I just found this via Sociological Images and just had to post it. It’s a “Good Morning America” “Today Show” clip from 1994, in which Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, and a co-host try to decipher the ‘@’ symbol and explain what the ‘Internet’ is. They eventually have to ask one of the (presumably) tech guys behind the scenes for help.
So you have some context, this sure-to-be-a-classic conversation took place after the January Northridge earthquake in California.
Does this mean the “series of tubes” description is pretty historically recent?
Feb. 3: Looks like this Youtube video has been deleted- hope you got a chance to see it!
We had an unusual winter thunderstorm system this week. For Noe it was great- not enough thunder to be scary, and plenty of rain to make the patio all wet. Apparently, it’s great fun to sit on wet, cold concrete while being drizzled on.
Of course, after she got bored, she got to come in and lay on the nice soft carpet in the living room before being served some chopped-up cilantro bits. It’s so hard to be a spoiled bunny.
The Year of the Rabbit is upon us (or coming up, by the lunar calendar). Since I blog a lot about Noe, our pet rabbit, I thought I should put in a word or two about buying a rabbit.
Apparently, many people buy rabbits around Easter time, and during the Year of the Rabbit. Is this a good idea? Well, would you buy a dragon because it’s the Year of the Dragon? I think not! You might want to think really hard about that rabbit purchase, too! There will most likely be less fire-breathing with a bunny than with a dragon, but probably more peeing on the carpet, gnawing on furniture and electrical cords, and general shedding.
More seriously, several weeks after Easter (and a few weeks into the Year of the Rabbit), animal rescue organizations tend to see a huge upswing in the number of abandoned rabbits. Here are some things to think about from the House Rabbit Society, a great place to go for rabbit information:
Housing: Bunnies need a roomy indoor cage that is approximately four times the size of the adult rabbit. The cage should not have a wire bottom, as the wire can cause sores on the rabbit’s feet. There should be room for a litterbox, toys, food and water bowls.
Playtime: Rabbits need plenty of exercise and should be allowed at least 30 hours out-of-cage running time in a rabbit-proofed area of the home per week.
Outdoors: Rabbits should never be left outdoors unsupervised. They can literally be frightened to death when approached by predators such as dogs, cats, raccoons and owls. They can also dig under fences to escape.
Litter Box: Rabbits, once spayed or neutered, will readily use litterboxes that are place in one corner of the rabbit’s cage; the rabbit’s running space should contain at least one additional box. (Noe has 4!) Use dust-free litter–not the clumping kind, and no softwood shavings.
Diet: Bunnies need fresh water, unlimited fresh hay, 1-2 cups of fresh vegetables, and a small serving (1/4 c per 5 lb. rabbit) of plain rabbit pellets each day.
Health: Like dogs and cats, rabbits should be spayed or neutered. The risk of uterine cancer in unspayed female rabbits is alarmingly high, and unneutered males are likely to spray. (Rabbit urine smells vile! Their poop is relatively benign, though.)
Grooming: Rabbits shed their coat 3-4 times per year; use a flea comb and brush away excess fur.
A person who chooses a baby rabbit as a pet must:
Have lots of time, a household that can withstand some chewing, and a stable residence. They will never stop chewing on your belongings (unlike a puppy).
Expect an unneutered/unspayed baby will spray urine on the walls (or on your bed). Know that neutering/spaying (at four to six months) will stop the problem.
Expect accidents when baby forgets the location of the litterbox.
Allow the energetic young rabbit at least 30 hours a week of free time outside her cage.
Know the cute baby will soon be an adult rabbit and may have a different personality.
Rabbits can be great pets, with interesting and interactive personalities. However, they’re also a lot of work. They are ‘exotic’ pets, so vet bills can be exotic as well. Keep in mind that rabbits can live up to 12 years (8-10 is common; Noe is 8-1/2). Getting a rabbit is like getting a dog or cat, not like getting a gerbil or goldfish. They’re a lot of work, but can also be a lot of fun.
Now, if you will excuse me, Noe is demanding a veggie and I must comply…
The Cooper’s Hawk that’s been trapped inside the US Library of Congress reading room for the past week has been captured. She’s underweight, and will have to be rehabilitated before she’s released (presumably away from downtown Washington, DC).
The hawk strikes a dramatic pose (Library of Congress blog).
I find this account of the capture interesting. You can generally tell the sex of raptors apart, because of size (females are larger than males) and sometimes markings. You can also tell she’s a juvenile- adults have different markings:
Adult Cooper's Hawk (Peter Wallack, Wikipedia).
However, even though this hawk’s gender was known, reporters are having a really hard time referring to her as ‘her’- they seem to bounce between referring to her with female pronouns and gender-neutral pronouns.
I wonder what prompts this sort of confusion, in a case where the sex of a specific animal is definitely known. I know English a rare European language in which species aren’t ‘assigned’ a gender automatically (my German-speaking grandmother constantly refers to Noe as ‘he’ even though she knows she’s female!) I know the convention is to refer to animals as ‘it’- at least wild animals, that is. Maybe the author of this piece just can’t get past that convention? Then, of course, there are all the commentators that call the bird ‘he’- maybe because she’s a powerful bird of prey and therefore must be male?
This gets at one annoying issue in our cultural depictions of animals in popular media- for example, in movies like “A Bug’s Life” and “Barnyard“. Especially in animated films, the social behaviors in different species are rarely depicted correctly. This ranges from depicting animals as the normative nuclear family (e.g., “Aristocats“), to turning female animals male (as in “A Bug’s Life” and “Barnyard”). The case of “Barnyard” is particularly egregious- in that movie, the protagonist is a cow (complete with udders), but is voiced by a male actor.
Notice the offending organ is covered up in this DVD cover (Wikipedia).
Unless there is something seriously wrong with that poor bull’s genitalia, this is a really unfortunate mistake. How can you design a character whose salient bits are a hanging out for all to see, and then assign the wrong gender to it? (Okay, in this case udders are not genitalia, but you get my point.)
…Though I suppose I should give the hawk commenters the benefit of the doubt and concede that, indeed, birds do not have dangling penii to make immediate identification obvious.
What lives in a Hawaiian alpine desert at 10,000 feet?
Here’s one species: the Haleakalā Silversword- `Ahinahina in Hawaiian.
Silversword in bloom, by Karl Magnacca (Wikipedia).
Descended from the lowly tarweed, these majestic plants have fuzzy, pointed leaves that gather tiny drops of dew in the rare high-elevation mists.
Dewdrops on silver.
Each rosette of leaves grows for many years, then flowers, sending a single spike of flowers high into the air. If pollinated, they release seeds, then die. These plants only have one chance at vegetative glory, so they make the most of it.
While rain is rare in Haleakalā, it’s more likely in winter (snow is even more uncommon). Silversword leaves resist freezing, so this cold moisture is welcome.
View into Haleakala under clouds.
High clouds turn the sun silver, and add iridescent light to the experience of Haleakalā. Do misty days mean happy Silverswords?
On our recent trip to Hawai’i, we spent one weekend on Maui. Maui’s never been my favorite island: it lacks the overall grandeur of Hawai’i, the cultural activities of Oahu, or the general quirkiness of Kaua’i. It does have these things in at least patches, though. And if you’re into hanging out at beach resorts, Maui may be a great place to visit for you. It’s also well-represented in the areas of entitled yuppies, crappy traffic, somehow-creepy mountains, and flat industrial agriculture vistas of sugarcane.
All that aside, we did have a good time there. We mainly concentrated our visit on Haleakalā, the eastern and younger of the two volcanic mountains that make up the island. Note the macron over the last ‘a’ in Haleakalā- that last syllable is what’s supposed to be accented.
Haleakalā is an enormous mountain: over 10,000 feet tall from the ocean surface (with another 20,000 feet or so to its base- one of several Hawaiian volcanoes that are technically taller than Mt. Everest!), containing 7,200 cubic miles of rock (USGS). Technically, the mountain itself is called ‘East Maui volcano’; it’s the valley at the top that’s called Haleakalā (meaning ‘house of the sun’). The sun does spend a lot of time up here: the summit is above the usual cloud line.
Haleakalā crater from the mountain summit, Pu`u `Ula`ula (Red Hill).
While the current valley is at the original site of the volcanic caldera, it’s not technically a ‘crater’- it’s an erosion-cut valley that later filled up with cinders from fresh eruptions. This is where the impressive landscape of red and gray cinder cones comes from.
The valley itself is several miles across, and over 2,500 feet deep!
The weather up here can be brutal: zero shade, nasty wind, and bitterly cold. But the views are awesome (in the true sense of the word). Here’s Hawai’i Island, off to the southeast (or at least the tops of 4 of its mountains):
Mauna Kea, Kohala, Mauna Loa, and Hualalai from the summit.
Did you see the snow on top of Mauna Kea? Pretty nifty.
