Currently having a very happy sojourn in Cayman. Having a Kindle means I can download anything reasonably current instantaneously, and it is a special blessing this year that even though I am not in Paris or New York, I can continue to send lists of library requests to Zack at Butler's Delivery Services, so that when I am back in my office there is going to be a bumper load of books waiting for me! I read Christopher Woodward's excellent In Ruins and it made me "need" about twenty new books.
OF all the amazing Institute things this year, the one that most amazes and delights me - it is by far the most important quality-of-life factor for me - is the system that's been put together to get Columbia books to us. Most amazing of all: "Reid Hall (Paris)" is now available as a delivery option on my beloved BorrowDirect! WHOA! The books go to Delivery Services and then get packaged up with the books that Zack's staff pull from the shelves and check out to us and posted to Paris. We're streamlining as we go along; I think most of the other fellows just send a list to our on-site research officer Grant, but since I am requesting so many it makes more sense for me to do a bit more of the work first, so that I send a list of the books as author and title and the stable URL from Columbia's CLIO catalog for the internal ones; initially I had to email lists of BorrowDirect ones too, but now I can request them directly, which is much preferable.
NB I am relying more heavily on BorrowDirect than usual because of the ways the project touches on architectural history; Columbia has an excellent school of architecture, and accordingly a really superb architectural library in Avery, but it's a non-circulating collection, so anything I want from there (scan and deliver will do me an individual essay from a collection) needs to come through the BD network. Funny note on numbers (imprecise): I was surprised when Grant said that the total number of books received as of early November was under 200, but not so surprised that 50 of those are mine! I think I will continue to be responsible for about 25% of total borrowing (I am one of 15 fellows, about half aren't academics), I just have unusually extensive book needs (it is my way of being in the world).
Mostly I'm in work & exercise mode here, those are 2 great pleasures in my Cayman life, but there have been a few other highlights. Very nice dinner last night at Ragazzi, where we were generously comped as a thank-you to the Cayman Islands Triathlon Association (it was a committee meeting for post-race debrief, really my intention was to say hello and then eat on my own at the bar, but there was an empty seat and I was invited to join properly - I always volunteer at the Stroke and Stride races if I'm not participating myself, so it is not quite as freeloady as it sounds!).
On Saturday we went to the movies. The film was Bohemian Rhapsody, and I thoroughly enjoyed it (would have made it a higher priority if I'd known about the prominence of cat actors!). Not a Queen fan as such (the songs I know are great, I like them a lot, but I don't know that I ever listened to an individual album, I just know the classic rock radio hits), but feedback from friends and particularly having read Daniel Nester's thoughts on the movie at Barrelhouse made me figure I would like it, and I did, very much.
Daniel is my personal Queen guru (here's another recent interview that you might like if you liked the movie); he published two amazing books about Queen, in Soft Skull days (I met him because Richard Nash was publishing us both there c. 2004).
Here is God Save My Queen and its sequel. I highly recommend them both - alas, they are not available digitally, so I will have to wait to reread until I am home in NYC.
I was bemoaning the lack of a good real biography of Freddie Mercury, and got this good recommendation from Daniel: Matt Richards' Somebody to Love: The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury. Which I have downloaded and hope to read soon....
Miscellaneous links: a nice story about a beloved eighteenth-century scholar and what it means to be a first-generation college student; at the Guardian, Brian Dillon on our love affair with ruins; Garth Greenwell's new story; the secrets of wombats' cube-shaped poo.
Showing posts with label recreational zoology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recreational zoology. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Thursday, August 04, 2016
Closing tabs
Quiet summer on the blog - Facebook is getting the sort of idle thought that used to show up here, and I think there is no point resisting the drain in that direction. Have a lot of open tabs to close, as well as a light reading update that I will write separately. Funny summer in life - I have done no substantive work of my own, it's all life stuff (apartment declutter, 100 runs in 100 days, family Disney trip etc.) and other people's work stuff - but I am going to have to accept that sometimes I have to pay attention to things that are not a book that I am writing....
The Clown Egg Register.
The beautiful afterlife of Edward Gorey's mink stroller coat.
Starbucks card value exceeds money on deposit at many financial institutions.
Eighteenth-century note-taking (and the interesting underlying link).
Secrets of the London Library.
Roger Luckhurst on trouble in Lovecraft Country.
Sheep View 360.
Baroque wigs of paper.
