We’ve know for quite a long while that chimpanzees use expedient tools – rocks to crack open things and twigs to pull termites out of mounds. But a new report on chimps in Senegal takes this to a whole new level. Female chimps there have been observed making spears and using them to hunt bush …
Author: Reid Farmer
Riding High
This picture of Lauren age 13 and Travis age 9 on Connie’s mare Squirt was taken just off of our front porch in Tehachapi. It’s one of my favorite family pictures.I was reminded of this by Heidi’s post about horses and her family. Of course, I said before there have been other horsemen in my …
Glimpse of the Future
Have Toyota Prius taxi-cabs made it to your town yet? This is the first one I’ve seen here. Actually, my previous general observation about taxis in this town has been what a high percentage here are made by Mercedes-Benz.
More Public Art
Last Fall I posted on some unusual sidewalk art that we sometimes see here in town, but I was taken aback at this inflatable, multi-tentacled, organic-looking thing installed on the top of an art gallery downtown. I suppose it might have been put up in honor of the annual Santa Barbara Film Festival that had …
More Maynard Dixon
I have continued reading the book about Maynard Dixon that I discussed in an earlier post and discovered that in the spring of 1930 he spent some weeks sketching and painting near the town of Tehachapi, California. Tehachapi is set in the Tehachapi Mountains, the southernmost range of the Sierra Nevada, and is a beautiful …
Colonial Iron Furnace
Matt sent this piece about an early Colonial iron furnace found near the James River in Virginia that is thought to date to 1619. He asked if I could provide some context for this find. This venture was an offshoot of the original Jamestown colony, the first successful British colony in North America, that was …
What Reid is Reading
We haven’t done this in a while! The Reindeer People by Piers Vitebsky. Account by an anthropologist of his life and times spent with the Eveny, a reindeer herding native people in Siberia. On Steve’s recommendation. Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Historical novel set in 1620s Spain and sequel to his earlier “Captain Alatriste.” …
The Laki Eruption
The BBC has an interesting story about a forgotten natural disaster in Great Britain. In 1783, the Laki volcano in Iceland erupted, and belched clouds of toxic gas (mostly sulphur dioxide) that blew over Britain and much of Western Europe. The clouds must have lasted for weeks, and researchers in the UK have recently estimated …
Metal Detectors
The BBC reports that archaeological finds are up 45% in the last year in the UK due to increased activity by metal detector enthusiasts. It is interesting to see that there is a large national organization there for these amateur researchers and a large on-line database for recording their finds. Follow the link for the …
Archaeology Fatigue
This piece reports that many residents of Easter Island are getting fed up with the disruption of archaeologists working on their island. They resent the resources that are being devoted to restoring the moai, the iconic prehistoric statues that Easter Island is known for, and land set aside to preserve prehistoric sites. As the article …