Walkabout

To make magic – disappear!

I am a big meanie; I admit it. I am one of “those people” – those who want to deprive so many others of their happiness and joy, their motivations, their reasons for living. I am… an outspoken skeptic.

This, of course, means that I’m a miserable soul person wretch, and merely want to [...]

The days of yore, part one

Okay, I admit it: I have no idea what the hell “yore” is. But since it’s not the season for nature photography, I’m hearkening (yeah, ditto) back to a time when it was. That I’m intending to make this an occasional habit is indicated by the ‘part one’ in the title…

This past summer, [...]

But how? Part five: Life!

Having taken a break longer than I should’ve, we now return to the “But how?” series of posts that examine how things might work if we stop using religion as a default explanation. Our topic for this evening is “life.”

It is admittedly hard to believe that such a thing could come about on [...]

Too cool, part twelve: Won’t fit in the bag

Courtesy of NASA’s Astronomy Photo of the Day, I present one of the most interesting examples of unintuitive physics: the curvature of spacetime to produce a gravitational lens. The ring that you see here is not the shock wave from a supernova affecting the surrounding gases, as I first thought, but actually a blue [...]

Amateur naturalism, part four

I didn’t initially intend it this way, but we’ve been working through a scale of increasing difficulty and effort in this series, starting with insects, then working through birds, then reptiles, and come finally to mammals. In my journeys, mammals have been the hardest to photograph and observe, for a number of reasons. So [...]

Book Review: Big Bang

This was a book that, I admit, wasn’t on my reading list, but when I came across a copy I began reading it out of interest. It is a credit to the author that I stayed with it, and chose to throw it into the review lineup.

Big Bang by Simon Singh is named [...]

Amateur naturalism, part three

Our next topic in the series is reptiles – you can also refer back to the posts about insects and birds if you like.

Reptiles (and amphibians, which I’ll also refer to here but will use the same term for each just for convenience) are perhaps the most misunderstood of animal classes, which is [...]

Drop the ‘Straight’

I used to think the column “The Straight Dope” was pretty good, and well researched. I was first introduced to it about twenty years ago, when it was carried in the local independent newspaper called, for some unknown reason, The Independent (this is a local publication, not the British one.) Many years later, I [...]

I wonder why?

Yesterday, I had a visitor, who turned out to be (as most knocks on the door are anymore) someone who wanted to introduce me to god. The last couple of times that this happened, it was some Wally Cleaver types in white shirts and ties, which spells either mormons or jehovahs, and I wasn’t [...]

Sylvan Heights continued

And so, our saga resumes where it left off, with our heroes trapped within the confines of a completely non-treacherous and non-threatening bird park…

As I mentioned before, Sylvan Heights Bird Park provides great opportunities for close encounters, and to the photographer, the urge to do personal portraits of the birds is practically irresistible. [...]

To make magic – disappear!

The days of yore, part one

But how? Part five: Life!

Too cool, part twelve: Won’t fit in the bag

Amateur naturalism, part four

Book Review: Big Bang

Amateur naturalism, part three

Drop the ‘Straight’

I wonder why?

Sylvan Heights continued

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