Saturday Morning Awesome: Eagle Owl in Flight

Just fantastic video here of an Eagle Owl landing in slow motion. I have watched it over and over again, just noting how the feathers are moving around.

For the camera geeks in the audience, here is the Youtube writeup:

New Photron SA-2 High Definition High Speed Camera. Shot of 'Checkers' the eagle owl, 1000fps 1920x1080 resolution. Shot by SlowMo (www.slowmo.co.uk). See the owl and other birds of prey at www.turbarywoods.co.uk.

Enjoy watching flight,

Bp

[via Uncle Tom]

Cat Parasite linked to Neurotic behavior in humans

I didn't make this up, in this Live Science post, a case is made for that assertion that human behavior is affected when stricken with Toxoplasma gondii. Namely, the person is more prone to mood swings, neurotic behavior, and depression.

"Pop science" or no, I thought the concept hilarious.

There is so much I could say about this connection, and people I know -- hell people we all know. But I won't. I'll let ya'll fill in the blanks.

Enjoy wild generalizations generating aspersion and stereotyping, especially if you can get science to back you up,

Bp

[via my Canukistani, Ex-Pat Uncle Ted, image via Nerve.com blog]

Sorry for no post today -- but, IT'S A GIRL!!!

See my doctor's note on the right for why I missed my allotted post today: Her name is Vivian, and she was 9 lbs. 15 Oz. 21" long. She's quite a little peanut.

Bp

First confirmed Wolverine sighting in California in 80 years!

A male wolverine was still-photographed last year and video'd this year on Sierra Pacific timber land in Northern California. Genetic tests have shown that it is a male, and the same animal in both instances. The video footage was captured by a cameras set up at baits by SPI on their land.

The individual shares more genetic similarity with animals in the Northern Rockies around Idaho or Montana than those from California's past. For more details, check out this article at Redding.com.

Check out the handsome fellow below:



Enjoy seeing some of the rarer aspects of the ecosphere creep back into the lower 48,

Bp


[via Uncle Tom, source Redding.com]

Songs Stuck in my Head Series: The Black Keys -- I Got Mine

I dig this song. More specifically, I dig this guitar hook -- simply awesome.

I blame my father's obsession with the rock/blues scene in my younger years. Something about the music is just so straight up and guttural, it gets me every time. The 70's style big-guitar Gemetzel solos (i.e. noodling) isn't my thing really, but in most of their songs they keep that to a minimum.

If you want the studio version of the song, click here. I appreciate the subtleties you can catch on that version. For some visuals as well, below is the band on Letterman:



For another awesome bluesey piece, check out Keep Your Hands off Her.

Enjoy the music of a couple throwbacks from Akron Ohio,

Bp

Saturday Morning Awesome -- David Bowie Mug Shot

Uncle Ted sent this to me, it's too awesome.



Enjoy unexpected art meeting celebrity,

Bp

[via The smoking gun]

Lizard venom key to help Diabetes

That handsome fellow on the right is a Gila Monster. It is the only venomous lizard in North America. They are slow-moving, not much threat to humans, and steadily becoming more and more scarce.

It turns out their venom can be used in an effective treatment for Type 2 Diabetes. The synthetic drug modeled after the active protein in the venom is called Exanatide.

No matter how clever we humans get, it seems like the vast majority of important discoveries and advancements come straight from nature.

Enjoy learning about another precious substance gleaned right from natures jaws,

Bp

[via Uncle Tom]

Saturday Morning Awesome -- Stevie Wonder "You Haven't Done Nothin'

You don't hear much outspokenly political music on the radio nowadays, not on popular radio, anyway. This song was all over the charts in its day, Stevie wrote it for Nixon. I think it's entirely appropriate to play for the departing Dubya. If you really want to bring it home, here are the lyrics. This Current.com post has a few other blatantly political songs, and many of them much newer than Stevie's masterwork below. But, you probably don't have to listen to all of them, as I expect I'll be poaching that post for a while and posting samples here.

Thanks to my Ex-Pat Uncle Ted for suggesting I look up this song. Perfect post for the Saturday Morning Awesome.



Enjoy the power of good music to bring home a point,

Bp

Word of the day: Balanoculture

I received an email a few months back from an uncle who was trying out making some Acorn meal. I thought, "man, these guys are as weird as I am."

Reading Oak: The Frame of Civilization by William Bryant Logan prompted Tom's experiment. Although I haven't read the oak book yet, Logan wrote another book that I found quite a great read, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth.

As for the word of the day, here is the body of my uncle's email, quoting the book:

I just finished re-reading an excellent book - Oak: the frame of civilization. Here's a review of the section that got me going.

