The Wandering Minstrel

I’m still having a vacation hangover, so I gotta show you some stuff I learned while traveling through the Indian Lands of Arizona and Utah. I learned that there are basically two kinds of rock art found in the Southwest: pictographs and petroglyphs. Pictographs are made from a variety of substances painted onto the rocks - they listed urine and blood among the substances the natives painted - weird, but whatever. Petroglyphs are etchings scratched or pounded into the patina deposited on the rocks.

In the Flash® animation above, you will notice a pictograph of the sun and a prominence. It fades into a petroglyph with images of animals, natives, stars, tools and an early cartoon of Bart Simpson in the lower right corner. Finally, the images will alternate until you put your mouse cursor over them, when you will see an amazing combination of both techniques that we discovered in Washington, UT. There is conjecture that this interesting combination may not have come from the early natives, but I’ll let you decide on that.

Last week, I visited the Kingman Powerhouse, a visitor center (tourist trap, actually) and museum. I especially liked this neon sign hanging over the entrance to the museum.

There is also a model railroad that circles the main room and has loops at either end of the run to send it back in the opposite direction. A portion of the tracks goes outside of the building for a short run just over the main entrance. I’ll dig up a photo if I can find one.

You can click on the image above for a larger view.

Bolts speaks his mind about Obama’s views on international politics.

What is implicit in Obama’s reference to “tiny” threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: “And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah.”

This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran’s own perceived ambitions and interests. That would be news to the mullahs in Tehran, not to mention the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world’s ills.

Fear the ’stache . . .

Thanks to Ace and Slublog.

Hedley Lamarr, aka Harvey Korman passed from among us today.

We all fondly remember Blazing Saddles, I’m sure . . .

“My mind is aglow with whirling transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor. My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thoughts cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.”

– Hedley Lamarr

“Golly, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue purdier than a two-dollar whore!”

– Taggart

We will miss you Harvey. Now go do that voodoo that you do so well.

Strange - I do NOT remember these guys having a factory in China.

Lesson learned - read the fine print.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Evel Knievel, the red white and blue spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, the Caesar’s Palace Fountain, live sharks and Idaho’s Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

The pain is now gone, buddy - see ya on down the road.