Odious and Peculiar

2012-01-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

New Mexico is stretching an inch every 40 years. Surprisingly evenly, as it turns out.

2012-01-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

Far out: Saturn's north pole features a rotating hexagonal clouds system.

2012-01-15T15:03:00.003-07:00

My kind of poem:

Please Sir, God of Death
Don’t make it my turn today,
not today
There’s fish curry for dinner.

-Bakibab Borkar

Via photographer Rajan Parrikar, who notes that the poem "captured the essence of what it means to be Goan".

2012-01-10T18:25:00.001-07:00

I can't believe I've lived over three decades unaware of this:

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

-Tennyson, The Kraken

Hat tip to Derb (apropos of something very random)

2012-01-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

Vermin Supreme for President:

2012-01-08T16:26:00.002-07:00

I'm quite amused by the New Mexican's cover art for the state centennial:

2012-01-08T16:22:00.000-07:00

Fragment of an unfinished libretto:

JIM WALKER:
Signori, ascoltate! Credimi, mio ben!
É un vil menzogno, bugiardi son tutti.
Io giuro, credimi, per carità,
Texano non son io!

FRA MARTINEZ (con l'ultimo velen):
Spergiurerai tu stesso davanti a Dio?
La verità io so, ai popoli la proclamo:
Texano voi siete!

GIUSEPPINA:
Vil traditor!

POPOLI:
Al patibolo! Al patibolo!

-from I Carnefici di Taos (Act II finale), dated January 1912, Prawne family archives

2012-01-07T10:25:00.001-07:00

Och, science!

Scottish scientists recreate Shackleton's whisky

2012-01-06T08:01:00.001-07:00

Cephalopod mimics fish, fish mimics cephalopod:

2012-01-04T19:52:00.003-07:00

What distinguishes a really nice map from a generic, mass-produced map?

....it may be the last important paper map ever to depict our country.

True and sad. I will also note that aficionados of clickable, zoomable, interactive maps seem to have a habit of dying a dog's death on backroads of the American West. Cartographic geekery can save your life!

2011-12-24T21:55:00.004-07:00

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T11:11:00.002-07:00

2011-12-23T22:05:00.003-07:00

More hanging coffins, this time in Sagada, Philippines. Nice to know there's a Christian precedent for the practice. I have some cliffs in mind (this one would do nicely, for instance).

2011-12-22T21:07:00.002-07:00

Sweet justice! Do not tease the batrachian:

Watch it to the end. Via Steve, who adds, "They [african bullfrogs] have teeth, you know."

2011-12-16T12:35:00.001-07:00

Photo gallery: 2011 in Volcanic Activity

2011-12-12T21:29:00.002-07:00

Siegfried Act III Prelude. This Wotan is pretty damn good for looking like he might work at a Santa Fe Jiffy Lube.

2011-12-12T08:32:00.002-07:00

Kinds of rainbows you've probably never seen: twinned (very cool), multiple supernumerary (really bitchen) and reflection (seriously awesome). More here on the science of twinned rainbows.

2011-12-11T16:03:00.002-07:00

I went out to photograph yesterday's lunar eclipse in the New Mexico badlands, with some success. Enjoy!

2011-12-02T10:35:00.003-07:00

The hanging cliff coffins of the Bo culture: I must say, this would be pretty much my ideal form of interment.

2011-11-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

Bravura fishing skills 42,000 years ago east of Wallace's Line

2011-11-29T08:39:00.004-07:00

Fermentation projects still working:

'Katy's Brown Mark 2', the second attempt to create a beer my wife will drink without wincing. Lots of malt, and a fair bit of hop bitterness (Chinook) and aroma (Hallertauer).

Now bottled:

Rosehip Saison: tried this last night and loved it. Comes off almost like a wheat beer (and all these are mit hefe) but with a citrusy, honey finish.

