Water controversies on the Yampa make it to NPR. I just took the Mr. Tierney quoted in the story down the river last week. There's much that I could write on the subject given time, but it will have to wait at least until I'm done running the Selway. For better visual aids to Dinosaur's river than NPR provides, click here.

Having failed miserably to supply content in Peculiar's absence, I shall send at least one charming discover our readers' way: Anne Carson's An Oresteia. Aeschylus' Oresteia is the only complete trilogy of plays we have from the Greeks, and so it takes a certain amount of sand to translate only his Agamemnon, and follow it up with Sophocles' Elektra and Euripedes' Orestes. She really only hits her stride with Sophocles, but all three plays are solidly done, and all have moments of brilliance. Her Cassandra I found moving; and the end of it all, Euripedes' mad tragi-comic wrap of an impossible mess, was perfectly toned.

She does tend towards simplicity in language, even when the original is deliberately vague. But this is less a fault if we imagine her plays performed--and they are clearly written with that in mind. For sheer dramatic potential, I'll take her translation over any other I've encountered.

Brandon is right.

Any version of the conflict thesis that is seriously put forward will have to deal with this fact, that virtually every major historical advance in the field has shown itself problematic for the conflict thesis: this or that particular religious doctrine understood this or that particular way may conflict with this or that particular scientific conclusion at this or that particular stage of scientific inquiry, but the historical evidence that one proves to be a serious obstacle to the other has steadily grown weaker over time. The evidence suggests the rather weaker conclusion that people can force a conflict when they want to, and here and there can back themselves into corners they can't see a way out of, but that's the whole of the conflict. There is no monolith Religion opposed to a monolith Science, however much we may reify them.

I also want to point out one of the most pleasing mixed metaphors I've encountered: "...as if we had magically hit on the natural classification, and carved nature perfectly at the joints, our first time at bat". There's a sport for me--Butcherball.

Double-nosed Andean tiger hounds. Photo here.

Via the fascinating Percy Fawcett, via Chas.