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Dinosaurs and other extinct saurians: a historical perspective by Richard T. J.Moody, EricBuffetaut, DarrenNaish & Dave M.Martill (editors). Geological Society, Special Publication343, London, 2010. No. of pages: vi+394. List price: UK£ 95‐00. ISBN 978‐1‐86239‐311‐0 (hardback).

‘Yet another book on dinosaurs?’, do I hear people say? Well, my thoughts exactly when I was sent this book for review. But, notwithstanding the fact that there is a lot on dinosaurs, this volume does do the ‘other extinct saurians’ pride and is, in fact, a bit of a mixed bag. The whole tome is full of mouth-watering details and forgotten stories, and makes for a very good read. Some chapters comprise a few pages only, others are much longer (up to almost 30 pages) and lavishly illustrated. As said, non-avian dinosaurs do figure prominently, but even in those chapters there is lots of information to be found for which you would be looking in vain in other works. Avian dinosaurs (birds, for short), pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and other marine reptiles are allowed to put an oar in as well. The main appeal, at least in my opinion, lies in the fact that every chapter is crammed full of detail. Data on the specimens themselves, often illustrated as well, but also on the people that studied, prepared and described them – some very famous, others long forgotten. I must admit that I had never heard of quite a number of those collectors and scholars of extinct saurians of many kinds. What about William Perceval Hunter (mainly Wealden dinosaurs, but he did a fair amount of travelling, too), Giovanni Capellini and Guillermo Schulz, who were instrumental in promoting vertebrate palaeontology in Italy and Spain? Of course, I cannot do justice to all contributions here, which is why I wish to list those that I enjoyed most. The chapter on Alan J. Charig is a prime example of tribute paid by former colleagues and friends, and includes a range of fieldwork snapshots, group pictures and a full list of his scientific papers. Comparable is an extensive paper on the so-called Leeds Collection of marine and terrestrial reptiles from the Oxford Clay Formation; part of the title, ‘Old bones, dry subject’, is particularly aptly chosen. There are numerous, good quality, black and white pictures of bones, with original sketches alongside, and pertinent archive material is also enumerated: it is a genuine treasure trove. The chapter on ‘forgotten women’ heads off with Mary Anning (who else?), but also provides details of the lives of many other women in vertebrate palaeontology, either directly or indirectly (by marriage), including famous modern-day workers such as Joan Wiffen, Betsy Nicholls and Halszka Osmólska, who all sadly died in recent years. As the editors point out in the introductory chapter, British material (e.g., Wealden Group taxa, Yorkshire dinosaur footprints) is central in this tome, but it is good to see that dinosaurs from India (featuring Charles A. Matley) and North Africa are not forgotten. The tale on spinosaurids avant la lettre nicely illustrates how wide ranging the former interpretations of isolated bones actually were. The remaining chapters offer a wide range of subjects, all historical in nature (of course), going from birds (Archaeopteryx; the reptile/bird transition and Thomas Huxley's stance on this), pterosaurs and the iconography of dinosaurs (films, comics and their impact on the public's perception), and back to the theme of sauropod dinosaurs. Five stages have been recognised in the research activities of these colossal animals; a very neat overview indeed, strongly recommended for usage in classroom and lecture theatre alike. In all, printing quality is good, with tight editorial control, but some of the diagrams are simply too small (e.g., fig. 1 on p. 230), while other illustrations (e.g., maps) lose their clarity in black/white (e.g., fig. 1 on p. 190), are too fuzzy or lack focus. But, such are the exceptions and I strongly advise anyone interested in those early days of vertebrate (reptilian) palaeontology to make sure to obtain a copy for themselves. I, for one, was pleased to see that the rendition of the looting of the second mosasaur skull from Maastricht by the French revolutionary armies in 1794 (not 1795) was based on the most recent accounts of this fact.