Christmas Beer: a cute idea--the malt is the gold, the spices the frankincense, and the honey the myrrh (on account of those wacky Georgian beys) that utterly flopped. Star anise is not to be played with lightly. Tastes like black licorice scrapped from the bottom of a movie theatre after a week.

Stout: Good enough that only four bottles are left.

Oracular Ale: same recipe as last time, only with dried nettle added in hopes of preventing kidney failure. So far so good!

Hawthorn flower mead: No idea. It'll be another three months before we taste this one. Lots of spiders went into it.

Strawberry wine: See hawthorn, minus spiders.

Spiced red currant wine: I got the spices right for this one--they're background rather than PCs. Still, we won't really know for six months.

Blackberry wine: The old standby. Hot (28-30 proof), sparkling, tasting of jam gone bad, yeast, and diesel fuel. I had to make five gallons this year to meet increased demand.

2011-11-28T18:57:00.002-07:00

Surely someone will see fit to make this a reality in print? We have an infant who will soon need it!

Thanks to Chas.

2011-11-26T10:22:00.002-07:00

My new favorite resource: Find online versions of geologic maps (warning: huge time sink). Use the interactive map and limit your search to "Maps in NGMDB Library". Here, for instance, are all of New Mexico, all of Nevada, and Dinosaur National Monument. Smaller scale maps are available.

2011-11-26T09:24:00.001-07:00

New jaguar sighting in Arizona

2011-11-19T07:46:00.001-07:00

European Union forbids claim that drinking water can prevent dehydration

2011-11-17T23:25:00.002-07:00

Written? Kitten.

Hence. Now we need "Written? Crytozooid."

2011-11-17T10:23:00.003-07:00

More research on the Gamburtsevs, the range of Alp-sized, glacier-carved mountains that lie buried beneath miles of Antarctic ice. Includes a cool fly-through animation!

2011-11-16T12:46:00.003-07:00

Do cows stand about in line with the earth's magnetic field? Maybe. Certainly an interesting use of Google Earth as a research tool.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

2011-11-13T22:12:00.001-07:00

Girls in Trouble: Rubies

They also have a song about Jael, wife of Heber.

2011-11-09T10:37:00.002-07:00

Caganer:

Statuettes of well-known people defecating are a Christmas tradition in Catalonia, dating back to the 18th century. Catalonians hide caganers in Christmas Nativity scenes and invite friends to find them. The figures symbolise fertilisation, hope and prosperity for the coming year.

If you say so. There's a picture, possibly NSFW. Hat tip Chas.

2011-11-07T12:41:00.001-07:00

Another video well worth a couple minutes of your time: A Murmuration of Starlings

2011-11-07T07:38:00.002-07:00

The fact that one is not krill would be dubious comfort here:

2011-11-03T22:39:00.001-06:00

Oh, a small Venn overlap for this one: Revolutionary Girl Utena Texts from last night.

2011-10-26T20:09:00.000-06:00

The destruction of Condit Dam on Washington's White Salmon River: Ed Abbey is smiling today!

2011-10-22T20:52:00.002-06:00

New modeling indicates that the Chicxulub meteor probably did not cause the eruptions of the Deccan Traps. Still a hell of an impact, though, 2 million times an H bomb!

HT: Instapundit.

2011-10-21T15:36:00.003-06:00

If philosophers were cooks
I was always a lackluster philosophy student, so this is a challenge better suited to Odious' talents. I'll merely note that the, oh let's say, chile relleno greater than which no chile relleno can be conceived obviously exists, inasmuch as an existent relleno is clearly greater than a non-existent one.

2011-10-19T18:34:00.001-06:00

Sailor eaten by Polynesian cannibal? As they say, worse things happen at sea, but we'll see how this shakes out.

HT: Adventure Blog.

2011-10-17T00:08:00.001-06:00

In which Odious, Proclus and I visit the Truchas Peaks:

2011-10-16T08:37:00.000-06:00

The world's oldest museum, in 6th Century B.C. Ur.

