Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Falcon Chick Update

Minnesota Power Falcon Cam

Hey, maybe YOU get tired of falcon chick pictures but I don’t!

Here’s another real-time capture from the FalconCam. The little guys are really getting more active now. You can see (where I’ve put yellow boxes on the picture) that they’re just starting to get some real feathers on the tips of their wings. Before long, we’ll see them practicing flapping them.

The nesting platform is sure a mess! See all the feathers and bones? MmmmMmm! Dinner! And, somewhat surprisingly, the old defunct egg is still there. Maybe the parents are sentimental.

Since it’s a nice clear evening in Cohasset, this is a good picture for seeing just how high up these little guys are. Whoa — they’re WAY up there!

Good News For Riley!!

Some of you may remember the entry I posted back in February about little Riley who had been removed from the home of the only parents he’d ever known and placed with a man who was not his biological father and who had, in fact, never had a father-son relationship with him. Click on “little Riley” above to read the entire story.

I’m delighted to tell you that Riley’s story has a happy ending! Melissa, one of his foster parents, has given me permission to reproduce her email.

This is such great news! Don’t you just love it when there’s a happy ending?

And isn’t he just the cutest little pookie?!

The Final Frontier

Voyager At Edge Of Solar System: “Voyager 1 broke away from the tour at Saturn and headed for interstellar space. When it entered the heliosheath, it was 8.7 billion miles away — the farthest any manmade object has traveled. Its speed is 46,000 mph.”

How cool is that, huh?

Pretty damn cool, I’ll tell you.

Unfortunately, there’s a chance that funding for the Voyager project and other long-term projects (Voyager 2, the Mars rover) will be cut. See, President Bush wants us to send humans back to the moon and then to Mars. While it would definitely be cool to go to Mars, I’m not convinced it’s the best way of spending our space-exploration money. I think we’d probably learn more by sending up another Hubble-type telescope or another, updated, Voyager-type craft. Consider that Voyager 1 was launched in 1977. We’ve got WAY better technology now than we did then!

By the way, if you click on the picture of Voyager 1 up above, you’ll be taken to an interesting article about solar shockwaves published last year on the NASA web site.

Falcon Chick Update

Minnesota Power Falcon Cam

The parents are leaving them alone for longer periods of time now. They’re growing so fast that they need LOTS of food.

You can see the unhatched egg is still in the nest to the left of where the three chicks are huddled together. There are also some feathers — probably leftovers from meal. (A pigeon or mourning dove, perhaps? That’s what the hawks around here like to eat.)

Finland, Finland, Finland

Finland Diary

The Washington Post is publishing blog entries from a couple of guys who are touring Finland this summer. The picture above is of a typical lunch served at one of the schools they’re visiting. (Finland has the best public school system in the world.) While the food looks fine, what really caught my attention is the cutlery! Look at the great design of that knife and fork!

Heh, heh… Leave it to the Finns!

Anyway, check out the blog. It’s interesting and there are lots of wonderful pictures of healthy, happy-looking Finnish people.

Don’t you wish you were Finnish? Yeah, me too.

I would be remiss if I didn’t quote from the lyrics of the Monty Python song:

And, indeed, Finland does have it all.

Kooks on Parade! Part 3When Kooks Compete!

Museum of Earth History
Hey, look! It’s another “museum” that has Adam and Eve living among the dinosaurs! This one’s in Arkansas, though. The one I wrote about earlier this month, the Creation Museum, is in Kentucky.

Alas, the Museum of Earth History’s web site has features that don’t work with Mac Safari (probably non-standard Java programs), so I can’t tell you much about the exhibits. If you’re using a Microsoft browser, you’ll probably be able to see more. If so, I hope you’ll report back here with a comment or two!

From the Arkansas museum’s press release:

Boy, I bet this really pisses off the Creation Museum people in Kentucky. The Kentucky museum hasn’t opened yet but, from the look of things on their web site, it will only be a few months before they do. The nerve of those Arkansas Creationists! Claiming they’re the only museum of this kind in the Christian world! Hmpf!

Learn The Ways Of The Farm, Young Cuke

Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion
Check out this animation from the Organic Trade Association. It’s a little long, but it’s amusing.

