Category Archives: Scribbles

Monkey In The Middle needs your help

Posted on April 22, 2011 | Comments Off on Monkey In The Middle needs your help

I’ve frequently linked to Katie Norcross’s posts on Israel and other subjects at Monkey In The Middle.

Now she needs some help to keep the blog (and herself) going. I gave something. You should click on this link and consider doing it, too.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Scribbles

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Speed limit 85 mph?

Posted on April 21, 2011 | Comments Off on Speed limit 85 mph?

I like it, even if this is probably only the Texas Legislature’s latest ploy to divert media and public attention from its real biennial business.

Which is, as always, making law for the lobbies that pay the campaign bills and ongoing perks of its members.

Besides, you want to drive fast? Light out on I-10 west of Junction where there is no speed limit. None. I have spun the old speedometer up past one hundred lots of times. And been passed by Corvettes and Porsches.

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Posted in Scribbles, Texana

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The famous basketball player and the rabbi

Posted on April 20, 2011 | Comments Off on The famous basketball player and the rabbi

This is a very cool story, from Ynet, about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor) whose father helped liberate the Buchenwald extermination camp in World War II and personally saved a future prominent rabbi of Israel.

Now, the famous son, a Muslim convert no less, is going to make a movie about his dad and his 761st Tank Battalion’s help at Buchenwald. That should shake up the Holocaust-denying mullahs and jihadis.

Watch your back, Kareem.

Via Elder of Ziyon.

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Posted in Israel, Library, Scribbles, The War

Our drought and brushfires

Posted on April 19, 2011 | Comments Off on Our drought and brushfires

Our heatwave is continuing, fueled by our drought, which the meteorologists say is the third worst October to April dry period since 1856—when the reliable record keeping began.

We’re in the 70s at night and 90s during the day, which is very unusual for April. Reason seems to be that the ground is so dry that, instead of absorbing some of the daily UV,  it’s radiating it back into the atmosphere, heating up the air.

Brush fires are becoming common and high winds are making some of them dangerous. A neighborhood in Southwest Austin lost almost a dozen homes to a brush fire the other day. No fires yet where we live, though we do have some brush (in a dry creekbed) a block or so away.

So I have a garden hose connected out front at the rancho where I usually don’t have one. May, on average, is our wettest month. So maybe….

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Whose side is Obamalot on?

Posted on April 19, 2011 | Comments Off on Whose side is Obamalot on?

“Can anyone detect a pattern here?  Mubarak must go.  Qadaffi must go.  But no diplomatic pressure on Assad, nor, aside from the occasional Obama video, any tough talk to the Iranians.”

Can anyone in Obamalot play this game?

Read it all.

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Posted in Obamalot, Scribbles, The War

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Boost for Knoxville 1863

Posted on April 18, 2011 | Comments Off on Boost for Knoxville 1863

My novel has received a four and three-quarter star boost from Red Adept Reviews, one of the gold standards of Indie book reviewers.

Wrote reviewer Jim Chambers: “I’ve long considered Michael and Jeff Shaara’s Civil War trilogy to be one of the benchmarks for Civil War historical fiction. Knoxville 1863 came very close to that mark.”

The complete review is here.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles

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Khamsin

Posted on April 18, 2011 | Comments Off on Khamsin

Snoopy says the Rehovot area is enduring its first major Khamsin wind of the year.

It’s sunny and a scorching 97 degrees F there at 1 p.m. and forecast to reach 101. Then (“…as it is mysteriously traditional on Passover”) to fall back into the 70s daily tomorrow with overnight lows in the 50s through Friday.

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Posted in Israel, Scribbles, Weather/Climate

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