2011-10-13T22:13:00.003-06:00

A successful first ascent of the Shark's Fin on Mt. Meru in the Gharwal Himalaya: looks like quite a route! Jimmy Chin, probably the world's best climbing photographer, was on the expedition, so it'll be worth looking for more images of this one.

2011-10-11T14:38:00.003-06:00

Were the corpses of Nevada ichthyosaurs artistically arranged by an enormous cephalopod? No, seriously:

"It became very clear that something very odd was going on there," said McMenamin. "It was a very odd configuration of bones."

First of all, the different degrees of etching on the bones suggested that the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged. That it got him thinking about a particular modern predator that is known for just this sort of intelligent manipulation of bones.
"Modern octopus will do this," McMenamin said. What if there was an ancient, very large sort of octopus, like the kraken of mythology. "I think that these things were captured by the kraken and taken to the midden and the cephalopod would take them apart.....
Even more creepy: The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc "pavement" seen at the state park may represent the earliest known self portrait.

I've enjoyed a couple visits to Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park over the years, but the next trip will be seriously enlivened by the possibility that it's a fossilized kraken lair.

Update: In the unlikely event the exercise is beyond any of our readers, National Geographic and Pharyngula take some Occam's razor to this story. They focus on the self-portrait idea, though, which is pretty damn out there, but don't much mention the the notion of the midden, which seems much less bonkers, even if it's not overly endowed with evidence.

2011-10-10T17:39:00.000-06:00

I just pre-ordered Moro Rogers' upcoming graphic novel, and so should you.

2011-10-06T20:03:00.005-06:00

Elisha Joseph Frishman

I'm not sure O&P has any readers who don't also read the Querencia blog, but on the off chance such a person exists, here is my son Eli, born October first (his actual due date!) at a whopping 9 pounds 12 ounces. We were trying for a home birth, but it eventually became clear that the western medicine safety net was warranted, so he came via C-section in St. Vincent's Hospital, the same place I was born. A second generation honky native of Santa Fe is a fairly rare thing.

Here he is with his state-of-the-art baby monitor:

He's named after Eli Tripp, my departed and much-missed best friend from my Montana years. Steve posted an excellent tribute to Eli a while back, and I'm not up to matching it. Joseph is a family name from his mother's side, and also a nod to Steve, who shares it as a middle name.

Eli and daughter Phoebe, sharing her father's wicked grin:

And for good measure, here's the last picture with our Eli on the inside, two Mondays ago in our local mountains:

2011-09-28T10:22:00.001-06:00

"A dog bitten by a snake fears sausages."

I.e., "once bitten, twice shy" in Portuguese. More foreign idiom equivalents, courtesy of Lonely Planet.

2011-09-27T10:13:00.000-06:00

Man inspired by 127 Hours lives the dream

2011-09-23T09:13:00.001-06:00

Apparently my English (at least when I produce it in quantity) is 84% Shakespearean. Give it a go.

2011-09-22T16:06:00.001-06:00

Great moments in advertising copy:

Colon hydrotherapy is the river of life...

Yah, it's the sacred bleedin' Ganges, mate. Glimpsed in the Santa Fe phone book.

2011-09-15T17:01:00.003-06:00

A cool map of generic American nomenclature for streams. My typical haunts are definitely fork, wash and arroyo country, no surprise. I'm a little surprised by the prevalence of sloughs in the northwest, and even into the Great Basin.

One interesting obscure term along these lines is "prong," (which doesn't make it on the map). The only examples I am aware of are in southern New Mexico's Black Range.

Via Strange Maps.

