So, I'm sitting here, on my sofa.  The Wii is playing it's "you're ignoring me, but that's OK" music.  Ember (Cat #4) is curled-up and sleeping about 8 inches from my right leg.  India is doing doggy things in the backyard, through which I should be forcing a reel mower.  Maple seed-pods, the color & translucency of old parchment, spin past the window, air assaulting the lawn and getting hung-up on dandelion redoubts.  Nicole is upstairs in her sewing room, making something of beauty, warmth, and utility.

I'm listening to Natalie Angier's The Canon.  It's a whirl-wind tour of science.  Not the usual latest-developments pastiche, nor a complete history of a particular field, it's what-scientists-wished-laypeople-understood-about-science.  Some examples:

• Science is a way of thinking.  It is not a catalog of facts.  The paramount importance of experiment is the only unchallengeable doctrine.  Every scientific understanding is up for revision, reversal, or re-enforcement by experiment.
• If you're going to challenge a well-established Theory (e.g., Evolution), you better have something spectacular.  'Cause we've already tested it thousands of different ways, and it withstood everything our best & brightest could throw at it.  The goal of a scientist is to try and break his own ideas -- and hopefully fail.
• Statistics is important.  It's also difficult.  Understanding it requires work.  It's like food -- you don't have to learn to cook, but you should at least be familiar with the basic terms.  Otherwise, you'll be eating-out a lot, and probably not enjoying it.  After all, if you don't know kimchi from a burger, you can't order and the waiter'll bring you whatever isn't moving that day.
  

Listening to this book, I realize I learned nothing from my high school Chemistry class.  Somehow, I got a C without understanding the fundamental difference between covalent and ionic bonds.  I learned that, these days, most people who think about the best way to teach science have concluded that we teach it backwards.  It should be Physics first, then Chemistry, then Biology.  Why?  Because Physics is the foundation science; and you can do easy/simple experiments that will teach the scientific method.  There is no such thing as a simple Biology experiment.
The book also re-enforced the degree to which science has permeated our culture.  When the toaster fails, no one in America offers sacrifice to the Toaster God so that it'll function again.  Neither do we assume that it has simply stopped working, but might simply start working later, and so wait around to try again.  We assume, in a way so fundamental to our thinking that we are blind to the assumption, that things happen for comprehensible reasons.  So, we check to see if the toaster's not plugged-in, or confirm the darkness-o-meter isn't set for barely-warm, etc.  All while talking about how we "don't get" science.
One of the things I've gotten from the book, so far, is a visualization of the electron cloud from Brian Greene.  He suggests thinking of it a pixelated face.  You look at, you know there are 2 eyes in there.  You don't know exactly where.  you only know that those 2 dark patches are the places where the eyes are most likely to be.  They might be somewhere else, but that's improbable.  And yet, while we don't know exactly where the electrons (or any particle, for that matter) are, they are there.  They occupy a distinct location.  Just like the eyes in the face behind the pixels.

Time marches.  Afternoon becomes late-in-the-day, becomes tomorrow.  The cat wakes.  The dog digs to freedom.  And I go measure the porch and try to learn if I need a permit to extend it.  Ah, entropy.

I saw a bird, as we drove over the Fox river.  I thought, "Pelican."  Then I thought, "Naw.  Pelicans are salt-water birds.  There aren't any pelicans this far inland, in the Midwest."  But it bugged me.  So I checked.

Turns out there's a species of fresh-water pelican -- American White Pelican.  Not only that, I found a Wisconsin DNR page about the population of American White Pelican living in Green Bay.  So, I accidentally added a "life bird" to my non-existent list.

I might take the car tomorrow, after Nicole is passed-out recovering from her race.  I understand there's a excellent chance I can see more at Voyageur's Park, a few minutes from here.  That would be crossing something of a line, though.  I've never gone somewhere to see a bird.  Not even a brief trip.  Traveling to see a bird could be considered the mark of a serious birder.  Besides, I left my good binoculars at home . . .

I finished Caesar's Legion.  The Tenth Legion, of the title, was the premiere military unit of Rome from about 50 B.C. to about 130 A.D.  I learned a lot about the Legions.  I also learned about the Roman Civil War (the first one, anyway).  I learned about Gaius Julius Caesar.

