We here at O&P have yet to acknowledge Darwin's birthday. That puts us in good company with Darwin in 1834, who seemed more concerned with baffling winds and Fuegians.

NPR had a rather good piece this week on the Shahnameh in contemporary Iran.

Find the acclaimed English translation by Dick Davis, open it at random, and you are as likely as not to find a sentence such as this: "When spring's new growth gave the plains the appearance of silk, the Turks prepared for battle."

Of course they did. The Shahnameh (like the Icelandic sagas) is one of those works that looks intimidating from a distance, but is a real page-turner once you get going. There are plenty of convenient excerpts available: I would recommend starting with the Legend of Seyavash or Sohrab and Rostam (either are readable in one or two sittings). But diving off the deep end is good too.

Update: Those so inclined may also examine the graphic novel, about whose quality I make no claims.

Well, turns out the stimulus is working for me:

For necessary and unnecessary expenses related to the Wireless and Broadband Deployment Grant Programs established by section 6002 of division B of this Act, $2,825,000,000, of which $1,000,000,000 shall be for Wireless Deployment Grants and $1,825,000,000 shall be for Broadband Deployment Grants: Provided, That an additional $250,000,060 shall be paid directly to Beelzebufo in the form of subsidized loans that do not require repayment. Provided Further, That the funds be used by Beelzebufo to Construct toad sanctuaries in rural New Mexico or for whatever. Provided Even Further, That Beelzebufo will receive free Natalie Dessay tickets for life. [Score!] Provided Even Further Still, That Beelzebufo shall be treated as a cabinet-level appointment for the purpose of income tax reporting, and therefore no taxes shall be paid on any of the aformentioned benefits. And one more thing: Harry Reid is hereby expelled from Congress, effective immediately upon enactment.

Request your stimulation here. And remember the toads!

And while we're in this vein:

The oldest known human hairs could be the strands discovered in fossil hyena poop found in a South African cave, a new study hints.

But we're all aware, are we not, that being eaten by hyenas is not as bad as it sounds?

Titanoboa is getting all the attention, but where's the love for Beelzebufo?

Evans, lead author of a new paper detailing the find, describes the 70-million-year-old frog as a rather intimidating animal the size of a beach ball, 16 inches (41 centimeters) high and weighing about 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms).

Like its closest modern-day relatives—a group of big-mouthed frogs in South America called ceratophyrines—the devil frog also probably had a very aggressive temperament....

"They're sometimes called Pac-Man frogs," she added, "and even the little ones will go for you. It's a frog with attitude, even today.

"And at two or three times the size of the largest living ceratophyrines, Beelzebufo would have had quite a lot more attitude."

The animal sported a protective shield and powerful jaws that may have enabled it to kill hatchling dinosaurs.

Emphasis mine. Now that's a batrachian for the ages!

Leaving aside the cheap thrills for a moment, Beelzebufo has some interesting biogeographic implications:

[Scientists] suggest that specimens like Beelzebufo provide proof of a later physical link between South America and Madagascar, most likely through a connection with Antarctica...

"In dinosaurs, crocodiles, birds, and mammals we've been seeing over and over again a close evolutionary relationship between animals in Madagascar and animals in South America," said Kristi Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalester College in Saint Paul...

"Based on the modern and fossil distributions of this group of big frogs, it's not a pan-Gondwanan group," said Macalester's Curry Rogers.

"So far they haven't been recovered from the fossil record in India and Africa. They are in South America and Madagascar, and that's really interesting."

Found via this roundup of giant critters.

Prehistoric Pueblo Parrots

Reid Farmer has a post up at Querencia regarding Mesoamerican imports to the Southwest. Inasmuch as he mentions macaws and parrots specifically, I thought I'd share a frame from a panel very near Santa Fe which I've been visiting lately:

I'm no rock art expert, but they sure look like parrots to me. Reid?

While I'm at it, might as well post a few more. Some things never change around here apparently; why did Kokopelli become an icon but not horned serpents?