2011-09-10T21:51:00.002-06:00

Even more terrible was the Palden Llamo, one of the divine protectors of Buddhism but also a devouring mother who sacrificed her own children. She rode upon a lake of entrails and blood, clutching a cup made from the skull of a child born from incest, her thunderbolt staff ready to smash the unbelievers and her teeth gnawing on a corpse. Her horse's saddle was made from the flayed skin of her own child, who had become an enemy of the faith, and snakes wound through her hair. Like many gods, she bore a crown of five skulls and a necklace of severed heads. Her ostensible purpose was to defend Buddhism against its enemies, and in particular to guard the Dalai Lama, but she must have terrified many true believers as well. The Tibetans considered Queen Victoria to be one of her incarnations.

Emphasis mine. Of all the sentences not to have an end-note! From The Bloody White Baron, a biography of the appalling Baron von Ungern-Sternberg: as Steve put it, "one of the most disturbing minor figures of history.... be glad that he is minor."

2011-08-31T22:17:00.002-06:00

Handy advice for dealing with anachronistic vocabulary in historical fiction.

2011-08-31T21:52:00.001-06:00

A little foodblogging: Tonight we tried an appealing recipe for "Pear-Shaped Meatballs Stuffed with Creamy Eggplant." I don't really feel like putting the effort to plagiarize it whole, and if this sort of thing appeals to you, you'd be be well advised just to find a copy of The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean by Paula Wolfert. She locates this recipes origin as Aleppo; it seems very Turkish to me, though perhaps it represents a strain of Arabic cuisine I haven't been fortunate enough to experience. (Virtually every Levantine restaurant I've visited in the western U.S. has left me thinking, "Surely Arabs must occasionally eat something besides hummus, tabouli, falafel and dolmas." But it is the mountain West in question, so I'm sure there is indeed more out there.)

This is something of an inversion of the dish karnıyarık ("riven belly"), which is a large eggplant stuffed with meat and other goodness. In this instance, one fries some small eggplants and stuffs them into the (nicely seasoned) meat, leaving the stems exposed:

Then you fry them a bit:

Make up a sauce from tomatoes, onion, garlic and seasonings:

Pour the sauce over the meatballs, bake for half an hour and serve:

Recommended, especially if, like me, you enjoy eggplants but wish to downplay their vegetable nature.

Wolfert calls this dish "ormuk kebabi," but a Google search for the phrase produces only a single irrelevant website in Hungarian. Ormuk certainly sounds Turkish rather than Arabic, but my casual searching has only found the word to be a) the name of a volcano near Lake Van [pg. 6] and b) "A fine, soft fabric, made of the hair of young camels in Turkestan." My curiosity is piqued.

2011-08-30T12:06:00.003-06:00

Two chatbots chat with each other.

I've heard odder conversations at the Santa Fe Whole Foods.

Update: xkcd has a take.

2011-08-28T20:46:00.001-06:00

Cheap content from Atomic Nerds! Bold for what I've read (no italics, since the only book I've started and not finished is The Fountainhead--which I have since--sigh--completed. Substance is no substitute for style.)

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Damn straight.

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Fuck you, philotes.

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert. That is, everything by Frank Herbert.

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin

6. 1984, by George Orwell

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov. All of them. Even the ones after the trilogy that had incomprehensible telepathy.

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. The best book about writing and the regret that follows. What, you thought it was about children?

21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. Assigned in my junior year of high school. A lot more impressive then.

23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King. Fine, italics. The first and no others.

24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

25. The Stand, by Stephen King

26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman. Entirely responsible for my goth phase, about which no further information will be given. There are no pictures.

30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne

38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys

39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells

40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings. The worst LotR clone since Terry Brooks.

42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven

45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Worthy of every Nebula they won.

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. This and not Blood Meridian?

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist. What's more, I've been to Krondor.

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks. And the other books beyond the first three. I just don't know why.

68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard. I never saw these as wish fulfillment; rather, as the explication of a peculiarly Texan philosophy of life.

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne

73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore. Ha! One nerd-bullet dodged!

74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde. My sister liked this, so I didn't read it.

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks. Ditto.

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson Bad style, and three for eight on interesting ideas.

