Just Make Them Die

Jesus. Here's a link to a YouTube video. I watched about 3 seconds and I want to kill people. This is horrible.

Mind the Fence

Can I just say, in advance, "OWWWWWW!"

That is all.



Brush-tailed Possum, Dee Why, Sydney, Oz, October, 2006.

Then and Now: The Photography of Irina Werning

Saw this on Roger Ebert's Twitter feed: Back to the Future:

I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today... A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

Laughing Kookaburra

Also from my 2006 trip, this is a Laughing Kookaburra, one of four kookaburra species, and the only one in the Sydney region.

Kookaburras are related to the little fellow I posted just below: They're members of kingfisher family, but while the one featured below is a river kingfisher, the kookaburra is a tree kingfisher. They're carnivores, too, but rather than fish they eat insects, worms, crustaceans, reptiles, frogs, snakes, mice, and even chicks of other birds.

They are most famous for their call, which begins at our place right around 4:15 every morning:

According to an Aboriginal legend, the kookaburra's famous chorus of laughter every morning is a signal for the sky people to light the great fire that illuminates and warms the earth by day. The legend captures the imagination, but the true function of the familiar cacophony is to advertise the territory of this bold bird. The Laughing Kookaburra is the largest of the kingfisher family, but unlike most of its relatives, it is sedentary and occupies the same territories the year round.

This site says that early European settlers described the call "appalling as the ravings of a madman . . . and ends in a prolonged sardonic chuckle."

Here's an example, but without the characteristic "hoo hoo hoo" start. This is just a raspy call.





The same site says this:

The name kookaburra is derived from an Aboriginal name, similar to the onomatopoeic words from other Aboriginal languages, including akkaburra, googooburra, gurgara, gingara and arkooburra. 

More:

Laughing Kookaburras are believed to pair for life. The nest is a bare chamber in a naturally occurring tree hollow or in a burrow excavated in an arboreal (tree-dwelling) termite mound. Both sexes share the incubation duties and both care for the young. Other Laughing Kookaburras, usually offspring of the previous one to two years, act as 'helpers' during the breeding season. Every bird in the group shares all parenting duties.

I actually saw one emerge from a termite nest on a tree once. Thought it was a little cream-colored rodent at first, then off it flew. Here's a photo of a termite mound on a tree with holes that were likely once entrances to a kookaburra nest:

The Laughing Kookaburra.

Azure Kingfisher

From my trip to Australia in 2006.




Australian Museum:

The Azure Kingfisher plunges from overhanging perches into water to catch prey. Prey items include: fish, crustaceans, aquatic insects and other invertebrates, and, sometimes, frogs. They will often bash their prey against the perch before swallowing it head first. Often watch Platypuses foraging underwater and catch any food items that are disturbed.

Saw this little guy, a cousin of the kookaburra and only three of four inches high, on the South Alligator River in Kakadu National Park. Several times he'd dart down, be back up on the limb and have his food down almost faster than you could see.

Cheeky Bugger

Big bird:

Old Sayings…Reconsidered: "A Stitch in Time..."

“A stitch in time saves 9.” A wise English person first said that a long, long time ago.

“A stitch in time saves 9.”

It’s like time is this gigantic piece of fabric—and it has a hole in it. Worse: 9 is gonna fall through the hole unless it gets stitched up. Hence “A stitch in time saves 9.” You get it?

And this is not some idle saying, this is important stuff. Because what would we do without 9? No more baseball. No more 9 o’clock. No more “Cloud 9.” No more “The whole 9 yards.” 3 x 3 wouldn’t equal anything. And how would we get to 10? We’d have to build a bridge from 8 to get to 10. And only 8 people could work on it until it was done. And they better finish the job in 8 hours—or they’ll never finish it at all! We’re in big trouble if they don’t finish it.

