Current reading

"I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed."

"Why do nice women marry dull men?"
"Because intelligent men won't marry nice women."

"With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself."

"... the besetting sin of woman, the passion to discuss her private affairs with anyone who is willing to listen."

"An appeal to the emotions is little likely to be effectual before luncheon. My own thoughts were then constantly occupied with love, but I never could imagine conubial bliss till after tea."

from The Moon and Sixpence
by W. Somerset Maugham

This in the first forty pages. I need to stop or I'll never finish the book. Of Human Bondage seems to be generally acknowledged as his masterpiece. It's certainly his greatest achievement in terms of length. I enjoyed that and The Magician and I'm enjoying The Moon and Sixpence.

No laws were ever passed saying that evolution had to be taught in biology courses. The prestige of evolutionary theory has been built by its impact on the thousands of biologists who have learned its power and usefulness in the study of living things. No laws need be passed for creationists to do the same thing. ~ Richard D. Alexander

I have been researching the debate between evolution and creationism. I read Dawkin's The River Out Of Eden and Evolution versus Creationism: The Public Education Controversy (Oryx Press, 1983), from which I got the quote above.

The first book is not Dawkin's best but it is very readable, impeccably reasoned and suffused with his delightfully irrascible personality.

The second book, although over twenty years old, is still disturbingly relevant. Although the fundamentalists' underlying argument--biblical inerrancy--hasn't advanced much since Darwin's time, one can view the evolution of their tactics as a living demonstration of the process of natural selection as less successful arguments are abandoned and the more sucessful proliferate.

August 1st Yahoo headlines

As I was logging into Yahoo! mail, the following headlines caught my eye.

• Bush Appoints Bolton, Bypassing Senate (AP)
• Fear Over U.S.-Born Extremists Is Brewing (LA Times)

For a dizzy moment, I thought the two news items were related.

Nob Hill Cigar is no more

A couple of days before we left on our trip, I'd plotted the location of several cigar stores in San Francisco. The nearest one to our hotel looked to be Nob Hill Cigar.

I left the hotel around 8am before my daughter was up and going and started climbing the hill in the direction I hoped was east. What a joy to be walking on city streets again after living in Houston for so long. H-Town has it's good side but a vibrant downtown urban scene is not one of them, despite what you'll hear from the people who want to sell you a purpose built downtown "loft".

I zigged and zagged, east and north and east and south, just enjoying the hell out of the people on the streets, the apartment building doorways, the weather, the weirdos, the corner grocery stores with fresh fruit and cut flowers spilling out onto the side walk, the smoke shops squeezed into half a store front with a service laundry.

I sought directions from a hotel concierge and so finally found Nob Hill Cigar on the corner of Sutter and Taylor. It looks like it used to be a very nice cigar store. Looking through the doors I saw glass fronted display cases all the way back, all now empty.

I'd brought a couple of smokes with me--two was all I thought I could get away with on a trip with my daughter--but I wanted to get a hold of a DryMistat humidification device to keep them in good condition. I tried a couple of other cigar stores without any luck and then gave up. I didn't want to turn the search into too much of a project.