The wit and wisdom of Zoe

I have a private list of stuff my daughter Zoe says that makes her sister and me collapse with laughter, but it suddenly occurred to me that the whole world would benefit from her wise sayings.

For today: Driving out to get lunch, I tapped the gear shift and asked her what kind of car we have. Her response: “stink shift.”

Despicable

Dexter!

So much to chew, so little time.

RIP

Dottie

She was such a great dog. She died last night in her sleep, and I can’t stop crying. She was 14.

Still in Salem

From Rolling Stone:

Cindy Oestriecher, a McCain supporter who turned out for his speech in New Orleans, is stumped when I ask her for an example of Obama’s lack of patriotism. “What was that thing about anti-American?” she asks a friend. “What were they referring to?”

“What thing?” asks the friend.

“People were talking about that thing, that anti-American thing,” Cindy says, frowning.

“You mean about the flag, the thing on the Internet?” the friend replies.

“Yeah, I guess,” says Cindy. “The anti-American thing.” “That bothers you?” I ask.

“Of course it does!”

“But you don’t even know what it is,” I say. “You just know that someone else said he was anti-American. You don’t even know who it was that said it!”

She shrugs. What’s my point? We all know what the deal is. When it comes to presidential politics, you either are or you aren’t. And Barack Obama aren’t. If you can’t grasp the simple math of that statement, you don’t know much about elections in this country. It’s not about the war, or the economy, or the faltering Republican brand, or any of that: This is about hate and fear, and a dark instinct in our blood going all the way back to Salem, and whether or not a desperately ambitious ex-heretic named John McCain can whip up a big enough mob in time to drown the latest witch.

Gnome Art

Emma’s an artist!

What My Kids Are Watching These Days

Emma’s guitar teacher gave her “Happy Together” to practice, which she remembered from Freaky Friday. So, of course, we had to put in the DVD, and now that’s all they’re watching. We all love this song–”Take Me Away”–which was interrupted quite a bit in the movie. I don’t know where the YouTube poster got the whole thing.

Back from Washington

We just got back from Washington State on Wednesday, where I struggled taking pictures with inadequate batteries! Here’s an interesting one I took facing into a bright sunset. No reds or oranges here!

Was there ever any doubt?

Everyone loves the idea that the dinosaurs are still with us. Here’s even more proof of it:

Ancient collagen—the main protein component of bone—has been extracted from the remains of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, according to two new reports.

The new studies provide strong support for the hotly debated claims that organic material previously extracted from the T. rex’s leg bone is original dinosaur soft tissue that somehow escaped fossilization.

Now, for the first time, scientists have obtained partial protein sequences from the soft tissue remains.

“The sequences are clearly from T. rex,” said John Asara of Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led one of the studies.

In addition, both studies found similarities between the dino sample and the bone collagen of chickens, providing molecular support for the hypothesis that modern birds are descended from dinosaurs.

Until now the dino-bird connection has been entirely based on physical similarities in fossils’ body structures (related: “Earliest Bird Had Feet Like Dinosaur, Fossil Shows” [December 1, 2005]).

Source: Dinosaur Soft Tissue Sequenced; Similar to Chicken Proteins

Another New Blog Name

Sorry, can’t ever make up my mind. I’m writing less dark stuff, so it’s time to change the name!