Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Beetlejuice!!
Beetlejuice was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid. The other day I found some free episodes online here.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Halloweenie Decorations
We've been going a little Halloween crazy here at the Gresham household. Evanston has a lame 4-7pm trick-or-treating policy, but we'll be ready for the ghosts and ghouls!!
At night we have lights and what-not. It's been fun!
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Quote O' The Day
"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies." -- Pablo Picasso 
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
What's for Lunch?
A little veggie chili on a cool October afternoon!
Maggie makes the greatest veggie chili. Being vegetarian was never so easy!
Friday, October 19, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Quote O' The Day
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
- Bill Vaughan
Friday, October 12, 2007
Walking With Dinosaurs
While I was birding down in SW Kansas I drove down to Clayton New Mexico specifically to see the dinosaur footprints. I had seen some in Black Mesa, but heard there were many more in Clayton. I wasn't disappointed.
The tracks are actually in Clayton Lake State Park which is north of the town of Clayton. The tracks were found a few years after they started building the dam for the reservoir. It took a while for the sediment on top of the tracks to wash away. The first picture here shows an overview of the area the tracks were found. Pretty much all of the depressions you can see filled with rain water are prints. There are over 500 prints, with 8 species of dinosaur. The area was on the shore of an inland ocean which made for great opportunities to step in some mud. 
This last picture fascinates me. The rock shows the shoreline pattern from over a 100 million years ago! The waves formed the ripples in the mud that can be seen here.
There are tracks where you can see a tail dragging. There is only one other instance of this in the world. Usually dinosaurs used their tails for balance and didn't let them touch the ground while walking, but here the dinosaur was off balance walking through the mud and had to catch itself with its tail! There is much detective work still left to do at this site.
It really is an amazing thing to see the actual footprints of dinosaurs. The only thing I would like to see more are the footprints Mary Leaky found of Australopithecus in Tanzania, but still these are older!
While there I found this Western Hognose Snake hanging out in its ancestors' tracks.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
New Horizons: NASA's Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission
NASA's probe, New Horizons, passed Jupiter last winter studying the planet and its moons as it moved toward Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. These images below are a composite of two photos taken a few days apart. Jupiter and Io are shown here. The amazing thing about the Io shot is the presence of an eruption. The 330 km plume is lit by the sun and glows blue in the picture. We can even see the magma! Click on the photo for a larger view and check out the red dot below the blue plume. 
Armchair Apocrypha: Andrew Bird
When Maggie and I went to see The Magnetic Fields at The Old Town School Of Folk Music the opening act was some guy named Andrew Bird. So this skinny guy in an old thrift store suit walks out and starts playing the violin, recording it, then playing it back while playing a saw, recording that, then playing them back together and then he starts whistling and so on and on. But this was no novelty act, this guy was just simply amazing. So I got his new album Armchair Apocrypha.
Amazing! Here's one of my favorites: Imitosis. And yes, that word is an A. Bird original!
Here's another song from the new CD: Spare-Ohs
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Netflix Friends
If any of you use Netflix. Click here and be our Netflix friend. We are always looking for new movies.
