Posts Tagged: trees

Weekend Tidbits or an Ode to Hedgehogs, Water, and the Deep Time of Trees, plus a few Con Men

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, tidbits.

Hedgehogs, UK Politics, and general understated Amusement in this Metafilter post: “1566 seems very recent, but the hedgehog was around before then”
Transcript of MP Rory Stewart’s hedgehog defense in Parliament in 2017.

Of all the possible Tory MPs possible to be the next Prime Minister, one can only hope that the Conservatives will vote for Mr. Stewart and not Mr. Johnson.

Why Water is Weird

Black, Hot Ice May Be Nature’s Most Common Form of Water

This Evangelical Prayer-Coin Grift Is What the Age of Trump Is All About

“The Wall Street financiers and C-suite lords-of-the-universe have made a Faustian bargain of their own, simply accepting that the President of the United States will have regular bouts of public insanity and upend the post-World War II geopolitical order because the Dow is up and taxes are down. This will not end well for them or for the Evangelicals, because everyone who gets in bed with Donald Trump ends up debased and disgraced. Often, he convinces them to do it to themselves. “

Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden
Toxic masculinity—and the persistent idea that feelings are a “female thing”—has left a generation of straight men stranded on emotionally-stunted island. Unable to forge intimate relationships with other men, it’s women who are paying the price.

A landmark malaria vaccine has been rolled out in Malawi

This Graphic Shows the Best Air-Cleaning Plants, According to NASA

The Art of Blooming Late

Winning the Peace

Trees of deep time are a portal to the past : The vanishing groves
A chronicle of climates past and a portent of climates to come – the telling rings of the bristlecone pine

Convict Creek Aspens

Posted by & filed under art + photography, nature + environment.

Wed. 10.17.18 – The beautiful golden leaved aspens at the delta where the Convict Creek meets Convict Lake. The light through the autumnal leaves was amazing in this space.

Photo by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 with a 50mm lens.

Sunday Tidbits for Your Reading Pleasure…

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, tidbits.

Single petaled rose with large stames casting shadows

Above photo of a rose taken by Ms. Jen on May 26, 2018 at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, with a Nikon D850 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.

The Pivot:

“Something huge is happening in the UK right now, and I wonder where it’s going. […]

Brexit was a classic example of a collusion conspiracy. Many of the named politicians and businessmen above stand to gain millions of pounds from a hard Brexit that causes the British stock market to fall. Others stand to make millions from juicy investment opportunities they were offered in Russia. We cannot know for certain what the quid pro quo for those investment deals were at this time, but I strongly suspect that support for Brexit (and more general socially-authoritarian right-wing policies) was part of it.

And now we’re seeing a rival collusion conspiracy surface. Not all billionaires stand to profit from seeing the remains of British industry sink beneath the waves, and not all of them are in the pocket of the Kremlin’s financial backers. There are a bunch of very rich, rather reclusive men (and a handful of women) who probably thought, “well, let’s sit back and see where this thing leads, for now” about 18 months ago. And now they can see it leading right over a cliff, and they are unhappy, and they have made their displeasure known on the golf course and in the smoke-filled rooms, and the quiet whispering campaign has finally turned heads at the top of the media empires.

If I’m right, then over the next four to eight weeks the wrath of the British press is going to fall on the heads of the Brexit lobby with a force and a fury we haven’t seen in a generation. There may be arrests and criminal prosecutions before this sorry tale is done: I’d be unsurprised to see money-laundering investigations, and possibly prosecutions under the Bribery Act (2010), launched within this time frame that will rumble on for years to come.” – Charlie Stross, The Pivot

Juno Solves 39-Year Old Mystery of Jupiter Lightning

Oldest bubonic plague genome decoded

Facebook confirms that it tracks how you move mouse on the computer screen

Demise of the Nation State

Clever Street Artist Transforms Ordinary Public Places Into Funny Installations

Umberto Eco’s 1999 article on ‘Ur Fascism‘

Here’s to Unsuicide: An Interview with Richard Powers

Sweet! It is May 1st…

Posted by & filed under news + events, writing + blogs.

The NaBloPoMo theme for May 2009 is sweet. Interpret the word sweet as one will.
The month of May is quite full right now and so it makes complete sense for me to sign up for NaBloPoMo when I will be overly busy. (not). But the theme this month intrigued me and I decided to sign myself up. I may be naturally bubbly and happy, but how many sweet things can I write about in 31 one days? We shall find out, won’t we?
Our lovely friends over at the Online Etymology Dictionary give the word sweet’s history as follows:
sweet (adj.)

O.E. swete “pleasing to the senses, mind or feelings,” from P.Gmc. *swotijaz (cf. O.S. swoti, Swed. söt, Dan. sød, M.Du. soete, Du. zoet, O.H.G. swuozi, Ger. süß), from PIE base *swad- (Skt. svadus “sweet;” Gk. hedys “sweet, pleasant, agreeable,” hedone “pleasure;” L. suavis “sweet,” suadere “to advise,” prop. “to make something pleasant to”). Sweetbread “pancreas used as food” is from 1565 (the -bread element may be from O.E. bræd “flesh”). To be sweet on someone is first recorded 1694. Sweet-talk (v.) dates from 1936 (in “Gone With the Wind”). Sweet sixteen first recorded 1826. Sweet dreams as a parting to one going to sleep is attested from 1908. Sweet and sour in cooking is from 1723, not originally of oriental food

Thus, I will spend the month attempting to blog about all things “sweet, pleasant, agreeable, and pleasing to the senses”. Since I am already blogging either a photo or a text post every day this year (as with last year), for the NaBloPoMo challenge, I will write a text post everyday with a possible photo each day, too. Possibly.
As for the sweet bit about today, I had a fuzzily delightful dream last night/early this morning, just in time for May Day where I was in a forest (a west side of the Sierra Nevada giant sequoia forest) and I had a mobile, handheld map of the forest made of model sized trees. To navigate you turned the tree model upside down and let your hand feel where to go in the forest.
The May Day 2005 post from this blog.
The May Day 2008 post from this blog about a dream I had May Day morning last year.
Last but not least, I hope you had a delightfully sweet day today, whether it was enjoying spring flowers and maypoles or out marching in the name of Labor. Though celebrating Beltane seems a bit more delightful than a march…

Wintry

Posted by & filed under art + photography, photos + text from the road.

Chichester Cathedral

Fri Nov. 23, 2007 – Today was a big day for travel. Mom and I started out the day after checking out of the lovely & funky Litten House B&B by walking over to the Chichester Cathedral.
The dreary rain of Ireland and the off and on rain of Wednesday had fully cleared out and a good wintry wind came in its stead. I was all bundled up and it was brisk to say the least. Of course, I loved the clear, clean, cold air. Not only was it invigorating but it made for great exterior photographic light all day, be it at Chichester or Stonehenge or Old Sarum.
The wind bit the most and was downright cold on the Salisbury plain as we hurriedly trotted around Stonehenge. Mom wondered if it was warmer when they built Stonehenge out on that hill.
Tonight we walked from our B&B down to town to have dinner and it didn’t feel as cold as this afternoon, due to lack of wind, but when I checked the temperature it was 32F or 0C!
Our “Stones: Cathedrals and Circles” tour of Southern England will continue tomorrow as we will visit the Salisbury Cathedral in the morning and Avebury in the afternoon before moving on to Oxford tomorrow evening.