Month: March 2006

It hasn’t rained in Phoenix since October 18th. It’s been the longest dry streak ever.

143 days without rain, but this morning I awoke to the most glorious sound. Water dripping outside my bedroom window. (Or, if it had turned out to be not raining, a most distressing sound.)

I decided I’d better sneak out and get a picture before it stopped.

We were in Taiwan on October 18th, so I don’t know how long its been since I saw rain here in Phoenix.

It sure is nice to see the rain today… and, they had to cancel the Taiwanese moms picnic today!

Additional note, 4/2/2006My mistake, it wasn’t the longest ever. I don’t know what all the weathermen were all worked up about.

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One of the cool things you occasionally see in Taiwan, is the Mitsubishi Jet Towel.

It’s a air hand dryer that actually works. You shove your hands into a trough and high pressure air jets push the water right off them. It’s rather like the way they simulate high-G acceleration in movies, where they air jet the actors’ cheeks.

Anyway, at last they’re available in the USA. My I recommend to any company that has those worthless air blowers to replace them with these jet towels.

I’ve never understood how anyone could think that the air blowers are viable. They take 30-40 seconds, if you’re lucky, to dry your hands. There’s usually one, maybe two in a restroom, which may have 5 or 6 sinks. Do the math, there’s going to be people who skip washing because they know they can’t dry their hands.

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…and people wonder why I don’t like for my daughter to just play with any kids you see on the playground.

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We were returning home this evening around 10:00PM, driving down Thomas, near 3rd Avenue, when I spied a person in the middle of the road.

He crouching down along the center line, about 10 feet from the intersection, facing our direction. He was an older man, wearing a levi jacket and baseball cap.

He was hoping around the road in a squatty, dance-like way, a little like that gremlin in the classic Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner. He was also making aggressive moves towards the cars passing him and swinging a chain.

He didn’t hit anybody and as we passed, I could see in the rearview mirror that he decided to leave the road.

There’s something you don’t see everyday.

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The Biggest Carnivore: Dinosaur History Rewritten

This is an interesting little report from livescience.com on the Spinosaurus.

The history of the paleontology of the Spinosaurus is s fascinating story. Spinosaurus, a large theropod dinosaur was discovered in Egypt around the turn of the 20th century by the German paleontologist, Ernst Stromer.

Stromer’s collection went to a museum in Munich (if I recall correctly) which was bombed out of existence by allied attacks in the 1944. The specimen were completely destroyed. The was a documentary on one of the Discovery channels recently about a group who recently went back to Stomer’s dig sites and brought back more Spinosaurus fossils.

This new report is now estimating that Spinosaurus was the largest yet discovered meat-eating dinosaur, at 55′ long from head to tail.

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My friend John is doing the second-wedding ceremony thing in Thailand.

Don’t you think these figurines on his wedding cake are an amazing likeness?

Incidentally, you can look at more of his Thailand photos on his flickr page.

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