Of course everything would be ok if 6 was 9. Then every time you need a 9, you could just reach back and grab a 6. You’d be like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, reach back and grab the 6—6 is 9!—10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, reach back and grab the 9 that was 6—if 6 is 9 then it goes without saying that 9 is also 6, right?—and you’ve got your 16. And so on. This way you wouldn’t even have to bother stitching up time at all. You could just leave the hole right in it. There could be unforeseen advantages in this. It might even solve the energy crisis! If the hole came around and said, “Hey, where’s that 9 that was supposed to fall through me? That’s a 9 right there, isn’t it? Gimme that 9”. You could say “What, this? This isn’t a 9, this is a 6.” What’s the hole gonna do? You’re right—it is a 6.

That English person was pretty smart. But not as smart as Jimi Hendrix.

The Naked Eye

I was in science class one day when I was a kid. The teacher was teaching us about atoms. At one point he said that atoms were "invisible to the naked eye." I thought about that real hard for a long time. "Invisible to the naked eye." When when I got home I told my mom that I really wanted to see some atoms, but I couldn't because I had "naked eyes." Mom, she was so thoughtful, she went right to her sewing machine, and in no time at all she had made me some eye-clothes. Little tiny eye-pants, little eye-shirts, little eye-socks and eye-shoes. There were even little eye-hats! Before school the next morning, Mom helped me tape my eye-clothes to my face. It was so cool. I never did get to see those atoms though, because on the way to school I got hit by a truck.

You might not be able to see atoms with the naked eye, but I’m pretty sure I would have seen that truck.

How to Barbecue Cockatoo

Shrimps on the barbie is for wusses

Since the invasion of the cockatoos—just two posts below this one—we've had at least one cockatoo visit us every day. Yesterday one came and stayed for half an hour or so. It had a distinctive orange mark on the left side of its neck:

We call him/her Rusty. I put out a plastic container with some wild bird seed in it, which I thought Rusty would eat from. No. Rusty promptly picked the container up in one of his nimble little feet, spilling most of the seeds, and held it up to his mouth while he casually picked at what remained. Video (during which I forget how to talk):



Rusty came back this morning. Today he flew away with the container and dropped it in the neighbor's driveway.

More shots, and a few damn fine ones, if I do say so myself, follow.

Cockatoos and frangipani flowers go together quite nicely, don't they?

A little closer:

And this one (click on photo to enlarge, and click again to get really close) lets you really see the grains of the feathers:

Stupor Moon

One and just one shot of the March 2011 full moon that made many, many people dumber than usual, with ringing and witty commentary.

Feast your eyes on this brooding number, for which I chose a cottony, hazy quality I like to call "eight-seconds exposure and crop the holy hell out of it." (Click to en-huge-en.)

Brings to mind some of Rembrandt''s darker work, doesn't it? I mean if Rembrandt were a lot more dull than he actually was, and only painted while tremendously drunk, and after repeatedly bashing himself in the face with a hammer, it does—doesn't it? Hmm?

The Invasion of the Cockatoos [updtd]

So we're sitting on the veranda after a fine dinner from Christine of lamb chops and mashed pataters and salad with blue brie cheese from Tasmania and walnuts when sulphur-crested cockatoos, one at a time, began landing on the tall, gangly antenna two buildings over. Christine snapped a picture (as always, click pix to enlarge):

More and more of them landed. And they stared at us. They just stared.

I said, "Maybe they smelled the lamb chops." Just joking, you know: Cockatoos eat seeds, berries, nuts, some insects - that sort of thing.

But maybe it was true.

Christine went and got some bread, came back out to the veranda, held a piece up, and, like it was the signal they'd been waiting for, the cockatoos instantly jumped from the antenna, disappeared for a second behind the roofline you can see in that first shot, swooped back over it—and came flying all big-winged right to us and the railing of our veranda. Ho-lee shee-ite. What follows is cockatoo madness.

Profanity Warning: This video starts with "Holy crap!"




Wow. These are really large birds. The size of big cats. And so dang pretty! And with some of them literally a few feet from our noses, we were able to get some really good shots.

I hoped to get the tongue of this guy: They have very thick strong tongues that they can use to pick  up tine things like seeds  that those huge, stocky beaks can not. Alas, I missed it.

Show us a little leg, baby:

More video—because you never have too many cockatoos and Christine. First a short one showing cockatoo shoulders, climbing, and feather-fluffing.



