This is Mutiny, Mr. Christian!

On 28 April, 1789 Fletcher Christian and the half of the crew of HMS Bounty decided to stay in the south seas, instead of going back to England.  Gee, who would have thought?

Bligh and 18 sailors made a 3,618 mile voyage in an open boat with only a sextant and a pocket watch for instrumentation.  They spent 47 days in an open, 23 foot launch before they came to the island of Timor.

Bligh survived, being an excellent sailor (and a card-carrying hard case).  He eventually became a Vice Admiral and  Governor-general of Australia, but had a second mutiny in 1808.  I said he was a hard case.

What Are You Smoking?

After a week that’s been mildly soul-searing, involving lawyers, distressed divorcing people, whiny undergraduates, and annoying co-workers, what I really needed to do was go to the range and shoot something.  I didn’t, but I did take the flower tour in Lake View Cemetery, and today was the day all the tulips and the flowering trees came out.

We won’t talk about the pollen, but Spring in Cleveland does have some good points, and the flowers are one of them.  Last year, ’round Easter, there were three feet of snow dumped in an evening.  I’ll deal with the pollen, thank you.

But, listening to the radio, it seems that surrealism wasn’t confined to the shores of Lake Erie this week.  There was the guy in Illinois who spoke at the Adolph Hitler birthday party.  Yes, that Adolph Hitler.  He claimed not know he was talking to Nazis, because they call themselves “National Socialists”.  He’d forgotten that NAZI is the acronym for National Socialists in German, but you’d think the swastika armbands and the brownshirts would have given the show away.

Then, of course, the legislators in the State of Florida are concerned with a very pressing problem–fake bull testicles on truck trailer hitches.  Evidently there are lots of those in Florida who need more compensation than an F350 can give them, and gas prices are increasing.

I’m going to go get a pizza and sit by the lake and eat it.

Sappy Cat Blogging

The cat with the bat is back.

Sappy Cat Blogging

Eliot Ness, Cleveland Safety Director, in the ’40’s, liked cats.

Anatomy and Physiology Week 13

The magnolias and daffodils are all out at Small Liberal Arts College. The black squirrels are also running around begging. I had a meeting with the dean, to touch base. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I think I went through the minefields (reproductive system anyone) fairly professionally. The students who wanted information on health professional schools were disappointed when I pointed out the opportunity costs.

I think eighteen- to twenty-year-olds want to hear about how neat and exciting being a doctor is, and how you have a rewarding career helping people. Well, you do. But you do put your life on hold for part of the training, and it makes having a child difficult (if you want one, that is) and it’s not all happiness and puppies.

I then went noodling around town. Though I think of the town as a college town, there’s a lot of heavy industry around. The housing stock is interesting, lots of old Victorians and craftsman style houses. But driving around, there were three plants that did something with titanium, a huge scrap metal yard that was chewing apart an old RTA bus, among other things, an architectural salvage yard, two large builder’s yards, and a small freight yard.

There was also a Hungarian bakery–with very good stuff, an art pottery, a tile studio, the modern books shop (complete with the cat, Booker) and the used book shop. The town is also the county seat, so there’s the courthouse, the library (with bookmobile, hadn’t seen one of those in thirty years) the county garage, justice centre, and the fairgrounds. You could tell the difference, looking at the houses, where the faculty live, where the captains of industry live, and where the folks live. It’s a very industrial town in certain places.

I got back in time for class. Today was the review session, class evaluations, and hand out the study guide. I still got some flack for not giving a take home test. But I did summarize the high-value material in the study guide. It is a science course after all. I think it’s not unreasonable to ask the students to, you know, actually know stuff. Like organs, and where they’re located, and what they do. The twelve cranial nerves are fair game, too.

Pimp My Haiku

It’s up at Sparrow’s haiku contest.

Better Living Through Chemistry.

You know, I don’t use my prescription pad much.  Not at all, really, but I could totally get behind this drug.  Totally.

Battle of the Beards

In Germany.  The story is HERE.  (all it needs is oompah music and beer)

Hat tip, Salome.

Spring In Cleveland…

Is the time for daffodils.  From Liberty Boulevard, where the Job Corps people have been planting bulbs madly  around the Cultural Gardens, to the OHIO spelled out in script daffodils on the westbound approach to the Valley View Bridge, to Daffodil hill in Lake View Cemetery–where the bulbs are naturalizing their little hearts out, to my side lawn.  For all their faults–and they were quite wierd, the Van Sweringen brothers were smart, and kept a lot of the big trees in the city.  This makes an amazing difference.  A neighborhood with trees just looks better. 

But trees get old, and eventually need to be replaced.  I HAD two large silver maples and a rowan in my front yard, that shaded the house and soaked up the western sun.  They have since passed, and the side yard next to the drive is almost impossible to mow.  It’s uneven, it’s narrow, it’s a pain.  So, I mulched it, and have been putting daffodil bulbs in it every fall.  Yellow ones, big ones, little yellow ones, paperwhites, and bicoloured ones, with the white petals and an orange or a pink trumpet. 

They all came out this week, and many of them were retained, and not sacrificed to the backhoe or the neighborhood squirrels.

Only in 2008

Can the white, war hero (with a wealthy wife) and a wealthy, white, professional, woman with an ivy-league education be calling the black guy elitist.

Of course, the black guy went to Harvard, after all. I think all three of these people flunk the “just folks” test.