Tuesday, May 24, 2005

when chimps attack

TThe Tale of Moe, in today's WaPo:

In 1967, LaDonna Davis's boyfriend went on a trip to Tanzania and came back with quite a surprise: a chimpanzee. It was a baby still, an orphan that St. James Davis said he had rescued from the poachers who killed its mother, and it was just adorable -- 'a large teddy bear,' LaDonna's mother declared. They named him Moe.

St. James, a stock-car racer, became so bonded to Moe that he would carry the little fellow in a sling around his chest as he worked at his auto body shop in West Covina, Calif. When St. James and LaDonna married a couple of years later, Moe was 'a combination of flower-thrower and best man,' LaDonna recalls, sitting across from her mother this sunny spring day.

'Tell her about . . . ' interrupts her mother, Terry DeVere.

'Oh . . . well . . .' says Davis, with well-practiced delicacy: 'Moe . . . peed on a woman.' All the excitement of the reception, maybe too much punch. DeVere and her daughter glow with the memories of the beautiful day and of the beautiful years that followed.

Friday, May 06, 2005

Sand Animation

Check this out:

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/sandsicaf.wmv

Edit: Note that this is 19 megabyte file.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

The World Warms Up

"Disappearing islands, thawing permafrost, melting polar ice. How the earth is changing."

The World Warms Up is the first of Elizabeth Kolbert's must-read three-part series on the reality of climate change from The New Yorker. This part is from the Arctic as well as various conferences, Greenland, and Iceland. Melting permafrost, retreating glaciers. The only country to equivocate on whether this is a real phenomena is the US.
Plus: Kolbert talks with Amy Davidson about global warming.