Frontier Texas! In Abilene

Frontier Texas!  is a combination rest stop and museum - just off Interstate 20 in Abilene. The building is patterned after a frontier fort complete with a parade ground with adobe structure with overhands to provide shade. There are picnic tables in that shade! The buffalo silhouettes on tall poles turn in the wind; the flag flutters.

Inside the sculpture of Longhorns driven through water at the entrance was the first indication that this was more that we had anticipated: two theaters - one in-the-round - and holographic speakers talking about their lives with lots of more traditional museum displays in-between. The multiple perspectives this museum offers into the frontier history of Texas are more diverse than in older museums; they include:   

- The Indian with family dead or scattered,
- The woman that survived capture by Indians and admitting in her later years that if she had known what it would be like she would not have to Texas,
- The former slave turned teamster,
- The bar tender than had been a lawman, and
- The cowboy. 

The slaughter of the buffalo is emphasized with a large display and a pile of skulls with a red light shining down on them. The last stage of the museum is the theater in the round. The seats are sections of tree trunks so it is easy to turn all around to see the various parts of the unfolding stories: a stampede….and Indian raid. 

Frontier Texas! offers a view of the time that attempts to be realistic rather than romanticized. Well done!

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 6, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

18 Jaw-Dropping Ocean Photos - Aptly named BuzzFeed posting

Can city farms feed a hungry world? - Experiments in urban farming around the world….the future of food in the cities may depend on their success.

Stunning Shots of Reine, the Most Beautiful Village in Norway - Snowy pictures for a hot summer day!

Modern Technology Aids Repairs to 14th-Century Kiva at Bandelier National Monument - Bandelier is probably my favorite place in New Mexico. I’m glad it’s getting needed repairs.

Oral History….DNA from Ancient Tooth Tartar - Bacteria in the mouth have changed over time (large changes with transition from hunter/gatherer to farmer (more soft foods) and then with the advent of refined carbohydrates and concentrated sugars).

Amount of Dust Blown across the Western U.S. is Increasing - The technique that they use to determine how much dust is blowing is the most interesting part of this gleaning.

Magical Long Exposures Photos of Fireflies in Japan - It is easy to image fireflies as fairies in these forest images.

X-ray images of women in corsets show skeletons in a bind - I am very glad corsets are in our past rather than our present or future!

Opinion: On Living Longer - A thoughtful piece about memory loss and aging.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #44 - As usual, I can’t resist the bird photographs. My favorite in this group is last one - of the southern carmine bee-eaters aerial ballet.

Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon - George Washington’s home on the Potomac in Northern Virginia - is one of my favorite places to take visitors. There were a lot of visits when we first moved to the area 30 years ago but they have not been as frequent recently. When I visited a few weeks ago - all the construction that was underway a few years ago had been completed. The new visitor center and museum areas are built to accommodate large crowds; Mount Vernon is a popular place.

On the day we visited, it rained off and on. We carried umbrellas and appreciated that the air was warm enough that being damp was not a problem. The rain was to our advantage: it was probably one of the few times there was not a line to see the house. The rest of the tour is less crowded and includes:

The view of the Potomac from the house

The necessaries (one we saw was a three holer!)

The flowers

The vegetables - including cabbages and artichokes

The old boxwood that overwhelmed the garden in years past are mostly gone, replaced with smaller boxwood that border the beds in the flower garden. The magnolias were in full bloom and I can’t resist a slide show for them.

And finally - the view of Mount Vernon from its carriage gate. What an appealing house it still is.

Arizona State Museum

The Arizona State Museum is located on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson. I had quickly walked around the museum on a previous visit to Tucson but enjoyed the museum at a leisurely pace this time - particularly the exhibit about the various tribes of Arizona from before the Europeans came to today….listening to the languages, enjoying the art (old and new) on display, and hearing about what happened to each of the cultures. There were some positive events but the overwhelming theme was the struggle of the tribes to survive the barrage of horrible things that happened as the Europeans came west. Sitting in the pottery room was a way to recover from the tour of that part of the museum. I find the designs and curves of the pots to be relaxing; pots also appeal because they are functional art. It is easy to imagine the potters all through history while looking at the collection the museum has displayed. The collection of sandals was the last of my photographs at the museum. The sandals on display are all old - found by archeologists. I noted that a lot of people in Tucson wear modern flip flops that look very similar.

3 Free eBooks - June 2013

It’s time again for the monthly post of eBooks that are freely available on the Internet. The three below are my favorites for June 2013.

Chadwick, Luie. Fashion drawing and design: a practical manual for art students and others. London: Batsford. 1926. Available from the Internet Archive here. Scan through the illustrations for historical perspective of fashion illustration or fashion itself. I particularly liked the silhouettes below.

