18 Jul 2010, 11:36 PM
Let’s see what’s new in the old sketchbook, shall we?
Most of my practicing the past week or two has focused on heads and faces. This gentleman has feet. That makes him unique in this post. (Though clearly I could stand to practice some body proportion next — see edit. :-P)
1 Jul 2010, 12:01 AM
I finished reading “The Count of Monte Cristo” last week; for the month prior, I had had a hard time putting it down. At the end of our copy, the publishers provide a short list of discussion questions as a Reading Group Guide, the last of which is as follows:
- The Count of Monte Cristo is unquestionably one of the most entertaining and timeless novels ever written and is also often described as one of the greatest. Do you agree?
Now, I could make some clever remark about an “unquestionable” opinion being phrased as a discussion “question.” But at this moment, I am inclined simply to say: yes, I agree.
30 Jun 2010, 11:52 PM
13 Jun 2010, 8:00 PM
I told you that tree was a work in progress. As it turns out, I actually meant it this time:
I’ve updated the site theme to reflect the new foliage as well.
The apple tree cuttings I took last autumn failed to root. I suspect I may have taken the cuttings too early, or else I let them get too dry over the winter. We’ll try again come Christmas… assuming the tree survives, of course. I perpetually fear a summer storm is going to sweep through and topple it. Hasn’t happened yet, though, and we’ve had some healthy storms in the past century.
This is where the world’s best applesauce and apple crisp start (picture taken by my mom, April ’09):
25 May 2010, 10:44 PM
The photograph seemed out of place in a science textbook. But there it was, looking for all the world like something out of a war zone. I’m not sure I fully understood what I was looking at at the time, but I’ve remembered it. Now, years later, I’ve found it again, and I think I understand it a bit better.
This was the picture (public domain from the FDA, via Wikimedia Commons):
That was the iron lung ward at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital, circa 1953. That was polio.
Andrew Wakefield, the vile fraud who started the MMR vaccine scare and is thus responsible for unnecessary illness and death in hundreds of children, may have been stricken from Britain’s medical register this week, but the fight against the anti-vaccine conspiracy movement is far from over. We’ve come so far in so little time. Lest we ever forget, this is what’s at stake.
