Mystery Plant

On his visit last week,Dan showed us these photos of a mysterious plant he photographed in San Diego. I think it is South African but don’t really have the botanical chops to ID it. Readers?

Lots of Links

Busy busy busy– but stuff just keeps coming in. Thanks to all! We had a good visit from Dan and his hounds last week– well, good except for that seat belt ticket. The weather was almost too hot to run dogs, but we have had two snowstorms since! He chronicles it all there, with pics. …

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You Can’t See Me

My crew members from Colorado grinned when they saw this camouflaged cell phone tower in Imperial County.

Prehistoric Trails

One of the things I have found fascinating about archaeology here in the Yuha Desert are the prehistoric trails that criss-cross the area. They are quite common and easily distinguishable from trails made by modern vehicles. As with the lithic scatters and pot drops I posted about earlier, it’s astonishing how long things can stay …

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Bill

In our younger years, Connie and I spent a fair amount of time around Bill, Wyoming, a bump in the road between Douglas and Gillette. So when the NYT had an article about the place it caught my eye. According to the Times, the business boom there has brought the population all the way up …

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That Vienna

Spent a week in Vienna, thankfully away from all those hideous Englishmen (wink wink, just kiddin’ ha ha), saw all manner of good stuff, a Monet to Picasso show that was an education (not to mention awesome and gorgeous and amazingly empty) a Durer exhibition that was sort of religious, a Max Ernst show that …

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Say Hello to my Little Friend

This is the second snake and the only rattlesnake we have seen in the field here. Though the daytime highs are in the 80s, it’s still only in the mid to low 40s at night and I think these fellows are still pretty torpid. This one never moved (other than a couple of tongue flicks) …

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Atomic Nerds

Although they have been commenting here for a while I had somehow not discovered the wonderful blog Atomic Nerds. They are a young couple, Stingray (male) and LabRat (female) who write from the ever- strange city of Los Alamos (strange even in our odd state!) They write on dogs, guns, evo- bio, religion, and other …

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Altai Falcon

In his monograph on the Gyrfalcon Eugene Potapov confirms that, in the high mountains of Central Asia, there are areas of hybridization between those recently and imperfectly separated species, the Gyrfalcon and the Saker. These are doubtless the semi – legendary “Altai falcon” or Shunkar of classical falconry. I made a probable sighting on my …

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