Halfway House

Halfway House

Sugar Pigs: Children’s Consumption of Confectionery

Sugar Pigs: Children’s Consumption of Confectionery

Dapper Humanism

Dapper Humanism Kevin Prufer (bio) Ooga-Booga. Frederick Seidel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. http://www.fsgbooks.com. 112 pages; cloth, $24.00; paper, $13.00. A recent, rapturous New York Magazine article (December 11, 2006) profiles the "hopelessly rich" Frederick Seidel thusly: The man is sumptuous. He hangs on the edge of a red-leather banquette behind his regular corner table at Cafe Luxembourg, cradling a second espresso, and his ash-colored suit—made to measure by Richard Anderson of 13 Savile Row—fits so perfectly that it looks like it was dusted onto his slender frame with a box of confectioners' sugar. Reading Ooga-Booga, I imagine him meditating on his cuticles, his mortality, or the cut of another man's coat, a thin-lipped smile—is it benevolence or disapproval?—and want badly to dislike him. After all, the Seidel of these poems exudes a kind of opulence and dissolution that is distinctly fall-of-Rome: loathsome, fascinating, self-satisfied, and very, very sparkly. But the truth is that, at his best, the generally awful-minded Seidel is also an insightful, technically superb, and often deeply humane poet, able to conflate the luxuries I imagine decorate his life with searing, social commentary or acute introspection. In "On Being Debonair," for instance, Seidel tells us, It is a joy to sit aloneWithout a book.I use myself up being fine while I dine.I am a result of the concierge at the Carlyle.I order a bottle of Bordeaux.I am a boulevard of eleganceIn my well-known restaurants. Lest we become too comfortable with the wine and the Carlyle and all that, however, the speaker's mind drifts first to Iraq, where "[t]he desert this time of year / Is troops in desert camouflage. / I dine with my Carlyle smile," then to an unnamed woman, who tries to soothe him. It is here, when we expect a return to opulence and comfort, that Seidel offers us something richer and more interesting. "I will cut your heart out," he writes, And drink the rubies and eat the coral.I like the female for its coral.I go to Carnegie HallTo make her open her mouth onstage and scream. Ooga-Booga is, in fact, punctuated by such screams, moments of rage, and fear rising from beneath the brocade of these poems. Where we don't expect it, the specter of battle in Iraq, of senseless military brutality, rises ("Winter, Spring, Baghdad, Fall," he interjects in one poem), then dissipates. In one of the best poems in the collection, "The Bush Administration," Seidel drifts from one surreal, terrifying moment to another, coming closest to clear [End Page 14] editorial when he writes, The United States of America preemptively eats the world.The doctrine of eat lest you be eatenIs famished, roarsAnd tears the heads off before its own is sawed off. Elsewhere, Seidel meditates on sex and, frequently simultaneously, his own impending death. In one poem, the poet's mortality appears personified as a kind of twisted Fred Astaire, "Dapper in hats, / Dapper in spats, / Espousing white tie and tails or a tailcoat and striped trousers." Elsewhere, observing an attractive, much younger woman, he writes, "We kiss. / It's almost incest when it gets to this." Or, in a perverse sonnet that begins "A naked woman my age is a total nightmare," he tells us: I hate the old couples on their walkers givingOff odors of love, and in City Diner eating a rayOf hope, and then paying and trembling back out on Broadway, Drumming and dancing, chanting something nearly unbearable,Spreading their wings in order to be more beautiful and more terrible. At its strongest, there's something spookily reminiscent of the very best of Stevie Smith in Seidel's frequently arrhythmic poetry—a deceptively conversational tone, always hinting at the profundity and the void, while maintaining a surprisingly musical surface. These poems trip along in a faux-naive, delightfully colloquial mode, managing, generally, to twist themselves into disturbing little rhymes at the ends of lines. Listening to the poems, one can't know where the rhymes will fall—the lines vary in...

