killers arrived and murdered his wife and four of his five children.
"The people whose children had to walk barefoot to school killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs."

Briefly, the Norse inadvertently depleted the environmental resources ( in Greenland) on which they depended, by cutting trees, stripping turf, overgrazing, and causing soil erosion. Already at the outset of Norse settlement, Greenland's natural resources were only marginally sufficient to support a European pastoral society of viable size, but hay production fluctuates markedly from year to year.

As if on cue, MacArthur suddenly appeared in the doorway, halting for a moment to gaze with a deliberately noble pose into the foyer....The emperor seemed overpowered. He stared humbly at MacArthur, then moved slowly toward him...

British and United States gunboats patrolling the Yangtze River were attacked by Japanese artillery and warplanes. The gunboat, USS Panay, was sunk and several of its complement killed.

That the Guards and the Highlanders, generally conceived to be the cream of the British Army, had been severely bested by armed farmers was hard to accept. The heavy losses of the Highlanders...were especially distressing and all Scotland mourned its dead...

The reader may find the Socratic method--the small-step-by-small-step analysis that is Socrates's stock in trade--alluring or annoying, depending on temperament. Logical, philosophical types are fascinated, whereas the artistic and intuitive may find the process excruciating...