The Clown Egg Register.
The beautiful afterlife of Edward Gorey's mink stroller coat.
Starbucks card value exceeds money on deposit at many financial institutions.
Eighteenth-century note-taking (and the interesting underlying link).
Secrets of the London Library.
Roger Luckhurst on trouble in Lovecraft Country.
Sheep View 360.
Baroque wigs of paper.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Closing tabs
Ah, I am long overdue some tab-closing and a light reading update, but life is complicated and Facebook continues to leach the energy out of blogging! I'm in Cayman for a couple more days, but my term isn't really over - flying back to New York Thursday for a couple more Friday tenure meetings and some end-of-semester teaching stuff. Can get through a couple more weeks without disaster I think....
Anyway, links first (I have upgraded to a new Kindle and will need to consult 2 different devices to get the full log):
How many eggs does a chicken lay in its lifetime?
On the subject of recreational zoology, read Jane Yeh's rhino poem in the NYRB!
At the New Yorker, Adelle Waldman on loving and loathing Samuel Richardson.
The new era of drone vandalism.
Should brand protection extend to paper offerings to the dead?
Top ten things junior faculty should know in order to get tenure. (There was a feminist rebuttal to this somewhere, but I have misplaced the link, and besides, it didn't invalidate the original points, just complemented them!)
What do Enid Blyton's school stories teach a reader about ethics?
Who will come with me to try this sour-cherry-pie sundae?
Finally, on a sadder note, Frederic Tuten interviewed Jenny Diski in 1999 and it's well worth a reread. I won't write more about Diski here, as I am attempting to write a proper piece about her for an online publication I admire, but I have been thinking very much of one of my favorite passages of hers, from On Trying to Keep Still (I think of it all the time and have certainly never read such an uncannily accurate description of why I have such a strong aversion to making plans to see even my favorite people!):
Anyway, links first (I have upgraded to a new Kindle and will need to consult 2 different devices to get the full log):
How many eggs does a chicken lay in its lifetime?
On the subject of recreational zoology, read Jane Yeh's rhino poem in the NYRB!
At the New Yorker, Adelle Waldman on loving and loathing Samuel Richardson.
The new era of drone vandalism.
Should brand protection extend to paper offerings to the dead?
Top ten things junior faculty should know in order to get tenure. (There was a feminist rebuttal to this somewhere, but I have misplaced the link, and besides, it didn't invalidate the original points, just complemented them!)
What do Enid Blyton's school stories teach a reader about ethics?
Who will come with me to try this sour-cherry-pie sundae?
Finally, on a sadder note, Frederic Tuten interviewed Jenny Diski in 1999 and it's well worth a reread. I won't write more about Diski here, as I am attempting to write a proper piece about her for an online publication I admire, but I have been thinking very much of one of my favorite passages of hers, from On Trying to Keep Still (I think of it all the time and have certainly never read such an uncannily accurate description of why I have such a strong aversion to making plans to see even my favorite people!):
Being really alone means being free from anticipation. Even to know that something is going to happen, that I am required to do something is an intrusion on the emptiness I am after. What I love to see is an empty diary, pages and pages of nothing planned. A date, an arrangement, is a point in the future when something is required of me. I begin to worry about it days, sometimes weeks ahead. Just a haircut, a hospital visit, a dinner party. Going out. The weight of the thing-that-is-going-to-happen sits on my heart and crushes the present into non-existence. My ability to live in the here and now depends on not having any plans, on there being no expected interruption. I have no other way to do it. How can you be alone, properly alone, if you know someone is going to knock at the door in five hours, or tomorrow morning, or you have to get ready and go out in three days' time? I can't abide the fracturing of the present by the intrusion of a planned future.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Turtle soup
At the Guardian, John Mullan reviews Christopher Plumb's new book on exotic animals in Georgian London:
The Earl of Shelburne, later to be prime minister, kept an orangutan and a supposedly tame leopard in his orangery at Bowood House. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham liked to stroke the leopard when he visited. Sir Robert Walpole’s pet flamingo warmed itself by the kitchen fire. Sir Hans Sloane was followed round his Chelsea home by a tame, one-eyed wolverine. He also owned an opossum and a porcupine.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Travels part III - Iceland!
By the time we got there, we were pretty much just due to collapse in the hotel room! (This was predicted in advance.) Fortunately it was an incredibly nice hotel.