Evidence of Romanovs in pre-Entrada New Mexico:

Lots of good animals in this panel:

The Wild Southwest

Between holidays, illness, boring weather, a funeral and general laziness, it's been a slow season photographically. But Mrs. P and I finally got out for some exploring yesterday, and a fine day it was:

This is out in the boonies in Sandoval County, a land of eroding badlands, big volcanic necks, and little else. Though I doubt the horses were wild, they didn't seem very sociable either. The white one was borderline aggressive when we had to pass close to them. Strange critters seem to like it out there. Last time I was in the neighborhood, I saw a mountain lion just walking down the side of the road, looking unwell.

For a wider view of the area, click here.

Val Kilmer ponders run for New Mexico governor in 2010

Maybe someone has something intelligent to say about this, but it isn't me.

Update: Atomic Nerds say the most obviously intelligent thing.

Fossilized remains of world's largest snake:

Titanoboa was 13m (42ft) long - about the length of a bus - and lived in the rainforest of north-east Colombia 58-60 million years ago....

The team of researchers led by Jason Head, from the University of Toronto at Mississauga, Canada, used a known mathematical relationship between the size of vertebrae and the length of the body in living snakes to estimate the size of the ancient animal.

Named Titanoboa cerrejonensis by its discoverers, the beast's 13m-long body and 1,140kg (2,500lb) weight make it the largest snake on record.

"At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips. The size is pretty amazing," said co-author P David Polly, from Indiana University in Bloomington, US.

Be sure to read the article and see the photo of this thing's vertebra next to one from an anaconda. Damn!

Cronaca beat me to it.

Update: Via Tet Zoo, an excellent post on Titanoboa, including this observation:

Large population surveys of reticulated pythons have failed to find individuals longer than 6 metres. By contrast, Head's team analysed vertebrae from eight different specimens of Titanoboa and found that all of them were roughly the same size. A length of 13 metres was fairly ordinary for this extraordinary serpent.

Today is Felix Mendelssohn's 200th birthday. He was a fairly late discovery for me, but despite his reputation for much of the 20th Centuryas Victorian wallpaper, he was a first-rate composer. You can tune into a fine celebration of his bicentennial at Performance Today.

As Cactus Ed said, a drink a day keeps the shrink away. And the doctor. And also the collection agent, apparently.

The data show that average income rises with alcohol consumption up to a point and then falls off as one moves into the range of heavy drinking. Income peaks at 2.6 drinks per day for men and 1.5 per women.

This also comes as no surprise:

In 2008, 89% of people who drank two drinks per day or less reported giving charitably. Compare this with 84% of teetotalers

Odious and Peculiar do not typically go in for the political agitation line. But on occasion even we are distracted from our Chinese poetry, geomorphology and cephalopod attacks. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is certainly such a distraction. Best case scenario seems to be that it will spell the end of any cottage industry producing children's products. Worst case, it may spell serious trouble for children's clothes in thrift stores and even children's books in libraries*. Hysteria over toxins in plastic crap from China may soon make plastic crap from China the only legal game in town. Read more here and, if you see fit, importune your humble servants in Washington.

*Note the absurdity of the devil's advocate statement in the Forbes piece: "Defenders of the law point out, for example, that item-by-item enforcement at thrift shops is unlikely to be an enforcement priority any time soon for the Consumer Product Safety Commission's 100 field investigators." Lord willing; but if it's not intended to be enforced, change the damn law! If it is law, it will eventually be enforced somewhere, whether such was intended or no.

John Derbyshire discovers a modern-day McGonagall.

Painting the Polar Landscape: a collection of Arctic and Antarctic paintings from the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

To see the 21st Century holding its own, check out Tony Foster's work (more, scroll down).

Frankincense found to be psychoactive.

Glad I'm going to Vespers tonight!

Credit due to Chas.

This video is allegedly famous, but it's news to me. Morals of the story?

1. Africa is one hell of a tough neighborhood.
2. Do not screw with cape buffalo.

Mountaineers measure lowest human blood oxygen levels on record.

The expedition found the average arterial oxygen level to be 3.28 kilopascals or kPa (with the lowest value being 2.55 kPa); the normal value in humans is 12-14 kPa and patients with a level below 8 kPa are considered critically ill.

Cool!

Also, a landslide the size of the U.S., though it disappointingly happens to be on Mars.

