As I think about “Reviving the Pleistocene” and such notions it occurs that one source of images of such a world is in the novel Conquistador by S. M. Stirling. Mr. Stirling is a creator of alternate worlds, parrallel timelines and such, often done with just one step away from the world we know, all …
Author: Steve Bodio
Pleistocene Revival: Update 1
There are a lot of stories about, and a lot of predictably silly reactions to, yesterday’s proposal for “Re- Wilding” America. Here is a relatively sober one from New Scientist. One from CNN yesterday– no longer available– contained some remarkable statements. The outrage from the stockman’s association was predictable but sad– I actually support public …
American Pleistocene Park?
For several years I have been keeping track of Sergei Zimov’s Siberian Pleistocene Park, where with the help of Universty of Alaska biologists he hopes to at least begin to bring back the Mammoth Steppe and, in the words of California beat poet Michael McClure, to “Revive the Pleistocene!” Now from Peculiar comes the welcome …
Great Game
A new article in the Moscow Times Online discusses what it calls the renewal of the Great Game in Central Asia, pitting a putative alliance of Russia and China against the interests of the U.S. Maybe. I am known as an optimist about Central Asia’s and Russia’s intentions, and a pessimist about China’s, so consider …
Poetry Time!
From Fred Turner’s lyrical epic Genesis, a piece of satirical rather than lyrical writing worthy of Roy Campbell, on a journalist: “Ah, Bill, you ask an ode of me, lest you And all your brothers vanish like the dew; Your virtues are not trumpet- tongued, and must Be duly whistled ere they turn to dust. …
Clone Gay Sheep?
Contrarian evolutionary and economics blogger Steve Sailer has a lot in his archives on a biological– but not necessarily genetic– component or cause for male homosexuality. (He convincingly argues that biologically- anthropologically “Lesbians aren’t gay”– I can hardly wait to argue this one with my friends Kath and Athena when they come back from Greece). …
Prehistoric Passenger Pigeons 2
The genesis of my idea that passenger pigeons as Europeans knew them– Aldo Leopold’s “biological storm”– were a post glacial phenomenon erupting into a new niche came to me as I discussed pre- Columbian America with our little Pigeon Forum– what Dr. John Burchard calls “pigeons for polymaths”. I bounced some of the details off …
REALLY ugly dog!
Several people have sent me various links to this… dog (it is alleged to be a dog). Myself, I think it is more akin to H. P. Lovecraft’s witch familiar “Brown Jenkin”.
Mole Martyr?
Sir Terence Clark in England sent me a story fom the UK Shooting Times that bears repeating here. There is no link to the story per se, but it is worth reprinting as a tale of what happens when law trumps common sense. What you need to know is that you cannot hunt a mammal …
Eco- Burial
I had to do a bit of thinking about this story on “ecologically correct” burial– in, wouldn’t you know it, Marin County. Some of the description is beyond parody: “He was buried un-embalmed in a biodegradable pine coffin painted with daisies and rainbows, his soul marked by prairie grasses instead of a granite colossus. “Here, …