All Her Breath Is Gone, and: Blue Cabin

All Her Breath Is Gone, and: Blue Cabin Carrie Ojanen (bio) All Her Breath Is Gone the gnats swarm around the hood pulled tight around my glasses, the blueberries begin to droop on their branches, the leaves to cling to my fingers, the red leaves to my fingers, the red leaves in the white bucket, some berries taste sour to my tongue. the gnats bite my upper lip, but the water on my hands keeps them away from the blue veins and raw red knuckles. how quiet it is, how still, after the retired men drive by, hunting from their old blue trucks. all her breath is gone from the curve of the bone white lichen antlers to the withered willow leaves, but we all cling to the land and we say our prayers to the red salmon, scales breaking against the net, please don’t take the long drink on top of that hill, the gray hill there, to the left of the park sign, [End Page 127] rocks are pressed down by some historic weight (now dissipate), crushed together, like tiles, herringbone patterned. I want to say that weight is still felt. Blue Cabin The driftwood rack hangs barren, the fish do not hang in long, low rows impossible to walk beneath without brushing the orange flesh, translucent as cut glass and dripping amber oil. The blue cabin is quiet, the swan wing broom and the sand still on the linoleum floor. Inside, flies bounce on the windows with no one to let them out. Outdoors, the flies do not buzz close to the fish rack, their maggot hatchery, though there is no wind to keep them away from fish, there are no fish this year. Auka, I’m sorry I’m away at school, while you grow old, trapped in a small house fifty miles from camp, in a town without fish racks, sitting beside Aupa in the kitchen eating last year’s fish, half-dried and boiled. I should be home, watching you cut fish, ulu in hand at the cutting table, [End Page 128] stained with black blood and slippery. I should be trying to cut fish heads off. The ulu unmanageable in my inexperienced hand would slide back and forth as I tried to find the place between the gills and body, to bear down upon the spine. It’s hard to crack it, and the bloodline bisected would gush over me, as it did the one day we stood there, my mother, her sister, you and I. You laughed, we all laughed as the black blood slid down my pink windbreaker. With the ulu I traced the backbone: horizontal jagged cuts yanked meat from bones. Ragged and mashed fillets, laughter and stories from mother of mangled fillets while you laughed without stories as you found the place between the gills and the body. As you broke the spine, the blood did not flow over you. As you unzipped from white bones the orange flesh, it landed heavily in your hand. Auka, I write the same thing, over and over. [End Page 129] Carrie Ojanen Carrie Ojanen’s poetry is largely influenced by the landscape of her childhood home of Nome, Alaska. She is currently pursuing an mfa in poetry at the University of Montana. Copyright © 2009 University of Nebraska Press

Talin heads off

Talin heads off

Sequoia Gardens

Sequoia Gardens Ernest J. Finney (bio) California From the back window of the van it was a world made out of cement, a tangle of freeways streaming with cars, of aqueductlike overpasses. Once you merged it was like you were propelled along in your slot amid the other vehicles by some mastermind computer. Everyone gaped from the tinted windows when Arturo said, "This is LA," though nothing looked very different from before. There were twelve of them plus the driver; no one spoke, they just looked. When he heard the sirens the driver jumped. The sound got louder, and then there were flashing lights. "Fire trucks," Arturo said. "Something is always burning in LA." But it was police cars, one two three four five, passing them in the fast lane as they and all the other cars slowed and moved to the right. Was he going to end up in the back of one of those cars, handcuffed, bleeding from a gunshot wound? "Don't worry," Arturo said as if he could read Raul's mind. "I've got your ids: born in the Golden State, all of you. You haven't committed a crime. Yet." He and the driver started laughing their heads off. At sundown they started climbing: the city lights ended and the freeways faded into black except for the taillight streams of red veering off and the white cones of light ahead from the van. They still watched. A week ago he'd been working in his uncle's appliance store in Mazatlán—it was something to do before he started hotel school in Mexico City in the fall—when opportunity knocked. That was his mother's favorite expression. It had knocked when she'd signed up for cosmetology school and again when she'd applied to work at the hotel in Acapulco. But the sound could be false, they both knew that: there had been a very loud knock when she'd met his father, then the assistant night manager at the hotel. He had [End Page 1] always wondered if you'd actually know the critical moment when opportunity knocked. What if you failed to heed it? His mother had a first-row seat as manager of the hotel salon and kept a minute-by-minute record of who got ahead. Every night she came home with more information. It was the maître d' in the restaurant who made the most money, more than the concierge. But it was the manager who met all the most important people. The chef got a write-up in an international newspaper. The couple who had the jewelry-store concession netted a hundred thousand dollars one quarter. He was nine when he began working after school in the hotel kitchen on cleanup. He saw for himself how the El Conquistador operated. It took him until he was eleven, the same year he'd joined the recreation director's Boy Scout troop, to decide for sure what direction he wanted to go. He would aim for the top, hotel manager. No one got yelled at or worked up a sweat in the manager's office. He'd taken all three English courses offered at his school because of that, and also because he liked British movies. He was going to learn Japanese, too; they were the world's most dedicated travelers. When he got tall enough he moved from the kitchen to outside maintenance and then to housekeeping, which was more efficient than maintenance and the reason for the 405-room hotel's 93 percent occupancy rate, according to his mother. At fifteen he became a bellhop, which meant big tips. His mother's younger brother, Jorge, had worked in maintenance at the hotel too, but later went north and opened an appliance store in Mazatlán. After school ended in May every year he took the bus to Mazatlán and stayed with his uncle's family for the summer. He knew his uncle felt it his duty to make a man of him because he had no father—and because his mother was his mother, a strong woman, as Jorge said. He enjoyed being...