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher

87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn. Not proud of that one.

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. I was pleased to see Sunshine here; it's McKinley at her best, which is very good, and is often under-rated.

93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge

94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson. I'll just read Genesis, by Fred Turner.

96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony. Way too many of these, sadly.

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis. Nice to see these get some recognition.

2011-08-25T18:10:00.002-06:00

A graphic ~~novel~~ biography of Richard Feynman: want!

Video trailer here.

2011-08-23T17:44:00.005-06:00

Two Oddities of the Snake Range

I recently enjoyed an overnight backpack in eastern Nevada's Snake Range (probably better know as Great Basin National Park). Anyone interested in seeing my attempts to capture Nevada's beautiful landscapes would do well to look in on my photoblog (and keep checking, I've got quite a backlog). But two things I've learned since I returned merit mention here on Odious and Peculiar.

What do Neal Stephenson's Anathem and the Snake Range have in common? They're both connected to the 10,000 Year Clock project:

...a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy from a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan.

The Clock is real. It is now being built inside a mountain in western Texas. This Clock is the first of many millennial Clocks the designers hope will be built around the world and throughout time. There is a second site for another Clock already purchased at the top of a mountain in eastern Nevada, a site surrounded by a very large grove of 5,000-year-old bristlecone pines.

Read the whole thing. I don't generally care for people mucking about with the landscape in indulgence of their own obsessions (see Christo and his planned hybrid of nuisance and eyesore which he wants to inflict on the Arkansas River), but this is pretty damn cool:

Carved into the mountain are five room-sized anniversary chambers: 1 year, 10 year, 100 year, 1,000 year, and 10,000 year anniversaries. The one year anniversary chamber is a special orrery. In addition to the planets and the Earth's moon, it includes all of the interplanetary probes launched during the 20th century, humankind's first century in space. Among others, you'll see the Grand Tour: Voyager 2's swing by of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The Clock will activate and run the orrery once a year on a pre-determined date at solar noon.

It's one of the better things I can imagine filthy rich people doing with their money. And in regard to the Nevada site, as much as I love the wilderness of the Snake Range, the area they're talking about is already impacted by mining and attendant road access. This is probably the only time rich outsiders purchasing an old mining claim might be good news. Mount Washington, the planned clock site, is visible below, towards the right, three ridges back and lighter than the other peaks (limestone, not quartzite).

Seems like a good site to me. And the Texas clock will surely be the coolest thing in the state, and may even provide some public access to a region that's mostly off-limits.

For those who haven't read Anathem, the Stephenson connection is that he was asked to imagine such a clock, and those imaginations developed into the central conceit of the novel. (And what's more, I have just learned of the existence of Anathem music.)

Only vaguely apropos, on my recent sojourn in the Snakes I photographed an odd timberline flower which caught my eye, and only later realized that it appears to be Holmgrem's buckwheat (Eriogonum holmgrenii), an endemic unique to the Snake Range:

2011-08-21T15:56:00.005-06:00

Here is a tidbit from Tony Anderson's (excellent!) Bread and Ashes which will be of interest to fans of Central Asian culture:

The way became very steep and we led the horses, thank God, while Rezo encouraged them with strange Ratchuelian cries of 'Achoo!' and 'Brrr!'....

This is of interest because, while the scene is in Ratcha, i.e. the Caucasus of northwest Georgia, anyone who has ridden a horse in Mongolia* will recognize these commands as the Mongol words for "Giddy-up!" and "Whoa!" Perhaps not amazingly surprising, given the central events of Mongol history, but interesting to see it far away and in liguistically very different country.

*Not too ridiculous a clause, given that this blog does in fact have a few such readers.

2011-08-19T11:22:00.000-06:00

Cephalopod camouflage:

2011-08-12T08:53:00.000-06:00

Moro Rogers indulges my batrachophilia. I am pleased and grateful!

