What happens when it snows? One thing that happens is that people are absolutely compelled to build snowmen. I have posted here before on the strange compulsions people have in certain situations. So what happens if you live in a place where it doesn’t snow and you are hit with the snowman compulsion? You build …
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 …
La Conchita
I have been wanting to write something about the La Conchita landslide for some time, and anniversary of its occurrence last week as recounted in the LA Times gave me something to hang it on. La Conchita is a hamlet on the Ventura/Santa Barbara County line along US 101 just south of here. Last January, …
Green Pigs
It was all over the news services last week: researchers in Taiwan had bred transgenic green pigs that glowed in the dark. These pigs are green inside and out. Apparently the purpose is to aid in genetic research: “The scientists will use the transgenic pigs to study human disease. Because the pig’s genetic material is …
Sappho, Vodka, Wildfire, Bad Poetry about Toads…
… and more, brought to you by Odious and Peculiar. For a sample of the last: A linked chain of bubbling notes,When birds have ceased their calling,That lulls the ear with soothing soundLike voice of water falling.It is the knell of winter dead;Good-by his icy fetter.Blessings on thy warty head:No bird could do it better.
Cig Kofte
I love Turkish food! Any New Mexican would love its creative use of hot peppers (just as hot as ours and far hotter than European varieties) and its innovative use of meat– lamb, especially– spiced or ground or in kebabs. I can enjoy lentil soup for breakfast, pilafs, garlic- spiced yogurt, and pizza- like “pide”. …
When Birds Attack….
To some of us, the news that Reid posted about below in “Not Aways at the Top of the Food Chain” was not exactly news. One of the main suspects in the death of the Taung Baby is the Crowned Eagle, an enormous and intimidating forest predator. In Birds of Prey of Southern Africa, published …
The Donner Party and Alferd Packer
One of the great stories of western US history is that of the Donner Party, a wagon train of emigrants bound for California. Their timing for the journey was bad and they were trapped by snow in the Sierras during the winter of 1846-47. They ran out of supplies, couldn’t find much game to hunt, …
Not Always at the Top of the Food Chain
This release from the AP has a humbling title – “Researcher: Early Man was Hunted by Birds.” Close re-examination of the skull of the “Taung child” one of the earliest discovered (1924) australopithecine fossils, shows damage at the rear of the eye sockets consistent with patterns seen in eagle predation of monkeys. We should always …
Alternate Reality?
Crossing several lines through Querencia is the effect of new technology on much older things (namely, places and cultures) and how it might shape their futures. In Eagle Dreams, Steve writes of Mongolian friends in traditional circular tents wired for Internet; of eagle falconers in Mercedes-Benzes. Weird and charming anachronisms are common now but more …