Sour apples

We have a rather unattractive apple tree in the front yard that’s half dead and was recently the subject of a conversation involving a saw. But one branch is on top of a wire and even though it’s a dead one, I don’t want to bring it down into the yard.

That’s good news for local squirrels. Most every day I spot a squirrel with a green apple in its mouth. I’m guessing it might be a rare source of water during these dry days that go on and on.We keep getting missed. There was very heavy rain Aug. 11 just seven miles east that caused a manure run-off. I heard last night about a pretty good storm in Archbold recently, but the streets were barely wet in Fayette.

There’s still no rain in the forecast over the weekend, so stop by for an apple if you want.

• Here’s how it works: Have you ever heard of David Macaulay’s book called “The New Ways Things Work”? New in this case means 1998 and there are a few now odd items such as a floppy disk, but Kevin Kelly still points to this as a wonderful set of explanations for many common machines. He has excerpts here.

• Our history: John Baez has a rather concise history of the Earth (for Physicists) that discusses some events of which you are not familiar. Some would argue they never existed, but this is very interesting reading. And concise:

The Earth has survived some remarkable disasters. To keep our tale brief, let us focus on four: the Big Splat about 4.55 billion years ago, the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4 billion years ago, the Oxygen Catastrophe roughly 2.5 billion years ago, and the Snowball Earth events about 850 million years ago. The details of these events — and indeed, whether they even happened at all — remain controversial.

• A little more Earth history. Here, in less than 90 seconds, is someone’s conception of 650 million years of tectonic history. Things are always on the move.

• Facebook doesn’t mean a lot to me. If it disappeared, I wouldn’t miss it. But I know there those among us who live their lives on Facebook and would be so very crushed of all was lost. So here’s what you need:

This nifty little Adobe AIR app that lets you back up your Facebook profile, photos and friend information. It makes separate backups every time you run it, so that over time you will be able to see comparative snapshots of your FaceBook activity.

Posted in It's life.