National Park tours with M-14 rifles at Organ Pipe Cactus

New frontiers in long-distance hiking: a proposed Great Plains Trail. Pretty neat idea, though I imagine securing access and easements would be a long, long process. But I'd certainly check out the New Mexico sections if it ever comes about.

Video of a wooly mammoth in Siberia? Don't I wish! Now that the world is flooded with cheap, user-friendly cameras intended to produce usable pictures even when handled by drunks in bars, mysterious blurry footage is real hard to take seriously.

On a similar note, apparently there's been an uptick of sasquatch sightings in the Chuska Mountains (New Mexico-Arizona border in Navajo country), of all places.

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

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

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".

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)

Vermin Supreme for President:

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

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

Och, science!

Scottish scientists recreate Shackleton's whisky

Cephalopod mimics fish, fish mimics cephalopod:

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!

Merry Christmas!

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).

Sweet justice! Do not tease the batrachian:



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

Photo gallery: 2011 in Volcanic Activity

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Thanks to Chas.

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.

New jaguar sighting in Arizona

European Union forbids claim that drinking water can prevent dehydration

Written? Kitten.

Hence. Now we need "Written? Crytozooid."

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!

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.

Girls in Trouble: Rubies



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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

HT: Adventure Blog.