2011-08-10T21:17:00.001-06:00

Singing bird pistols (link may expire)

2011-08-10T17:14:00.001-06:00

Flight of an eagle owl at 1,000 frames per second

2011-08-10T11:45:00.000-06:00

A photographic treat to brighten up your day: Paul Nicklen’s gallery of leopard seals. Amazing!

2011-08-09T18:10:00.002-06:00

A film is in the works about Miss Elizabeth Hawley, Kathmandu's keeper of all mountaineering knowledge.

2011-08-02T15:18:00.001-06:00

World's largest fungus discover in China

2011-07-31T14:27:00.006-06:00

The pig is a wonderful, magical animal! It gives us ham and bacon and pork chops, and can even turn into giant mushroom clouds of flame, a venerable tradition at certain nameless Idaho rafting companies:

Click to enlarge. This is why you don't put out kitchen grease fires with water, kids!

The sequential view:

2011-07-31T09:53:00.002-06:00

Dinosaur discoveries are one of those areas of science that has moved too fast in the last couple decades for most of us to keep up. So here's a nice run-down of updated dinosaur understanding.

Via Chas.

2011-07-15T11:19:00.001-06:00

Fun new art blog project from Moro Rogers: An Animal a Day.

2011-06-17T23:04:00.004-06:00

Impaled boat, 40 yards from water:

For more detail, check the photoblog.

2011-06-05T17:33:00.000-06:00

Reaching the edge of the Nyiragongo lava lake

2011-06-03T12:03:00.002-06:00

Transportation of live fish in antiquity:

A number of texts from antiquity have contentiously suggested the ancient Romans could transport live fish by sea. For instance, the scientist, Roman officer and historian Pliny the Elder spoke of transport of parrotfish from the Black Sea to the coast of Naples.

[Researchers] estimate an aquarium behind the mast of the ship could have measured about 11.4 feet by 6.5 feet by 3.3 feet (3.5 m by 2 m by 1 m) for a capacity of approximately 250 cubic feet (7 cubic meters). For comparison, an average bathtub has a volume of about 7 cubic feet. If properly maintained, it could help keep at least 440 pounds (200 kg) of live fish such as sea bass or sea bream, they noted.

Cronaca again (who has lots of good stuff lately).

2011-06-02T22:09:00.002-06:00

Cryptozoological philately.

There are some very odd gems in there. I think my favorites are (of all things) the North Korean tribute to Darwin by way of coelacanth, and this Bhutanese yeti confrontation.

Via Cronaca.

2011-06-02T18:09:00.002-06:00

Worms from Hell: nematodes (Halicephalobus mephisto) found over a mile below the surface in South African gold mines.

Reports of shoggoths will doubtless be forthcoming.

2011-06-01T15:55:00.003-06:00

Did the Nazis try to train dogs to talk? If this piece were dated April 1, I'd be very suspicious, and I still am rather. But they were crazy buggers, and even if it's not true, there are some great lines in the article:

"...attempted to build an army of fearsome 'speaking' dogs..." ["Oh God, the enemy wants another treat!"]

"...The bizarre 'Wooffan SS' experiment..."

"[The Airedale] was said to have speculated about religion, learnt foreign languages, wrote poetry and asked a visiting noblewoman 'could you wag your tail?' The patriotic German dog even expressed a wish to join the army, because he disliked the French."

"...a Dachschund named Kurwenal..." [for the Wagner fans]

"...there is no evidence it ever actually came to fruition and that the SS were walking around with talking dogs..." [You don't say. And neither do the dogs.]

Words fail, indeed.

2011-05-28T17:09:00.001-06:00

Reindeer can see UV light:

"...there are some very important things that absorb UV light and therefore appear black, contrasting strongly with the snow. This includes urine - a sign of predators or competitors; lichens - a major food source in winter; and fur, making predators such as wolves very easy to see despite being camouflaged to other animals that can't see UV."

