Last Saturday’s predicted high of 52 with a chance of thundershowers turned into a high of 35 and a Spring snow storm. Native Southern Californians Sadie and Maggie ask: What is this stuff?
Squirrels Gone Wild
This item is a little old, but it happened while I was busy moving and couldn’t get to it. The LA Times reported that the city of Santa Monica has been faced with a problem where one of its parks has been overrun by a population explosion of ground squirrels. And what did the city …
Auctions
This NY Times piece on an auction of fossils and antiquities has it right – it is painful for paleontologists and archaeologists to watch these things. Artifacts and fossils taken from the context of their deposition lose much of their ability to contribute to scientific analysis.
More Granddogs
Matt suggested I put up this photo of Nate’s lurcher Pearl and tazi girl Maty. Photo Nate Moody: Matt says: Ah…dog humor.
Mullahs Dis 300
The mad mullahs aren’t very coherent about it, but they sure don’t like the new movie “300”. A couple of reactions: “The government spokesman referred to the movie as part of the extensive cultural aggression aiming to degenerate cultures of world states.” And: “The Iranian embassy in Paris has termed the film an insult to …
Sympatric
A real find for evo- wonks: a likely case of sympatric speciation in finches. “Examples of sympatric speciation in nature are rare and hotly debated. We describe the parallel speciation of finches on two small islands in the Tristan da Cunha archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean.” For a fascinating book on the subject– by …
Ancient Enemies
Proof that at least one species of prehistoric cat, Megantereon, hunted humans– it’s in the isotopes. “”Paranthropus robustus and the early Homo species,Homo ergaster, had a diet that reflected a mix of carbon isotopes, suggesting that they were omnivorous, which is similar to what modern humans are today,” said Lee-Thorp. “Knowing the hominid carbon isotope …
More AR Follies: Kill Knut!
Now the idiots want to kill a popular polar bear cub in Germany because he was rejected by his mother. “”Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws,” animal rights activist Frank Albrecht was quoted as saying by the mass-circulation Bild daily, which has featured regular photo spreads tracking …
PETA’s Jesus
Even for the notoriously irrational PETA, this is amazing. Having convinced themselves that Christ was a vegetarian, they have created this… installation: a “diner” made out of an Airstream trailer, featuring a model of Christ presiding over a Last Supper company composed of various famous real and alleged vegetarians– Ghandi, George Bernard Shaw, Paul McCartney …
Prairie Rambles
The last seven years we had been living in a suburban tract house, so when we bought the house here at Moonshine Gulch, I was happy that we could get some property around it. Here is Sadie out back. I must say I have never had a yard before that was narrow-leafed yucca, gramma grass, …