What Was Found

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Leaving aside what was lost, for the moment, here is what was found: In the top drawer of the dresser in Ms. Maddie's bedroom: a cardboard box filled with baby teeth tucked into tissue-lined compartments. In two inches of caked oil covering her carpeted living room floor: a dozen tiny elephants, beaded, ceramic, Chinese porcelain, dusty terra cotta or shimmering eggplant and marigold. In her Chalmette house: space and light. The place looks so much bigger than it ever did. She is standing by the kitchen sink washing the dishes, watching the kids play in the street outside, hearing the blare of the television in the den, the clatter of videotapes tossed aside. Her grandson comes to the threshold and there is his grandmother, alone in the hollow plywood skeleton. He runs back to the street crying. could tell about what was lost. About streets flanked by piles of debris five feet high, houses in the middle of streets, orphaned concrete steps, cars overturned or in trees, block after block after block after block after block after block after block. could tell what was lost and we could speak to each other with great sincerity; we could care deeply. is war in Iraq and Afghanistan, poisoned drinking water in China, genocide in Sudan, guerilla raids in Guatemala, the body of a dead teenager dumped across the river from a New York City nightclub and now Ms. Maddie's no-longer house outside New Orleans. So we could care deeply about everything, but in the end it would only be a list. We wouldn't give a shit about anything. So leaving aside what was lost, for the moment, here is what was found. are mornings in New Orleans when wake up and there isn't any milk in the apartment, but ManChu, the corner store on North Claiborne and Esplanade, will be open. Inside there will be Chinese food, oyster po' boys, beer, liquor, orange drink, milk, yes, and two dozen people just standing around. It is cool inside, already hot enough outside to boil the skin off your back, and no one is buying anything. is a crowd of kids kicking a seven-year-old sissy mufucker fallen in a clenched curl in the corner near the cereal, but no one has the energy to tell them to stop, much less leave and walk home in this kind of heat. There is a house a couple blocks towards the river, baby, that way, yeah. You might not see us, but we're around back. My cousin picked up the crawfish and all that this morning. You ain't never ate a turkey neck? Well, shit, ain't today your lucky day. Stand at a newspaper-wrapped table in the backyard, watch the kids in the pool shoot their squirt guns over the fence. The man next door yells that he is to kill little shits if don't stop splashing him. You never know, that man just might be cuckoo crazy. I told boys to stop, dammit, and ain't going to tell again. One last feeble squirt that doesn't reach the fence, but that's not the point. Just remember you ain't the boss of me; ain't even scared me none. Don't ever try to out-crazy a twelve-year-old boy. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Big basket of crawfish dumped on the table, scooped onto saucer plates like hubcaps. Rip the heads off, suck the brains, suck the tails. Let the sweat drip down your face, the little drops of blood escape from the tiny finger cuts made by shells, the spices sting your wounds. And baby, eat, eat. are afternoons in New Orleans when go downriver to Bywater, to the warehouse, down there along the canal by the railroad tracks, just before the Claiborne Avenue Bridge. Danger Keep out! No trespassing. Not a soul in sight. Hop the fence, there go, make it quick. Walk into the warehouse with the rusting metal siding missing in places, no good foundation holes in the roof, and if a train rolls by and dares to rumble the whole crooked thing might fall. There's the end of you; they won't even find for months, and there you'll wait in this city where they bury their dead and their Mardi Gras floats above ground. …