A longer one, with various kinds of cockatooing.



And here I experiment with getting bit by a cockatoo, which the birds were happy to go along with. (The funny thing is, on the first bite, the actual bite is not in the video. You see me offer my finger to the cockatoo, he reaches out to bite me, then there's a flick, and then I say Ow. The bite is gone. We have no idea how that happened, but thrust me - it bit. And the next time I got bit it drew blood. Just a little, but still.)



One more for the road:

So long, cockies, see you next time!

Update: Next time came a few minutes after posting. Luckily just one bird this time. Quite a mellow guy or gal.

He got a few sunflower seeds. We don't want to encourage them too much. He's been hanging out for 45 minutes or so.

Christine went to the store. And our new friend knocked on the window.

One more video of the lone cocky. This one has a really good, full on display of the crest. (This cockatoo will henceforth be known as "Three-toes," as she seems to be missing one toe, which I noticed on one of the birds last night.)

Google Starry Night Gadget

I just remembered that I had this at my old blog, and just used it to identify the enormous star low to the east at dawn - Venus . It's a very cool tool: Knows where you are; you may have to enter the time; and it displays the sky as seen from your location; and it identifies constellations and stars for you.

RIP Rick Martin (of the French Connection)

That's the French Connection of 1970s American hockey fame. Martin was the left winger in a Buffalo Sabres line that included René Robert and Gil Perreault, all of them high up on my list of childhood heroes in my Buffalo.

And it was especially bad news for Robert:

It was a doubly tough day for Robert who’d heard earlier in the day that his older brother, Real, had died of a heart attack in Montreal.

"It’s like a bad dream," said Robert to the Buffalo News on Sunday afternoon. "First my brother, then my left-winger. I lose Rico (Martin). I tell you what. This one is going to be tough for everybody in Buffalo."

Here's a truly pretty goal by Martin in a game the Sabres played against the Soviet team in 1976. You can see Martin pause for a second, choose a spot - a tiny one - and nail it. Beauty way:

Tawny Frogmouth

I came to Australia for the first time in 2006, with Christine. Walking through the suburbs of Sydney one night on that trip I heard this "ooo ooo ooo" sound:



Too dark to see, I flipped open the flash, pointed the camera at the sound, and snapped. And got what has to be the luckiest shot of my life:



It was a Tawny Frogmouth, probably about 16 inches from tip of the tail to head. They're owl-like—but they are not owls, nor are they closely related to them.

Here's a closer look:



More here. And more images of the messy-faced Frogmouth here.

• Fromouths are classified as belonging to the order Caprimulgiformes. The name means "goat-sucker," because of the mistaken belief long ago that another bird in the order, the nightjar, sucked milk from female goats.

Nuke Plant Info via Mother Jones, More [updtd]

Good thread going on here. That one has stopped now so go here. (Change made April 5.)

Inside the core.

Skepchick talks to her dad, a nuclear engineer. Audio. (First minutes are biographical, then a simple explanation of what a nuke plant is, then they get to the Fukushima plant.)

All Things Nuclear. (Recommended by this scientist.)

Update: Seemingly very knowledgeable person here.

Japan's Nuke Plant [updtd]

This is a pretty dire look at the situation. Let's hope it's overblown.

It all seems built around the lack of  electricity. I don't see why they couldn't get replacement generators in there pretty quick.

Update: Union of Concerned Scientists.

Old Sayings…Reconsidered: "The Darkest Hour..."

We continue now with "Old Sayings…Reconsidered":

Timothy thought about that old saying, "The darkest hour is just before the dawn." He had been trapped in his sensory deprivation unit in his Upper West Side apartment for three days now. Something had gone wrong with the latch. 

Worse: there was no light. He couldn't see his own hands in front of his face. 

"The darkest hour is just before the dawn," he thought, over and over again.

 After five days Timothy imagined he heard a rooster crowing. Then he died.

Old Sayings…Reconsidered: "I'm Rubber and You're Glue..."

‎"I'm rubber and you're glue: whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."

This actually works pretty well…until the acid wears off. Then you're pretty much just as vulnerable to insults as the rest of us.

