I am back from Thanksgiving break. My favorite part was the Mustard Museum. Habanero Horseradish = mmmmm. There was mango mustard too and a whole gallery of mustards from across the globe, including Azerbaijan! and a smuggled container of Cuban mustard. I also liked going to St. Donatus, Iowa, and seeing a hill full of sheep (and then trying to ( Read more... )

If anyone has not seen 2046, please do so. And not just because it partly takes place in Macau and one of the characters names is Dubao, a blatant reminder of the Portuguese history in the East ( Read more... )

It always amuses me that all arabs in brazil are called turcos for some odd linguistic reason. There are really no turkish people at all there. Anyhow, I am reading this fabulous book about Manaus told entirely in first-person in a kind of chinese puzzle box structure where one person is writing a letter to another person and that in turn leads to ( Read more... )

the gut-splitting laugh caused by this photo attracted some odd looks at the library:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/noah_lenstra/detail?.dir=b5ef&.dnm=b591.jpg

i finally arranged a place to stay next year. hardwood floors and my own room for $225 a month. i will share an apartment with a guy from india and a girl from zimbabwe. speaking of foreigners, the earthquake center is full of them. there is a delightful little korean man who appears to live in his cubicle. beats rent, I suppose. i get all mixed up ( Read more... )

I'm in love with Pope county, Illinois, population 4,211, deep in the heart of Shawnee National Forest. Last weekend was nothing if not weird. I bonded with a stripper from Nebraska, met some serious hillbillies on horses from North Florida, became reaquinted with waterfalls and sandstone bluffs, and marveled at the redbuds and dog wood. I also ( Read more... )

http://www.livescience.com/technology/050407_earth_drill.html

What horrors await?

And here's the low-down on seismology (or why we can understand the cosmos but not the Earth interior) Leave a comment

I got the internship for the Mid-America Earthquake Center. I will be in Memphis this summer learning all there is to know about seismology and the big bad faults that riddle the central US, sullenly biding their time. This is the best news I've had in a while. Not quite news, but still exceptional, is the weather done here. My apartment overlooks ( Read more... )

This article might sound extremely odd -- indeed it is -- but it is interesting to note that at the end of the 1700's, Brazil made Portuguese the official language of Brazil and effectively decimated about 50 competing European and indigeneous tongues, most notably Spanish, Dutch and Tupi, that were spoken as much as, if not more, Portuguese ( Read more... )

The trip to the southwest was cancelled. The professor came down with some severe virus and was informed by his doctor that if he flew his ear drums would most likely explode. So I am in Galena for spring break where I plan to rustle up some geologists at the area universities to shed light on some of the vaguer aspects of quaternary driftless area ( Read more... )