Lift Up Your Hearts!

You'll see a better video almost anywhere else, but here is a bit of natsukashi for our expatriot Floridians!

You can't see the bright orange flame on the video, but those of you who've experienced this stunning sight before can lean on your imaginations a bit.

Shuttle video, view from our driveway

Today's Frazz:

Our router seems to be acting erratically again.  Last time the problem was the power supply, and I have a spare one to try now if necessary, though it's hard to believe this one would fail after just three months.  (Then again, I said that about our car battery recently.)

It's fine at the moment, but in the past 12 hours has twice done strange things like allowing just one half of a telephone "conversation," or allowing e-mail to be received and sent but not allowing web access.  To be on the safe side, I've set up the system to ring my cell phone if it doesn't establish contact via the regular phone.

Computers.  You can't live with them, and...it's hard to remember that we once lived without them.

Tropical Storm Barry brought us a night's worth of good, soaking rain, our first significant rain in many months and much needed.  The forecast was for rain all Saturday, too, but the radar looked reasonably clear in the morning so we paid another visit to Leu Gardens.

The effect of just one night's rain was amazing.  Already the plants had lifted their hearts to heaven, puttin out new growth and blossoms.  Except for a wedding party, I think most people were kept away by the forecast, because we had our own private garden for most of the time. (More)

Before I write about today's bike ride, I have to clear the backlog and tell you about last weekend's.

The Cross Seminole Trail is not yet complete, and voters defeated the minuscule property tax increase that would have paid to purchase environmentally sensitive lands and built recreational trails, so we're not waiting for its completion to do what we can. (More)

Two weeks ago, after our exhausting off-road biking adventure, we paid a visit to Fort Christmas.  We went there several times when the girls were young, on our own and for Indian Princess outings.  But that was a long time ago.  The girls have grown a lot since then, and so has the fort.

They now have a large collection of old Florida houses, and we enjoyed a trip back in time as we wandered from one to another.  Bear in mind that Florida is a young state, even if it does have our country's oldest city.  Sometimes it seems more like the Wild West than the East Coast. (More)

I find it amusing that President Bush gets blamed for anything that goes wrong, including hurricanes.  But even I am incensed about this one.  Whatever his personal opinion might be—if he's aware of the situation at all—he surely bears part of the blame for the following insanity, because the president is ultimately responsible for the actions of his administration. (More)

Remember the story of the guy who got in trouble for (correctly) using the word "niggardly"?

Porter's boss once called him on the carpet for "using words I don't understand."

Now Missouri legislators are up in arms because their vocabularies failed them.  They passed a bill legalizing lay midwifery because they didn't realize what "tocology" means. (More)

The purpose of Memorial Day is to honor those who have given their lives in our country's wars.  The advantage of a blog is that I can do that with a link, so this year I'm doing something different, and give the day a genealogical bent.

According to no less an authority than Wikipedia,

The southeastern United States celebrates Decoration Day as a day to decorate the graves of all family members, and it is not reserved for those who served in the military. The region observes Decoration Day the Sunday before Memorial Day.

Therefore I will metaphorically decorate the graves of all our family members who have gone before,

From my most ancient documented ancestor (so far)

Pepin d'Heristal (abt 635 - 16 Dec 714)
(You can follow the line back further from the link, but despite what I said above, I'm waiting to consult another authority than Wikipedia.)

To our beloved

Isaac Christopher Daley (21 Nov 2002 - 23 Nov 2002)

They say this hurricane season will be a busy one.  But for now we are enjoying the most wonderful May in my memory.  For weeks now the air conditioner has hardly ever turned on.  We are able to keep the windows open for most of the day, if we're careful to close them when the sun is shining directly in.  Those of you who were brought up in Florida know how unusual that is for any month after February!  The humidity is relatively low, as are the temperatures (today's high was only in the low 80's!), and best of all we have been enjoying delightful breezes!  Breezes are unusual here.  Mostly the air is so calm that clothes on a line stiffen into boards rather than attaining the gentle wind-graced softness we remember from our time up north.  It's as if Florida stores up all its wind, only to release it in big hurricane bursts.

But for now the weather is so delightful I had to write about it.  Now I'm going to leave the computer and rejoin Porter in the family room, where we are delighting in our books (Threads of Grey and Gold, and Lilith) and in the cool breeze that is wafting in the front windows and out the back door.

Among the more bizarre stories of the day, here's a study that claims to be able to predict your child's future SAT performance based on the relative lengths of his fingers.  Those whose ring fingers are longer compared with their index fingers are statistically likely to do better on the math portion, and those with the reverse situation to do better on the verbal.  This supposedly reflects prenatal testosterone/estrogen exposure.

It's a lot harder to measure finger length than I thought.  I finally settled on measuring from the knuckle, and it seems my ring finger is a bit longer than my index.  It's true, I did very well on the math portion of the SAT.  But I did even better on the verbal, so I must have measured wrong.  :)

The researchers plan to expand their studies into "other cognitive and behavioral issues, such as technophobia, career paths and possibly dyslexia."

My hearing is very good, probably better than that of many my age because I didn't ruin it in my teens with headphones and loud music.  But I still find that I can understand what people say better if I can see their faces.  Now I know why.

A Canadian study indicates that there is a signficant visual component of language understanding even amongst hearing people.  The four-month-old babies in the study were able to distinguish when adults in a silent video were speaking English and when they were speaking French.

The eight-month-old babies could do the same, but only if they were being raised in a bilingual French/English environment.

Just what parents didn't want to hear.  Apparently high-action video games can improve your eyesight.  (Rochester Review, May/June 2007)

Were it not for the probability of disturbing other library patrons, Li'l Writer Guy would be dancing a happy little jig.  Instead, he allows himself a pleased smile and a contented sigh before getting back to work.

You can see why in the Letters to the Editor section of the May/June issue of the University of Rochester's magazine, Rochester Review.  Unfortunately, you can't yet access via their online archives the issue to which I was responding. (More)

Porter put the bikes on the back of the car again this morning, and we headed off to the Tosohatchee State Reserve near Christmas.  That's Christmas, Florida—we're still much nearer Memorial Day than Christmas.

We knew this would be a different kind of ride.  We knew it would be on unpaved trails through a wilderness area, and we thought we were prepared.  We had sunscreen and bug repellent, emergency bike kit (tube, CO₂ cartridge for inflating same, patches, wrench, and those little thingies for helping you put the tire back on the rim), water to drink, and cell phones.  Knowing we'd be in a game preserve, we also had a monocular and a camera.  We had a change of clothes and a picnic lunch waiting in the car for our return.

"Unpaved trails."  I was expecting something like the crushed-shell-and-sand trail at our local park.  Silly me. (More)