krazy kat's korner

Just finished this:

No Bone Unturned by Jeff Benedict

The description from Amazon does a better job than I could.

A curator for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Doug Owsley painstakingly rebuilds skeletons, helping to identify them and determine their cause of death. He has worked on several notorious cases -- from mass graves uncovered in Croatia to the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon -- and has examined historic skeletons tens of thousands of years old. But the discovery of Kennewick Man, a 9,600-year-old human skeleton found along the banks of Washington's Columbia River, was a find that would turn Owsley's life upside down.

Days before Owsley was scheduled to study the skeleton, the government seized it to bury Kennewick Man's bones on the land of the Native American tribes who claimed him. Along with other leading scientists, Owsley sued the U.S. government over custody. Concerned that knowledge about our past and our history would be lost forever if the bones were reburied, Owsley fought a legal and political battle for six years, putting everything at risk, jeopardizing his career and his reputation.

Highly highly recommended.
Intriguing read. Over half of the book deals with the legal battle against the US government (absolutely unbelievable actions by the Army Corps, Justice and Interior Departments).
A strong stomach is needed, his work on the victims of the Waco fire was particularly difficult to read. I know the government came in for a lot of flack, but I have no doubt after reading this that Koresh was the only one to blame. The children could've been put in a safe place (there was plenty of underground tunnel areas where they would've survived), but he deliberately put them in the munitions bunker where he knew they'd die horribly. Then the coward went to another area and had one of his people shoot him in the head. Made me so angry.

My website is back up.

Any opinions on the HBO series, Carnivale? ABC advertised it tonight...have they now got the HBO contract instead of 9?

I've read 5 (*) of the top 10 favourite books according to ABC's survey.

1. Lord of the Rings (J R R Tolkien)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) *
3. Holy Bible
4. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) *
5. Cloudstreet (Tim Winton)
6. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J K Rowling)
7. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell) *
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) *
Equal 9. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) and Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
10. A Fortunate Life (A B Facey) *

4 of the 5 were also high school English texts.
Number 6 is on my bookshelf.
Have that many people really read the Bible and actually consider it a favourite book? Or was it a more "I probably need to tick that box" type thing (wasn't in the top 100 in the UK)?
Never even tried LotR. I killed the Hobbit after about 2 pages. Did Tolkien have an editor? But the Umbilical Brothers summarising it was hilarious.

Note to self:
When wgrib doesn't work, check whether the name of the file you're trying to wgrib is too long.
Only after you've shortened the filename and it still doesn't work should you panic and consider leaving the country or possibly reading the instruction manual...

Thank goodness shortening the filename worked, though there was some panic when it was telling me the data was 6 hour averaged when I wanted the monthly mean, but re-wgribbed a past file and that's what the code is supposed to say :wipes brow:
And for the first time just read what the fields in the inventory mean (I could work out most of them) and the mean (the average type) is now clear in my head (it's just telling you that it's a monthly mean of the 6 hour averaged data).

And possibly even the computer people are scratching their heads now.
wgrib is a program to read grib (format used to store binary data) files that were created by the NMC/NCAR Reanalysis Project (the atmospheric data I used for my thesis and papers).

And I'm just having a giggle at this:

usage: wgrib [grib file] [options]

options:
-v verbose
-V even more verbose

***

And I have Mulan on dvd!!! I so love that movie.
Need to track down the Gone with the Wind special edition.

And mum went to the Met Bureau in Sydney yesterday and bought me the book Drought, Dust and Deluge: A Century of Climate Extremes in Australia. I sent down to Melbourne for it a couple of months ago, but the envelope and cheque got damaged in the mail so they had to send it back.
Some great photos and history.
Early 25 July 1986 there was snow in much of Tasmania (some of the heaviest falls on record), Hobart was isolated due to road closures until noon, snow fell in Melbourne and many suburbs, and melting snow (melted on contact with the ground) occurred in metropolitan Sydney. I remember that, was in high school and there was snow falling as dad drove me to school. Quite an event.

CJ's going to hate me tomorrow.
Have to take him to the vet. He's got scaly beak/legs, and while the stuff I got from the pet shop has managed to keep it in check, need to get the stuff that kills it completely which can only be prescribed by the vet.
Plus his beak has grown overlong, which may be because of the scaly. Needs cutting.
Never thought a budgie could glare until we had to apply the stuff to CJ. Put him back in the cage, after quite a struggle and a lot of noise, and he just glared and frowned at us.

***

Watched my Lion in Winter dvd last night.
Adore that movie. Such lovely family-oriented people.

