Apologies

… for non- existent bloggage. I have been busy, ill, overextended, and probably depressed, though too much A, B, and C to take notice. I am involved in a lawsuit over last year’s work (if it is ever resolved it will be a splendid tale for Michael Blowhard’s critiques of modern publishing); am trying to …

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More Pretties

I keep forgetting to put in a better pic of the Stephen Grant sidelever. So: ancient (1889) English Best gun, resting on a relatively modern kilim I picked up in Sanliurfa on the Kurdish tazi expedition,

Sunday Pix

On Sunday this time of the year we do a lot of stuff around the house, garden, with birds etc. Patrick Porter of the Pigeon list (also a bird hunter, botanist, horticulturist, and damned good writer), sent Libby a bunch of huge Dahlia tubers. (Wish I had thought to show scale– some of these are …

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Feathered Dinos

Feathered Dinosaurs: The Origin of Birds— the best book on the subject yet, by Australian paleontologist John Long and magical artist Peter Schouten, best known here for his collaborations with Tim Flannery. You look at these and think: THIS is what they looked like. A mother Troodon attends the hatching of her eggs. Much behavior …

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Bo Diddley RIP

Coming back from a sort of bloggish lunch in Albuquerque with frequent commentors and dog- in- laws Paul and Nate, MDMNM of Sometimes Far Afield, his friend Amelia, and a baby hawk, we saw that the flags on the State Police hq near Socorro were at half mast. Turns out the great old rocker Bo …

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Meat!

Hilarious article from the Guardian by Fraser Lewry, a poor man who had to give up meat for a week, and SUFFERED. “My head is spinning. I really don’t know how you do it. The fake meat you’re expected to eat tastes nothing like the real thing; restaurants are charging you an arm and a …

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Azhdarchids! (And other Paleo Matters…)

Our favorite zoological blogger, Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology, has had a blog post (about giant pterosaurs stalking prey on the ground) turn into a peer- reviewed scientific paper (With Mark Witton.) Here is the post telling the tale, with many links and pix. They even have a “support blog” about the monster pterosaurs here. …

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PETA kills chicken course

PETA successfully pressured an upstate New York school to end a well- regarded course in the ecology of food in which willing students raised and slaughtered chickens. It was much like a 4H program but more balanced– vegetarian students were encouraged to address the class, there were lectures on eating less meat, and they were …

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