Yearly Archives: 2006

Iowa: Then and Now

This entry was posted in History on by

In 1853 Grenville Dodge surveyed Iowa from Iowa City to the Missouri:

He wrote his father, “oh, that you could come out and overtake me on the prairies of Iowa, look at the country and see how we live.”
….
Dodge loved the flaming sumac, the gold tinge of the willows, the turning leaves on the cottonwooe beside the rivers, and on the elms, black oak, and hard maple,, the silvered wild grass, the variety and number of animals.
Stephen Ambrose, Nothing Like It In The World, 33.

This conjures up a much different picture for me than today’s Iowa:
CornCamView800.jpg
(Click image for larger view)

This is a pretty good representation of the Iowa I saw last summer when we drove across the state from Council Bluff to Iowa City to Davenport and back with some side trips around Iowa City.

Friday Ark #100 Centennial Edition

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

As this is the Centennial edition we decided to celebrate by making a few changes:

  1. You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive Page (construction underway).
  2. Links to related carnivals and other miscellania are now at the bottom following the boarders.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to discover new boarders.

Cats

DogsOther VertebratesInvertebratesBirdsIn Memoriam
Didn’t Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (73 shouts as of 08/17)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 125th edition, 8/13 is up at Blog d’Ellison. The 126th edition will be hosted by Red Peonies on 8/20. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff’s Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants. Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 30th edition is up and hosted by Burning Sile The 31st edition will be hosted on 8/31 by migrateblog.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 11th edition is up at Words & Pictures. The 12th edition will be hosted August 31st by Sunbeams From Cucumbers.

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted “too rapidly” by the same host. I don’t know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I’m sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh….

This Is The secretary of state??

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

She said:

“I can tell you that nothing has really taken me aback more as secretary of state than the way that the politics of energy is–I will use the word `warping’ diplomacy around the world,” Rice told Congress in April. “It has given extraordinary power to some states that are using that power in not very good ways for the international system, states that would otherwise have very little power.”
Coming from a former Chevron board member, Rice’s shock is puzzling.

Puzzling??

I think it is quite reasonable to expect the secretary of state to have a clue prior to taking office!