Gordon, Elizabeth. Flower Children. Chicago: P.F. Volland and Company. 1910. Available from the Internet Archive here. The drawings capture both children and flowers. The tiger lily and trillium are shown at the right. What fun it would be to have customs along these lines for ‘dress up’ play!

Quennell, Marjorie Courtney andQuennell, Charles Henry Bourne. A History of Everyday Things in England. London: Batsford. 1918-1934. Three volumes available on the Internet Archive: volume 2, volume 3, and volume 4. This is quite a series - covering from the 16th Century to the early 1930s. The illustrations depict changes in that time period for simple things like staircases to work such as farming and the advent of the industrial age. The high chair from about 1860 (left) looks like a low table with a chair attached to the top! 

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 15, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Exploding Glass (Prince Rupert’s Drop) - Video

Feds issue guidelines for self-driving cars like Google's - Speeding up the advent of self-driving cars?

The City and the Sea - A survey of the landscape and politics of New York, post-Sandy - Analysis of what was discovered about New York due to Hurricane Sandy

Essential Friends + Gateways: Take A Long, Slow, Ride Along The Natchez Trace - This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for the past few years. This post has some good references when I get serious about actually taking the drive!

Here's what Pangea looks like mapped with modern political borders - A visualization to understand the first continent…and where the pieces are today.

WWII Drug: The German Granddaddy of Crystal Meth - It was used to keep pilots and soldiers alert

Butterflies tell UT climatologist about climate - An interview with Camille Parmesan

Nutritional Weaklings in the Supermarket - More color often means higher nutritional content

The Physics of Ferocious Funnels - Several visualizations to explain how tornados form and the historical tracks of tornados in the US.

Best Diets Overall - From US News and World Report

World Life Expectancy - Data presented mostly on maps. There is a portion of the site for USA Health Rankings.

Fish Oil - Info page from NIH

Blue Zones - Lessons learned from people who’ve lived the longest

Houses of the Future - A Wish List - Part II

Today's post is from the perspective of configuration. There are certain type so floor plans that appeal to me for the future. The technology that makes a house generative and sustainable must be packaged in a way that faciliates the lives of the people that make it their home.

• The concept of ‘single family’ should change to be three generations in the house: children, their parents, and grandparents. Today almost all houses are originally built for two generations and then retrofitted to three as needed. With the demographics of the population shifting older and young people continuing to live with their parents longer, the trend in new housing should be to accommodate at least two adult couples…with three being even better. There are many ways this could be accomplished:
  • Using the same basic colonial house floor plan with walk out basement: increase the sound proofing between floors making the second floor for a couple with children, the walkout basement for a second couple; instead of a living room/dining room make a bedroom/sitting room for a single adult or a guest room. This arrangement could be a retrofit for an existing home.
  • Imagine a hexagon shape that contains a kitchen, eating area and den; this is the core of the house. There are wings from 3 of the six sides (evenly spaced around the hexagon); each wing includes a bathroom and bedrooms, home offices, etc. I’ve drawn a rough diagram below. The plumbing for the house would all be in the hexagon or the walls the wings share with the hexagon. There could be many variations of this basic design:
    • Basement under the hexagon only
    • Basement throughout
    • Some wings with two stories with outdoor bridges between the upper floors of the wings
    • A garden on top of a single story wing reached by the bridges from other wings and/or external stairs
    • One wing could have a laundry room and garage on the first floor and then have the rooms for living above
    • Various lot shapes and sizes could be accommodated by different lengths of the wings.
  • Keeping an overall rectangular shape, it is easy enough to achieve separate space for two adult couples. The shared areas - den, kitchen and eating area are in the center of the house and the separate space is on the sides. An outdoor area - side yards - can also be non-shared space. Again - there are variations of this design:
    • Configure this arrangement as a U instead of a rectangle. The inside of the U often becomes the shared garden area because it is primarily accessed from the core of the house.
    • The living space one side can be smaller to make room for a garage.
    • Basement - or not.
    • One side two stories - particularly the one that includes a garage. 

I’m sure over time I will think up more to add to this wish list....and I'll post them as a part III!

Part I of the series is here.