Like most Americans of my generation, most of what I know about Caesar is from Shakespeare's play.  (Who am I kidding?  Most of what Americans of my vintage know about Caesar probably comes from The Simpsons.)  Turns out he was a good military leader, although not the genius strategist I'd thought.  Mostly, he was amazingly charismatic, a remarkably good engineer (even by Roman standards), and famously, even in his own lifetime, lucky.  Whenever he made a mistake, it was recoverable.  Or his opponent made a worse one, or failed to capitalize on Caesar's error.

There were Romans before Caesar who dominated Rome and gave but briefest lip-service to the Republic (Marius, for one).  But he actually attacked & conquered Rome.  Not the City, itself; although his troops did riot there at one point (in his absence).  Nonetheless, he launched the civil war, and methodically destroyed the Senate-appointed defenders of the Republic.  I suspect it is mostly coincidence that his battles were outside the Italian peninsula.  His opponents' power bases, like his own, were in the Provinces.  He had to follow and beat them on their own turf.

Marc Antony was, based on this book, anyway, an incompetent thug.  His military commands frequently mutinied.  His attempts at conquest, in the wake of Caesar's death, were poorly timed, unsubtle, and badly executed.  During life Caesar avoided leaving Antony in command (even when Caesar left and Antony was second-in-command).  After one of Antony's more-egregious failures, Caesar left him behind.  By contrast Caesar regarded Brutus (as in "et tu, Brutae?") as his adopted son.  Brutus supported Pompey (and thus, the Senate) against Caesar.  Nonetheless, when Brutus was part of the opposition force in one of Caesar's battles against Pompey, Caesar issued special orders that Brutus was to be unharmed and allowed to escape in the aftermath of victory.

'nother thing I learned from Caesar's Legion.  One of the great advantages a Roman Legionary held over his opponents: (Daniel will like this) pointy swords.

No kidding.  Everybody else had a sword with a rounded tip.  Useless for stabbing.

'nother thing -- their pilum (javelin) was 1/3 iron and 2/3 wood.  The iron was deliberately left somewhat soft.  The opening move of every battle was to thr javelins at the enemy's close-packed troops.  Why were they close-packed?  Because the opening move was to throw javelins.  If you're standing close enough together, you can all raise your shields and and everyone is protected.  The reason the pilum is soft is so that it'll bend when it penetrates the enemy's shield.  If you get lucky, and the Romans threw enough javelins that they frequently did, the javelin point would penetrate the edge of 2 overlapping shields, bend, and (effectively) staple those shields together.  heh.  Pretty smart, those Romans.

Julius Caesar had a subordinate commander named Quintus Fufius Calenus.  Listening to Caesar's Legion, a military history, I suppress the urge to laugh whenever "General Foofius" appears.

I remember when Dad used a reel mower in Virginia.  I thought it was cool.  It whirred, it rolled, it made that cool snih-snih-snih-snih-snih sound.  Now, I have one.  I don't think of them as "cool" anymore.

I have learned things.  Mostly I've learned that what I had previously dismissed as "obsessive" lawn care stems from a past where gasoline-powered lawn mowers were expensive and rare. 

Take the hatred of moles.  It's not aesthetic distaste for yard-spanning, meandering tunnels disrupting the smooth expanse of lawn.  Those tunnels collapse into yard-spanning, meandering, impossible-to-see-in-uncut-grass soft spots exactly wide enough to trap a mower wheel.  The dirt excavated from those tunnels?  That goes into large blade-dulling mounds that stop the blades.  Those lovely trees that shade your lawn . . . drop sticks, twigs, even! -- that are more than sufficient to bind the mower.  Again, abrupt stop.  If you rake, thoroughly, before cutting, you'll only stop on a stick once per pass.  A group of tough, woody Dandelion stems is sufficient to bind the mower.  And, invariably, some of the stems grow close enough to the ground that the blades pass over them.  Leaving you with the certainty that they'll grow back before the next round of mowing.  Crabgrass, Quackgrass, whatever you call it?  That stuff that doesn't grow as a smooth carpet of green, but rather as large, above-ground-level clusters?  That stuff is dense, tough, and exactly the right height to stop the blades.  Again, hating it is not unreasonable from the perspective of a reel mower user.

