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Fairfax Cross County Trail, 41 miles: completed 2 July 2010.
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Monthly Archives: September 2008
Short bits of string: 8
Handy tip for navigating in the southwest: Ferocactus [sp.] tend to grow slightly tilted toward the south, because of the additional sun exposure. If you are ever lost in the desert without a compass, remember to look for this feature … Continue reading
Posted in Natural Sciences
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A roost
As we parked at the Kensington Armory this evening to see a show—it was early dusk, about 7:15—we saw a sizable flock of Chimney Swifts (Chaetura pelagica) swirling about, ready to come into to roost for the evening. We didn’t … Continue reading
Posted in In the Field
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One of the big ones
Farewell to Paul Newman, actor, entrepreneur, mensch.
Posted in In Memoriam
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New projects
I started a single-user wiki (an oxymoron?) to collect my reading notes from Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions. I’m not sure how much will come of it, but it’s good to futz with a different medium. And I started a … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs and Internet
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Appalachian Trail: Maryland middle third
A good hike today, the Appalachian Trail from I-70 to Maryland 77, led by Cliff Fairweather of Audubon Naturalist Society. We spent a lot of time looking at living things, so we covered the 8.5 miles (or 9.5 miles, no … Continue reading
Posted in In the Field
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14 questions: 2
Thanks to the presidential campaign of John McCain for likewise responding to Sciencedebate 2008′s 14-item questionnaire. Without offering too much in the way of specifics, McCain does make it clear that he understands how complicated water issues in the West … Continue reading
Posted in Water Resources and Wetlands
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A lose-lose for the pig
George Saunders deconstructs: So, when Barack Obama says he will put some lipstick on my pig, I am, like, Are you calling me a pig? If so, thanks! Pigs are the most non-Élite of all barnyard animals. And also, if … Continue reading
Posted in Fun
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The buck fence is gone
“You know, Moisés, how much has really changed in Manhattan in the last 10 years?” Moisés Kaufman goes back to Laramie, ten years after.
Posted in Backstage
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Mixing the bowspirit with the rudder
Well, the team-building exercise part of the trip didn’t turn out to be much, but my director’s unit from the office (software engineering, QA, documentation, and network operations) spent an enjoyable sail on Chesapeake Bay on the Woodwind II out … Continue reading
Posted in Like Life
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Electrons and positrons
Downtown, the big-ticket Shakespeare Theatre Company is performing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with a all-male cast (à la Elizabethan performance practices) while on the Hill, Taffety Punk has just opened a production with an all-female cast. Do the people running … Continue reading
Posted in Theater
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Loss of pressure
A recent paper by Erin F. Baerwald et al. as summarized in Science Daily, suggests the cause of many bat fatalities near wind turbines: rather than direct collisions with turbine blades, bats die from barotrauma, internal injuries caused by sudden … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Sources and Consumption, Natural Sciences
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Invaders from Europe, invaders from Asia
Recent publications by Steven D. Gaines and Dov Sax challenge the conventional wisdom that invasive, exotic species inevitably lead to extinctions and loss of biodiversity, as reported by Carl Zimmer.
Posted in Biodiversity
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Once again, from Dalkey Archive Press
For Powell’s, Deb Olin Unferth interviews Stanley Crawford on the occasion of the reissue of his novel Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine. Unferth: Where did the name Unguentine come from? Crawford: A fairly typical experience for me upon … Continue reading
Posted in Prose Fiction
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Smetnicate all forms of antrifact
Rob Slade takes up Henry’s argument from The Real Thing in a post about the semantic drift of terminology in the field of computing security. Along the way he makes a great analogy: … language is kind of like a … Continue reading
Posted in Words Words Words
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International Rock-Flipping Day 2008: 4
A few stragglers: Let’s Paint Nature (Illinois, USA) Sleeping in the Heartland (Midwestern U.S.) Three Oaks (Ohio, USA)
Posted in In the Field
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