Houses of the Future - A Wish List - Part I

Single family houses have been the main places I have called home. There were a few apartments I lived in between the ages of 19 and 25…and an apartment we rented while we waited for our third house to be vacated so that we could move in; I always thought of the apartments as temporary and that is what they turned out to be. Of all the housing types available, the single family houses come closest to what I want in the future although I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what would make them better. Some of the items are possible now while others will require technological advances. Here’s my wish list:  

• All external surfaces need to be productive. They need to generate power or grow food. The paint, brick, siding, and shingles we’ve been using for years protected us from the elements but that is not sufficient for a house of the future.
• External surfaces and structural integrity need to be sufficient for the environment. In areas of high wind, heavy rain or snow, or extreme temperatures - houses need to be built to survive and remain habitable.
• Plan for older inhabitants. At least one suite and the main core of the house (den, eating area, and kitchen) must be accessible without stairs. The bathroom needs a large shower that is easily entered. Doors need to be wide enough to easily accommodate mobility devices (i.e. wheel chairs, walkers).
• A gray water system collects ‘slightly’ used water from sinks, showers, bathtubs, dishwashers, and clothes washers and then the water is used in toilets and for watering gardens reducing the water going into the sewer.
• The driveway and patio - any concrete or asphalt surfaces - need to be pervious pavement so that water soaks through rather than drains away too rapidly. If water drains from roof surfaces, it should be collected and used for gray water purposes. Again - this reduces the water that goes to the sewers.
• Yards have grass in areas where it is needed recreation (for example, a play area for children). Otherwise - the yard is either in native vegetation that does not need to be mowed/watered or used to grow food (vegetable garden, orchard) mixed with flowers.
• The inside of the house can be easily reconfigured as the needs of the inhabitants change over time. The number of internal walls is minimized; permanent walls are only built where they are needed for structure, sound proofing or privacy. Screens, storage units or sliders could be used a movable room dividers.
• Closets include shelves and racks to allow productive use of the space all the way to the ceiling.
• All rooms have some form of overhead lighting and ceiling fans.
• Heating and cooling is done to keep the temperature at comfortable levels in rooms that are in use at the time and the system is tunable for a particular person (for example, the room where an older person is located might be warmer in the winter time).
• Heating and cooling is done in the most efficient way possible for the area. In areas where geothermal (buried pipes) heat pumps are possible, this may be the way to go….or maybe there will be other technologies that will be even better. The classic gas (or heating oil) furnaces and electric air conditioners are not what we should be building in the future.
• Lighting is on when the room is occupied and it is needed. Otherwise the lighting turns itself off.
• Window coverings adjust based on temperature and are linked to the heating and cooling system. For example, on a  the window coverings will allow direct sunlight to shine in to warm the inside on a cold day to the temperature preferred by the person in the room.
• Kitchens need to function well for several people cooking at once.
  • If there is room for a center island, it needs to be counter space - not a stove top.
  • Ovens - microwave and conventional - are combined into one unit.
  • Water for drinking (and ice) is filtered.
  • Over counter cabinets go all the way to the ceiling to maximize storage space.
  • Task lighting is installed under the over-counter cabinets and comes on automatically when needed.
• At least one wall of each room is a ‘screen’ that displays art or functions as a computer display.
• Work from home is a growing trend - particularly for workers performing their jobs via computer. The house needs to be adaptable to support a work environment for everyone in the house.
• Modular construction may be a way to make new technology more accessible at a reasonable cost. The idea of a core of rooms (kitchen, eating, den) with all the utilities connected being built first with modules of rooms that plugged into those utilities is appealing both to allow for 'starter' homes and then enlargement of the house later by the addition of modules.
• No more items that are merely for ornament like shutters that don't close or dormers that provide no space on the inside. 

I’ll post the coninutation of my wish list tomorrow.

Charles Towne Landing

Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site is across the Ashley River from Charleston. I visited in late April and just realized I had not posted about the place. It is the earliest colonial settlement in what is now South Carolina - started in 1670. There are exhibits in the museum and from archeological digs throughout the site that help visualize what it was like. There is a replica of a 17th century sailing ship to tour as well.

There is a statue of a Native American situated in the trees. How strange they must have thought the colonists coming in ships and taking command of the land.

The camellias were near the end of their season but a few bushes still had blooms.

Looking out over the marshy land - the Ravenel Bridge is visible in the distance and pelicans are seen frequently.

The place is wild enough to still have raccoons under the trees.

It had been dry enough the few days before we were there for some of the resurrection fern growing on the oaks to be withered (top image) but other limbs still had green fern - allowing for comparison.

This is a place to walk and absorb the history of the place while savoring the outdoors of South Carolina in the spring before it gets too hot.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 25, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

The Art of Data Visualization - Video about using geographic data.

Visual Rendering of Animal Sounds - Mandalas from colorized sound waves

Breakup of Physician, Drug Company Relationship Could Improve Health Care, Cut Cost - Published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine….and seems logical…but there is a lot of money that locks in the status quo

Onomap - Put in a name…and the tool will feedback cultural, ethnic, linguist roots based on patterns from a database that includes 28 countries.

Annotated Map of Moore, OK Tornado Damage

Scientific Tooth Fairies Investigate Neanderthal Breast-Feeding - Evidently during breast-feeding, barium levels in teeth are higher….making it possible to tell from teeth how long a child was breast-fed

The Nutrition class I am taking via Coursera was about dietary supplements this week and the list of sites below was provided. Since there is little regulation of supplements, it is much more up to the consumer to determine if a particular supplement is worthwhile for them. The last one provides abstracts of research papers; I did a quick search for Vitamin D….lots of interesting findings.

NIH Office of Dietary Supplements

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Medline Plus

Natural Products Foundation

Mayo Clinic - Drugs and Supplements

WebMD - Vitamins and Supplements Center

Natural Medicines Database

Consumer Lab

PubMed

3 Free eBooks - May 2013

The Internet has a growing number of online books…and many of them are free. This is my monthly post highlighting 3 that I have enjoyed most this past month.

National Research Council. Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds. December 2012. Available in several downloadable forms here. A new global trends report is published every 4 years following the US Presidential election. It is intended to provide a framework for thinking about possible futures and their implications. Is our future going to be characterized by stalled engines, fusion, gini-out-of-the-bottle or nonstate world…or some combination?

Paxton, Sir Joseph. Paxton’s Magazine of Botany and Register of Flowering Plants. London: W.S. Orr and Co. 1834-1849. More than 10 volumes available on the Internet Archive here. I can’t resist including at least one eBook with botanical prints. Many of the images are quite recognizable - like the azalea at right.

Dobson, George; Grove, Henry M; Stewart, Hugh; Haenen, F. de. Russia. London, A. and C. Black. 1913. Available from the Internet Archive here. Look at this book for the pictures and realize that it is about that time just before World War I when everything was breaking…no one fathomed just how bad it was going to be or what would be built afterwards on the rubble.

Patriots Point

Patriots Point is on the Mt. Pleasant SC side of Charleston Harbor - within sight of the Ravenel Bridge. The centerpiece of the museum is USS Yorktown, a World War II air craft carrier. It is so big that it will not fit in one picture frame from the parking lot.

There are tours available but we chose to take things at our own pace. The hanger and flight decks have planes displayed.

Walking on the flight deck is quite an experience; the metal deck made odd sounds as I walked toward the edge. I was more comfortable staying toward the center of the flight deck. The bridge towers above- with the World War II ‘kills’ indicated by the Japanese flags.

There were rooms on the other decks set up in museum style (I was disappointed that the room about Navy women did not mention Grace Murray Hopper). The arrows on the floor are helpful; it would be easy to get lost in the warren of rooms!

The ship is in Charleston Harbor and there is some degradation of the metal. Hopefully it can be maintained for years to come - enlightening visitors about a period of 20th Century history. It bridges World War II to the space again since it was the ship that recovered Apollo 8 from the sea in the 1960s.

Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens

Boone Hall was a pleasant surprise. It is across the Cooper River from Charleston SC. It started out as a cotton plantation, supplemented that crop with pecans and a brick yard, and now is a farm using precision growing techniques for fruits and vegetables offered in their own store and pick-your-own. The only cotton grown now is a small test plot that still showed last year’s crop when I was there in late April.

The brick slave cabins with clay tile roofs are unusual; slave cabins were usually built of more flimsy material. But Boone Hall included a brick yard so the cabins for the slaves associated with the house were built of bricks. The cabins have displays and recorded narrative to explain the life there prior to the 1860s.

The gardens are full of hearty flowers of the season and the mature oak allee dates from the 1600s. The people in the picture provide some notion of the size of the trees.

There is a two story cotton gin that had shored up walls - awaiting renovation. The gin was on the top floor and there were holes in the floor to push the cotton below where it could be baled for shipment.

Interesting ironwork is part of the Charleston scene - and Boone Hall’s gate is no exception.

Brookgreen Gardens

Brookgreen Gardens, located south of Myrtle Beach, SC, is more than plants. It has many sculptures spread throughout the garden areas and in museum type displays. There is a Butterfly House (photos in an upcoming post) and opportunities to learn about the history of the area which was colonized as indigo and rice plantations.

We were too late for most of the azaleas and camellias but the iris were beginning along the edges of the water. There was lush greenery and the black masked squirrels abounded.  There was sculpture everywhere - sometimes as the center piece of the garden and sometimes almost hidden in foliage. My favorite was of a dancer with swirling skirts.