And, the dog.  Your joyful canine companion.  Who hunted moles, while you cheered.  After all, moles are bad, right?  Collapsed mole tunnels are bad.  Dog holes are much worse.  In fact, the dog will convert her favored area from smooth lawn to an ankle-turning, not-a-level-square-foot-in-it nightmare of wheel-stoppage.  And she isn't afraid of the mower.  She'll stand in front of you, with that hurt expression in the big brown eyes, as you yell at her to move or get hamstrung.  Not to mention the inevitable -- finding a "deposit" when the blades convert it into a "weaponized aerosol."  (No, you won't find them all before you cut.)  You'll find yourself fondly remembering the stick-strewn area where you stopped only once per pass, rather than every 3-5 feet.

When you buy one of these, the description usually mentions that golf courses use reel mowers as finish-cutters on the greens.  This leaves you with the idea that you'll get a similar result.  Yeah, . . . no.  Reel mowers cut better than anything else when you're cutting homogeneous grass, on a perfectly flattened surface, with sharpened blades, and you never let the grass get tall enough to be a problem.  Towing the reel mower behind a small tractor doesn't hurt, either.  Oh, and you wont get a satisfactory cut with one pass over the lawn.  You'll have to cut it twice, perpendicular directions, to get something that looks like you cut it with something other than a scythe.  And you still must have trimmer, 'cause you ain't getting close to anything.  The blade-cage is a good 3 inches from the outside of the wheel.

Still, there's no smoke.  There's no $4-a-gallon gasoline to purchase.  It's 3-4 hours outside.  You can run it at 8 AM on Sunday and the neighbors don't even know.  Or 10 PM on Tuesday.  And the blisters heal by the next day.

I listened to a bunch of Aubrey/Maturin books, not too long ago.  They're good.  They're enjoyable.  They're definitely worth spending time listening to.  They certainly fulfill my principle goal of remaining awake, avoiding the complete waste of 3 hours of car-time a day, and not getting angry (thus, avoiding the radio).  But Hornblower's still my man.

After those, Orson Scott Card's Hart's Hope.  It's not Ender's Game, but it's not a complete waste, either.  I don't remember the reader, so he was at least average-skill.  The story was OK, but not riveting.  It boils down to: Bad king deposed, bad king's daughter returns to wreak her vengeance & and retake kingdom, good guys stealthily & accidentally position themselves to depose bad king's daughter.  Not much in the way of character development.  Mostly, the characters are what they are.  It's more about what caused them to be that way.  Plus, gods & religion, 'cause this is Orson Scott Card.

More recently, David Maguire's Wicked.  I abandoned it about 2/3 of the way through.  I realized I really had no attachment to any of the characters, or the story.  I thought the reader was very good.  In fact, I appreciate him more than the actual story.  The best explanation I have for my lack of interest in the story is this:  The Wicked Witch of the West isn't a character, she's an archetype, and that means she can't have a backstory.  She's not meant to be a person, with a history that lead her to her wickedness.  Nor an alternate point-of-view, showing her wickedness to be a matter of perspective.  The Witch is just Bad.  She's not a person, she's a Function.  The "hook" for Maguire's story is "the real story of the Witch."  But, since I think she can't have a story, the book just doesn't work for me.

Currently, I'm listening to The Black Echo.  This is the first book in a series about an LA detective named Harry Bosch.  I heard of it an aldoblog, which is where I first learned that putting audiobooks on iPods is not only possible, but a really good idea.  Michael Aldrete (the blogger) notes this series as one of his personal favorites.  So far, I'm liking it.  It's a good noirish detective story, with a main character driven to "do the job, regardless of the cost."  The reader is excellent.  Initially, I objected to some of the special effects (e.g., adding an echo to indicate the speaker is on the phone).  But I've come to appreciate them as very effective and only initially obtrusive.  The story's good, the reader's excellent, and I'm looking forward to finishing this story -- and pursuing others in the series.