Acceptance of the Mineralogical Society of America Roebling Medal for 2007

Thank you, Jerry and Mike, for your generous remarks and for nominating me for this prestigious award. I also wish to thank the 2007 Roebling Medal Committee for selecting me. Jerry and Mike, I am happy to count you among my close friends, both personal and professional. I also want to thank you for organizing the incredible symposium in my honor yesterday (October 29, 2007). The 31 talks presented an exciting retrospective and prospective of many areas of the mineral sciences and made a remarkably positive statement about the health of this field in its broadest definition. What a stroke of luck it was for me to choose to attend Penn State for graduate study in 1965 rather than go to graduate school in inorganic chemistry at the University of North Carolina with Jim Collman, who is now a colleague of mine at Stanford. I also made the correct decision to accompany you, Jerry, from Penn State to Virginia Tech in 1966. I have fond memories of the two of us discussing linear algebra and matrix theory at your home in State College, Pennsylvania, walking to get a milkshake at the local drugstore or a salad at The Greeks in Blacksburg, Virginia, laughing our heads off at the 1967 George C. Scott film The Flim-Flam Man at the only movie theater in Blacksburg at that time, and taking your graduate classes, which were models of clarity and the best classes I ever had. Mike, I remember meeting you for the first time when you came to visit me in the summer of 1976 and we collaborated on the high-temperature crystal structure and thermal expansion of cordierite, and the way you responded to the nickname “Rookie” from my more senior graduate students at Stanford when you joined my research group for …

Biting the heads off jelly babies to relieve tension – whatever next?

It came as no surprise to read that the initiative to stop nurses ‘bad mouthing’ the NHS is being led by Clare Chapman, director general of workforce at the Department of Health (news November 21).

Laughing Our Heads Off: When Metaphor Constrains Aspect

n/a

Blue (review)

Reviewed by: Blue Karen Coats Hostetter, Joyce Moyer Blue. Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills, 2006 [200p] ISBN 1-59078-389-1$16.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5-8 In January of 1944, thirteen-year-old Ann Fay says goodbye to her father as he heads off to fight Hitler, and she puts on the blue overalls that will make her the man of the house in his absence. With help from a neighbor boy, she plows, sets, and tends the family's huge vegetable garden, battles the encroaching wisteria that threatens to take over their property, and takes care of her younger siblings. They all miss their father dreadfully, but their real tragedy begins when four-year-old Bobby is stricken with polio. Ann Fay does her best to hold things together while her mother stays with Bobby at the polio hospital in Hickory, North Carolina, known as the "Miracle of Hickory." Bobby dies, but the epidemic isn't done with their family, and Ann Fay finds herself side by side in the contagious ward with a black girl. They become fast friends, helping each other through the uncomfortable Kenny treatments and physical therapy until they are separated, under much protest, into the segregated convalescent wards. Between Daddy's absence, Bobby's death (and the death from grief of his faithful dog, Polio Pete), and Ann Fay's difficult recovery, this is three-hankie historical fiction about a truly grim time in American history, but Hostetter manages to avoid too much sentiment by focusing on Ann Fay's determination and common sense in the face of hard times. Readers in this iconoclastic age will be struck by the admiration and esteem people, especially fellow polio victims, felt for Roosevelt, as well as the spirit of volunteerism that characterized the response to the domestic epidemic in the midst of war. An informative author's note and extensive bibliography are included. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Moxifloxacin heads off levofloxacin in geriatric CAP