Hat tips for both to The Adventure Blog.

Colorado Winter Weirdness:

Ever imagine what would happen if you went off the road on Red Mountain Pass? Why the Ouray Mountain Rescue Team would be along in five minutes, of course, on their way to make some turns.

When you go skiing, be polite to the lifties. Why? Because bad lift karma will leave you upside down and pantless. As former lifties, Odious and Peculiar make no apologies for their schadenfreude.

Happy New Year! As you've no doubt heard, Yellowstone is doing some very entertaining things lately. I must say, it's rather tempting to head up that way: there might be some splendid spectacle to be had, and in the worse case scenario it would be one of the less unpleasant places to be. What would you give to be a fly on the wall of the Church Universal and Triumphant right now?

If you're the type who would enjoy them, Fresh Bilge is posting frequent Yellowstone updates. We're also in his sidebar: rather generous of him, I'd say. I guess he liked my Manzano Mountains post a couple years back. Thanks! Our site meter has been non-functional and ignored for quite a while now, so I have no idea who may have been linking us. Linkers, feel free to say hi in the comments if you like.

I've finally gotten far enough with my Chinese to attempt a (very poor) translation of some easy poetry. Of necessity, this is a loose paraphrase, since the literal translation would be ungrammatical, lacking poetry, and incomprehensible.

This is the saddest thing to me:
Not waking to find you gone,
After a night spent
Composing poems on these walls,
But there on the table to see
Your wine cup, still half-full.

--Xia Zhou Yu, c. 900?

The "State" Of Idaho: The Case For Open Debate

Yep, I'm a proud member of the Cartographic Thought Police.

In a similar vein...

I'm a sucker for kemence and bagpipes, so imagine my delight to stumble upon this very interesting post by Dumneazu on Laz ethnorock and the Pontic music scene generally. Plenty of interest here. I particularly like that these folks aren't running afoul of Turkish language laws because Lazuri is not written:

Laz literature, in fact, seems to have skipped the "written literature" phase altogether and gone straight to the "hit CD" level.

And speaking of YouTube, Dumneazu has the best apologie for Internet video I've yet seen:

Youtube lets you peek in on private after dinner parties where a bunch of greek speaking turkish muslims drink raki/ouzo and just let it all hang out.

Indeed. Based on a quick look at the archives, Dumneazu's mission in life seems to be to jaunt about Eastern Europe and the Levant in search of drunken musicians and sausages. Nice work! There are a lot pork products in those archives, as well as this gem:

Two YouTubes in a row: apologies. But some things cannot be passed up:

Thank you, Rigor Vitae!

Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans

Noel Coward:

John Derbyshire has had better things to do than follow politics of late. Politics' loss is very much our gain. He and Odious seem to court the same muse.

Thursday last, Mrs. P's employer treated us to attendance at an event in that notorious naval of northern New Mexico, Taos. As a native of the state, I must say I'd greatly prefer the world to associate us with Los Alamos and atomic weapons than with the far more pernicious, if metaphorical, energy that radiates from Taos. Remember the scene in Easy Rider when Fonda and Hopper wind up in the New Mexico commune? Dirty, filthy hippies grovel about, awkward looks are exchanged, Fonda and Hopper get the Hell out. Well, that place was purchased and given a makeover by filthy-rich Texans, and Taos is what remains.

Don't believe me? We were put up at one of the town's highly prestigious resorts: to protect the guilty I'll call it the Monte Chingado. The place encapsulated what I'm talking about. Antlers and turquoise, that's the Taotian spirit:

Presiding over our room:

Ooh, can we brand the dressers?

Yay, a turquoise pillow! Thing weighs about twenty-five pounds: you could smother a spouse with no hands. Our armadillo likes it, though:

Oh, good: art. Zombie horse seeking delicious brains, above our mini-bar:

Really, this place is where both virtuous Texans and sinful New Mexicans go when they die. It wasn't all trashy. There were actually some very nice touches in the conference rooms, dining areas and other classier sections. The water feature was pretty good. The bar had an enormous snake effigy over it. But everything was just wrong, wrong, wrong. This was amply demonstrated when we came back to our room and found on our pillow not a chocolate truffle or other such welcome offering, but a rose quartz. With a pamphlet expounding its vibrational effects on our circulatory, mental and reproductive systems. But I must observe that a lodging that offers healing crystals in a room full of antlers and cowhide is unclear on basic New-Agery.