2011-05-27T13:48:00.004-06:00

I might as well jump on this week's bandwagon of Bob Dylan tributes. Here: The Times They Are A-Changin' in Dutch. Listening to other Germanic languages is always so amusing! I recommend ignoring the images.

What I'd really like to post in Dylan's honor would be Tom Russell, Eliza Gilkyson and Joe Ely singing Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, but I can't find a linkable version. So just buy the recording.

And speaking of Dylan and Russell, Steve (lucky bastard) has a sneak preview of Russell's upcoming album Mesabi. I'll look forward to much on it, including A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall with Lucinda Williams. More glimpses into his recent songwriting are at Tom Russell's own blog.

2011-05-26T20:42:00.001-06:00

Music of the exploding spheres

Explanation here.

2011-05-21T22:27:00.002-06:00

Time-lapse of a slow-moving landslide in Wyoming

2011-05-21T10:52:00.003-06:00

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad accuses Europe of stealing Iran's rain.

Funny, people of a certain mindset have long held similar suspicions about Mormon cloud-seeding in the Wasatch depriving innocent ski areas further east. Such a notion could certainly explain this year's peculiar snowpack. Come on, LDS! Some of that snow is rightfully ours! I expect aircraft loads of it to start shipping to the Gila postehaste!

2011-05-20T17:28:00.000-06:00

Answers to all your questions about the titanic storm currently raging on Saturn

2011-05-19T12:50:00.001-06:00

The Cthulhu Crochet blog

What more is there to say?

2011-05-19T09:55:00.004-06:00

What a strange year it is for western snowpack!

Click to enlarge. La Nina is clearly visible here: anything south of about Tierra Amarilla, NM has really missed out (though it looks like the Whites in Arizona got a little love yesterday). The snowpack in the Great Basin and Utah is seriously insane, 300% of normal in a lot of areas, and normal is already a lot of snow in the Wasatch. It's going to be quite a year on the Idaho rivers, and a crazy awesome year on the Yampa.

2011-05-16T14:36:00.000-06:00

Three new frog species!

2011-05-13T15:51:00.004-06:00

An unnerving incident in which the very popular law blogger Ann Althouse has had her blog suspended as spam, apparently on a whim of Blogger/Google. I hope Ann gets a good resolution, but this would be a good time for anyone hosted on Blogger to export their blog. It's easy, you should do it anyway from time to time, and you'll find it under Settings>Basic. This would enable you to move your blog to Wordpress or another platform if necessary.

2011-05-09T19:31:00.002-06:00

"Lathspell I name you, Ill-news; and ill news is an ill guest they say."

Bow to the Tolkien fans, NYT!

2011-05-09T15:30:00.001-06:00

The folks talking about using hideous architecture to communicate the dangers of nuclear waste into the future could take a little inspiration from this gallery of abandoned Yugoslav war monuments.

Thanks to Odious for the tip.

2011-05-08T16:45:00.002-06:00

The wind hissed as if welcoming us
The pine swayed creating a lot of fuss

Worst poem ever? Not by a long shot; it's a crowded and competitive field. But Major James Abbot's eulogy to his eponymous town does approach McGonagall territory.

2011-05-06T11:01:00.002-06:00

Useful reference: Off-color Turkish slang. Apparently the company Amway didn't do so well in Turkey (exercise left to the reader). And apparently mention of the number 31 (otuz bir) is something foreigners may want to avoid. It's better to know these things than not.

Initially inspired by Claire Berlinski, in the less prurient context of impending Turkish Internet censorship, I hasten to add.

2011-05-05T16:05:00.000-06:00

How hummingbird tongues work

I didn't even know they were forked.

2011-04-15T19:34:00.001-06:00

Swarm of earthquakes on a previously unknown fault in western Nevada

2011-04-15T15:35:00.003-06:00

The tallest known cliff in the solar system: Verona Rupes on Miranda, 12 miles high. For comparison, El Capitan in Yosemite is about 0.6 miles high.