***

Books:

The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
Adored it. The world and history of orchids and orchid collecting was fascinating, funny and ridiculous. Fabulously written.
Need to check whether my aunt and uncle have read it. They've got the Orchidelirium. Greenhouses, breeding them, going to Hawaii to collect them, showing, judging...one of their prize orchids they got from Hawaii was stolen from a show at a local shopping centre a couple of months ago.

Fetish by Tara Moss
Haven't read a lot of novels in recent years, enjoyed this murder mystery. Short chapters made for a fast read and I liked the twists and turns. The characters came to life and it's nice sometimes to read a book set in your home town. Will read Split next.

Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times by Helen Thomas

Absolutely bloody brilliant read.
Maybe it's being outside the US and also younger, but I learnt a lot about the US political system and the history of the Presidents from JFK through to Clinton.
It covers her own history, as well as chapters on Air Force One, all the press secretaries, Presidents and First Ladies she's covered.
Frequently funny, sometimes sad, and always interesting.

Helen Thomas is what a political reporter should be, always questioning. If only there were more of her calibre and integrity in all countries, maybe the public's trust in government would not be so eroded.
I recall reading a year or two ago that Helen had been pointedly ignored during a WH press conference and the WH press corps didn't stand up for her. Unfortunately that is very telling of both government and the media in the present day. They should all be forced to sit down and read this book and maybe then they'd remember their duty to the people.

Didn't go to see Harry Potter.
I woke up with my head really tight and I'm strangely tired. Would've probably fallen asleep, dozed off watching my dvd of Rear Window tonight.

Went down the shops for a little while. Got cheap dvds of Down with love and David's Mother (good tv movie with Kirstie Alley, Sam Waterston and Stockard Channing and an amazing performance by Michael Goorjian). Though will have to take them back on Monday because the person didn't take the security holders off.
Also got books: Not Happy, John! by Sydney Morning Herald political editor Margo Kingston, and Fetish by Tara Moss. Been interested in reading her in the last few weeks since a net friend saw her at a writers conference and was very impressed with her and the amount of research she did. I also think she has an incredibly sexy voice. I liked Canadian accents :)

Poor Eddie broke a wing feather today (on his clipped wing) and bled quite a bit :(

Wingswing is in.
Though I'm pretty sure it was after the deadline. I got totally mixed up with timezones, which I shouldn't have as I used to know GMT well. So I hope it will be accepted.

***

Have seen the teaser trailer for Phantom of the Opera. And my fears are starting to recede. Won't completely until I hear some of the singing, but it looks very pretty and they seem to have done many of the set pieces.

***

Another book:
Report from Engine Co. 82 by Dennis Smith.
A firefighter's life in New York City's South Bronx during the late 1960s/early 1970s. In addition to fighting the fires, it's a portrait of the area's poverty, which hasn't really changed in the intervening years. Very interesting and thought-provoking.
Don't let the fact that it was written 30 years ago put you off, most of the time I forgot it was.

I've enjoyed reading posts from friends recommending books they've read. So here's a couple I've read recently.

- Death's Acre: Inside the Body Farm by William M. Bass and Jon Jefferson
If you like forensics or anthropology, I highly recommend this book. Though a reasonably strong stomach is required as he's spent the last twenty years physically investigating the decomposition of bodies.
In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the quickest book I've read in years. I found it very hard to put down, it was so educational, interesting and actually quite funny in places. As well as being very poignant and respectful.

- The Coroner by Derrick Hand with Janet Fife-Yeomans
This may only be available in Australia and probably only of interest to us. Retired NSW State Coroner, Derrick Hand, takes you behind the scenes of the investigations into some of the most high profile cases in NSW's recent history, including the Thredbo landslide, Michael Hutchence's suicide, the brutal murder of Anita Cobby, and the Newcastle earthquake.
A wonderful insight into the role of the coroner.

- Inside the Hurricane: Face to Face With Nature's Deadliest Storms by Pete Davies
Slightly different title here, The Devil's Music.
Dad actually bought it at a sale. After I finished reading it I asked him what he'd thought of it, and he said it was interesting and well explained (Dad has no scientific background). I was more interested by the people, seeing names I recognised from articles and the tropical cyclone mailing list. Yes, I'm a science fangirl.
Primarily covers the 1999 hurricane season and the scientists of the National Hurricane Center and the Hurricane Research Division, including those brave souls and strong stomachs who fly into hurricanes. The drawback of this book is that there isn't a photo or a diagram.

- Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House by Helen Thomas
Anecdotes covering nine Presidents. Funny, interesting and at times poignant. Calling the press secretary to confirm that the First Hamster had drowned in the President's bath. And the image of Al Gore being sworn in as President dressed as Frankenstein.
I learnt quite a bit about US history.
And two references to West Wing, including when Allison did a briefing.


Maybe I need to read some novels...