(Our final two nights in Iceland were at the Geo Hotel in Grindavik - both of these hotels are pretty much brand new - I was initially a bit horrified that I had rashly taken us from lovely cosmopolitan city to isolated country location, but really it is good to see something a bit different - we had an interesting walk around small town and harbor, and the nearby restaurant was surprisingly good - I think this is it - we ate three meals there as options in walking distance were limited.)
Food in Iceland in general was ridiculously good. I don't have links for everything (or even most things), but we had fantastic Thai food here, very decent random local pizza, tons of good fish (with and without chips), a beer at Nico's favorite place, steak lunch here with my friend J. and his two older kids after an episode of puffin watching and delicious cocktails in the lobby at our hotel.
The Golden Circle bus tour was a little overwhelming (the landscapes are amazing, but there are too many people - tourist infrastructure really isn't up to current volume); I loved the small zoo in Reykjavik and the Blue Lagoon also exceeded expectations.
(We had two very fancy meals in Iceland, food on New Nordic lines: one at the Lava Restaurant at the Blue Lagoon, the other at Haust in our hotel lobby. The regular-place food is so good, the fancy food is slightly wasted on me & B. - but it was genuinely exceptional, and I would especially single out lovely desserts. Not so photogenic - subtle rather than flashy - but utterly delicious: at Haust, a rhubarb victoria with almond sorbet, roasted almonds and arctic angelica syrup, and at Lava a poached pear with ginger sorbet, praline cake and elderflower syrup. Divine!)
Pictures below are piecemeal: the final ones are only a small fraction of what was on offer at the glorious Saga Lounge at the airport on the day we left!
(Our final two nights in Iceland were at the Geo Hotel in Grindavik - both of these hotels are pretty much brand new - I was initially a bit horrified that I had rashly taken us from lovely cosmopolitan city to isolated country location, but really it is good to see something a bit different - we had an interesting walk around small town and harbor, and the nearby restaurant was surprisingly good - I think this is it - we ate three meals there as options in walking distance were limited.)
Food in Iceland in general was ridiculously good. I don't have links for everything (or even most things), but we had fantastic Thai food here, very decent random local pizza, tons of good fish (with and without chips), a beer at Nico's favorite place, steak lunch here with my friend J. and his two older kids after an episode of puffin watching and delicious cocktails in the lobby at our hotel.
The Golden Circle bus tour was a little overwhelming (the landscapes are amazing, but there are too many people - tourist infrastructure really isn't up to current volume); I loved the small zoo in Reykjavik and the Blue Lagoon also exceeded expectations.
(We had two very fancy meals in Iceland, food on New Nordic lines: one at the Lava Restaurant at the Blue Lagoon, the other at Haust in our hotel lobby. The regular-place food is so good, the fancy food is slightly wasted on me & B. - but it was genuinely exceptional, and I would especially single out lovely desserts. Not so photogenic - subtle rather than flashy - but utterly delicious: at Haust, a rhubarb victoria with almond sorbet, roasted almonds and arctic angelica syrup, and at Lava a poached pear with ginger sorbet, praline cake and elderflower syrup. Divine!)
Pictures below are piecemeal: the final ones are only a small fraction of what was on offer at the glorious Saga Lounge at the airport on the day we left!
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Sunday, February 08, 2015
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Closing tabs
The new semester has hit me on the head like a gigantic hammer! It's all good, I am thoroughly enjoying it (and particularly excited about teaching Clarissa again), but three of the last four days have featured me collapsing into bed mid-afternoon for a three-hour nap as I try and make the transition back from independently and naturally nocturnal to sociably diurnal - let us hope I can soon compound the transition....
Too lazy to log the light reading and associated links, but here are some tabs to close:
Owl cafes.
Viktor Shklovsky, hilo hero.
Debbie Chachra on why she is not a "maker."
Charles Simic remembers Mark Strand. I didn't know Mark well at all, though we taught in the same department and I used to see him regularly midmorning at Bodystrength Fitness on 106th St., where we both worked out for a stretch of several years. I did have one memorable night out with Mark and his then partner (my colleague and friend) Tricia Dailey: they had an extra ticket to what this (Mary Louise Parker, a great fan of Mark's poetry, was starring in the revival of Craig Lucas's play and had comped him tickets). We said hello to her afterwards and then transferred ourselves for a glorious meal and copious alcohol at the Russian Samovar, also mostly on the house due to Mark's longstanding close friendship with the late lamented Joseph Brodsky. A glimpse into another world!
