Buffer


This post serves a double purpose, both to show off a handful of recent photos and serve as a buffer before another gout of mantis pics comes crashing in. As even further warning of that upcoming post, a lot of them are going to be really weird looking.

Yesterday morning, I watched a pair of green herons (Butorides virescens) at the nearby pond. The image above is probably the best I got, read more

Lofty

You know what I said a few days ago about standards being too high? I just had to share this.

In the local Craigslist postings, there was a ‘Creative Gig’ opening for a Paranormal Investigator, the entirety of the ad reading thus:

Creating a show to investigate the paranormal and past lives. Looking for an individual who is natural, curious, has a personality and is interested in these read more

Monday color 26

For today’s Monday color, we go back almost exactly five years (one day shy,) and over about eight or so kilometers, and turn mostly north, to the UNC Botanical Gardens and a butterfly, probably a silver-spotted skipper (Epargyreus clarus,) on an amaranth spike. This is the kind of image I consider a magazine cover: read more

A god in every pot

I’d really love to see a poll on this topic, because I think it would be immensely revealing about religious belief. Lacking this, we’re just going to proceed with my own experience, which fits the description of “anecdotal” without conflict – we’ll get that out of the way right up front. My experience, however, has led me to believe that every religious read more

July’s abstract


Yeah, now I’m feeling obligated

This one’s from not quite a week ago, an earlier morning outing. The sun had finally broken through the foliage and was attempting to burn off the overnight dew that had been surviving in the shade. In the brief time slot where the light was hitting it, before it evaporated within a couple of minutes, I played around with short depth images at f4, read more

Occam’s stubble

There is a concept, a meme if you will, that shows up a lot in critical-thinking circles, and I’ve even tackled it a few times before here. Commonly known as “Occam’s Razor” but also by the less folksy term of parsimony, it provides a very simple measuring stick: if multiple explanations can be advanced for any given facts or events, the simplest read more

Hey! I just saw a UFO!

Well, very briefly, anyway. Almost as soon as I got the binoculars on it, it became Identified.

Here’s the whole, sordid story. The Girlfriend was outside at roughly 10:25 pm EDT chatting with a neighbor when they saw the light in the sky, and came in to summon me, telling me to get the binoculars. By the time I came out it had disappeared, but I got specific location and directions from them read more

Let’s check back with the mantids

Gosh, it’s been, what, six whole hours since I’ve posted anything about the resident mantids? I cannot apologize enough – I know how you must feel.

Okay, it’s been a bit longer than that, and in fact, this first image was taken nine days ago and not posted then. [See what I did there? I prefaced with hyperbole and followed with a contrasting statement, and now another read more

Look to the skies

Just a quick note along a neglected blog topic, but the next few nights will host two meteor showers: the Delta Aquarids for tonight and tomorrow night, and the Capricornids for tomorrow and Thursday. Since discontinuing the blog calendar, I moved some of the events over to my personal calendar as a reminder to post reminders.

While I have witnessed countless meteor showers, I have photographs of read more

Just some recent ones


While I have a handful of photos from the past week or so, there isn’t a whole lot to say about them, so I’m mostly just going to throw them up here without a lot of exposition. Right at the moment, I have not identified the dragonfly above, which was hanging around the front garden for a few days being cooperative and photogenic, but I do have to draw attention to the read more

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