Newfound Gap Overlook Newfound Gap Overlook, up in the high Smokies, looks down onto both the Tennessee and Carolina sides of the mountains. From the Overlook one can see, if not forever, and if only rarely as far as the hundred-plus miles' vista of 250 years ago, still about as far as a body's soul needs to see. (Check out the National Park Service's WebCam view from Look Rock, updated every fifteen minutes!) Through the Gap one could make a relatively easy descent to wherever one was going...

We're all in this together: Haiti needs our help.
Donate for Haiti relief. There are plenty of good choices. Here are a few:

• the American Red Cross
• Doctors Without Borders
• the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
• Oxfam
• National Nurses United

or pick your own at the Network for Good.

This site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

To the Firefighters, Emergency Medical Technicians, and Police Officers
of New York City:
May whatever Powers you believe in hold you safe in Their care
as we will hold you in our hearts always

---

A man describing making his way down the stairs from the 67th floor of the North Tower:
"And then when we got to around the 35th floor we had to move over for the firefighters. I mean, we were all trying to get out, and here they came, up into the building."
Visit Up Into The Bulding My Tribute to the FDNY & NYPD in the original Greenbelt.

A Carnival is a bi- or tri-weekly showcase of good weblog writing. Every other week, one website highlights a collection of interesting weblog articles in one convenient place, making it easy for everyone to find the good stuff - these links take you to the home page where you can find current and past Carnivals.
So check out The Boneyard for paleoanthropology blogging; The Tangled Bank for natural science; The Carnival of the Godless for atheist, agnostic, and freethinkers; the Carnival of Maryland, for bloggers in the Old Line State; The Carnival of the Liberals, The Skeptics' Circle, The History Carnival, and The Humanist Symposium all for what they sound like; and I and the Bird, for birders of all experience and interest levels.

Emory Valley's Center for Evolutionary Studies - my battlement-manning in one of this age's most important battles - updated 9 April. Articles include one by Richard Dawkins and one by Isaac Asimov, an interview with Dawkins from Slate, an article by Daniel Dennet about the missing science in ID, and a nice editorial from the Washington Post on Bush's leap into the middle of the so-called controversy. There are also a few things about the Dover trial. The Center's just getting started but there are links to other sites, textbook stickers, some thoughts on real science vs. pseudo-science (including creationism), and a bit on what it means that evolution is "just a theory instead of a Law". And just added, Tiktaalik, the new transitional fossil and, brand new, notjustatheory.com - a site dedicated to the proposition that "Evolution is not just a theory, it's triumphantly a theory!"

Examples of 'they' used non-specifically from writers over the centuries added to the Forum. And a final (hopefully) note added quoting Geoff Pullum, 5 Jan ("...This use of they isn't ungrammatical, it isn't a mistake, it's a feature of ordinary English syntax that for some reason attracts the ire of ... pontificators..."). Also, a new wordsmithing example and another example of misuse of hyphens added to the Pellissippi Parkway, 22 Apr.

Emory Valley's Agnostic Chapel, part of the Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic, updated 1 Jan with Richard Dawkins' "Inferior Design", and Quotes. And check the blog for recent thoughts.

Emory Valley's Center for Magic and Math updated 7 December with the I'll Guess Your Number trick.

Bear Creek Road high-intensity projects: Keeping the Dream, my response to the Columbia disaster, with updates for ISS Exp 16, who are there now (Nov 2007), with first female commander Peggy Whitson, veteran Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Malaysian astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar, and Clayton Anderson staying over from ISS Exp 15.

The Greenbelt is now a blog. Check here for what was on the Amazing Newstand, the Bush & DoJ page, and the Liberal Trails. There will also be language, evolution, and freethought there, too.

Great Quotes updated 1 March

T-Rex discovers words that are their own opposites - and you can too.

Lord of the Rings various things, some funny, some admiring, some beautiful (ah, the Elf....) - and a bit on the extended DVD of the films

Mark Twain's Anti-Imperialism still ringing true after a hundred years

LBJ and Civil Rights - an addendum from an article by Bishop Spong

Fan fiction: A Night at the Opera and Secrets, posted 21 April, and When We Meet Again, posted 29 April. I've been remiss lately about writing, but I'm back. Really, this time.

Sports Night A page for my teams... updated fairly regularly for the Lady Vols (National Champs again!! Woot-woot!) and the summer teams: Mystics, Braves, Orioles, Smokies, and Alouettes

Language Forum Quick Quiz - can you spot what's wrong? old quiz answered and new quiz posted: 3 January

Rules of Grammar added to the Pellissippi Parkway - Case in English, part one: Objects, and Objects in passive voice. Also, What follows "wish" in English?

Poem of the Month A new poem every month! [updated for March]

New links added to Key Springs Road 3 August take a ride on the unpaved side...

new music recommendations - Great American Songbook and Dial-a-Song new book recommendations - Donna Leon, Henkell Manning, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea new video recommendations - Slings & Arrows, Primeval, Life on Mars, and Bender's Big Score

A Sad Day--End of an Era Mir goes down: "Most significantly, from September 1989 to August 1999, the station was continuously occupied. "[For 10 years] you had a human in space anytime you looked up into the sky," Siddiqi says. Mir, he adds, "was the first steppingstone toward the human migration off the planet." And eventually, Mir's legacy will stretch far beyond Earth orbit. "Astronauts voyaging to Mars won't be able to come home when things go wrong. They will have to respond to crises the way their Mir predecessors did when, faced with life-threatening emergencies, they did not abandon their ship or their mission."

Comments on my site are welcome. E-mail me at kmdavisus AT yahoo DOT com (sorry to make you type it in, but the spam was increasingly annoying).
This site is added to all the time; the last update was on 14 March 2010 .

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