Wildlife biologist John Carlson, last seen in a tux in Antarctica (go here for reference), offers some reasons why penguins are admirable, despite the fact they are not “cute:” …I totally agree with the young lady concerning the nasty nature of penguins, but I also feel I must defend the little buggers too. Any wild …
The Tazi Girls
The attraction of, and also the problem with “primitive” breeds of dogs is that they are intelligent. Interestingly, many pop boooks say the opposite; Oriental sighthounds, huskies, laikas are not neccessarily “tractable”– they figure things out, and you must work with them. This makes many people think they are stupid. As someone who has trained …
Life is Dangerous – Deal With It
The title Biting Back: just because great white sharks are protected doesn’t mean we should be on their menu of this LA Times op-ed almost says it all. It is symptomatic of the age we live in that an increasing proportion of our population believes that nature belongs in nature movies and we as individuals …
Of Pigs and Pit Bulls
How long can anyone sane continue to live in California? (Reid?) It’s not just the cost of living or the deficit or the smog or the crime or the massive illegal immigration– one might put up with many of those things for the glories. It’s the endless niggling laws, the superficial reverence for an environment …
Sacrificial Lambs
Have you ever wondered about the logistics of those burnt sacrifices in Classical and ancient Greece and Rome, or even in the Old Testament? Chas, hunter, professor, Pagan, and blogger, has…
On Falconry
My introduction to Steve’s writing was from the falconry side of it, a popular article in Smithsonian, sometime in the mid-80s. I was surprised to know anyone wrote so well about the sport, then surprised again to discover he writes well about a lot of things. I’m sure various pigeon fanciers, gourmands, world travellers, writers, …
The Pack
I mentioned the hounds in the last post but readers are asking how they are. During the summer the heat is bad for the muscular, greyhound-derived lurcher—tests by John Burchard have found that after a run in an outdoor temperature of 60 degrees F., the internal temperatures of greyhounds are in the dangerous range, as …
The Beauty of Weapons 1
Fall is in the air in the New Mexico highlands, and my hounds and hawk are restless, whining at the front door, or rowing wings in the quickening wind. You will be hearing more about them, I promise. But a natural transition from the fluted points of prehistory is the beauty humans– all right, mostly …
Yosemite Lawsuit
According to a story in the LA Times, a ten million dollar lawsuit by the parents of a climber killed in a rockslide may result in closing the park to all climbing. “In its first century as a national park, Yosemite has seen 15 people killed by rock falls. Given the more than 3 million …
Pygmy Mammoths
A little known but interesting aspect of Pleistocene megafauna was the species of pygmy mammoth (Mammuthus exilis) that inhabited the Northern Channel Islands of the California Coast. During the late Pleistocene when sea level was much lower than it is now, the four present northern islands (San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and Anacapa) were …