53 Brentwood Blog

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Bill Cutillo Memorial Golf Tournament

You have until June 1st to get your money in, sorry didn't get the paperwork til very late.

This is the 10th anniversary, I still remember getting that call and having Maiko drop me off at South Station for the train ride that would not get me home in time to say goodbye.

Bill Cutillo Golf Tournament

Sunday, May 20, 2007

America out of America's Cup

Lost to Italy.

Italy for Christ's sake. 5-1.

I am speachless.

Italy.

Friday, May 04, 2007

More Bushisms!

Man, when he'll be gone, I'll miss this president so much ....

- That Ohio appearance generated so many new Bushisms that it's hard to know where to begin. Asked about the polls showing the unpopularity of the war and his own low approval rating, Bush said, "I've been in politics long enough to know that polls just go poof at times." Asked about immigration, Bush said, "There are jobs Americans aren't doing. . . . If you've got a chicken factory, a chicken-plucking factory or whatever you call them, you know what I'm talking about."

... the president elaborated: "Either we'll succeed or we won't succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve."


By Eugene RobinsonFriday, May 4, 2007;
washingtonpost.com

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Lonesome George

George, who has stubbornly refused to mate with the female tortoises from a related subspecies placed in his pen, has been considered the last of his kind since his discovery in 1971.

His wrinkled face became a symbol of how human activity leads to extinction, and the meter-wide, 88-kilo tortoise has long held the Guinness Book of World Records title of "rarest living creature."

Three of the 14 species of Galapagos tortoises - which helped Charles Darwin develop the theory of natural selection - have become extinct because of hunting and competition for food from goats introduced in the 1950's.

The loss of George - the first tortoise found on the island of Pinta since 1906 - would have brought that number to four.

"Even after 35 years, Lonesome George seems uninterested in passing on his unique genes and has failed to produce offspring," said lead author Michael Russello of the University of British Columbia Okanagan who began working with the tortoises as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale.
"The continuing saga surrounding the search for a mate has positioned Lonesome George as a potent conservation icon, not just for Galapagos, but worldwide."

Researchers now hope that another tortoise from George's subspecies - Geochelone abingdoni - may be living the neighboring Galapagos island of Isabela.
A multinational team headed by researchers at Yale has identified a tortoise which has half his genes in common with George and is "clearly a first generation hybrid between the native tortoises from the islands of Isabela and Pinta."
They hope that with further testing they will be able to find a genetically pure Pinta tortoise among the 2,000 tortoises living on Isabela and start a breeding program.
"These findings offer the potential for transforming the legacy of Lonesome George from an enduring symbol or rarity to a conservation success story," said Yale biologist Jeffrey Powell.
It will take a team of about 20 people around two months to do an exhaustive sampling and transmitter-tagging of the tortoises on the volcano and then to find the potential Pinta tortoises and bring them in captivity.
The study was published in the May 1 edition of Current Biology.
Tue May 1, 3:09 PM ET