The Cambias Digression

Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.

  • France Excursion 2023 Part Eight: Heroes of the AEF

    On Tuesday, June 27th, Diane had to head off to the neuroendocrinology conference, so I was on my own for the morning. I got some espresso and walked about more or less at random. I went across the Loire via the Pont Napoleon, which crosses a large island in mid-river. The island is set up…

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  • France Excursion 2023 Part Seven: Secrets of the Templars!

    Monday the 26th was the last full day before the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology conference got underway, so we decided to go see what lies west of Tours, having gone east on all our previous jaunts. More or less at random we chose Chinon as our destination. Chinon is a little town sheltered between a…

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  • France Excursion 2023 Part Six: Pandas!

    On Sunday we set out early once again, heading up the valley of the Cher a second time. Our destination was the town of Saint-Aignan, home of the ZooParc de Beauval — one of France's best zoos. It's big, modern, and — on summer weekends, anyway — packed with visitors. We got there at opening…

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  • France Excursion 2023 Part Five: Naps!

    On Saturday the 24th we decided to take it easy. We slept about 11 hours, then I stashed the car in a garage for the day while Diane went out to find pastries for breakfast. We took our dirty laundry two blocks to the nearest laundromat: "Charlie et le Choco-Laverie," a hybrid cafe-laundry with wifi.…

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  • France Excursion 2023 Part Four: Up and Away!

    On Friday the 23rd we got up very very early, about 4:30 a.m., and bundled into the car for a drive up the Cher river to the little town of Francueil where we sat outside a deserted winery in the pre-dawn darkness. A few other cars pulled up nearby, and then the caravan of white…

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  • France Excursion 2023 Part Three: Chambord, Ezia, and Magic

    We got moving early on the 22nd. I got the car out of the underground garage, and we set out eastward on the Autoroute heading for Blois. From there we followed smaller roads to the great palace of Chambord. This was Francis I's personal dream house, and he poured treasure into the project — and…

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  • France Excursion 2023 Part Deux: Stones and Wine

    On Wednesday the 21st we had a fabulous lunch at a restaurant chosen at random because we were hungry, then picked up our rental car at the Tours train station and drove out of the city to do some tourism on the north side of the Loire River. Our first stop was the Dolmen de…

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  • France Excursion 2023: Episode 1, The Beginning

    The 27th annual meeting of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology was hosted this year by the University of Tours. When neurobiologist Dr. Diane A. Kelly decided to present a poster session at the conference, my response was, "I guess we're going to France, then!" So we did. The plan was to cross the Atlantic a…

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  • Notes on Worldbuilding Part 15: Ecologies

    I'm going to begin this entry with a warning: I am not an ecologist. Some of the terms I use in this blog post may be inaccurate or incorrect, although I think I'm at least close to the technical meanings. I'm trying to generalize from what we know about ecosystems on Earth to what any…

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  • The Worldbuilding Index

    This is a master index to the Notes on Worldbuilding series. It’s a bit better than just searching for the Worldbuilding tag.   Notes on Worldbuilding 1: Real and Not-Real Worlds Notes on Worldbuilding 2: Why? Notes on Worldbuilding 3: The Future! Notes on Worldbuilding 4: Stars! Notes on Worldbuilding 5: Planetary Systems Notes on…

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The Worldbuilding Index