Chapter Three, "Balanoculture," (defined as societies whose diet staple is the oak acorn) discusses evidence the oak tree's earliest contribution to civilization was to feed people. Recent research suggests not all early humans were big game hunters who eventually converted to farming. Some of our human ancestors were balanophagists. As an example, the archaeological site at Catal Huyuk, a settlement 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Turkey), offers clues its residents ground and ate acorns as their diet staple. Once its tannin is leached out, the acorn is highly nutritious and surprisingly filling. (Logan personally sought out Korean acorn jelly and thought it even an appetite suppressant--Slim*Fast(TM) buyers might soon be trekking to their neighborhood Korean food stores.) The crucial fact for theories about what our ancient ancestors ate is acorns are much easier to harvest and store, for calories spent, than chasing animals.

Interestingly, California is home to some of the finest remnants of balanoculture. As an example, if one travels two and a half hours northeast of, say, the Bay Area, one crosses Highway 49 to reach the town of Volcano, where the Indian Grinding Rock State Historical Park preserves a legacy of those early Californians, the Miwoks: some 1,185 mortar holes, the largest collection of bedrock mortars anywhere in North America. Miwoks used pestles in these mortars to grind acorns and did so for five thousand years until early in the twentieth century.

As an aside, here are the quotes that make up the signature text of all of Uncle Tom's emails. I'm so pleased to come from a sane family.

"Nature is the art of God" - Dante

"No amount of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted" - Aesop

"Technology is of no use to us if it is used without respect for the earth and its processes" - Aldo Leopold

Enjoy the wisdom of relatives,

Bp

Happy Birthday Pops!

Quick personal note -- my father is approximately 8 meelion years old as of yesterday (technical problems stopped me from posting this on the 17th).

Here is a picture that captures his inner child perfectly.

Happy Birthday Dad, I Love You (you big geek),

Bp

[photo via Thomas Daniel]

Time to Geek out -- World of Warcraft retrospective

I found these videos very interesting. They reach back to the board-top games that inspired the modern World of Warcraft. [Warning: if you had to click that text link to find out what WOW is, you might not be very interested in the rest of this post.] There is a lot of information on the real time strategy (RTS) forerunners of modern WOW.

More than a great watch for gamer geeks and WOW lore fiends, I find these videos an interesting view of the creative process. The lore just kept building, the computers and mechanics kept improving, and Blizzard just kept innovating along with it.

In a way, you can get a peek into the creation of gaming as one of the most potent media forces today. [I believe there will be a 3rd part to the series that will delve in depth with WOW as we know it today, but it hasn't posted yet]





And for added spice, here is an article about a guy who plays WOW on 11 computers at a time, with 36 accounts running. Oh my.

Enjoy surrendering to your inner geek,

Bp

[videos via The Portland Mercury Blog, crazy man article via cousin Zen]

Enough talk, it's time for action -- Move to Canada!

Too funny. Sent to me by my Ex-Pat Uncle (who works in high-tech no less).



Enjoy the tantalizing prospect of truly socialized medicine,

Bp

Back Home!!

We had a great visit, enjoyed the wedding, and I'm back at a working computer. Really makes me realize what an enormous information nipple this thing is for me to be without for a while. The feeling was made that much more poignant by having a computer in the house but totally crippled by spyware and bizarre mini applications (a peeling banana cursor animation, for example), so it's really just a tease and not actually usable.

I will be gratefully immersing myself back into cyberspace pronto.

Hope all is well,

Bp

We're Gonna Have a Baby!!!

It's time to announce that we're pregnant -- we waited as best we could until the 2nd trimester. The Wife is 14 weeks along, and doing great. Our due date is March 31st - first week of April sometime.

The families are all very excited, because we hadn't told folks we were starting to second-guess our no-baby policy of the previous 10 years.

We aren't going to peek, so the sex of the baby is going to be a surprise. I do love hearing all the old wives' tales and superstitions about how folks can tell and whatnot. We shall see.

Don't know how I'll incorporate this into the blog, but I can't see as how I'd avoid doing so. Time will tell.

Enjoy the surprises you find in this life,

Bp

Laphroaig Whiskey

During a recent family reunion, one of my many uncles kept talking about Laphroaig as the only scotch worth drinking. He continued to push his point by sending me this video after I came home -- just won't let it go I tell you. It's actually quite interesting if you are into brewing and distilling at all.



Enjoy uncles who refuse to back down,

Bp

Getting the bees into the hives

My Dad took pictures as I unpackaged the bees. The sky was ominous and I would have preferred warmer weather for the little ladies, but you do what you have to. The packages arrived, so we install the bees.

