I heard a fascinating interview on the radio on the way into work this morning describing the narwhal research project detailed in this NY Times piece, whence the picture comes. We have known about narwhals and their tusks – passed off as “unicorn horns” in earlier times – for many years. But we have only …
Month: December 2005
Hunting Good for Wildlife? Imagine!
A story from today’s offerings by Reuters: Hunters helped save rare bird from extinction. As a patriotic, horn-tooting falconer, I immediately assumed “Peregrine recovery,” although that story is a little crusty, even for we hacks. Turns out this one is about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a bird arguably saved from annihilation by hunters’ annual purchase of …
Just a Sunset
We haven’t done much here in terms of pretty pictures for their own sakes, but we did have an A-1 sunset here yesterday that I wanted to share with you. Taken from East Beach, Santa Barbara.
Yosemite Lawsuit Thrown Out of Court
Steve posted back in August on a lawsuit brought by the family of a young climber killed by a rockfall in Yosemite back in 1999. It’s hard to intellectually square lawsuits like this when people voluntarily undertake an intrinsically dangerous sport such as rockclimbing. The LA Times reports that their suit was thrown out of …
A Visit To New Orleans
In addition to shelving and re-shelving our eight books at the library, I take on as much freelance writing as I can find. A recent email from a construction industry clearinghouse: Could I find places of worship in New Orleans, take pictures of storm damage and draft an article for the website? I certainly could, …
The Nash-Reid-Hill House
In my day job as a cultural resource consultant, I work every day with the eligibility criteria for the National Register of Historic Places. The National Register is not just a list, but a tool for historic preservation, as properties affected by projects must meet the eligibility criteria for protection under the National Historic Preservation …
If a Sparrow Should Fall
In this piece by AP writer Toby Sterling, a murdered House sparrow gets honorary internment in the Rotterdam Natural History Museum. After finding its way into an exposition hall, where for months volunteers took pains to set up millions of dominoes (4,002,136 tiles and a Guinness World Record if confirmed), the bird began toppling pieces …
Kaplan, Kipling and Things That Don’t Change
My favorite living writer of non-fiction (after Steve of course!) is Robert D. Kaplan. He is mostly a travel writer with a deep sense of history and culture, following Patrick Leigh Fermor as his model. Mediterranean Winter is my favorite Kaplan work so far. I recently read his latest book, Imperial Grunts that is a …
Poles Will Wander
It has been well known for many years that the magnetic field of the earth is somewhat unstable and that as a result the magnetic poles “wander” or move gradually over time. This piece says recent studies show that the north magnetic pole (both poles move – I think we are Northern Hemisphere chauvinists) is …
Hottest Year “On Record”
This piece proclaiming that 2005 is the hottest year “on record” has run right into one of my pet peeves, which is that where climate is concerned, “the record” doesn’t mean much. “The record” refers to directly observed temperatures and those only go back 150 to 200 years at the most. At the time scale …