Old Sayings…Reconsidered: "Time Heals All Wounds"

I had a great-uncle who used to say that a lot. "Time heals all wounds." Until he fell down the back steps of his house and broke both his hips when he was 92. His body wasn't discovered for six days. His wristwatch had bite marks on it.

This has been another episode of "Old Sayings…Reconsidered."

Something Bit Me in Bed Last Night

No, that's not the title of my latest country song, it's a too-true story with a happy, if a bit disgusting, end.

I woke up last night to a slight stinging sensation right about in the center of my back. I then felt the unmistakable, almost not there—but definitely there—feeling of tiny legs crawling slowly on my skin.

I live in Australia now, as you may have noticed from the title of this blog and whatnot.

When you get bit by something in Australia, there are significantly higher odds than would be in any other place in the world that the thing that just bit you is either a) harmful; b) really, really harmful; or c) you won't even meet the EMTs—and the hospital's next door!—harmful.

Okay, still, it's probably not a deadly spider. It could be a—well, look, I'm lying here in bed and have just been bitten by something that's still on my back. Could we discuss this later? Okay? Good.

I thought that, under the circumstances, rather than burst out of bed flailing my arms and legs and sending the sheets flying and scaring the crap out of Christine—all of which did occur to me—it might be best to identify whatever had just bitten me. So it could be noted properly in the obituary and all. Luckily Christine is a very light sleeper. I quietly muttered, "Christine," and she immediately said, "What?"

"Turn the light on."

She started to move toward me…and whatever was on my back.

"No! No! No! Turn the light on please."

You know how you say "please" in situations like this? It doesn't mean "please" at all, it's just a lot faster to say please than saying all the other things you'd really like to say.

Christine moved away from me and got off the bed. We still don't have bedside lamps, so she found her glasses, stumbled to the door, found the switch, turned on the light, and headed back to the bed.

"What's on my back?"

"Oh shit, a cockroach."

Oh for chrissake. There I was, bravely lying still while the most deadly creature on eight legs steadily made its way toward my jugular vein to deliver its final, lethal, bite—and it's a cockroach. How ignoble.

The next minute or so consisted of:

• exiting bed

• exiting cockroach from bed with a flick of the wrist

• watching cockroach land high up on the curtains

• watching Christine search floor for cockroach, shoe in hand

• sitting on bed, pondering not telling Christine that cockroach is in the curtains and going back to sleep

• finally flicking the cockroach off the curtains and onto floor

• watching Christine…a little too eagerly…smash cockroach to pudding

• way to eagerly

• going back to bed.

Well, it could have been deadly. There is no sign of a bite this morning. Perhaps it just gave me a nip.

A final note:

According to Stoy Hedges, an entomologist and Manager of Technical Services at Terminix International, "They [cockroaches] have been known to bite but only in rare circumstances, when they have exploded into large populations. They are known to crawl onto people's ears, bite off their eyebrows and things like that. They are looking for food, but that's when they are in large populations. They only do this when there is no food available."

Unknown 1963 Dylan Concert Becoming CD in April

Wow. This could be a beauty.

A previously unknown live recording of a 21-year-old Bob Dylan taped at the Brandeis First Annual Folk Festival in Waltham, Massachusetts, on May 10, 1963, Bob Dylan In Concert - Brandeis University 1963 captures the rollicking wit, deadpan delivery and driving intensity of the young artist's on-stage persona in an assortment of end-of-the-world songs -- none of them commercially available at the time -- performed in front of an appreciative audience two weeks prior to the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (May 27, 1963). 

The Bob Dylan In Concert - Brandeis University 1963 concert tape was discovered recently in the archives of the noted music writer and Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph J. Gleason, where it sat on a shelf for more than forty years. "It had been forgotten, until it was found last year in the clearing of the house after my mother died," said Toby Gleason, Ralph's son. "It's a seven inch reel-to-reel that sounds like it was taped from the mixing desk."

The Welcome Swallow

Yesterday I snapped a photo of a bird on a fence post in the nearby suburb of Dee Why.

I had absolutely no idea what it was, so I posted the photo on Facebook and asked for help. This morning I found several replies. Thanks, everyone.

