Wine, food and my wife….three of my favorite things, a gluttony triple-header! 
My wife and I were invited to a couple of the final events of Wine and Food week in the Woodlands. The Waterford by Robert Mondavi Seminar and the Wine Rendezvous Grand Tasting & South American Chef Showcase. I found some great wines to add to my everyday list (I’m too impatient to keep much of a cellar, though I do have some Silver Oak, Amarone and my wife’s Cristal Champagne put back), had some excellent South American food and only had one incident of “red wine on the white clothing spillage”. (more…)
After the break, a video of the entire Bellagio Hotel Dancing Waters sequence in the daylight, with a rainbow no less, from our last trip. Not as good as the Elton John concert, but a classic as well. (more…)
I have a very unique name. I thought I was the only one in the world. But I found out I 
assumed incorrectly in a very interesting way.
About two years ago, I started getting the newsletters from the USS William M Wood Association. The Association is very active, just had a great reunion in Branson…I wasn’t there.
The Wood was named after William Maxwell Wood, MD, the 1st Surgeon General of the US Navy, a hero of the War with Mexico, credited with “Saving California” for the US; also serving during the Seminole War, the second Opium War, and the Civil War. (more…)
The teams I’ve worked on have managed some incredibly large data centers. But I have
some serious geek envy for the dudes running the computing and network infrastructure for CERN’s Large Haldron Collider.
In case you’ve been sleeping in a scientific vacuum, you know that that the Large Haldron Collider (LHC) is where big bucks meets particle physics. To says that it is “big” is using small words for, well, big things:
- it is the most expensive science experiment, with a budget of close to $6 billion; the cost is so massive that it is almost an all or nothing bet – many countries have put such a large percentage of their science budget into the LHC that there may not be funds for other experiments until past 2010;
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Contrary to popular belief, there are people who win contests, not just some made-for-TV
cheering and screaming rubes. My wife is one of those people; last year she won the Burger King Bobble Head Bowl sweepstakes (yes, there is such a beast).
It was on a Saturday a couple of weeks before the big game when the FedEx package arrived. Normally Saturday FedEx packages are contracts for me to review, but this one had my wife’s name on it. And it was full of contracts. My wife does enter tons of contests, but for her to open an envelope with several pages worth of T’s&C’s was a little intimidating.
I said “Looks like you won something,” in the understatement of the year. (more…)
Almost every martial artist has some wayward fantasy or frequent daydream about
dropping out of life and dropping into the Shaolin Temple, to emerge some undetermined time later as a well-tuned, philosophy spouting fighting machine. Matthew Polly did just that, leaving his junior year from college and heading to China in 1992.
My expectation of this book was that this would be a martial arts, culture clash and personal transformation story. And it was certainly all three and more. In addition, drinking games, language, sex (or at least attempts), “the sixth race”, the Chinese Triads and other topics are intertwined with this very enjoyable story. (more…)
A research paper and personal journal covering the possibility of a world consciousness and psyche evolution on-going, and building up to the near future.
Daniel Pinchbeck covers a lot of ground in this sometimes rambling, often revealing and occasionally genius work. “Personal consciousness evolution” is the phrase I’d use to describe both the glimpses into Pinchbeck’s own journey and his research of tying or attempting to tie many seemingly disparate cause/effects into a worldwide readiness and/or need for evolution of our joint psyche.
“In shamanic cultures, synchronicities are considered to be teachings as well as signs indicating where one should focus one’s attention.
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It really is Louis’ fault…he brought it up. He took me back to the scene of many crimes and many bar exams, the Bombay Bicycle Club (near the corner of Mulberry and St. Marys, stumbling distance away from Trinity and Breckenridge Park). He reminded me of records set and challenges almost met.
He made me recall that I own the Trinity University record for number of crackers simultaneously stuffed in your mouth and eaten without a beverage. I have not informed Guinness but I’ve drank a few.
We were trying very hard to enjoy pitchers of beer and burgers sitting on the patio at Bombay. I say trying very hard because the bar ran out of Shiner on tap (at 12:30pm???) and it took an hour for the burgers to get to us, delaying our further adventures. But it was a gorgeous day, Alamo beer on tap was an able substitute, and the story swapping began. (more…)
My son is a well-read, well-informed world traveler at sixteen years old. His blank look when I told him I was reading an advanced copy of a new book by Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein is just one of the many reasons I am excited about the long overdue publication of this book. Cousteau died in 1997, and the absence of his influence in the past decade is echoed in my son’s generation’s lack of recognition. From the foreword by Bill McKibben:
For those of us who come of age in the 1960s or ’70s, the picture of Jacques Cousteau is fixed forever in our minds. A slight but wiry man, yellow tank peeking over his shoulder, falling backward off the stern of the good ship Calypso as he prepared for yet another dive down among the rays or the jellyfish or the sea cows or the parrot fish - down, literally, into his world, “the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau.” His voice became just as familiar, with its somehow slightly wistful but still infectious Gallic intonation. “In ze wisdom of ze dolphins lies ze test of human wisdom.”
Always passionate, frequently logical, sometimes preachy, The Human, The Orchid and The Octopus presents Mr. Cousteau’s unique perspective on personal exploration, the environment and our power to influence it. It sits well on my bookshelf next to volume 1 of The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau that my father gave me years ago, a tribute to one of the world’s great explorers and visionaries. The influences of Cousteau and his unique perspective on man’s effect on the environment are felt in the perceived environmental calamity in my own novel, Dusk Before the Dawn. (more…)
Quarterfinals are set with three excellent matches and one potential road kill; and, yes Gordon, pic of Jason White from Scotland!
With some outstanding matches and a few blowouts, the pairings are set for the eight teams entering the knockout phase for the Rugby World Cup. The Quarterfinal matches are:
- Australia vs. England
- New Zealand vs. France
- South Africa vs. Fiji
- Argentina vs. Scotland
England had won its way in on Friday with a 36-20 win over Tonga, with Jonny Wilkinson scoring two penalties, two conversions and two drops to move to within 5 points of Scotlands Gavin Hastings for the RWC points lead. England plays long time rival Australia in what would have been a runaway for the Wallabies if not for the return from injury of Wilkinson which seems to have stepped up the play of the entire England side. (more…)
