Listics

Thanks NASA

Technorati Tags: Lockheed Martin, NASA, if we wreck up the earth maybe we can all move to mars and eat red dirt

The plains abound with three kinds of partridge,* two of which are as large as hen pheasants. Their destroyer, a small and pretty fox, was also singularly numerous; in the course of the day we could not have seen less than forty or fifty. They were generally near their earths, but the dogs killed one. When we returned to the posta, we found two of the party returned who had been hunting by themselves. They had killed a puma, and had found an ostrich’s nest with twenty-seven eggs in it. Each of these is said to equal in weight eleven hens’ eggs; so that we obtained from this one nest as much food as 297 hens’ eggs would have yielded.

* Two species of Tinamus, and Eudromia elegans of D ‘Orbigny, which can only be called a partridge with regard to its habits.

(Thanks to Emily Davidow for the link.)

Technorati Tags: charles darwin, omnivores, carnivores, predators, prey

There’s an old hackberry tree, maybe seventy feet tall, at the front of the house. Do we say “hackberry tree?” We don’t say “oak tree.” “Oak” suffices. There’s an old hackberry at the front of the house, stage right of the entrance. Perhaps I should say house left. The living room windows provide a view of its trunk and lower branches.

Molly came in and out of the office, whining, offering little yips, telling me she wanted to go outside. These cold winter days we’re pretty regular about when we dash out together so she can squat or hunch-up in the snow as the eliminatory spirit moves her, and I might have known that this was something else. Still, when she’s in guard-dog mode, scaring away the fearsome ungulates, barring the sciuridae and the leporidae from the doors, she barks — loud, fearless and fearsome, other-directed barks. This was definitely a “let me outside please” imprecation, whined with some urgency.

When I opened the front door she dashed toward the hackberry and while she danced around the base of the tree there was the scurrying and scratching sound of a raccoon climbing. I called her back. Mirabilis dictu, she came. After only four years I’ve learned enough of her language to issue simple commands that she is willing to obey. On a branch about twelve feet off the ground I saw the silhouette of what might have been a large — a very large — cat. Except for how pointy was the nose….

Molly and I went back inside. I fetched a powerful flashlight and we went upstairs. Molly didn’t need the visual aid, of course, but I enjoyed looking at the illuminated beast, his faced smudged like an American football player who thinks he can reduce glare by smearing carbon on his cheeks, his claws ideally adapted for climbing trees, opening garbage cans, ripping open plastic bags. He climbed higher in the tree. We watched him for a while, then I went to the kitchen and prepared an offering of salami and cheese which I placed at the base of the tree while offering my humble prayer that the god of garbage cans would not again scatter our trash while we slept.

The offering was accepted, but the wish wasn’t granted. There was nothing new in the garbage can since the last time he visited, but ever the optimist he needed to spread the contents and see if there was a morsel remaining that he might have missed earlier in the week. Tonight I’ll place a box trap by the garbage can, bait it with carrots and banana peel and maybe a dab of sturgeon eggs, a slice of salami. Tomorrow I’ll take him to a city park, to a place where there are more garbage cans than he can find on this quiet country road. By the time he finds his way back I’m hoping enough snow and ice will have melted that I can put the garbage can back in the little raccoon proof shed where it belongs.

Fresh from the wikipedia hotline, this just in…

Cornelius Coot (1790-1880) was born in 1790 as an American citizen. His ancestors had been in America for quite some time and his roots are believed to reach to the colonization of Jamestown, Virginia (1607) and the voyage of the Mayflower (1620). But he is the first member of the Coot Kin to gain prominence. His birthplace is unknown and before reaching Duckburg he lived the life of a wandering hunter. He apparently had travelled all the way from the East to the West coast making his living by trading furs from the animals he killed.