Finally, the best clip I have seen this week on the internet: how hamsters fit so much in their cheeks.
Too lazy to log the light reading and associated links, but here are some tabs to close:
Owl cafes.
Viktor Shklovsky, hilo hero.
Debbie Chachra on why she is not a "maker."
Charles Simic remembers Mark Strand. I didn't know Mark well at all, though we taught in the same department and I used to see him regularly midmorning at Bodystrength Fitness on 106th St., where we both worked out for a stretch of several years. I did have one memorable night out with Mark and his then partner (my colleague and friend) Tricia Dailey: they had an extra ticket to what this (Mary Louise Parker, a great fan of Mark's poetry, was starring in the revival of Craig Lucas's play and had comped him tickets). We said hello to her afterwards and then transferred ourselves for a glorious meal and copious alcohol at the Russian Samovar, also mostly on the house due to Mark's longstanding close friendship with the late lamented Joseph Brodsky. A glimpse into another world!
Finally, the best clip I have seen this week on the internet: how hamsters fit so much in their cheeks.
Wednesday, January 07, 2015
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Squamous!
Paris was absolutely lovely, but I am very happy to be back at home with two funny cats and a real computer (the technology conspired against "real" blogging - there is a very complex and roundabout way to post pictures taken on my iPad in entries here, but the device kept crashing and I gave up and posted to Facebook instead - will put some of that stuff up here later on at a quiet moment, though life re-entry is now slightly daunting).
I really might have to read this book, though it's a minor splurge (and too new to be available yet at the library) - have pasted in the bizarrely steampunk (of course colonialism really did produce this kind of effect, it's not a novel observation) photograph of a nineteenth-century New Zealander with pet tuatara.
Jonathan Losos' Anole Annals blog is one of my great internet pleasures. I cannot really say that in another life I am an anole specialist, as really I do not have the eye or temperament for a natural historian (in a near alternate life, I am writing about Melville and Dickinson, and in a further-away but still plausible one I am an epidemiologist!), but I do really love 'em, and I like the styles of looking and writing on display here - makes me think of another book I very much liked, Richard Fortey's Dry Storeroom No. 1.
My morning's first meeting has been rescheduled from 10:45 to 12:45, buying me an extra hour before I need to be on campus at 11:30: that is good, I must just now try not to waste it all delightfully on the internet....
I really might have to read this book, though it's a minor splurge (and too new to be available yet at the library) - have pasted in the bizarrely steampunk (of course colonialism really did produce this kind of effect, it's not a novel observation) photograph of a nineteenth-century New Zealander with pet tuatara.
Jonathan Losos' Anole Annals blog is one of my great internet pleasures. I cannot really say that in another life I am an anole specialist, as really I do not have the eye or temperament for a natural historian (in a near alternate life, I am writing about Melville and Dickinson, and in a further-away but still plausible one I am an epidemiologist!), but I do really love 'em, and I like the styles of looking and writing on display here - makes me think of another book I very much liked, Richard Fortey's Dry Storeroom No. 1.
My morning's first meeting has been rescheduled from 10:45 to 12:45, buying me an extra hour before I need to be on campus at 11:30: that is good, I must just now try not to waste it all delightfully on the internet....
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Closing tabs
A long-overdue post to close some tabs. I am finally running again this weekend, very slowly, though lungs are still impaired. In work as opposed to lung capacity, though the two may be loosely aligned, I am at the point of the semester where I am barely functioning at 60% capacity - teaching Heart of Midlothian and associated criticism tomorrow just overwhelmed me with a desire to write JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM on all forms of social media, and I must also, alarmingly, write a lecture on Endgame and Adorno for Tuesday evening!
A wonderful personal assistant from my friend Jill's company Lambent Services helped me clean up my work office so that I have lots of room for NEW PROJECTS (about which more anon at some more leisurely moment probably about a month from now). This service is highly recommended - that office has always been a chaotic and neglected enclave, to the point of functionality being impaired, and I am going to make sure to have regular tune-ups to keep it in good nick.
Liz had an extra ticket to this for Thursday: Black Mountain Songs. Enjoyable, interesting, thought-provoking: I had some pangs of guilt that though I am a dedicated teacher with considerable meta-interest in teaching, I have never (yet) been involved in a really utopian teaching scheme. I wouldn't rule it out, only in reality such things probably happen mostly in summers and I am not sure I would survive year-round teaching! Deep Springs has always interested me as a possibility: now I think they either have gone or about to go co-ed, it might be an actual opportunity?
