More to illustrate the respective limits of art and science, researchers in the Netherlands (what’s with the Dutch, lately?) have determined that Mona Lisa’s smile is “83% happy.” From the text by Toby Sterling: “…the researchers scanned a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece and subjected it to cutting-edge ’emotion recognition’ software, developed in collaboration …
More Wind Energy Follies
I talked about this before, but now Congress seems to agree with the Kennedys (and Gov. Mitt Romney to be fair) that Nantucket Sound is far too tony a place for wind turbines.
Some More Very Old Rock Art
I have posted before here about the scarcity of prehistoric North American rock art that portrays extinct Pleistocene megafauna. I showed a couple of examples that could possibly be mammoths or mastodons. During my visit to Little Petroglyph Canyon last month looking for more examples was high on my agenda. One of the examples I …
Earliest Known Mayan Painting
Whatever it may say about Pre-Classic Mayan culture – namely that these people were more sophisticated at an earlier time than previously thought – this 2,100 year old painting from Guatemala is a dazzling work of art. This leads me to reflect on how art is so intrinsically woven into us as a species. We …
Paleoindian Skulls from South America
This news release has just enough in it to be intriguing, but lacks enough detail for me to comment much on it. Researchers in Brazil have studied 81 Paleoindian (11,000 – 7,500 BP) skulls from the Lagoa Santa region of that country and find that their features – long narrow crania, projecting jaws, and low, …
California Tsunami Preparedness
The bottom line in this LA Times piece is that we aren’t prepared. I certainly agree with that. Tsunamis are back on everyone’s radar after the disaster in the Indian Ocean a year ago. California has a tsunami alert system, but it is sort of feeble in that the State contacts each county and the …
The Real Unicorn
I heard a fascinating interview on the radio on the way into work this morning describing the narwhal research project detailed in this NY Times piece, whence the picture comes. We have known about narwhals and their tusks – passed off as “unicorn horns” in earlier times – for many years. But we have only …
Hunting Good for Wildlife? Imagine!
A story from today’s offerings by Reuters: Hunters helped save rare bird from extinction. As a patriotic, horn-tooting falconer, I immediately assumed “Peregrine recovery,” although that story is a little crusty, even for we hacks. Turns out this one is about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a bird arguably saved from annihilation by hunters’ annual purchase of …
Just a Sunset
We haven’t done much here in terms of pretty pictures for their own sakes, but we did have an A-1 sunset here yesterday that I wanted to share with you. Taken from East Beach, Santa Barbara.
Yosemite Lawsuit Thrown Out of Court
Steve posted back in August on a lawsuit brought by the family of a young climber killed by a rockfall in Yosemite back in 1999. It’s hard to intellectually square lawsuits like this when people voluntarily undertake an intrinsically dangerous sport such as rockclimbing. The LA Times reports that their suit was thrown out of …