Again, that's Taos for you.The next morning at a coffee shop, Mrs. P found a notice which pretty well encapsulates the whole town:

Will trade therapeutic body work for firewood.

One more illustration? How about some more art? Also from our room:

The inscription at the bottom:

Details not provided.

Life Imitates Art, Art Imitates Jokes at its Expense

Curators of modern art have such complicated problems, the poor things. Give me a good rousing performance of 4'33" any day.

Speaking of the Alps, here is some historic Alpine poetry:

To the Matterhorn

Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,
And four lives paid for what the seven had won.

They were the first by whom the deed was done,
And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight
To that day's tragic feat of manly might,
As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.

Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon
Thou didst behold the planets lift and lower;
Saw'st, maybe, Joshua's pausing sun and moon,
And the betokening sky when Caesar's power
Approached its bloody end; yea, even that Noon
When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.

--Thomas Hardy

Hardy likes these grim, elliptical finishes that set you down with a hollow thud. I'm still debating whether this one does anything for me. But mountaineering poems aren't that common, particularly if you don't count free verse in the Telluride Mountain Gazette as legitimately belonging to the genre. (Yes, I know, the lines seldom reach the right edge of the page. Nevertheless...) The four and seven refer to Edward Whymper's first ascent of the peak in 1865, with its four fatalities on the way down. As the saying goes, "The summit is optional, but descent is mandatory."

From John Derbyshire's Readings page, always worthwhile if you crave a spot of verse.

Update: Here's some mighty fine Matterhorn for you.

A well illustrated and pretty readable account of the first ascent of Kang Nachugo in Nepal this September. I like the notion of "the 'Fairbanks Belay' – if you fall off one side, I’ll jump off the other." And the scale of the snow fluting and cornices on these giant mountains always blows my mind.

In other news, we alpinism nerds can look forward to Nordwand. Someone on SummitPost claims it's slated for U.S. release in December; I hope that's correct. I'm not aware of any other mountaineering movies that depict a substantially earlier era of climbing. Hob-nailed boots, wool, rope around the waist: I also hope to see some English-language articles about the making of this one.

Goodness, I've been gone long. I've been immersed in the winding path of modern tax law, et il y a une anguille sous toutes roches, as they say. Possibly.

Peculiar and jack were good enough to remember me with Stephenson's Anathem, and since I have yet to comment on the last book they gave me (Sayings of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Short version: I find your concern for the relations between goats and men disturbing), I thought I would jot down a few thoughts on this latest.

It's not his best. At the center of all his better books is a giant idea--often an idea in the Kantian sense, as something too big really to get a hold of. At this center of this book is a lot of philosophastering. To be fair, the main character and most of the others are all the sort of people who do have conversations about deep philosophical issues and then try to answer their questions with explosives, but there's only so many paraphrases of the Meno you can read before you want to shake the author and say, "I get it."

This is true. Unkind, but true.

And the science is... not good. The basics are acceptable, but his grasp of larger issues in physics seems comfused.

In its favor is the fact that even Stephenson's lesser stuff is more intelligent and engaging than just about anyone else out there. The book also offers the only convincing portrait of an active Temple of Reason I've read.

Anathem also drives home just how rare the ability to follow an argument is, and how much training it requires. The sense of when a point has been proven is a rare one, and needs much cultivation before a taste for truth (which is above all an acquired taste) is identifiable.

Finally: worth one's time, absolutely, but no Diamond Age. Which is praising with faint damns, of course.

A man eager to climb famous mountains must have the patience to follow a winding path. A man eager to eat bear's paw must have the patience to simmer it slowly. A man eager to watch the moonlight must have the patience to wait until darkness falls. A man eager to see a beautiful woman must have the patience to let her finish her toilette. Reading requires this patience also.

--Feng Zhenluan, Commentaries on the Strange Tales.

Exploring a 3,100' cave shaft in China.

"Doc, we're losin' him! He started out playing Irish, slipped into bluegrass, and now it's sounding like Nashville!"