Other bits of interest:
On founding your own country. (Via I.H.D.)
Helen DeWitt's personal library.
Lottje Sodderland on recovery from a stroke.
The Tingle Alley bear report.
Himalayan marmots! (Via B.) Also, an eagle's view of London.
Slight obsession with this historic food site, especially the ices... (Original link possibly via Teri D.?)
Last but not least, pygmy marmoset loves being brushed with a toothbrush and a short history of the black pug.
I must log the light reading or it will be forever lost in the dim mists of history. It has mostly been a very large number of werewolf-vampire-type novels that I think I will not log individually - Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels novels, which I thought were really very good (I should not have then read the first couple of the Edge series, they are not so much suited to my taste); Stephen King, Revival (suffered for me in comparison to The Shining and sequel, which I read last year, but certainly worth the time); two crime novels by the Israeli writer D. A. Mishani, The Missing File and A Possibility of Violence, both very much the kind of thing I enjoy reading; a reread of a favorite novel of mine by Diana Wynne Jones, Deep Secret, now happily available for Kindle (this caused me to think I should write a long essay or a short book about her); Heather Abel's fascinating and troubling Gut Instincts, an excellent Kindle Single about celiac and mysterious gut woes (could be paired with Leslie Jamison's Morgellon's essay and Sarah Manguso on illness for an interesting trio); Dorothy Hughes' The Expendable Man; then Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson novels en masse (still finishing the last few of these - it is mighty soothing to have such a good flow of high-quality light reading).
Also I remembered during grumpy desperate non-exercising binge of book acquisition that I very much wanted to read my longtime digital correspondent Robert Hudson's second novel, and finally got around to obtaining a copy: it is called The Dazzle, and I enjoyed it hugely. Recommended in particular to readers of Peter Dickinson and good interwar period pastiche, but really it's just very appealing (good use of epistolary format!): I am going to pass it on to my mother now, in confidence that she will enjoy it as much as I did.
A wonderful personal assistant from my friend Jill's company Lambent Services helped me clean up my work office so that I have lots of room for NEW PROJECTS (about which more anon at some more leisurely moment probably about a month from now). This service is highly recommended - that office has always been a chaotic and neglected enclave, to the point of functionality being impaired, and I am going to make sure to have regular tune-ups to keep it in good nick.
Liz had an extra ticket to this for Thursday: Black Mountain Songs. Enjoyable, interesting, thought-provoking: I had some pangs of guilt that though I am a dedicated teacher with considerable meta-interest in teaching, I have never (yet) been involved in a really utopian teaching scheme. I wouldn't rule it out, only in reality such things probably happen mostly in summers and I am not sure I would survive year-round teaching! Deep Springs has always interested me as a possibility: now I think they either have gone or about to go co-ed, it might be an actual opportunity?
Other bits of interest:
On founding your own country. (Via I.H.D.)
Helen DeWitt's personal library.
Lottje Sodderland on recovery from a stroke.
The Tingle Alley bear report.
Himalayan marmots! (Via B.) Also, an eagle's view of London.
Slight obsession with this historic food site, especially the ices... (Original link possibly via Teri D.?)
Last but not least, pygmy marmoset loves being brushed with a toothbrush and a short history of the black pug.
I must log the light reading or it will be forever lost in the dim mists of history. It has mostly been a very large number of werewolf-vampire-type novels that I think I will not log individually - Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels novels, which I thought were really very good (I should not have then read the first couple of the Edge series, they are not so much suited to my taste); Stephen King, Revival (suffered for me in comparison to The Shining and sequel, which I read last year, but certainly worth the time); two crime novels by the Israeli writer D. A. Mishani, The Missing File and A Possibility of Violence, both very much the kind of thing I enjoy reading; a reread of a favorite novel of mine by Diana Wynne Jones, Deep Secret, now happily available for Kindle (this caused me to think I should write a long essay or a short book about her); Heather Abel's fascinating and troubling Gut Instincts, an excellent Kindle Single about celiac and mysterious gut woes (could be paired with Leslie Jamison's Morgellon's essay and Sarah Manguso on illness for an interesting trio); Dorothy Hughes' The Expendable Man; then Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson novels en masse (still finishing the last few of these - it is mighty soothing to have such a good flow of high-quality light reading).
