TimHenderson.net

New Arrival

On March 13, 2007, Karen and I welcomed our first child, Lauren Mai Henderson into the world. You can see more baby pictures here.

Repent, Eco-Sinners!

The indispensable Iowahawk shows you the way.

Africa Pictures

Ok, maybe "Coming Soon" wasn't the best title for my last post. Nevertheless, I'm happy to announce that I've finally put my Africa pictures online.

Coming Soon...

Africa pictures!

Albus Dumbledore: Not Pining for the Fjords?

This guy makes a persuasive case that the fate of Albus Dumbledore in the latest Harry Potter book might not be what it seems.

(SPOILER WARNING: The linked site contains many plot spoilers. If you intend to read the book but haven't yet, don't click through.)

If the title of this post leaves you puzzled, see here.

Back From Hawaii

Karen and I are back from Hawaii. (Actually, we've been back since Sunday night, but I've been busy playing catch-up at work all week.) We spent the entire time on the island of O'ahu. Being the most citified of all the Hawaiian islands, we weren't sure how we'd like it, but I'm happy to report that we had a great time.

Unfortunately, it will be few days before I have time to blog the trip, but in the meantime, here are a couple of pictures.

Karen looks out across eastern O'ahu from the Pali lookout.

View of Waikiki from the top of Diamond Head.

News From the Wild Kingdom

More lions like this, please. Less like this.

For the record, I'm highly skeptical of the Ethiopia story. Since when has being small, frail, and helpless ever induced in lions a desire to be protective? It never worked for any of those baby gazelles on the Discovery Channel. The behavior of the Minnesota lion (and tiger) seems much more typical of big cats.

And how bad a day was that Minnesota kid having? Usually, being mauled by a tiger would be enough to win you bragging rights over just about anybody. But this kid looks up while they're pulling the tiger off him and what does he see? A lion coming in to take its turn! Yikes.

The Deal With Comments

In case anyone is wondering why they have to register with TypeKey in order to post a comment, it's mainly to help prevent comment spam. For those who don't feel like wading through the gory details in the preceding link, comment spam is like email spam, except that the messages are posted to the comment sections of weblogs. When first I converted this site to a weblog format, I allowed unrestricted posting of comments. I wanted to make it as easy as possible for someone who was just wandering through to leave me a note. Within a couple of weeks, however, my blog entries had about 20 "comments" each, every one of which was an advertisement for an online casino. It didn't take long before monitoring and deleting comment spam became a real pain. And that was with only two blog entries! I could see that as the number of entries grew, manual culling of the spam would become impossible. So, I opted for the TypeKey solution. Now you know.

Harvard's Diversity Grovel

Writing in this month's City Journal, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald exposes Harvard's $50 million faculty diversity pledge for the craven appeasement that it is. (Hat tip: Power Line)

Jeff "Skunk" Baxter: Rock Star, Counterterrorism Expert

Are you tired of playing guitar for the likes of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers? Feel like your career as rock star has reached a dead end? Well, why not start a second career in the exciting field of counterterrorism? After all, that's what Jeff "Skunk" Baxter did. (Hat tip: PowerLine)

As much as I love the quirkiness of this story, and as much as I don't want to be a wet blanket, I still have to wonder whether some of Mr. Baxter's boosters aren't motivated more by the PR value of his celebrity status than any insight he has into terrorist tactics. Most of the observations the story credits him with seem stone cold obvious to me. And then there's the complete implausibility of this scenario:

In the late 1990s, Mr. Baxter led a fictional future alliance of Iran and Iraq that was trying to drive the U.S. Navy from the key oil-shipping routes through the Persian Gulf. Facing a massive military imbalance, Mr. Baxter had covert operatives introduce oil-eating bacteria into the Saudi Arabian oil supply that rendered its petroleum shipments worthless. The Navy was forced to pull out after oil-dependent American allies threatened to pull their financial assets out of the U.S.

All I can say is, if I were allowed to pull some Corbomite Maneuver every time I was up against a superior military force, I'd be the most formidable bad guy the Pentagon war gamers have ever seen.

Reunion Pictures

I've posted some pictures from my 20-year high school reunion here. For convenience -- and because I tend to remember them that way -- I refer to women in the photos by their maiden names. Hope that doesn't offend anybody.

If anyone has pictures of their own that they'd like to share, email them to me (tjh at alodar dot com) and I will post them as well.

Welcome, DHS Class of 1984

Hi to all from the Deland High School Class of 1984 who are finding their way here for the first time. I had a great time at the 20-year reunion. It was good to be able to see some of you again, and see how you've changed -- or not. ;-)

As you can see, there's not much here at the moment. I'm in the middle of a major renovation of the site. Hopefully it will lead to a better organized -- and more exstensive -- photo album, plus this web log, which I intend to update at least every couple of days.

At the moment, though, I'm in the middle of remodeling a house, which has to be ready to move into by this Sunday. So, I'm a little pressed for time at the moment, and I have to ask for your patience. Check back in about a week. Hopefully by then things will have settled down, and I will have had time to post some reunion pictures