Saturday, December 1, 2007
< previous day | archives | next day >
Today I decided I was in major need of a quiet few hours in a bookstore. So far on this trip I have not noticed a single significant bookstore in passing and thought I'd Google Barnes & Noble and see if there was a store in Chattanooga TN since the town is blocking my path toward Birmingham AL. Success. Well, sort of. I found a listing for a store in Chattanooga at Hamilton Place, the largest shopping center in the state. So I Googled a map, drove there, parked, went into the mall (huge), walked up to the mall map kiosk, found the listing for B&N. With an asterisk. Found the note for the asterisk at the bottom of the sign. The store opens in 2008. What the %$*!? - why couldn't that little bit of info have been on their web site?
Oh well, at least all that hoo-haa led me to an easy traverse of Chattanooga and a delightful ride down AL route 75 through some quiet rural farm country with a distinctly southern flavor.
Night camp: Wal-Mart in Oneonta AL
Five Trillion Spiders
Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.
From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69