Shuffling off his mortal coil

There is a reason, perhaps, why these birds are almost extinct:

The unlucky photographer is Mark Carwadine, who you might remember from an earlier book review, and of course Stephen Fry leaping catlike to his aid. You might be puzzled as to why Carwadine, um, held still and thought of England, but read more

Too cool, part six

Sometimes I just kick myself for being stupid. At Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne does a post on one of the most remarkable of animals, and of developed forms of locomotion: the Paradise Tree Snake, the only snake that flies.

Now, this wasn’t news to me, since I’d seen a brief mention in a book years ago, but then, before I started blogging, found videos of the research that was being read more

The color of magic

Okay, that was a shameless Terry Pratchett reference, but c’mon, I’m working alone, here. Editors are supposed to come up with the headlines…

A very key element of nature photography is doing a lot of shooting in the early morning and early evening, dawn and dusk. These are often called the “golden hours” and extend from roughly 45 minutes before sunrise (first light) read more

Not far enough south


While most residents of the northern climes of the States have seen some winter storms already, they tend to run very few here in North Carolina, and often not until January. The Girlfriend and I were paying no attention to the weather reports today and so were taken by surprise when the fairly heavy, wet stuff came in this afternoon, more so by its accumulation. The temperatures read more

Define, “poisons everything”

I talked a little bit about this subject in an earlier post, but a couple of things I’ve come across recently reminded me that it can stand a bit better detail. Part of this comes from a concern I’ve harbored for a while, one that has no small difficulty in establishing whether it is legitimate or not. Bear with me for a bit while I lay this out.

John Shimkus, a member of the US House read more

That’s not supposed to be there

So, a few months back I posted an image of the night sky (duplicated at left) that featured a portion of the constellation Scorpius, and made a remark about two sets of twin stars in the image. I’m only an astronomy buff, and never really bothered memorizing the constellations because I consider them read more

More than meets the eye


When I took a quick look outside tonight thinking I was hearing rain (it was actually the bubbles in my Pepsi can, but that’s another post,) the moon was peeking through a thin layer of high cirrus clouds and producing an effect much like the above image. However, the shots I took just now don’t look like the image above, because that one was taken under rather specific conditions.

Before read more

Book Review: Last Chance to See

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwadine is a curious book format. Adams, best known for his “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series, writes with a distinctively quirky style, outside the box and off the wall, and he is supremely capable of taking the reader completely read more

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