HoodedHawk

An article in SCIENCE this week [September 15 2006, 313 (5793)] reports the discovery of a stone block believed to be about 3,000 years old (dating to ~900 B.C.E). The block has chiseled into it a series of glyphs thought to be the earliest writing in the Western Hemisphere, and is attributed to the Olmec civilization. The Olmecs pre-dated the Maya and Aztec cultures of Central America. The block of text has yet to be disciphered, and it may never be – until a Rosetta Stone equivalent is found. The discovery of a new form of (ancient) writing is a rare event, so this is a major find.

Interestingly, the block was found by workers in Veracruz, Mexico while building a road. Unfortunately is was not left in place, but was brought to a local antiquities official along with some shards of pottery also found. This was back in 1999, and the official kept the pieces in his house all this time. While it is fortunate that the workers saved the block rather than using it for fill, it is unfortunate that it now has to be studied “out of context”, as it were. Plans are in place to go back to the site of discovery to hopefully find more artifacts.

The boys and I went camping at Assateague Island this weekend. Fun time, though I got a bit more sun than I expected. The ponies, while wild, have no fear of people. They visited our campsite both nights (the first night one woke me up when he knocked over one of our food bins). I got out of the tent to find him standing over the bin with an english muffin hanging out of his mouth.

We had toast the next morning.

The campsite was nice, though has no shade (hey, it’s on a beach). Also, no privacy whatsoever. I’m used to camping in the woods where even though you can see/hear a nearby campsite, there are trees between you. And voices do carry at night! You parked the car out of site a bit back, and walked in to the site(s). There was a fence directly behind us (see picture below), to prevent people from walking over the dune to get to the ocean; you walked down about 50 yards to a walkway through the dunes. In the picture below, our tent(s) are directly behind and the ocean is just over the dune.

The water was *so* warm! First day had gentle waves, but a ton of jellyfish. Didn’t stop Brandon and I from swimming, but Dylan preferred to poke the jellyfish on the beach with a stick vs. swimming with them. The second day there were no (or few) jellyfish, but much bigger waves. No pictures of the ocean because the wind was too intense, and I didn’t want to get sand/spray on my camera. But it was a nice beach. I had bought a cheap beach umbrella the day before – but the wind was a bit intense. At one point the umbrella blew away, and as I was loping after it, Brandon comes running past me to catch it as it was going end-over-end. He just smiled and said something to the effect that it was a good thing he was there or I’d never have caught it. Prolly right, kid.

While the ponies did wake me up both nights, I didn’t mind – especially the 2nd night since they didn’t knock over anything (food was in the car). However, some idiot camper(s) had a dog a few sites over (on the other side of a dune), and it barked a lot during the night, waking me (and others!) at 1, 3 and 5 am. Joy. Why do people take dogs camping if they can’t control them? I used to take my dogs all the time, but kept them under control. Oh well.

          More pictures are available on the Photography page.

The boys slept through the dog and ponies both nights; they had their own tent and were dead to the world until about 6am when I could hear Dylan saying “wakey wakey, Brandon, time to get up”. The older brother was none too happy about that. :)

The Maryland Renaissance Festival opened this weekend, and the boys and I spent the day enjoying the festivities. Brandon and Dylan got to participate in the Human Chess Game (Brandon as Black Rook and Dylan as the Red King); they got a kick out of that.

Note that clicking on any of the thumbnails in this post will start a slideshow – you can go to the next/previous picture by clicking on the left/right of current picture.

From an essay in “Intelligent Thought”:

theistic evolution – the view that God got the ball rolling with the Big Bang (or even earlier) and has kept his hands off the universe ever since. In this view, evolution occured as part of God’s plan but also according to the laws of physics and biology and without supernatural intervention. Theistic evolution is simply neo-Darwinism with the addendum “God started it.”

Have you ever wondered exactly what the “light, sweet crude” was referring to when you hear a commodity price quote? Well, it refers to partially refined crude oil. Crude oil (out of the ground) is made up of various components, which can be separated by boiling point (related to the density of a component) – “fractionated”. Lighter fractions are more desireable (such as gasoline and diesel), while heavier fractions contain more sulfur (“sour”). For use, this sulfur needs to be removed, i.e., the oil needs to be made “sweet”). The goal is to go from a “heavy, sour” crude oil to a “light, sweet” crude – i.e. partially fractionated with a higher percent of light components, like diesel, with most of the sulfur gone.