He arrived at Fort Drake Borough, a British military base in Calisota, in 1818. He was apparently only looking for some trading with the soldiers but his life took some unexpected turns. During his stay the Fort was attacked by Spanish Troops from neighboring California. The small British garrison couldn’t defend the Fort and decided to retreat. In order to save face the commander made a deal with young Cornelius. The Fort would pass into his possession and if the Spanish managed to conquer it, he and his troops had nothing to do with the failure other than trusting an insane American to guard. Cornelius agreed. After the escape of the British he managed to frighten the Spanish away by making them believe that British reinforcements were approaching by popping some sweetcorn. [Apocryphal or simply erroneous? Sweetcorn doesn't pop that well. -fp-]

He renamed it Fort Duckburg and turned it into a trading camp for hunters. Soon enough, some of them began to settle down and start their own families. Cornelius started his own farm and started acting as the leader of the new settlement. Pretty soon, a village was flourishing in Duckburg. Calisota was annexed into the new independent state of Mexico in 1821 but Duckburg acted much as a city state. It had its own laws, its own leaders and thanks to Cornelius its own defense force. Cornelius organized the citizens that could carry weapons into the Woodchuck Militia [posse comitatus? -fp-], a force that would guard the territory from any threat, including any conflicts with the Native Americans [concerned regarding species here. are these Native American members of the Anatidae family, or what?] of the area. Cornelius turned the old Fort into the militia’s base. He personally supervised the repairs to the Fort and had the idea to build underground tunnels under the Fort so that even during a siege they could still move in and out of the Fort. Besides the tunnel they made, they found an already existing one, the tunnel built by Fenton Penworthy and his men in 1579 after the building of the Fort. Cornelius explored the tunnel. He found the body of the long-dead Fenton and gave him a proper burial. He also found the info on the Guardians of the Lost Library. He found and kept the book written by Fenton and containing the secret knowledge of the Guardians. Apparently he appointed himself the next Guardian, the first after Fenton.

Cornelius had managed to pipe mountain water into the village. He was a capable leader and managed to improve his settlers’ relationships with the Native Americans over time and Cornelius himself married an Native American woman. They had their only known son Clinton Coot in 1830. [their success at procreation seems to indicate that the referenced Native Americans are indeed Anatidae, but with Walt Disney one never knows, do one?]

Technorati Tags: Junior Woodchucks, cooties, old coots, Nathaniel Daniel’s Annual Spaniel Manual, American Spirit

Today is the day we often hear the first cranes of the year.  Not this year.  It’s been cold and snowy and if they have any sense they’ll stay in Mississippi until things warm up around here.

Elk, that is. Our friend Joanna snapped these pictures from her living room. Impressive neighbors in a beautiful neighborhood!

© Joanna Lynch

From the living room window!

© Joanna Lynch

These Roosevelt elk make our local White-tailed deer look like munchkins.

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Last summer Jon Lebkowsky interviewed Cliff Figallo, author of Climate Frog, at WorldChanging. It was a two part interview. Part one is here. It brings focus to Cliff’s lengthy experience in intentional communities, from The Farm to The WELL.

Part two is here. It focuses on “…climate change, denial, and the possibility of mitigation and adaptation.” Regarding denial, Figallo refers to a letter in Newsweek which I had a hard enough time finding that I reproduce it here in its entirety:

Kaneohe, Hawaii

Sharon Begley’s article about “The Denial Machine,” as frightening as it was, misses a crucial aspect of the problem. It is not just that well-heeled corporations are buying up politicians or promoting science-as-they-want-it-to-be. It is that our society is more than happy to accept spin and cant because we have come to believe that all expertise is bias, that all knowledge is opinion, that every judgment is relative. I see this daily in my university classroom. Many of even my best students seem to have lost the ability to think critically about the world. They do not believe in the transformative power of knowledge because they do not believe in knowledge itself. Begley decries the tactic of making the scientists appear divided, but the corporations didn’t have to invent this tactic. It is built into our carefully balanced political “debates,” into our news shows with equal time given to pundits from each side and into the “fairness” we try to teach in our schools. We need not be surprised that people have become consumers who demand the right to choose as they wish between the two equally questionable sides of every story. Neither global warming nor any other serious problem can be addressed by a society that equates willful ignorance with freedom of thought.

Bernard Dov Cooperman
Dept. of History, University of Maryland

Cliff Figallo believes in the power of networked communications and particularly blogging to help get the word out on this most crucial problem that faces us all. His blog, Climate Frog, collects reports of local climate change impacts and responses from around the world. What have you done to reduce your carbon emissions today?

Technorati Tags: jon lebkowsky, cliff figallo, climate frog