A Harlequin New Year’s

Open in a new tab twice to see full size. Sources ​It is Harlequin season again. The local birders take a lot of good pix of them through the winter. It is easy to see why. They are one of the most beautiful birds in the world in one of the most beautiful places, i.e. surf. …

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How to Win a Long Distance Pigeon Race

  From Patrick Porter, the best  writer you haven’t  read: How To Win a Long Distance Pigeon Race   It helps if your Dad kept pigeons in his youth because his father dabbled with them along the Saugus River in Lynn, Massachusetts.  They also kept ducks and a few chickens but Dad spent most of his …

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Notes on The Kingdom

Sonoma County CA black-perigord-truffle ​I saw this last week and it reminded me that Steve has posted about mushrooms a fair bit. Truffle Breakthrough This was a much more interesting piece than the CA one. A great piece, in fact. Good writing, a fungal related quest, a mystery, failure, and underdog success. It hits a …

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True and Ominous

Think about it. I have this written on the flyleaf of Charles Pellegrino’s Ghosts of Vesuvius, a book about 9-11, Thera, the Antikytheria mechanism, and  Yellowstone, among other things. It is not in the book,  but states its theme exactly. “Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.”  Will Durant

Arrakis aka Dune

I should have added this back when I mentioned seeing the Dune Movie. I started the post and forgot about it. SOP Anyway, too cool, not to post. Arrakis Simulated Dune: we simulated the desert planet of Arrakis to see if humans could survive there  Complex models like this take time to run, in this case …

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The Debate Continues

Over- Kill Theory Prof. Barkai concludes that “we believe that our model is relevant to human cultures everywhere. Moreover, for the first time, we argue that the driving force behind the constant improvement in human technology is the continual decline in the size of game. They claim a huge data set.

Crow Art

“This is in Fredericton, New Brunswick Canada- made from roped and shredded Michelin Tires A statement on birds flying into glass. Very effective.” I am not a fan of most public art but this was clever.