theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
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 tumblelog for more frequent mundanities.
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 one is quite sure) in 7:45. Not quite a “naturalist’s shuffle,” but leisurely. The path lies between 1300 and 1800 feet on the elevation chart: I measured at most a change of 600 feet. The climbing is not too hard, rising through a long tract of mountain laurel, and most of the walking is fairly easy, but there is a stretch of rocks along the ridgetop of South Mountain that’s good for some knee-twisters (as my left one can attest) and ankle-breakers.
We paused for a look at sawfly larvae on the leaves of an American Chestnut. Only one of the chestnuts we saw was head-height; most were about 3 or 4 feet high. Participant Joe was working on his mycology, so we stopped several times to see many, many fine examples of fungus. We smelled the faint sweetness of Hay-Scented Fern (Dennstaedtia punctilobula). Cliff pointed out a saddleback caterpillar that my point-and-shoot was not able to image. Towards the end of the hike, we saw some very dark brown examples of Squawroot (Conopholis americana). Squawroot is a parasitic plant of the Broomrape family, which also includes Beech Drops.
We took side trips to Annapolis Rocks to the west and an unnamed viewpoint to the east. Table Mountain Pine (Pinus pungens) at Annapolis Rocks and a fun little rock scramble to reach the eastern view. Not much in the way of bird life: woodpeckers, a few chickadee friends, Blue Jays imitating hawks, a couple of mystery vocalizations, maybe a tanager? Participation on these hikes is pretty broad, all the way from hikers who don’t stop for much of anything to shoe-gazing botanists. My carpool mate Susan and I were the most experienced birders.
By far the big sighting of the trip was this lovely butter-yellow Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) that sauntered across the track. A first sighting for a lot of us; as for myself, it’s been several years since I’ve seen one of these guys.
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 can be.
10. Water. Thirty-nine states expect some level of water shortage over the next decade, and scientific studies suggest that a majority of our water resources are at risk. What policies would you support to meet demand for water resources?
As a westerner, I understand the vital role that water plays in the development of western economies and to maintaining a high quality of life. Water is truly our lifeblood. I believe that we must develop, manage, and use our limited water supplies wisely and with a conservation ethic to ensure that we have sufficient supplies to meet municipal, tribal, industrial, agricultural, recreational, and environmental needs. I believe that water rights must be respected, and that disputes are better resolved not in the courts but through negotiations that build consensus, and provide justly for the needs of the west’s diverse interests and needs. I understand the importance of state law and local prerogatives in the allocation of water resources, and that all levels of government must work together with stakeholders to ensure that our lifeblood is protected, managed, and utilized in a wise, just, and sustainable manner.
I support constructive, continuing cooperation and dialogue among the states and the water users in a manner that is fully consistent with existing compacts and agreements. This is an approach that is forward looking, and ensures cooperation in achieving implementation of water agreements among the states and the Department of the Interior and is mindful of potential technological developments that could potentially reduce water demands in certain areas.
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 you put lipstick on my pig, do you know what the difference will be between that pig and a pit bull? I’ll tell you: a pit bull can easily kill a pig.
“You know, Moisés, how much has really changed in Manhattan in the last 10 years?”
Moisés Kaufman goes back to Laramie, ten years after.
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 of Annapolis—at least most of us had a good time.
The Woodwind II is a schooner, fitted with two masts and four sails: aft to fore, mainsail, staysail, fisherman’s, and jib. According to lore, the fisherman’s sail evolved from the practice of hanging fishing nets in the area above the staysail on the mainmast and aft of the jib sail at the bow: sailors found that the nets caught some extra wind, and so this space was filled with another sail.
The idea of the team-building exercise was that we would split into four teams, two on yards controlling sails, one at the helm, and one navigating. Captain Duncan and his crew would teach each team the elements of the station, and then the teams would rotate around and we would teach each other. This didn’t work out so well in practice, but it did mean that most of us got a turn at the wheel as well as duty pulling rope. The crew were very good-natured about leading a group of clumsy office workers through the necessary tasks, along with fetching blown-away hats. And it probably didn’t hurt that one of us was an experienced sailor (Jody); there was lots of time on this 4-1/2 tour to kick back and swap stories. Captain Duncan kept up a good patter of historical lore (how Bloody Point got its name, for instance), bad jokes, and “tips” like “a stationary object [like a bridge piling] always has the right of way.”
We sailed as far south as Bloody Point light (at left), which marks the shoals at the southern tip of Kent Island, up and down the South River, then a turn at Thomas Point light (at right) and back into port. On my turn at the wheel, I was beginning to get the feel of steering to trim as opposed to steering to course (or to a landmark) as we moved up the South River. I think it was when we crossed a stretch where a scattering of crab pots were set that crew member Rachel took over for me.
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 the Large Hadron Collider know about this?
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 changes in air pressure. Unfortunately, the researchers don’t have ready suggestions to mitigate the pressure changes and hence reduce the kills.
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.
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 hearing or seeing a somewhat striking name in print is to repeat it silently in a sort of involuntary way, to the point often of annoyance. Unguentine was probably one of those names. I didn’t realize or remember until much later that it was also a brand name.
I wrote up some notes on the book in 2003.
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 giant Wikipedia, where anyone at all can make an entry. And anyone at all can try and modify that entry.
A few stragglers:
Via The Morning News: Matthew Guerrieri stumps for some presidential candidates whose campaigns never got much traction this time around.
There’s a stretch of the W&OD near my office that I walk about once a week: it rises on an fenced embankment to meet a bridge that crosses Broad Run, so the fence posts are the high ground favored by Indigo Buntings in season. And it also crosses a power line cut and some ground that’s been cleared for development. I’ve seen Wild Turkey down there a couple of times. Anyway, on this evening’s walk, I saw a bird that we don’t seem to see (or notice?) much any more: flying in to perch on a pokeweed stalk replete with berries, a solitary Cedar Waxwing.
More linky goodness: