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August 25, 2005
Muppet Mommies For Baby Hornbills
The South African Ground Hornbills look like giant black turkeys. When we were in Kruger, we saw quite a few of them wandering around on the ground as well as in dead trees.
One thing we didn't see was any nests. We were, however, asked to mark on a map any male or female ground hornbills we saw. Ground hornbills are carnivorous and tend to mate in monogamous pairs. One other interesting fact is that ground hornbills don't seem to drink water, but instead ingest enough moisture from their food.
The South African bushveld is a dry, hostile environment and animal mortality is very high due to disease, predation, and other factors. Ground hornbills seem to have adopted a rather Darwinian policy in terms of their feeding behavior with their young. Despite laying and hatching multiple chicks, they only seem to feed one of them. In fact, a group of hornbills will contain only one alpha male/female pair, which will do the breeding for the group. The group then helps feed the young - always a difficult task when you live in a place where it's hard enough to feed yourself.
With the ground hornbill teetering on the edge of the endangered species list, South African scientists have decided to pick up the slack themselves, kidnapping the unfed baby chicks and feeding them until they are strong enough to be re-released into the wild. In order to keep the hornbills from associating humans with food, these scientists dress up as hornbills using an almost comical but brilliantly simple sock puppet disguise.
Researchers hoping to increase the breeding rate of southern Africa's increasingly rare ground hornbill have taken to feeding abandoned chicks with puppets disguised as the birds' parents.
The faux foster mother may seem real to the ground hornbill chick. But inside the puppet head is a human hand trying to save the chick and its species from sliding to extinction.
Ground hornbills lay up to three eggs at a time, but they feed only one chick. Conservationists collect remaining hatchlings that are otherwise left to starve and hand-feed them.
More at: National Geographic: Puppets Help Raise Africa's Abandoned Hornbill Chicks
Posted by sorsha at 5:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
People As Primates
The London Zoo has a new exhibit showing people "au naturelle". I have to say, when I first read about this, I was like "Oh God, please don't let this be yet another dumb reality show!"
I have to applaud the zoo for coming up with this exhibit, although I wish it was taken a bit more seriously, and was a bit less silly. I guess it really has to do with the personalities of the people in the enclosure more than anything - and that would be true of other animals as well. But models and body builders? Well, posturing is certainly a primate trait...
LONDON - Caged and barely clothed, eight men and women monkeyed around for the crowds Friday in an exhibit labeled “Humans” at the London Zoo.
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“Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals ... teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate,” Wills said.
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They are being treated as animals, complete with keepers, but are allowed to go home each night at closing time.
More at: MSNBC: Crowds go ape over ‘humans’ zoo exhibit
Posted by sorsha at 5:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 24, 2005
Paper or Plastic? San Francisco Answers Neither
When I was in South Africa a couple of years ago, I noticed the litter problem - it was impossible not to. My South African friends joked that the national flower of SA was the plastic bag. Then in 2003, the country instituted a bag fee which greatly reduced the number of bags blowing around as trash. In order to get a bag at the store, you had to bring your own or pay for them - and they weren't particularly cheap.
I have often wondered why this kind of fee hasn't shown up in the United States. We tax all sorts of other goods - CRV's for cans, fuel taxes at almost 20 cents a gallon, and yet we applaud people for choosing plastic over paper, and leave it at that. If I take a canvas bag or backpack into a grocery store (and it's not Trader Joe's) and ask for no bag... I get a funny look I interpret as "What a hippy". Even with all our little steps, we still have a big bag of bags in the pantry.
Always a trailblazer, San Francisco is finally making some movement to help save the estimated $8.5 million htey spent for plastic bag cleanup each year. This works out to roughly 17 cents per bag.
In January, the resolution passed unanimously to institute a bag fee of 17 cents at major store chains. A six month consumer education program has been in effect, and soon San Francisco consumers will begin to realize the value of what was once considered an unlimited free resource.
A recent Environmental News Network podcast dated 5/2/05 had some interesting statistics on this issue.
Posted by sorsha at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 18, 2005
Laurie Darcey - Force Of Nature
National Geographic has this great flash site on "Forces of Nature" to go along with their IMAX film. You can make your own hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, and tornadoes by choosing from a variety of factors and then watching the results of your simulation. You can see how the different variables combine to form different types of events - for example, which kind of volcanic eruption was Mount St. Helens, eh?
Trust me to make massive damage hurricane the first time, hehheh! Check out Hurricane Laurie:
It was also interesting seeing the building damage simulated by the different earthquakes on different land surfaces. This is why people don't build brick houses out here on the California fault lines...
Make your own: National Geographic: Forces of Nature
Posted by sorsha at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 17, 2005
Harr, Matey! I'm Addicted To Sid Meier's Pirates!
I'm not much of a gamer, especially since I really suck at what Shane calls the "button mashers" - or games which require quick reflexes and memorizing button combinations or smashing random keys a lot and hoping for the best. But every once in a while, I'll find a game I really like and am good at. I used to play the LucasArts Monkey Island
Chomper McDarcey is my boy. He's a smooth talking pirate duke who's married a beautiful French Governor's daughter but still romances all the lovely ladies of the caribbean anyway. He's defeated all the other notorious pirates and enjoys recruiting the able-bodied men in a town, sailing away and then quickly turning back and plundering that city for its loot. Captain Chomper sails the fully loaded frigate aptly named the 'Megalodon'. Chomper McDarcey has a special taste for big, fat Spanish treasure ships, and the Spaniards have put a hefty bounty on his head. Chomper is friendly with the natives and enjoys sending them after Spanish colonies.
Chomper Prefers Hanging In The Taverns
Blackbeard Was No Match For Chomper McDarcey!
A Typical Sea Battle
Chomper Becomes An English Duke!
Chomper Dances With His French Wife
Chomper Duelled With His Bride's Former Intended
Trixy Chomper Loves Land Battles & Sneak Attacks
Chomper Enjoys Flying the Jolly Roger Over Recently Vanquished Towns
Posted by sorsha at 3:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 16, 2005
Lions, Ligers & Bears - Oh My!
Whether it's cloning exotic animals, cross-breeding lions and tigers, or living amongst a dangerous species like the grizzly, a lot of people seem to be messing with nature in a quite startling variety of ways.
Lion + Tiger = Liger?
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At first I thought this was a hoax, but I guess you really can cross a lion and a tiger and come up with a hybrid called a liger. The result, when successful, is an interesting cat species mix. I wonder how well they would really manage with some very conflicting natural habitats (wet swampy jungle for tigers and the African savannah for the lions) not to mention the distinct social differences - tigers are loners and lions are social creatures living in prides. For now, these guys seem to be treated as a kind of freakish show animal with some exotic conservationalists pushing for the liger to be protected like other big exotic cats, and others shaking their heads in disapproval over this "unnatural" breeding. Hey, who would have guessed that Hitchcock's The Birds
The faintly striped, shaggy-maned creatures are the offspring of male lions and female tigers, which gives them the ability to both roar like lions and chuff like tigers—a supposedly affectionate sound that falls somewhere between a purr and a raspberry.
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"Crossing the species line" does not generally occur in the wild, because "it would result in diminished fitness of the offspring," said Ronald Tilson, director of conservation at the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley.
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"The interesting thing about these animals is that they have the best qualities of the tiger and the best of the lion," said movie actress and conservationist Tippi Hedren, who has run Shambala since 1972. "Those qualities manifest themselves in the fact that they like to be in the water [a tiger trait] and are very social [a lion trait]."
More at: National Geographic: Ligers Make a "Dynamite" Leap Into the Limelight
Living With Grizzlies: How Close Is Too Close?
Many of us heard about the "Grizzly Guy" - the man living amongst the grizzlies. Well, then we heard the news that his cute and cuddly friends ate the guy and his girlfriend. Timothy Treadwell (the bear guy) may have "found his calling" with the bears, but his demise seemed more to do with ego and a false sense of safety. People are always underestimating nature and wild animals - and this kind of downplay of the "wildness" of a dangerous animal never helps people nor the animals themselves. Now there's a movie done with the guy's video footage called Grizzly Man, which won at Sundance. I expect we'll catch it on DVD if only to see the nature footage, although I'm praying it is a film that discourages contact and encourages respect of a wild animal's personal space.
Katmai park rangers shot the thousand-pound (450-kilogram) male responsible for Treadwell and Huguenard's deaths after their bodies were found. A second, younger bear was also killed when it became aggressive.
Bear biologist Lance Craighead says the deaths of Treadwell and his girlfriend created a lot of bad publicity for bears. But, he says, the New York-born Treadwell also inspired people with his message that grizzly bears should be protected and preserved.
"Treadwell did more good than harm," said Craighead, director of the Craighead Environmental Research Institute in Bozeman, Montana. "He sure reached a lot of schoolchildren—he spent most of his winters talking to schoolkids about bears."
Treadwell "pushed the envelope" when it came to taking risks, Craighead said, which may have encouraged others to do the same.
More at: National Geographic: "Grizzly Man" Movie Spurs New Looks at a Grisly Death
While I remain skeptical as to the longer term impact of Treadwell's research, I should also say that I have to applaud someone for taking the initiative to start their own private "study", regardless of education, etc. I just hope the man's achievements are acceptable to other scientists. Perhaps I'm being too harsh with the situation, after all, there have been other successful cases of non-scientists pushing the envelope successfully in order to blaze new trails in zoology and conservation - just look at Dian Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist story).
Dian Fossey gave vet school a shot but failed out when she couldn't handle the coursework. She scraped through a junior college with a degree in occupational therapy. She convinced the Wilkie foundation to sponsor her gorilla research through a mix of passion and persistence. Much like Treadwell, she got very close to the gorillas and ate and socialized with them. But there are also some very distinct differences - Treadwell went off into the woods with no equipment or plans, and just set up camp and started messing around; Fossey planned her trip for years. She read everything she could in order to arm herself in order to study the gorillas, and her research was eventually well accepted. She got funding from a variety of sources, including National Geographic, and took on interns, etc. She may have been practically self-taught as a scientist, but she worked within its boundaries in terms of collecting legit data and publishing. She was also able to use interns to supplement study she did not do herself, while still instilling upon them the importance of non-clinical approaches to science and conservation. Because of these differences, I find it uncomfortable that people compare Treadwell the Grizzly Man with a revolutionary like Dian Fossey - who also died in her line of work - but from poachers not her gorillas.
Posted by sorsha at 1:04 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
August 11, 2005
The Ins & Outs of the In-N-Out Menu
It's a good thing that the nearest In-N-Out Burger is about a 45 minute drive from where I live, because otherwise, I'd be a big fat cow. I don't particularly care for fast food and I don't really find myself tempted to go to Taco Hell, Heart-Attack In The Box, Barfer King, or McDoh's Golden Arches. But, In-N-Out I, and many other relatively health conscious Californians, have remained steadfastly loyal to, despite the hidden bible quotes all over their packaging.
When someone from out of state comes to visit, we always make a voyage over the hill to an In-N-Out. Sure, we might take in San Francisco or Yosemite, but we almost always manage to hit up the big I-N-O in the process. Seeing the ultra simple menu with 3 meals, fries and drinks often results in our guests giving us some initially skeptical looks followed by very surprised moans of pleasure a few bites later.
In-N-Out represents all that is good in fast food - it's fast, it's cheap, they're friendly, they use high quality ingredients, and their stuff tastes 100x better than the other chains. When you ask for lots of ketchup, you get it (Very important to Laurie, as fries are just a vehicle for ketchup).
And did I mention that they have a secret menu? Only a really cool restaurant confident in its business model would dare to have a secret menu. Over the years, I've learned more about various items and tried them, all with delicious results. Today I thought I'd share some of them, as well as some others I have yet to try but shall work on:
Burgers
Flying Dutchman - Two patties with two slices of cheese only.
Grilled Cheese - Two slices of cheese, plus condiments, on a bun.
Veggie/Wish Burger - Condiments, on a bun.
Double Meat - 2 patties, plus condiments, on a bun.
3x3 (MxC) - M patties stacked with C slices of cheese, plus condiments, on a bun.
Condiments & Cooking Requests
Animal Style - Grilled onions, sauce, pickles, mustard fried into meat.
Protein Style - Replace the bun with a lettuce wrap.
Meat Doneness - "Medium", request "well done" or "medium-rare".
Regular Onions - warmed raw full slice of onion.
Grilled Onions - chopped, grilled onions.
Whole Grilled Onions - a whole slice of onion grilled until soft.
Raw Onions - cold raw full slice of onion.
Chopped Raw Onions - cold raw chopped onion.
Chopped Chilis - adds some mild peppers.
Extra toast - toasts the bun longer.
Fries
Cheese Fries - Fries with melted cheese on them.
Animal Fries - Fries with cheese, sauce and grilled onions.
Fry Requests
"Double-Fried" or "Well Done" - Crispier version.
"Light" - Less Cooked version.
"No Salt" - Don't salt the fries.
Drinks
Neopolitan Shake - Vanilla, Strawberry, and Chocolate Mixed Shake.
Strawklette Shake - Strawberry & Chocolate Mixed Shake.
Choco-Vanilla Swirl Shake - Chocolate & Vanilla Mixed Shake.
Rootbeer Float - Half Vanilla shake and half rootbeer soda.
Lemon-Up - Mix of lemonade and 7-Up.
Tea-ade or Arnold Palmer - Mix of Iced Tea and lemonade.
Root Beer Special - Mix of Rootbeer and Dr. Pepper.
Any Mix of Sodas - Coke & Dr. Pepper is a nice one.
Drink Requests
Extra syrup - Add Extra Chocolate or strawberry to a shake.
Large & Extra-large Shake Sizes - Uses the soda cup sizes - 1.
Check out the In-N-Out Burger website for more info. Also, Wikipedia has some rather interesting info on the chain as well.
Lastly, in college, my housemate and I attempted to perfect a home bbq'd version of an In-N-Out burger. We found that Thousand Island dressing made an excellent substitution for the special In-N-Out sauce.
Posted by sorsha at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