Moxifloxacin heads off levofloxacin in geriatric CAP

Topiramate heads off migraine at reasonable cost

Topiramate heads off migraine at reasonable cost

Topiramate heads off migraine at reasonable cost

Topiramate heads off migraine at reasonable cost

Atomic model of a myosin filament in the relaxed state

Contraction of muscle involves the cyclic interaction of myosin heads on the thick filaments with actin subunits in the thin filaments. Muscles relax when this interaction is blocked by molecular switches on either or both filaments. Insight into the relaxed (switched OFF) structure of myosin has come from electron microscopic studies of smooth muscle myosin molecules, which are regulated by phosphorylation. These studies suggest that the OFF state is achieved by an asymmetric, intramolecular interaction between the actin-binding region of one head and the converter region of the other, switching both heads off. Although this is a plausible model for relaxation based on isolated myosin molecules, it does not reveal whether this structure is present in native myosin filaments. Here we analyse the structure of a phosphorylation-regulated striated muscle thick filament using cryo-electron microscopy. Three-dimensional reconstruction and atomic fitting studies suggest that the 'interacting-head' structure is also present in the filament, and that it may underlie the relaxed state of thick filaments in both smooth and myosin-regulated striated muscles over a wide range of species.

Laughing their Heads off: Nineteenth–century Comic Versions of the Bluebeard Tale

The Blaubartmärchen rewards study because it encodes key notions about gender, order, and the nature of fairy tale. In contrast to comic French and English traditions, the canonical German Blaubartmärchen is serious and tragic. However, a rich, forgotten nineteenth–century tradition of popular German Bluebeard comedies exists.Franz von Pocci’s Kasperliade (1859) seems to promote conservative authority structures but subtextually evokes carnivalesque subversion. Alexander von Sternberg’s Märchen (1850) involves transgressive gender roles, indeed an (albeit very limited) deconstruction of gender, before resorting to defensive reinscription of conservative gender roles. F.W. Hackländer’s realist novella (1863) seems to lack subversive moments in its denial that Bluebeard is evil, but a closer reading shows up its uneasy moments; and Roderich Benedix’s play (1861) is unique in challenging the Märchen plot and established gender roles.Laughter here restores order and ridicules characters who transgress; but it is also used in complex ways as an inoculation against fear. Despite seeming to share cultural and political values with texts in the canon, these comedies are nonetheless excluded because they deviate formally from the Grimmian Märchen and question the canonical view that Märchen must be ancient and serious. Given that these texts were more popular than the Grimms’, a review of notions of the Märchen, folk and popular culture is required. Some of the texts also undermine canonical values in dangerous ways by using laughter to rob Bluebeard of his terror and power.

