People often ask why there isn’t more coverage of Syria, Ivory Coast or Yemen. One answer is something that non-journalists sometimes don’t appreciate — the difficulty of getting visas. Yemen and Syria are completely blocking Americans. Only hope to get an Ivory Coast visa is to go to Senegal and beg its embassy there. Sad truth is we... - http://dendroica.tumblr.com/post...
"The operators of Hummingbirds.net offer a cool litle piece of citizen science that's also a service to birders with their yearly map that tracks the northward movement of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds in the eastern US and southern Canada. The map is regularly updated with sightings collected from reports made directly to hummingbirds.net. What results is a fairly accurate snapshot of the advancing Hummers, with each week designated by a different color."
- John (bird whisperer)
from Bookmarklet
These are just first sightings. There probably aren't very many yet in any of these locations, and they'll be around all summer.
- John (bird whisperer)
We've had a few hummingbirds that have stayed all year. I'm looking forward to them coming back in full force in a month or so.
- Kristin
The first will probably hit New Jersey fairly soon. It's too cold for most hummingbirds to winter here, but sometimes one of the western species will spend part of the winter at a birdfeeder.
- John (bird whisperer)
I was talking to the nurse when Rach was in labour. She said humans are one of a rare few species that give birth to a young so helpless. Babies should be born around 18 months.... roll THAT around in your brain...
- Johnny
and we most often bond with a couple species, cats and dogs, which are blind and deaf at birth *smile*
- Michael W. May
Johnny, many people say that the first 3-4 months of a baby's life is the "fourth trimester". The baby isn't technically ready to be out of the womb yet, and so the best way to handle things is to make the baby's environment as womb-like as possible (swaddling, warm temperatures, lots of touch and holding, food on demand, movement, etc.)
- Rochelle
"Earlier this week, we decided that the only way to deal with the exploding celebrity Death Star that is Charlie Sheen was to take his spectacularly hubristic comments and put them in the mouths of superheroes, with the help of Chris Haley and Curt Franklin of the webcomic Let's Be Friends Again. You, the readers, told us that the six measly pieces of original art where your favorite Marvel and DC characters reiterate the philosophical jewels of the only celebrity whose veins pump pure tiger blood was simply not enough, and we have heard your demands. And so today, we bring you eight more Charlie Sheen quotes presented by superheroes, because duh, winning."
- RAPatton
"Having just moved to Toronto, Ontario from Berkeley, California, one thing that is on my mind, as well as on my front yard, is snow. Crunching through the drifts on my way to the subway, or when I walk my dog Dexter, gives me a lot of time to contemplate the unfamiliar white stuff. One of those thoughts is how familiarity with snow figures into one of the more persistent false beliefs about language—the one that says, “Eskimos have X number of words for snow,” with X being a number ranging from several dozen to as many as four hundred. What makes this myth interesting isn’t that it is false and persistent—there are lots of those beliefs, from the innocuous “elephants are afraid of mice” to the insidious “President Obama was born in Kenya”—rather, this myth is interesting because it plays into misunderstandings about language and the workings of the mind."
- Maitani
from Bookmarklet
"But of course, Smilla’s Sense of Snow and 1984 are both fiction. Is there any scientific evidence that Whorf’s hypothesis is true? The answer is again no, at least not as depicted in these fictional examples. It has been shown that having a word for something makes it easier to memorize or categorize it. For example, someone with a name for a particular color will be more likely to...
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- Maitani
"Guy Deutscher, in his recent book Through the Language Glass, describes the Guugu Yimithirr people of Australia, who have no words for right or left. Instead, they give directions using cardinal directions, north, south, east, and west. A Guugu Yimithirr speaker will not only tell you to drive five miles north, as one might in English, but will also ask you to scoot a few inches to the...
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- Maitani
This is the best and most rational discussion on the subject I have read of late. Recommended!
- Maitani
"CROSSING PLACES and boundaries are the habitation of fascination for me. The not-quite-one-nor-the-other is a chancy and magical place, where in-between sorts of people wander, outcasts and wisdom keepers, and left over thoughts blow past. Here on these thresholds between times and spaces: the water's edge, the way into the forest, the twilight hour or the dawning, doorways, openings, turning points in years and lives, you'll find the something that you sometimes remember you were looking for, and then forget again."
- Maitani
from Bookmarklet