I'm just using a European bee jacket instead of a full suit here. Considering that de-packaging bees is probably the most disruptive, violent thing I'll be doing with them, and I didn't have a smoker yet, but I didn't get stung -- I'd say it's going to be easily sufficient for my needs. Oh were the girls pissed when I removed their queen and then had the audacity to shake them out of their cage to boot. Such an angry hum, I can't tell you.



The second picture shows me holding up a top bar with the queen cage hanging from it (I used a thumb tack to secure it). At that point I had removed the cork from the cage and installed the mini marshmallow as the time-release fuse for the queen. Should take the bees a day or two to eat up that marshmallow and let her free into the hive. By that time her scent is fully ensconced in that hive and they won't bolt on you.

For more of a blow-by-blow of de-packaging bees, here is a video I found that gets pretty specific. Of course they're using commercial hives, but you do get some more detail regardless.

Tonight I also made some bee-fondant to feed the hives tomorrow. It's cooling now. It's basically a sugar syrup that's been brought up to "soft ball" temperatures, then whipped as its cooling to add a bit of air to it. For bees you add some apple cider vinegar as well, to adjust the PH a bit and possibly provide a tiny bit of nutrient. The weather is just too cold right now for them to be flying much, so even though there are blooms everywhere for them to forage, they'll starve if I don't feed them a bit til it warms up. Fondant seemed the cleanest way to do it. I'm going to put chunks into cheesecloth and hang it from string from a top bar for them to feast on.

Enjoy learning new husbandry skills,

Bp

This should be an interesting experience.

So I have two mid-terms on Monday -- Genetics and Mammalian Physiology. Mam Phys looks to be one of the harder classes I've taken yet in college. My father and step mother are visiting this weekend for the first time in a decade, and I've not studied a lick since they got here on Friday. We're having a great time.

I'm not ready for the tests, and I'm not getting ready for the tests.

There is a strange feeling building in my gut. I'm about to have an experience that is new to me, I suspect. I'm going to learn to let go of this maniacal drive for straight A's and have a different type of test day than I'm used to. I already feel like I need to write a note to the profs and explain the situation -- apologize ahead of time for my lackluster performance on this first test.

I'm nervous and getting a bit distracted. I don't know if I'll be able to resist staying up all night on Sunday to try and make up some ground at the last minute. I understand most all the basic concepts for these tests, but just haven't practiced the math . Both of these tests are math-heavy, with very little vocab and concept -- pretty much all word problems, one of my weak points.

If there is a sound track for my life, I believe right now it sounds something like Silence of the Lambs, or The Shining.

Enjoy setting yourself up,

Bp

Robotic movement is way more advanced than I thought...

My geek uncle (oh, wait... that's all of them, sorry) sent me this video of the Boston Dynamics Big Dog robot. Watch long enough to see it slip around on the ice or be knocked to the side by one of the engineers. Truly amazing stuff -- way more advanced than I was expecting. Kinda freaky too.



Enjoy watching humans hobble along behind nature,

Bp

Vegetarianism a "perversion of nature" according to hilarious Pravda article

My uncle turned me on to this article in Pravda.ru about how vegetarians are a "perversion of nature." It's freaking hilarious, check out a typical quote:

Furthermore, cosmetologists say that a typical vegetarian has dry and fragile hair, dull eyes and unhealthy complexion. They can hardly stand criticism and have a low boiling point. They raise their voice, swing their arms and splutter when arguing. They are weak even in their logic.

Awesome.

And finally, here is a UK newspaper take on the same story. It's funny and provides the saucy Alicia Silverstone/PETA advertising as a counter argument -- touche.

Enjoy the glory that is bad journalism combined with bad translation,

Bp

Thanksgiving note from Grandma

[hand written in tight, loopy cursive]

"Dear B & K,

Once again I'm grateful for you, My Family, and then for the awe-inspiring Beauty -- just outside my Patio Door. The ground is slowly being covered as dark red, bronze and gold leaves drift down. Many different kinds of leaves finished for this year.

Golden brown Pin Oak, Red, crinkle edged Crepe Myrtle flutter down, their smooth white trunks and branches left bare. Liquidamber trees with their "maple-shaped" leaves falling to the ground like so many stars - stem upward - red and gold.

They crush under foot.
Fall berries orange-red; left over rosey roses and Camellias; clumps of sharp green lily leaves awaiting spring.

Dark green pines and cedars above the roof tops making a fine backdrop.

A single tall Tulip tree covered with little smooth balls like an early Christmas tree.

A lone dove - or two - search the seed scattered on the patio floor.

All of this is to be seen; to be enjoyed --

Outside my Patio Door
I'm Thankful to be here!
At our Home this year!


Love, Grandma L.
Happy Thanksgiving"


[Grandma rocks, what can I say]
Enjoy the love of relatives,

Bp