Ciudad Blanca and the Legend of the Lost City of the Monkey God

In our world of extreme modern innovation– sometimes to the point of destruction of ancient grounds– it’s a beautiful thing to know that there are still lands that are unexplored. Apparently, archaeologists have just discovered one of those places deep in the jungles of Central America, and I can’t wait for more updates about it! It is apparently a world that “resembles a vast tended garden” deep in the heart of the Honduran jungle. It has been sought after for centuries, most famously by Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes, to no avail. The wild tangles are rumored to be the location of a sprawling, mythical lost city in Honduras’ Mosquite region, with an ancient reputation of being filled with riches and gold.

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Rise of the Flat Numbers: Chase Sapphire Preferred and Discover It

I appreciate good design and aesthetic challenges to the common core.  One new trend I’ve noticed in credit card design from some of the bigger, more daring, banks is to eschew using raised account numbers on their credit cards.  My new Chase Sapphire Preferred card is quite beautifully designed in shape and substance, but it is a little less daring than the same card that was issued only a year ago.

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When Religion tries to Become Science, Bad Things Happen

There’s a lot of righteous arguing on The Internets recently concerning the way religion and science are cleverly being mashed up by fanatical Christian fundamentalists to create a whole new anti-science, anti-reality, anti-educational rhetoric that is being fed to our children as something real and true and factual when it is not.  The monsters behind this religious terrorism of the mind are the same evildoers who invented the “Creation Museum” where they argue that people walked the earth with the dinosaurs even though there is a 65 million year gap between the last dinosaur and the first human.

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The Slow, but Triumphant, Return of Sandy Hook, New Jersey

Just in time for the warm weather, I’ve learned some great news from home: Some portions of my beloved Sandy Hook, New Jersey beach and its recreation area will be available to the public again! The tireless rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy has paid off enough to merit a reopening ceremony on May 1st, and although I won’t be present for it, I couldn’t be happier.

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Every Day We Fledge

When Nicola pointed me to Alessondra’s Great Horned Owl Cam a month or so ago, I was hooked.  Every day I would watch the live USTREAM video feed of the mother and father owl feeding and taking care of their two owlets:  Tigris and Teegra.  Every few days it seemed like the owlets grew twice their previous size. It was a magnificent experience watching how Great Horned Owls raise their own.

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Things that Go Bump in the Night in Alcácer do Sal

Today we returned to the house in Alcácer do Sal, time to photograph and measure up rooms ready for advertising the house for sale. I have to say it looks and feels much better in the sunlight.

This must be my fifth or sixth visit to the house, we went up and back in a day today but we have spent one night there in the past. I was reminded of that today as I lay down for a ten minute rest in the heat of the afternoon.

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Aspects of Alentejo: Wine

Alentejo is becoming famous for its wines and rightly so. The North of Portugal, specifically the Douro region, has a long history in wine production.  Alentejo is catching up quickly both in terms of quantity and quality. Wine is Alentejo’s biggest export accounting for nearly 40% of their exports to a wide variety of countries, including Australia, China, Angola and the Americas.

Most of Alentejo’s wine production is centred in the area of Vidigueira to the east of the region in the hot centre of the country although some producers are now expanding to the coastal area where we currently live.

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The Biology of Alzheimer’s and Couch Potato Rat DNA

I am concerned with an ongoing effort in the scientific community to prove, once-and-for all, that some of us are genetically predestined to be lazy.  It seems there are those among us who are natural-born couch potatoes.  If laziness become a medical condition, then I’m sure we’ll soon see a category of disability that will then offer the lazier among us a Federally paid way of life for sitting around all day watching television.

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Why I Only Speak Romanian to My Son

Toward the end of the Passover holiday, I was out at dinner with Chaim and Elizabeth at a friend’s home and was in the middle of telling Chaim that he had to wait only a little bit longer before food would be served, and someone decided that it was the perfect time (mid sentence) to ask me why it was that I chose to speak to Chaim only in Romanian. After I got over the initial shock that he could not seem to wait until I was finished with my sentence (perhaps he thought it was okay to interrupt because he didn’t understand me) I responded, and as I explained it occurred to me that it might be prudent to explain it here as well — for the record.

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How Sugar Fattens Your Liver Just Like Alcohol

Robert Lustig, M.D. is a terrific and insightful doctor who knows, and who has quantitatively proven, what the rest of us refuse to confess:  Sugar is killing us by fattening our livers from the inside.  We all know alcohol is bad for our bodies, and since alcohol is sugar, Dr. Lustig argues in his new book — “Fat Chance” — that the regular sugar we eat in our food can adversely affect our livers because of metabolic disease, just as if we were boozing it up all day long.

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The Bridge Generation Between the Paper Mountain and the Uncanny Valley

As we descend deeper and deeper into The Uncanny Valley, we are left to wonder if we want those built to be like us, to be like us, or if we prefer them to look mechanical so we can more immediately identify not just what, but who, we are interacting with in our intimate lives.

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Bible Thumpers and the Nincompoop Liberal Elite: John 3:16 vs. the Unexamined Life

In America, we have been brewing a Cultural Holy War since 1969 and I have mindfully tried to stick myself, not in the middle of the argument between Conservatives and Liberals, but between the two diametrically opposing ends to shadow the mean sun.  As a child of the Midwest and a University of Nebraska-Lincoln undergraduate, I comprehend the conservative core.  As a graduate of Columbia University in The City of New York, I understand the liberal mentality.  As I have written many times, this Boles Blog is dedicated to preserving common ground where everyone has a safe opportunity to be heard and that we do our best to honor a “liberal mindset with a conservative morality.”

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A Shed Story: 27 into 5 Does Not Go

Notwithstanding all the emotions involved the hardest part of moving several thousands of miles to a new country is what you take with you. Many people who undertake moves of this distance move en-masse as a family, often with the assistance of an outside agency such as work that will ultimately pay for your removals and help you through the last frantic months in one location and assist you at the other end. Large organisations have their own relocation services, either their own in-house or a specialist company contracted to do the same.

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