And here's a 2.5-mile high cliff band on Mars. Terraforming, please!

2011-04-14T11:24:00.001-06:00

The Ayapaneco language has only two remaining speakers - and they won't talk to each other.

2011-04-12T13:49:00.000-06:00

Yellowstone Volcanic Plume Larger than Previously Thought

2011-04-02T10:39:00.003-06:00

Don't miss the teaser for John Scalzi's new fantasy novel, The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City (announced yesterday).

Lot of overlap between a parody of bad fantasy and good Terry Pratchett. I expect it took a certain amount of willpower for Scalzi not just to keep writing.

Update: And a follow up, a statistical look at fantasy novel titles.

2011-03-31T19:59:00.003-06:00

Pyrard de Laval says in 1616: ‘(in Goa) they have no glass windows, instead very fine and straight oyster shells are used, inserted into wooden frames, allowing the light to come in as if it was of paper, as they are not as transparent as glass.'

Photographer Rajan Parrikar has some pictures of Goan nacre windows, though only from the outside, alas. I imagine that accurately rendering the quality of interior light filtered through the shells would be a consummate challenge for any photographer. It brings to mind the large sheets of mica used for window panes in Spanish missions in California, another effect I would love to see in person.

I highly recommend a look at Parrikar's blog and photo galleries. The twin poles of his world seem to be Goa and Iceland, an unusual combination to say the least, but he does excellent justice to both.

2011-03-31T18:21:00.003-06:00

It's good to have projects. And while documenting every bridge over the Rio Grande would not be my project, I wish Mr. Baca all the best in his endeavor. Seems like a relatively healthy monomania for a former Albuquerque mayor, certainly a more laudable habit than politics. I recommend that he also try and visit the source.

2011-03-30T21:37:00.002-06:00

Massive new arch discovered in Afghanistan, one of 14 natural spans in the world over 200 feet. Very cool, even if it does bump Dinosaur National Monument's Outlaw Arch a notch down the list. Complete list of 200'+ arches here.

2011-03-29T10:50:00.003-06:00

Musical oddity: Performance Today has the Concerto for Oboe, Eight Timpani, and Orchestra by Georg Druschetzky. Lest you fear that this must be some ghastly 20th Century thing, take heart: it was composed in 1800 and apart from its bizarre set of soloists is straight-laced late Classical period stuff (one should note that it's eight timpani, not eight timpanists; now that would be something!). I really enjoyed the first movement cadenza. 'Bout time the timpanists get to have some real fun!

I'm not sure that PT is archiving shows indefinitely anymore, so if you're interested, listen soon!

2011-03-29T09:31:00.000-06:00

Biggest bear ever:

A prehistoric South American giant short-faced bear tipped the scales at up to 3,500 pounds (1,600 kilograms) and towered at least 11 feet (3.4 meters) standing up, according to a new study.

The previous heavyweight was a North American giant short-faced bear—a related extinct species—that weighed up to 2,500 pounds (1,134 kilograms). The largest bear on record in modern times was a 2,200-pound (998-kilogram) polar bear shot in Alaska in the 19th century.

2011-03-28T12:35:00.003-06:00

Did the immigration of bison from Eurasia cause large mammal extinctions in the late Pleistocene? An interesting line of inquiry, though I'd definitely want to see a good account of the effects of another immigrant from Eurasia, one with two legs, taken into account.

Hat tip: Skolai Images.

Update: Or did it have something to do with a comet shower?

2011-03-27T20:33:00.002-06:00

Poaching on Larissa's preserves:

"Keep smiling!" could be a good slogan for the American lifestyle. "Why would I smile?" - this could be a slogan for the Russian lifestyle.

From a Russian source, no less. Rather interesting thoughts.

2011-03-25T15:47:00.002-06:00

Overindulging in XKCD these days, but I just can't help it:

Don't miss the mouseover text!