In this video, courtesy of the Washington Post “Former FBI agent Joe Navarro describes how our torsos, hands, feet and legs frequently communicate emotions that are not put into words.”

Not as interesting as Schulhoff, but I like stuff like this.

Okay, so much for political correctness and sensitivity and all of that nonsense. This just pisses me off:

St. Louis County • Two people were killed and 13 injured — one critically — Tuesday in a catastrophic crash that closed eastbound Highway 40 just west of Interstate 270 as the evening rush hour was beginning, the Missouri State Highway Patrol said. Sgt. Al Nothum of the Highway Patrol said 11 vehicles, including a tractor-trailer, were involved in the double-fatality crash at about 3:45 p.m.

The accident started when a tractor trailer apparently plowed into a line of stopped cars waiting to get onto I-270.

“The driver of a large tractor-and-trailer unit was traveling eastbound on (Highway) 40 in the far right lane and basically ran over several vehicles,” Nothum said at a news conference.

I know the rhetoric about how the trucking industry keeps America’s economy moving and that this is an isolated incident and that most truckers are just trying to make end’s meet, but I can’t help be angry at this, especially since this is on my commute during the school year and a spot where I wait in traffic just a little bit earlier than the time frame for this accident.

Nothing against truckers since I know almost every single one of them drives more safely than most of the rest of us, but this is a great moment to mention how strongly I feel about this nation needing to rebuild its railway system, for a variety of reasons.

An article from today’s edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch describing the town next to the town in which I live:

COLLINSVILLE — Few American cities can claim a condiment-centric festival. Collinsville can claim two.

A mere five weeks after wrapping up its International Horseradish Festival, the city kicked off its “World’s Largest Catsup Bottle Festival” Saturday, celebrating the 59th birthday of the giant red receptacle that towers south of downtown.

“It’s just a good reason to have a birthday party,” said Judy Demoisy, the festival’s organizer. “Any deep meaning? No. Just that any community should celebrate its assets. It’s an awareness thing.”

You have to see it to believe it…

… and you can, on this website dedicated to the Official World’s Largest Catsup Bottle!!

Americana at it’s finest along Route 66.

As the title suggests, my interest in the idea of sharing what I think about the world isn’t of particular interest to me right now. I have had a bit of an eventful couple of months, beginning with an interview for a reasonably good tenure track position in a geographical area close to my roots (and family) that seemed to go very well. It went so well in fact that after talking with the head of the search committee, several of my references called me to tell me that I had done very well during the interview.

Five weeks after the interview and with no official news I found out that the gig went to a graduate school colleague (it would be another three weeks before I got the form letter), which leaves me happy for him, but with many, many unresolved questions about the nature of academic job searches. It is the residual bitterness over this search that has kept me from blogging in recent months.

Apparently, from what I can divine from the comments of those with whom I spoke and my own post-mortem reflection, I think I gave an unfavorable opinion about a textbook or said something that created a moment of hesitation for the committee. Though I’m not really that inflexible, I think I tend to give the impression that my opinions are etched in stone. I believe this because I received a follow up phone call a week after my interview that left me with a very bad vibe.

(I later learned that a few days after this follow-up call, a fresh round of telephone interviews began. Ugh.)

On the bright side, I did receive a substantial part-time gig from McKendree University to supplement my teaching over at Maryville University of St. Louis. The salary reflects the part-time nature of the gig but fortunately I am responsible for the curriculum at both schools and will be able to teach from the same materials. This removes the largest single impediment from teaching in two programs and should prevent me from losing my mind teaching 21 credits of coursework a semester. Together, the renumeration from the two schools is approaching a credible full time salary and I have my wife’s outstanding Illinois benefits to cover that part of the equation. All is not bad because at the end of the day our financial situation will be greatly improved.

(It does mean that my thoughts about community service might be on the back burner for a while though. I need to get that sorted…)

The annual baby name report from the Social Security Administration has been released and the popularity of the name Mark continues it’s plummet from the lofty heights of popularity it enjoyed in the 1950’s and 1960’s (when it finished in the top ten for 15 straight years.)

According to the SSA statistics, my name finished in 129th position last year and has now dropped to 138th. I fear that Mark might be heading for the same hapless fate as that of Mildred, a name which despite being the bee’s knees and finishing in the top ten for the first three decades of the 20th century, hasn’t even been in the top 1000 since 1984!!

In other news, did you see that a robot conducted the Detroit Symphony last night? Nice publicity stunt, but a little frightening. I wonder if its audio receptors are protected under EU law from prolonged noise exposure?

Building falling! great cracks in the Earth! Fire in the sky!