Man plays banjo during brain surgery.

World's biggest crocodiles!

Hat tip: Where else?

(Image is my own, shot at Colorado Gators.)

Speaking of reading offline, we've probably all heard of the phenomenon in which bookworms report that reading Internet material shortens their attention spans for hard-copy literature. I'm happy to report that I've been experiencing the opposite effect. My attention span for long Internet articles is pretty limited, but give me horizontality and a chunk of dead tree in my hands and I'll go for hours.

Perhaps this is why I havn't been following Prairie Mary lately (there's certainly no other good reason). So if you're like me, get yourself a hard copy of Twelve Blackfeet Stories and dig in. That deserves Superior Scribbler status in the non-blog division.

Oh, to Hell with work! I've just stared into space for half an hour with thoughts roaming great distances from the task at hand: it's time to crack a beer and glean the teeming brain, which in my case means catching up on a little blogging.

Steve has passed along to us the status of Superior Scribblers. Well, it's only nepotism towards one of us, strictly speaking. And I'd say that scrabbling is more what we do of late. Our glory days are somewhat fled what with Odious' sarariman lifestyle (complete with landscape of cherry blossoms and a symmetrical volcano), and my creative energies mostly funneled into photography. But they may return, so the blog lives on. For a sampling of our better times, see myself on The Illinois River, Karluk, Alaska and Richard Wagner: Eco-Feminist; and sample Odious' rediscovery of the Prawne family and at his very best.

I rather dislike the chain-letter nature of these blog awardy things, so nobody ought to feel himself "tagged." But I always enjoy offering credit where it's well due, and I never mind an excuse for some links. So, here:

• Leaping instantly to mind: Larissa. She posts seldom, but it's worth the wait. My favourite ought not to be read by anyone whose involuntary laughter will perturb co-workers.


• For a different kind of scribbling, I always enjoy Kambodia Hotel.


• To step beyond our self-referential little corner of the blogosphere to include someone who has no idea I exist, I really like Utah photographer né Frenchman Guy Tal. His writings on photography are honest, sensible, intelligent and offer inspiration to improve one's photography in ways that don't involve four-figure expenditure. His Six Silver Bullets essay is an obvious example. People who like this sort of thing will also enjoy this podcast interview.


• In the same vein, Suprada Urval is doing some excellent photoblogging, the highlight being many terrific interviews with some amazing landscape, travel and wildlife shooters. Fellow herpetophiles will especially enjoy this.


• I'll save some space for Odious, if he likes. Did I mention that most of my reading is offline these days (more on that to come, I hope)? Besides, Steve took Chas and Pluvialis, and the LosAlamotians started the whole thing.

A vast, high and entirely unexplored mountain range: the only catch is that it's buried under 2.5 miles of ice.

An Antarctic mountain range that rivals the Alps in elevation will be probed this month by an expedition of scientists using airborne radar and other Information Age tools to virtually "peel away" more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of ice covering the peaks.

One of the mysteries of the mountain range is that current evidence suggests that it "shouldn't be there" at all.

The researchers hope to find answers there to some basic questions about the nature of the southernmost continent, including the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet. For instance, it is unclear how Antarctica came to be ice-covered in the first place and whether that process began millions of years ago in the enigmatic Gamburtsev Mountain range...

The scientists will eventually create a coordinated mosaic of images of the shallowest layers in the ice sheet to regions hundreds of kilometers beneath the hidden mountains, in effect creating a 3-D map of the vast and unexplored region...

Mountains of Madness, anyone? It's mindblowing just how thick the Antarctic ice sheets are: the South Pole lies at over 9,000 feet, but bedrock is thought to be near sea level.

And for those who missed it, take a look at Jack's blog. Wow, indeed. Hang in there till at least the third verse.

(Odious and Peculiar assume no responsibility for ill effects resulting from this link, including but not limited to insanity, impotence, glossolalia and Arianism.)

Odious, you managed a restaurant for how long, and never managed to implement this?

Yup, New Mexico's a stinkin' desert. Nothing to see here folks, just saguaros and buzzards. Take dawn this morning, for instance:

Nothing to see... (click for better)