The Mackerel Skies, the Salmon-Crowded Seas

The Mackerel Skies, the Salmon-Crowded Seas William Greenway I've always wanted to catch a fish in Britain. Not necessarily one of those huge trout they always catch in movies in Scodand whüe wearing a tweed cap and waders, just a fish. Fish are not very far from sight since every vülage and High Street has its own fish store, the windows fuU ofwhite metal trays on snow holding cockles—soft, wet tiger claws of translucent pearl, orange rooted—red smoky kippers, shiny as sheUacked boards, bones woodburned black, Uke fern shadows, fossüs. In another tray wül be a chevron of rainbow trout, sulking. Through the ice between the trays twine conger eels thick as fire hoses. We've never quite understood how fish get into the stores, because for aU the time we've spent on the harbors of the coast, the only boats we've seen are wrecked, sticking out ofthe sand like sugar scoops, or decorative, brightly painted and covered in nets, full of lobster traps, lying on picturesque shingle beaches, puUed up next to thatched cottages. Their names seem either ironic—Uke Success, Victory, Providence, Industry, Diligence, Perseverance, or appropriate , like Blind Fortune, Happy Return, or Marie Antoinette. Only twice have my wife and I seen anybody come in with any fish. In CornwaU we saw them unload some skate onto the stone cob of the harbor , their white undersides like clown faces with the giUs like sad, downturned eyes. On the docks in Portree, Isle ofSkye, we finaUy caught a fuU fishing boat. GuUs swirled, watching the men as they worked on a board cleaning their catch, hovered, eyeing particular bits, tiU the yeUow mackintoshed, watchcapped fishermen raised one end oftheir board and slid the remains offinto the bay, the way a body is buried. When we asked them questions, they wouldn't answer direcdy "What have you caught?" we asked, and they just looked quickly, shyly at us and smüed. But when we asked, "Are those prawns?" they said "Oh, aye."To everything we asked they'd say "Oh, aye," 79 80Fourth Genre never stopping tearing heads off, separating into buckets. A local restaurant owner came out of his shop on the dock and bought the prawns, and for the next week we saw prawn salad advertised on his chalk board, a direct lesson in simple economy. Although I have always been a salt-water fisherman, what I had seen of salt-water fishing in Britain hadn't been encouraging. Someone once said you're never more than forty mues from the coast in Britain, so I guess it's not unusual to have so many kinds of fishing cheek by jowl. On the pier along the coast, they fish with huge rods they cast with both hands, flipping the heavy weights a country mile. The weights sit on the bottom whüe the treble hook, a mass of bloodworms, catches the dab, sole, flounder, cod, whatever. There's a little beU on the rod tip to teU them when they have a bite. The wind seems to be blowing every day, and they huddle in oüskins waiting for a bite. I never saw anyone catch anything, though the chalk boards at the entrances to the piers always listed as the catch of the month something I never recognized, Uke a five pound cocUing, which must be a cross between a ling and a cod. The fish they catch in these northern waters seem strange to me, more prehistoric than the fish of the Gulf of Mexico where I have always fished. No swordfish, pompano, tuna, or red snapper for them; the salt-water fishermen hold up for the camera things coelacanthine , pelagic, bony, Uke shark, skate, tope, plaice, dab, and sole, their eyes goggled or on one side of their body, ice-water fish. Scottish salmon or Welsh sewin (sea trout) aside, they seem aU bones and scales, and when I eat them I feel Uke I'm grappUng with them—they don't go down smoothly like the sauced seafood of New Orleans. So I was after freshwater fishing in the beautiful ponds, lakes, and...

The Postmodern Story

‘And how should I begin?’ Naturally, or post-naturally enough, at the end. We have been hearing for some time recently of the end of things and this paradoxically, is where we must start. Book titles have warned us of the End of the Nation and Nation State, the End of Print, the End of Architecture, The End of Work, the End of Man, the End of Economic Man, the End of Time, the End of the Future, the End of History and yes, the End of the World. It doesn’t take a salaried cultural critic to see here the symptom of an encroaching mood, the expression on the part of marooned journalists and intellectuals of what Raymond Williams termed a ‘structure of feeling’. It expresses not so much conviction – though these scenarios of the end could not in one way be more final – as the waning of common beliefs and values. Hence the appearance world-wide of millennial sects, outcrops of New Age mysticism, the thrill of out of body experiences and the paranormal; even if, thanks to postmodernism, these tend to be more normal than para, and to come at you via the X Files or the Virgin multiplex than anywhere more distant. New media combine oddly with the new mysticism, advanced technologies with advancing teleologies. This is the way then that we are seeing in the fin de siècle, the beckoning end of century when Bakhtinian carnival will at last take to the streets, fleeing its confinement in works of cultural theory, and we shall all go belly up and dance our heads off. Or when half the world will fall into poverty, disease, and starvation and the other half wear itself out in vainglorious in-fighting, leaving a sybaritic residue to enter upon a computer-aided decadence of virtual existence. Or when we shall go up in smoke in a bang and whimper all at once.

Lobbying in US Senate heads off restrictions on foreign researchers

Lobbying in US Senate heads off restrictions on foreign researchers