And here’s a view west across the isthmus (and all that sugarcane) to the West Maui Mts., Lana’i, and Molokai in the background (though it’s hard to see what’s the West Maui summit and what’s Molokai):
View of the West Maui Mts., with Lanai to the left. Molokai's in the back, but hard to make out.
We didn’t do any real hiking up near the summit, but did do some down below the treeline -both warmer and easier to breathe down there :). More on that later, though…
Exciting breaking news! A Minnesota astronomer has announced that astrological signs are all a month off! And what’s with this new ’13th sign,’ Ophiuchus?
Well, it turns out that this news is not so new, after all. Astronomers have known about precession of the equinoxes since the time of the ancient Greeks, 2,100 years ago! Hardly breaking news.
Sorry, Slytherin fans: this serpent hasn't been promoted...
Precession is the motion of Earth’s axis of rotation with respect to the stars that’s noticeable on a timescale of decades (it moves through 1 cycle every 2,600 years). From Earth, the Sun appears to travel across the sky along a constant path across a background of constellations known as the Zodiac. Precession means that the apparent timing of the Sun’s travels seems to vary, as we observe it from Earth. The Sun’s path doesn’t change (and keep in mind that the Sun’s ‘path’ is an illusion of perspective from our position on Earth- we are traveling around the Sun, not the other way around).
The recent news has been about the fact that the timing of the ‘astrological calendar’ is wrong: the Sun is basically not ‘in’ the constellations when astrologers have been saying that they are. This is a phenomenon that’s been known for centuries! However, there are a few more things wrong with the astrological picture:
First, the division of the year into 12 equally-timed astrological signs is a matter of convenience. The Sun does not spend the same amount of time traversing the 12 Zodiacal signs (they’re widely-different in size).
Second, Ophiuchus, the ’13th sign,’ lies along the Zodiac, but was excluded from the count for some reason when the ancient Babylonians made the divisions. Why? Probably because it was easier for their calculations to divide the sky into 12 equal pieces.
Third, the constellations are an optical illusion, only visible from the vantage point of Earth. They’re made up of imaginary lines connecting star ‘groups’ that can be in reality thousands of light years apart.
Fourth, and most important: astrology does not work! The reason we can read a horoscope and later think ‘gee, that predicted event x so well’ is because of something called confirmation bias. Human memory is fallible, and after the fact we will selectively recall the few sentences of a horoscope that seem to ‘predict’ events that happened, and forget the many more ‘predictions’ that did not occur. Despite millennia of searching, we have not been able to identify any cosmic force that would cause the planets or stars to affect our individual lives. And multiple scientific studies have proven that horoscope charts are no more predictive of our personalities than statements chosen by random chance.
So the upshot is this: If you liked your ‘old’ sign, stick with it. Chances are, your horoscope based on that sign is just as accurate as the one from your ‘new’ sign. Meaning that it will predict your future no better than a set of sentences pulled randomly out of a hat.
Sometimes you see an awesome (to you) pet toy, and buy it, and the pet just does not care. This was the case with the “Bunny Bungalow“- a Noe-sized basket made out of hay. What bunny wouldn’t want to nom her way out of a yummy basket?
Apparently Noe.
This is as far as she’s willing to enter the basket:
Gnaw marks on chair are actually not her doing...
She refused to eat it after an initial sampling- even though it’s made of the same type of hay she eats every day. We now put hay inside it, and she seems to enjoy pulling it out & eating it while making a mess. At least she’s using it, I guess.
This story is just really disturbing. A UC Davis prof has asked his students to vote on what a pregnant classmate’s grade should be. See the full story at Dr. Isis’ blog.
In summary, the prof (who is chair of his department!) sent out an e-mail to students asking them to vote on the way he should grade their classmate, who is likely to miss some quizzes due to childbirth. Apparently, the vet school is very strict about no make-up assignments. However, it is inconceivable that this situation has not arisen in the past. Has no student missed assignments because of childbirth or an accident before? Shouldn’t there be a policy for this?
Regardless of whether the prof was poorly-prepared for this eventuality or not, it seems completely unethical to allow students to vote on another’s grade.
More unethical is his singling out of this one individual for attention due to her medical state. In effect, this professor is shaming the student to the class. While he did not specifically name the student, it either is or will become obvious who she is by the end of the semester.
While my own teaching experience has certainly not been decades-long, like this professor’s, I would never single out one student for criticism by her peers in this way. I’m sure more details will emerge, but at the moment this seems completely unethical, and unacceptable.
Update: Apparently, this incident is now being investigated by the UC Davis administration.
