Some of you will remember a post I put up last month on the Donner Party and Alferd Packer, that was occasioned by a report that excavations at one of the Donner Party camps had provided no evidence of cannibalism. Well, yesterday the LA Times had an op-ed by Ethan Rarick entitled “Cannibals with Courage” …
Author: Reid Farmer
African Slaves in Colonial Mexico
Last week the NY Times had this article on colonial era burials excavated in Campeche, Mexico. Researchers were able to identify some of the individuals as African slaves brought to Mexico by the Spanish as their teeth had been filed, showing evidence of an African cultural pattern. Also high levels of the trace element strontium …
Poor Oetzi
Poor Oetzi the Iceman – the more we find out about him the sadder his story becomes. Oetzi is of course the 5300 year-old body found preserved in a glacier in the Alps on the Austrian/Italian border. He was discovered in 1991 and represents one of those “moments frozen in time” we archaeologists love. His …
More Cetacean Stuff
Ah, synchronicity! Yahoo News has this interesting piece today titled “Killer Whales Set Traps for Gullible Gulls.” Seems researchers in Canada observed a young orca who figured out if he left pieces of chewed fish floating on the water’s surface it would attract gulls who would land to try and eat it. He would lurk …
Whale Attack!
Last Wednesday evening at just before sunset, Gerald Gormley left Santa Barbara harbor in his new 27 ft Bayliner boat. It was a brand-new boat, only the second time he had taken it out, and two friends accompanied him for a planned sunset run. They were off Leadbetter Beach and Santa Barbara Point when a …
Quest for an Aussie
My wife and I have been on a search the last few weeks. Our favorite breed of dog is Australian Shepherd. We have had two as pets and they were both wonderful – very intelligent and very socialized to people. Osa (1983-1999) was a blue-merle female we bought for $10 at a ranch near Bailey, …
Horses and Weeds: To Blame or Not to Blame
I saw this interesting but ultimately frustrating piece in the LA Times a few days ago. For years horses have been blamed as part of the problem for the spread of non-native plants and noxious weeds into National Parks and Wilderness Areas in this part of the world. The reasoning goes that horses eat these …
Re: Writing for Money
Thank you for sharing that story, Matt. I really enjoyed it. I believe that this sort of thing has been going on in one form or another as long as there have been journalists. Savvy PR people know exactly how to get their stories with the proper spin placed with sympathetic journalists. Most of the …
Precolumbian Chinese and the Vinland Map
The BBC had an interesting item last week about this Chinese map that is dated to 1763. It obviously displays knowledge of the Americas, not surprising in a map of that age, but a statement on the map says that it is the direct copy of a map made in 1418. If true, that would …
Suburban Wildlife
These two pictures of bobcats appeared in today’s Santa Barbara News-Press. The article is subscribers-only so I haven’t bothered to try to link. They were taken last week in the backyard of a house that adjoins Tucker’s Grove County Park, which is a quarter-mile north of where we live. Our neighborhood really is pretty classic …