Also I remembered during grumpy desperate non-exercising binge of book acquisition that I very much wanted to read my longtime digital correspondent Robert Hudson's second novel, and finally got around to obtaining a copy: it is called The Dazzle, and I enjoyed it hugely. Recommended in particular to readers of Peter Dickinson and good interwar period pastiche, but really it's just very appealing (good use of epistolary format!): I am going to pass it on to my mother now, in confidence that she will enjoy it as much as I did.
Friday, November 07, 2014
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Closing tabs
Rather grumpy about ongoing minor respiratory ailment. Had hoped I might be able to run for a bit today, but really I'm still hawking up huge gobs of disgusting phlegm, it will not do lungs any good to strain them with exercise! Behind on various work stuff, generally feeling rather low. (About to dig in on clearing some of these overdue tasks, which with any luck will lead to a feeling of considerable relief .)
Nice writeup of last week's Swift symposium. I had a very funny conversation afterwards with an elderly Irishman who was peculiarly vivid of conversation. He was excited to tell me that I was "a BORN LECTURER: BORN TO THE PODIUM" - also I used two words he was unfamiliar with, paratactic and hypotactic, which let him tell me a wonderfully complex multi-part anecdote about an alcoholic friend of his, now deceased, who was a great lover of language and once told this gentleman, when he used the word "creature" to describe a lady, "to refer himself to the discipline of the dictionary"! This is now a good new phrase in my repertoire. Said friend died in hospital of complications due to alcoholism, but on his deathbed sung this gentleman two songs which I promised I would go and hear online: one I think was "The Parting Glass," if I am remembering correctly, and the other was a Gaelic song whose title loosely translated into "Nobody knows her name" (various versions here). Some reciting of Yeats was also involved....
Fun to see this profile of an old friend in my Digg feed!
Jane Goodall's jungle.
The link B. sent me yesterday really did bring a smile to my face: the Shetland Pony Grand National!
Nice writeup of last week's Swift symposium. I had a very funny conversation afterwards with an elderly Irishman who was peculiarly vivid of conversation. He was excited to tell me that I was "a BORN LECTURER: BORN TO THE PODIUM" - also I used two words he was unfamiliar with, paratactic and hypotactic, which let him tell me a wonderfully complex multi-part anecdote about an alcoholic friend of his, now deceased, who was a great lover of language and once told this gentleman, when he used the word "creature" to describe a lady, "to refer himself to the discipline of the dictionary"! This is now a good new phrase in my repertoire. Said friend died in hospital of complications due to alcoholism, but on his deathbed sung this gentleman two songs which I promised I would go and hear online: one I think was "The Parting Glass," if I am remembering correctly, and the other was a Gaelic song whose title loosely translated into "Nobody knows her name" (various versions here). Some reciting of Yeats was also involved....
Fun to see this profile of an old friend in my Digg feed!
Jane Goodall's jungle.
The link B. sent me yesterday really did bring a smile to my face: the Shetland Pony Grand National!
Monday, September 22, 2014
On eating and being eaten
The changing diet of polar bears, with a new emphasis on the eggs of snow geese:
David Iles, a graduate student at Utah State University, who has been working at La Pérouse Bay for several years, set out cameras to observe goose nests and caught the bears in the act. He now has 40 cameras set up over a stretch of tundra. They take photographs every two minutes and shoot a burst of 30 images when an animal walks in front of the camera.
In addition to capturing photographs of bears consuming eggs last season, the cameras caught cranes, wolves, eagles and foxes eating. “Everything seems to love eggs out here,” he said.
One goose or one nest may not seem like much. But polar bears are gluttons. Dr, Rockwell described one case in which a bear ate about 1,200 eggs — of eider ducks, in this case — in four days. He said Dr. Gormezano had calculated that a clutch of four eggs would amount to 825 calories, the equivalent of one and a half Big Macs. Three hundred four-egg clutches would be 247,500 calories, or about 10 percent of a bear’s yearly nutritional needs.
Friday, September 05, 2014
Dipterocarp forest
Armand Marie Leroi has a good diary piece at the FT (I am excited to read his new book) - here's a nice bit about visiting Borneo, FT site registration required:
There was a canopy walk, a series of metal towers that led to the arboreal world where most of the forest lives. We set out in the dark, climbed at first light, and watched morning mist dissolve to reveal a sea of green. You could also pick up a mobile signal there. As we got to the top, the chimes of iPhones springing to life competed with the bird song and the distant whoops of macaques.
