Baboon Butts

Years ago I read about an interesting aspect of baboon social behavior. The males have a variety of rituals they go through when they are trying to assert dominance…but if one male baboon moons another, it always ends up in a teeth-and-claws fight. Now, I’m not sure of the provenance

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Sigh

One of the odder things about getting older is the unexpected — and unanticipated — systems failures you get to experience along the way. For the past few years I’ve been pretty diligent about going to the gym, at least four times a week and often every day except Sunday.

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RIP, Jerry Pournelle

I just read that Jerry Pournelle, one of my favorite sci-fi authors, passed away. Unlike many of his compatriots, he wasn’t an engineer or scientist. Instead, his background was in political science and psychology, coupled to a deep knowledge of history. If his libertarianism got the better of him in

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A Great Book About Nothing

I just finished reading A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, by Lawrence Krauss. It’s a grand tour de force that attempts to explain why there’s a universe with a bunch of stuff in it rather than nothing. Interestingly, it turns out our latest understanding of

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Great American Eclipse

I’m a big believer in Murphy’s Law: if anything can wrong, it will. But sometimes the gods take pity on us mere mortals, and let things work out for the best :). That happened for me with the Great American Eclipse. I’ve wanted to see a total solar eclipse ever

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Benedict Arnold and the American Revolution

Another great book for your reading pleasure and edification… 🙂 This one’s about how Benedict Arnold transitioned from being a hero of the Revolution to its almost-successful betrayer, and thereby earned the dubious distinction of having his name become a synonym for traitor in American English. That story is worth

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