Not really, but it was an interesting morning when a 5.2 Richter earthquake woke us at 4:40 am. I have to admit, that even though I lived for 10 years in California and a veteran of a bunch of earthquakes, this one was fairly notable. Even though the epicenter was over 150 miles away it was not only pretty strong but I was even able to estimate that it was “probably a five-oh” to my wife, herself a veteran of a year in Japan and the ring-of-fire. Compare this to the 7.1 Loma Prieta Earthquake that rocked Northern California 1989. I was away at college at the time, right around 200 miles from the epicenter and was completely unaware of the event until someone told me about it.

Apparently it has something to do with the soil and bedrock of the two regions, but it does lend credence to the historical reports that the 1812 New Madrid Earthquake which was estimated at 8.0 and supposedly rang church bells in Boston, a claim that I long thought was only hyperbole.

It has started some chatter in the music blog world, including being the inspiration for Scott Spielberg’s weekly FriPod.

And as I am typing we are having an aftershock. I’d better quit while I’m ahead.

Just to let anyone who might be reading know, I’m taking a short break from the blog to focus on teaching, some composition projects that I need to finish up and some other business that needs to be addressed.

I’ll return with something new in a few days/weeks.

In the meantime, good luck with your taxes.

It’s been two full years and 155 posts since I first created this blog.

I’m sure all eight of my loyal readers will be cracking open bottles of their finest sparkling cider.

Perhaps it’s a sign that at one time (okay, I still am) I was a bit of a nerd, but I actually am quite sad to have learned that Gary Gygax, the creator of the original Dungeons and Dragons passed away this week. The game is the butt of many jokes and for a time was maligned as an evil influence on American youth, but when I first encountered it in the 5th or 6th grade I was (pardon the pun) enchanted.

I was never a serious player, and in fact probably only played a few times with my friends as a child and then a few games in college. For me, it was never about the game itself but rather the ideas in contained within those innocuous boxes. It was an entire world, ready to be explored and conquered and it provided fertile soil for my pre-adolescent imagination and led me on many wondrous flights of fancy.

Of course, in the current age of computer games that can provide online role-playing with hordes of like-minded gamers, the dice game that started it all might seem just a bit quaint and cliché, but for me it represents a nostalgiac touchstone of my childhood and I think that maybe quaint and cliché aren’t such bad memories.

In the spirit of my recent “Wienermobile Post” I recently read a rather bizarre article published in last Thursday’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle about Burmese Giants Pythons (Python molurus bivittatus) that have been colonizing the Florida Everglades. Apparently, irresponsible pet owners have been dumping adult pythons into the swamps of South Florida for quite some time and there are an estimated 30,000 of the giant snakes in the region. USA Today chimes in with a report that Global Warming could eventually lead to these snakes populating the entire lower third of the United States, from coastal Virginia down through the south and Texas and up the Pacific coast as far as San Francisco.

Of course, this will take decades, and frankly I’m far more concerned about other potential side effects of Global Climate Change to worry about these pythons, but the articles did produce a few interesting lines that I found somewhat remarkable. A sampling follows:

At 20 miles a month, a determined Burmese python from Florida could arrive in San Francisco as early as August 2020.

“It would be exceptional for one animal to be that unidirectional in its movement, but it’s mathematically possible,” Rodda said.

The snake’s cross-country crawl would be made easier by the large population of beavers along the way, Rodda said.

“Beavers would be a very tasty treat for them,” Rodda said. “No beaver would be safe from a python.”

The natural enemies of the python are lions, tigers and other large cats. There are few free-roaming African lions and tigers between Florida and San Francisco, the geological survey said. And the absence of alligators outside Florida can only help the snakes on their journey west, although it’s a complicated relationship - while pythons eat alligators, alligators also eat pythons.

It’s good to know that we don’t have many African lions and tigers (Aren’t tigers Asian?) roaming the Great Plains. Very decent of them to point that out for us, though I am deeply concerned about the beaver population…

And from the USA Today:

The Burmese python is not poisonous and not considered a danger to humans. Attacks on humans have involved pet owners who mishandle and misfeed the snakes, Snow says. In Florida, they eat bobcats, deer, alligators, raccoons, cats, rats, rabbits, muskrats, possum, mice, ducks, egrets, herons and song birds. They grab with their mouth to anchor the prey, then coil around the animal and crush it to death before eating it whole.

If you see one, don’t attempt to engage it. Leave the area, note the location and notify the authorities.

Another sage piece of wisdom. I’ll be sure to heed the advice not to engage the world’s sixth largest snake should I run across it during my next (and first) family holiday in Vero Beach.

Of course, I’m being unfair to the journalists and the newspapers as most of these quotes are attributed to a spokesperson from the U.S. Geological Survey.

I am very, very frightened by the dumbing down of science in our country.