The concesus seemed to be swallow. BPaul gave me the family name, Hirundindae, and I soon found the Welcome Swallow (Hirundo neoxena):

Colour: metallic blue-black on top and light to dark grey on its breast and belly. Its forehead, throat and upper breast are rust in colour. It has grey legs and feet, and its eyes and bill are black.

That sounded close, but the throat color is off—but it's followed by this:

A young Welcome Swallow has shorter tail feathers than an adult and its forehead and throat are a creamy beige (instead of rust).

And this:

Swift: is larger and has longer and more-curved wings, and rarely lands. Welcome Swallows are commonly seen sitting on perches.

I'll keep looking, but I think what we have here is a young Welcome Swallow.

More, and lots of really good pics here.

Australia Reptile Park

I hate and love zoos. Some I just hate, I guess. But many are very good at what zoos are supposed to be good at: fascinating humans while educating them about animals while being exceptionally mindful of the care of those animals. On that note, Christine and I went for a drive up north yesterday and came across the Australia Reptile Park. We were tired of driving and said What the hell and paid the $24 (!) to get in.

We will be going back. Possibly to work as volunteers.

First, a sign we saw in the park, helpfully illustrating the life cycle of the tasmanian devil (click to enlarge):

In case you didn't get that, kids:

Look at those faces: Mating is fun! And a little naughty! Like I said: educating and fascinating!

Moving on: The Australia Reptile Park is one of the country's most important wildlife parks/zoos. For starters: It's where the venom from what is commonly called the most deadly spider in the world, the Sydney funnel web spider, is "milked" from spiders in order to develop antivenom. (Here's how they do it!) That antivenom first became available in 1980: before that, deaths from funnel web bites weren't exactly common, but they did happen, and if you didn't die you suffered horribly and were in the hospital for weeks. Since development of the antivenom there has not been a single reported death from the bite of a Sydeny funnel web. Not one. You still suffer horribly—the funnel web's bite is extremely painful, and you'll still get fever and sweats and chills and nausea and pain and pain and pain—but you're only in the hospital for a couple days, rather than weeks and weeks.

• Note: When Christine was a kid her grandfather died from a funnel web bite. She has a funny story about that. Honestly. Seems Grandpa was able to kill the spider—always helpful—and dear little Christine, about six at the time, was assigned the duty of holding said dead spider while they raced to the hospital. Once there, they were tending to grandpa and whatnot…when the "dead" funnel web spider…the most deadly spider in creation…started crawling across Christine's hand. But really, she should tell you the story…

The park, we found out from the very nice and very funny Ranger Mike, has about 600 venomous snakes - OH. MY. GOD. I am so going into the building - and they do regular venom milking on several of them of different species, as well as the venomous spider milking. They even have king cobras—the only zoo in Australia that has these snakes. And they breed them. And if we volunteer…maybe we can help milk them? Please?

Let's get to some pics. You'll be happy to hear that I actually didn't take very many. First, on the drive out, we stopped and listed to some bell birds. Just beautiful. (The also beautiful whining cries are from another type of bird which I'm not familiar  with. I will let you know when I find out.)



I've always thought of copperheads as distinctly American snakes, but they are found in many parts of the world. Here's an Aussie version—very venomous (of course)—the very attractive lowland copperhead:

Here's a closer shot. If you click, then click again, you can get in very close to the cute bugger's face, and see the mites on its head.  Mites are a big problem with captive (and wild) snakes.

Next up, a non-native animal, the Galapagos tortoise. I don't have much to say about it, but this beast does have an odd shell:

Now back to native Oz: wombats, the cutest little pig creatures you ever saw. I'll write more about them when we see them in the wild, which we will:



• My feelings about animals in captivity were very affected by this book: King Solomon's Ring. Lorenz believed that some, maybe many, animals are not adversely affected by captivity. And he speaks with more than a little authority. (On a personal note, I think it was my old friend Dave May who recommended that book to me. Along with A Confederacy of Dunces, A Canticle For Liebowitz, and many more. Thanks for that, Dave.)

Rrrror.