About Oregon Expat
Sometimes the best view is from the outside, and an American expatriate living in Portugal is, in many ways, outside of both nations. The views can be spectacular. I'm also a science nerd, Mac dweeb, and grammar geek, so the posts in this blog tend to be eclectic.
Click the "About" tab if that wasn't quite enough detail.
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Recent Posts
- Gecko tail update
- Nat Geo on the veranda
- Three minutes of art
- Portugal wildfire (we’re okay)
- Alien: Covenant review
- A must read: “My Family’s Slave”
- Curmudgeons
- Dia da Liberdade (Freedom Day)
- Nat Geo moment
- Song of Saturday
- Innovative teachers (subtitle: Ryanair is the Scrooge McDuck of airlines)
- Strange weather
- No good deed goes unpunished
- Raise your hand if you remember the modem dial-up tone
- Rogue One review
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Monthly Archives: February 2010
Chile tsunami
Twenty-four hours after the Chilean earthquake, the resulting tsunami has rolled across the Pacific Ocean to wash up on the shores of Japan and Alaska. It was easily managed nearly everywhere it hit, almost always less than a meter in … Continue reading
Posted in science
4 Comments
Waiting for the tsunami
This morning I woke up to a tsunami warning in my email inbox. The automatic email, generated by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC), informed me that there had been a massive 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Chile less … Continue reading
Posted in science
7 Comments
The old and the new
While taking my daily walk today, I came upon an older Portuguese man standing at the end of a right-of-way, holding an umbrella in one hand and a cane in the other. The right-of-way cuts through an orchard, and is … Continue reading
Posted in Portugal
6 Comments
When the US poisoned its citizens
Deborah Blum has written a fascinating article on a bit of American history that I certainly never learned in school. Did you know that the US government used poison as an enforcement tool during Prohibition? Doctors were accustomed to alcohol … Continue reading
Posted in culture
6 Comments
Saturn V: an oldie but a goodie
Back in the glory days of NASA, when the budget was vast and the race was on to beat the USSR to the moon, US engineers developed the most powerful rocket engine in human history. Fifty years later it is … Continue reading
Posted in science
7 Comments
Mark Twain reviews a romance
In 1908, Mark Twain wrote a letter describing a torrid romance he had just read by a young English author named Elinor Glyn. The idea of women writing such things was practically unheard of then, and Twain was most impressed … Continue reading
Posted in culture
4 Comments
All in the kiss
Is there a point to the classic liplock other than romance or foreplay? According to a 2007 study in Evolutionary Psychology, kissing is actually a sharing of biological data. (Warning: this is more than you may ever want to know … Continue reading
Posted in culture, science
6 Comments
The Mariana Trench to scale
The Mariana Trench is the deepest point in the oceans (that we know of). It’s so deep that the true dimensions of it are hard to grasp, but this visual illustration does a great job of clarifying things, even as … Continue reading
Posted in science
6 Comments
The Olympic story of Petra Majdic
Why this story is not getting more attention, I do not know. It’s got everything sports journalists usually drool over: top ranked athlete, injury, gutsy performance, medal against all odds. But this top ranked athlete is a cross-country skier, which … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, life
9 Comments
Weightlifting ant
Dr. Thomas Endlein of the University of Cambridge scooped first prize in the BBSRC Science Photography competition with this fantastic image of an Asian weaver ant lifting 100 times its own weight — while clinging upside down to a glass … Continue reading
Posted in science
2 Comments