Friday, July 04, 2014
Heel-dragging morning update
It is taking me a ridiculously long time this morning to get out the door for my run, the run I should have done yesterday but didn't get it together to do then at all! It is still grotesquely humid, but much cooler than yesterday, so that's something....
The fourth of July makes me grumpy, from a strictly personal point of view - the library is closed, and there is less interesting news than usual on the USian part of the internet. On the bright side, as it is a holiday I feel justified in blowing a large chunk of morning and midday on exercise - will hope to get in a few good hours of work on the wretched article revisions (which are enjoyable now that I am actually immersed in them, only I am waiting on some BorrowDirect sources that are delayed because of the holiday!) later on in the afternoon.
A few tabs to close:
King Lear with sheep! (Via John Kuhn. Amazingly reminds me of the exhilarating brief moment when I thought the Clydesdale Hamlet at Busch Gardens was going to feature a production of Hamlet performed by gigantic drayhorses - it was one of those fantastical glitches. Ditto, in a weaker version, my onetime quest for the Penguin Euripides....)
The reading habits of tennis players.
Jordan Ellenberg on the summer's most unread books as glimpsed by Kindle highlights.
A really nice piece by Mark Halliday on Kenneth Koch.
The Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson! I have something exciting coming up next year, by the way: I need to write a really good talk for this (it is going to be a good chance to delve into my battle-of-ancients-and-moderns project, which I think I haven't yet written about here as I am trying to stay focused on the still-unwritten Ten-Week Clarissa proposal - Johnson is not directly in that one, but the question of textual editing and commentary looms large throughout, thus Spinoza and other recent dipping into Grafton on Poliziano etc.)....
(Also excited that I have two rewarding minor work trips coming up in the fall - I like the feeling that my career is enabling me to have interesting travel experiences I wouldn't have otherwise: Dublin, for this year's edition of the Swift symposium conducted at the Deanery of St. Patrick's Cathedral; and Paris, in December, for a dissertation defense. I am excited about the latter for various reasons, one of which is that I will finally be able to go and get a cupcake at a bakery I have long admired from afar!)
The fourth of July makes me grumpy, from a strictly personal point of view - the library is closed, and there is less interesting news than usual on the USian part of the internet. On the bright side, as it is a holiday I feel justified in blowing a large chunk of morning and midday on exercise - will hope to get in a few good hours of work on the wretched article revisions (which are enjoyable now that I am actually immersed in them, only I am waiting on some BorrowDirect sources that are delayed because of the holiday!) later on in the afternoon.
A few tabs to close:
King Lear with sheep! (Via John Kuhn. Amazingly reminds me of the exhilarating brief moment when I thought the Clydesdale Hamlet at Busch Gardens was going to feature a production of Hamlet performed by gigantic drayhorses - it was one of those fantastical glitches. Ditto, in a weaker version, my onetime quest for the Penguin Euripides....)
The reading habits of tennis players.
Jordan Ellenberg on the summer's most unread books as glimpsed by Kindle highlights.
A really nice piece by Mark Halliday on Kenneth Koch.
The Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson! I have something exciting coming up next year, by the way: I need to write a really good talk for this (it is going to be a good chance to delve into my battle-of-ancients-and-moderns project, which I think I haven't yet written about here as I am trying to stay focused on the still-unwritten Ten-Week Clarissa proposal - Johnson is not directly in that one, but the question of textual editing and commentary looms large throughout, thus Spinoza and other recent dipping into Grafton on Poliziano etc.)....
(Also excited that I have two rewarding minor work trips coming up in the fall - I like the feeling that my career is enabling me to have interesting travel experiences I wouldn't have otherwise: Dublin, for this year's edition of the Swift symposium conducted at the Deanery of St. Patrick's Cathedral; and Paris, in December, for a dissertation defense. I am excited about the latter for various reasons, one of which is that I will finally be able to go and get a cupcake at a bakery I have long admired from afar!)
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
Saturday, April 05, 2014
Slothmageddon
Slothified! (Via B.) Sloth rescuer and kitten socializer are at the top of my list of fantasy alternate careers - though really it might just be that I need to find somewhere with a few more animals I can help look after (do not need more in my own home, despite temptation to acquire a pet rat or rabbit for the office)....
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