From a window

A post on PetaPixel talks about a South Korean photographer named Ahae who has taken a million pictures from his studio's window in the past two years. The results are actually pretty cool, check out his site. The "Birds" section alone is worth your time.

NEVER MIND THE FLYING CHUNKS OF CONCRETE, JUST GET THE DAMN PICTURE

So the Second Avenue Subway contruction had a minor mishap today:

This photo was taken by

...John Wilson, 69, of Wilmington, N.C., who was out exercising a new hip implant when the explosion happened.

Wilson, who underwent hip-replacement last week at the nearby Hospital for Special Surgery, was with his wife, Roberta, when they arrived at the scene just moments before the earth moved.

"We were right in the middle of it," Wilson told the Daily News. "We were crossing Second Ave. and a worker says, 'Would you like to see something really cool happen.' Then boom!

"I started feeling the dust and the debris hitting me," Wilson said. "The rocks were right in my face."

Wilson said he immediately started snapping away with his camera, taking dramatic photos of the sky-high blast.

(That's all from the Daily News story linked above.)

John Wilson is my new hero. I want to be like him when I grow up.

Blackburnian etc.

I see one of my favorite bird bloggers posted another of my sightings:
http://mariewinnnaturenews.blogspot.com/2012/08/blackburnian.html - "Ed Gaillard is very cool about his Blackburnian. If I had been reporting one I probably would have let myself go with CAPS and exclamation points!"

I guess I just like to make my reports concise and matter-of-fact.  But also, I didn't find the bird, a couple of other birders pointed her (pretty sure it was a female) out to me.

And I have a skewed perspective on account of not having birded very long.  I had a bunch of good Blackburnian sightings this Spring:



so maybe I don't fully appreciate what a good sighting this was.

I also had a Northern Parula, Redstart, Baltimore Oriole, and Northern Waterthrush today. The migrants are returning in force already, and it's not even the middle of August.

Bears Discover Beer

http://www.thelocal.no/page/view/bears-break-in-to-norway-cabin-drink-beer

Warblers returning south already

What do you know, somebody blogged a bird sighting I sent to NYSBirds-L:

http://mariewinnnaturenews.blogspot.com/2012/08/warblers-heading-south.html

At first I thought I had seen Yellow-Rumped Warblers, not Redstarts.  They were moving pretty fast and I got neither a photo nor a good look through binoculars, just a flash of yellow on the side. (I did get a good look at the Black-and_White Warblers).  But when I looked at the failed photos, I saw the tail of a Redstart moving out of the frame.

I saw a Black and White a week ago, Louisiana Waterthrush on July 21 and Northern Waterthrush on July 25.  These are all pretty early.

The Decisive Moment

Curiousity spotted while landing by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia15978b.html

A poem by Eric Van

I lost track of this excellent poem by Eric Van once before, so I'm sticking a link to it here:  http://ericmvan.livejournal.com/2407.html.

On Conferences

Excellent post about conferences on Mark Bernstein's site:  http://www.markbernstein.org/Aug12/OnConferences.html.  His site in general looks interesting.

Reduce, re-use, recycle

I wanted a place to put random links to stuff, and I noticed that I'd never got around to deleting this blog.  OK, then.

Just make us be brave and make us play nice

Warren Zevon died yesterday, of lung cancer. He was 56. Don't let us get stupid, and don't let us smoke.

It had to happen.

A friend sent me a link to this: Primate Programming Inc: The Evolution of Java and .NET Training, saying that he wasn't certain they were kidding, or that they would be less cost-effective than Bangalore. Well, I'm sure they're kidding, anyway.

Oh, give me a break

Alcoholics set to sue drink firms, writes Matthew Knowles in the Sunday Times (London): "Twleve alcoholics are trying to sue drink manufacturers for failing to warn them of the dangers of alcohol. The group, aged between 18 and 60, will claim that their lives have been ruined by addiction and that no warnings were given."

Yeah. Nobody ever warned them that you could get addicted to alcohol. They never saw a bum, never heard of a Skid Row, never heard a preacher speak against strong drink, never heard of alcoholism. That's because they were raised in a cave by wolves.

Can I sue morons like these for failing to take personal responsibility for their own actions? Please? Because they're doing my blood pressure no good, I can tell you.

Science!

The Institute For the Study of the Neurologically Typical is doing brilliant work in researching a sadly common mental disorder. (via Electrolite)

Game like a Gangster

So, gamers.com decided to show mobster-turned-informant Henry Hill some of the recent gangster shoot-em-up games. And, for laughs, they threw in a ringer, a cute-animals game.

You can probably guess what's coming.

Yup. He stole their copy of _Animal Crossing_.

Second Amendment, baby!

Build your own cruise missile, and a lotof other fun crafts projects.

It can't happen here

Prison camps where a governments enemies are executed after secret trials--with no jury, no appeal, and with the judge, prosecutor, and "defence" all from the same organization--are typical of vicious tyrannies. Fortunately, such things could never happen in the United States, where we have a long tradition of the rule of law, open trials, and fair courts. In the wake of the second Gulf War, we can expect the American people to support the overthrow any government that runs such "death camps".

A fine example of the genre

I saw this at The Sideshow.

Henceforth to be known as "Mojo Jojo"

You'ev probably seen this story about the close genetic relationship between chimps and humans. What interests me is that everyone seems to think that this means we should move the chimpanzees to genus Homo. I think it should be the other way around. I have no joke here, I just like saying, "Pongo sapiens".

Breathtaking!

The Hubble Telescope has taken the deepest pictures ever of the night sky. And they are just beautiful. (Via The Sideshow)

Not the old "what if computer manufacturers made cars" joke

Yahoo news reports that Thailand's Finance Minister was trapped in his new BMW when the car's computer crashed, locking all the doors and shutting down the air-conditioning.

The story doesn't mention what OS the car was running, but you can guess, can't you? Of course you can.

Where do you want to get stuck today?