I buy a fair amount of organic produce and prepared foods made with organic stuff and I won’t be coy, organic stuff is more expensive. Sometimes it’s WAY more expensive. If you can afford it, though, it’s certainly better for you all the way around. Even if none of the pesticides or herbicides get into your own body (extremely unlikely), it’s not good for other animals to be exposed to this stuff.

So, you kill off a weed that would otherwise reduce the yield of your soybean crop. That weed might be something a particular kind of butterfly needs as food. Maybe the caterpillars of that particular butterfly are a major food source for a kind of vole. Maybe the voles would have fed some foxes. Suddenly you’ve got no foxes anymore.

In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell: “Give me spots on the apples, but leaves me the birds and the bees.”

Ending World Hunger

This Washington Post article really has nothing to do with ending world hunger. It’s about a fence dispute that escalated to the point where Black Angus cattle breeder John Ames shot and killed his neighbor. It’s an interesting story, so read it if you have time.

What I want to comment on is the absurd notion that increased cattle production could end world hunger. It’s quite well documented that if the land currently used to grow feed crops were instead used to grow food for people, THAT would be a significant step towards ending world hunger. You can feed something like 10 times more people with an acre’s worth of human food crops than what you could feed with the meat of cattle (or pigs or chickens or whatever) fed from the same acre. Cattle breeders might argue that the vegetable and grain foods are of a lower quality than meat. They’d be wrong about that, too. People can easily meet all of their nutritional needs with a diet consisting solely of vegetables, grains, and dairy. You not only don’t need meat. Meat is bad for you. Everyone knows that, right? Jeez, you’d think so.

Oh… the other thing I wanted to comment on is that, if everything in the Post article is true, John Ames has got to be an asshole of cosmic dimension.

Running The Numbers

When I was a kid I got the idea pretty early on that I wasn’t good at doing math and, consequently, I didn’t like math. No doubt there’s more to it, but I trace my dislike of math back to one teacher in particular: Mr. J. at Orono Middle School. He was such a jerk. He pretty clearly didn’t like girls (which was odd because he had three daughters) and he favored the “teach through humiliation” method. If you were a shy girl who had the wrong answer when being called on in class — well, you didn’t stand a chance. On top of all that, he was crappy at explaining things.

I’m not usually the sort of person who holds a grudge, but I’ve made an exception for Mr. J. Who knows how my life might have been different if his bullying approach to “teaching” hadn’t turned me off to math and science early in my life? I know it’s stupid, but I’m still pissed off about it.

My relationship with math didn’t change until I was in my early 40s. I had begun taking classes at the local community college — mostly just for fun. I’d only taken the minimum amount of math when I was high school, though, so in order to meet the college’s general education requirements, I had to take a couple of Algebra classes.

I discovered, much to my surprise, that math was actually… well… kinda fun! And interesting! I’d had no idea it could be like that.

I enjoyed my Algebra classes so much that I took more math classes. And then even more. I took all the math classes the college offered, including Matrix Algebra and Vector Calculus. Yes, really! And I loved it! And I could do it. I found out I can do math — really well.

Finding that I can enjoy math and do it well has changed everything for me. Doors that had been closed to me were opened. I was always interested in learning physics and chemistry, for example, but I was never able to go very far with it because I didn’t have the necessary math background. I’ve also discovered that I’m best at math when it’s not related to any particular “real world” problems (as with physics and chemistry.) I like it best when it’s completely abstract.

I want to make a couple of main points here. First, if you’re a teacher, be aware that what you do can make a HUGE difference in how a kid’s life goes. Second, even if you’ve always thought you “couldn’t do math,” consider giving it another try with a good teacher. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Inside a New Glidehouse

LiveModern – Inside our Glidehouse

I’ve written about the Glidehouse before. It is the coolest house ever!

Check out this blog entry at the LiveModern web site for some relatively new pictures of a freshly installed Glidehouse on Vashon Island in Washington state. For that matter, it’s worthwhile to read this particular Glide enthusiast’s entire blog for interesting and useful information about budgeting, site planning, and the entire process.

Fascinating!

I want one RIGHT NOW.