Musings

For today’s excitement we summited Standing Indian, a peak west of Franklin, North Carolina, to lunch in the sun on a lovely, cozy outcrop with a westerly view through lush sumacs.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Hopefully, today was the last day that the street in front of our house was a construction site. After all the digging and general construction mucking about, which would send my monitors into a minor earthquake-scale shaking frenzy, today we finally reached the asphalt phase. They’re working in the light summer drizzle right now, trying to finish covering all the red subsoil they exposed before it becomes goopy red mud.

I’ve never noticed any machine-kin to the Superior Broom that they used for several stages of cleanup, but here it is in all its glory. Note the fire extinguisher on top, I guess for when they have to work near, dare I say?, fireweed….

And, wasn’t it a good idea that John and I got the white car washed yesterday?

Posted at 5:58 PM | 2 Comments »

When I saw this, I thought bald-faced hornet on a boletus. Boletus I’m sure. The hornet species still seems right, too.

I walked quietly on….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Bald-faced?

Yucatán Peninsula: cenote at Chichén Itzá.

When I first started this blahg I should have mentioned Antipixel, the blog of a terrific photographer who’s Australian and living in Japan while working as a web coordinator. His images are amazing and his words are thoughtful and lovely, and Antipixel has to be added to the list of blahgs that inspired me originally, and continues to do so. Take a look at this photo of trees and moss and green-ness on the island of Yakushima (never heard of it; looks gorgeous!), at, get this, a kilometer above sea level! You can even download a higher-res version for your desktop—I did!

Posted at 1:56 PM | Comments Off on Forest green

Fremont troll, Seattle.

How did I miss this story, out since Tuesday!

A car built by JCB has broken the diesel engine land speed record after reaching 328.767mph (529km/h).

And here I thought jcb was downstairs designing books and studying Python! Hrrrrrumph! Live and learn!

Posted at 3:54 PM | Comments Off on Automotive miscellany

Kitch-iti-kipi, the Big Spring, near Manistique, Michigan.

This could be subtitled: versions of a not-memorable ditty…or, ticketing in the old days….

A dog is a dog and a cat is a dog, and a squirrel in a cage is a parrot, but a tortoise, he’s a hinsect, so he rides free.

I heard this long ago, and vaguely remember it referred to ticket costs when riding? what, a train? a bus?, but nothing more.

Now, buried in the on-line correspondence in the New York Review of Books is this, attributed to Freeman Dyson:

When I was a boy in England long ago, people who traveled on trains with dogs had to pay for a dog ticket. The question arose whether I needed to buy a dog ticket when I was traveling with a tortoise. The conductor on the train gave me the answer: “Cats is dogs and rabbits is dogs but tortoises is insects and travel free according.�?

And this, from a 1869 Punch cartoon caption of a railway porter advising a woman traveling with her no-doubt beloved animals:

“STATION MASTER SAY, MUM, AS CATS IS ‘DOGS,’ AND RABBITS IS ‘DOGS,’ AND SO’S PARROTS; BUT THIS ’ERE ‘TORTIS’ IS A INSECT, SO THERE AIN’T NO CHARGE FOR IT!�?

…both from Nicholas Humphrey, resident of Cambridge, England.

Well, this is as far as I can go; maybe someone knows more of the story, or how this came into folk memory (a quick Google turns up nothing)…. Certainly, classification has deep human roots….

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Charleston Lighthouse, Morris Island, SC, ca. 1863, by J.R. Foster (Accession #1994.91.52)

Our Smithsonian has a slew of historic photos online for perusal and inspiration. This photo isn’t a bad place to start, or you could begin with all the flashy intro stuff here. Beware the visitors’ keywords, although the Smithsonian’s own keywords are inconsistent, too.

Here’s the Washington Post’s take on the photo web site, courtesy of a $500,000 gift (half a million smackers; I’m in the wrong biz!), and more info….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Old photos

Is this the trajectory of life? A Fibonacci curve of sorts?

(Not to be confused with Tribonacci numbers….)

Posted at 9:30 PM | Comments Off on Sculptural curl

Chihuly glass installation at Atlanta Botanical Garden, 2004.

Happy news today from the Middle East: truce in Lebanon! (And interesting interactive graphics, too.) Read here for some insights on what it’s been like to live through what’s been going on in northern Israel. Kudos to Leah for making these entries, and I breathe a sigh along with her that she can now move on to another topic….

Posted at 5:48 PM | 6 Comments »

Some climatology types have examined the effect on agriculture in the US—specifically premium wine grape areas—by a continued trajectory of increasing temperatures over the next century. The figure they used is 2–6°C. This is Figure 2-f, showing where the prime areas will shift to—that is, those areas lacking extremes of heat and cold. They make the point that wine is economically significant with 3.5 million tons of winegrapes out of approximately 6 million tons of grapes harvested each year. By converting them into wine, their value increases greatly, with concomitant deleterious effects if their production drops this much.

This is your world, and the projection is not pretty. Note how few premium grapes will come from California. In short:

… areas marginally suitable for winegrape production in the current climate were nearly eliminated and the area capable of consistently producing grapes required for the highest-quality and highest-priced wines declined by >50%.

Don’t trust my word; download the original here.

And, no, I haven’t seen Al Gore’s movie yet. Have you? What’d you think?

Posted at 6:13 PM | Comments Off on Our future?