I found myself interested in the faces of the pieces and picked some of the best for the slide show below.

The tickets for Brookgreen last for a week and I found it was well worth taking more than one day to see the place.

Ten Months of Shelf-Fungus

Last July (2012), a shelf-fungus started to grow on the stump of an oak tree that had died and been cut down in our neighbor's yard. I first noticed it while our power was out after the derecho. It developed rapidly during the first month and then changed slowly through the remaining nine months in the slide show. I am posting the series now as a memorial to the shelf-fungus. They were ripped off their stump by the yard crew spreading new mulch in April 2013.

July 2012

July 2012

July 2012

July 2012

July 2012

August 2012

August 2012

Sept 2012

Sept 2012

Oct 2012

Oct 2012

Nov 2012

Dec 2012

Dec 2012

Jan 2013

Jan 2013

March 2013

March 2013

April 2013

April 2013

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 6, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

The “50+ Market”: A Few Fab Facts

Are they (cicadas) coming to town? - There’s a brood of the 17 year cicadas coming to my area of Maryland this year!

Trends in Iceland - recession = good?

20+ Dramatic Shots of Lenticular Clouds - unusual clouds

Photos of Famous Authors as Teenagers - How many books of these authors have you read…and how many of these people aged well?

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #40 - My favorite of this batch are the flamingos in flight

Hollow chocolate Easter eggs - It’s too late for Easter this year but this is such a great idea, I’m including in my gleanings list….and looking around for another occasion to try it.

New Gullies Found in a Young(ish) Crater on Mars - Somehow knowing that Mars is not as static as we once thought makes it seem more like Earth too

Glowing Millipedes Accidentally Found on Alcatraz - The place….the organism….found when they were really looking for rats!

Teasing Out New Teeth - And how long will the research and refinement take before it begins to transform dentistry. No more implants or false teeth.

Too Early for Cherry Blossoms

When I made the reservations for a cruise on the Potomac to see the cherry blossoms on 3/24, the projection was for them to be near peak on that day. Then the area has some cold days that turned into a couple of weeks of colder than usual weather and the cherry blossoms were delayed. We opted to go on the tour anyway.

The day was cold and damp. Everyone stayed in the enclosed part of the boat. There was a birthday party next to us. They gave us desert parfaits to make up for the noise the little children were making; it was a nice little treat and the children actually were making happy noises making the day brighter even without the sun.

Being on the river provides a different perspective than fighting the traffic on the roads around Washington DC. The scenery slides by: Haines Point, the National War College, the capitol, the Washington Monument, the 14th Street Bridge, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, National Airport, and a flock of seagulls as we get close to our pier.

We’ll have to try it another year when the cherry blossoms are blooming.

3 Free eBooks - March 2013

The Internet has a growing number of online books…and many of them are free. This is my monthly post highlighting 3 that I have enjoyed most this past month.

Featon, Edward and Sarah. Art Album of New Zealand Flora. Wellington, New Zealand. Bock & Cousins. 1889. Available in two volumes: one and two. These volumes were the first full-color art book published in New Zealand. Now the botanical art (and the text) are digitized and available on the Internet Archive. A sample clip from one of the pages is to the left.

The second item on my list this month is a magazine archive rather than a book. I found it when I was looking for resources on the web about May Theilgaard Watts (and about ‘reading the landscape’). Chicago Wilderness Magazine was published from 1997-2009 by Chicago Wilderness (a regional alliance dedicated to protecting nature and enriching life). The archive can be found here. The articles and photographs are focused on the outdoors around Chicago in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.

Toulouse, Pamela Rose. Integrating Aboriginal Teaching and Values into the Classroom. Canada. The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat and the Ontario Association of Deans of Education. 2008. Available here. This is a research monograph from Canada but broadly applicable to diverse, inclusive classrooms. Who does not want children to learn respect, love, bravery, wisdom, humility, honesty, and truth? The site includes other education/teaching ‘research into practice’ monographs as well (follow the link at the bottom of the PDF). 

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 16, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Are Surgical Robots Worth It? - Evaluating technology is difficult. We want to believe that medical devices are better than what they replace...but they may not always be.

50 Disruptive Companies 2013 - The list from MIT Technology Review

Shell’s New Lens Scenarios - projections for 50 years from now…or even in 2100

30 Literary Cakes

Rebuilding after Sandy: How Assateague Island National Seashore Officials Are Dealing With Climate Change - barrier islands….and infrastructure on them...the islands will change and so will what man puts there

Frank Jay Haynes, A Photography Pioneer in Yellowstone National Park - also take a look at a book published by Haynes available on the Internet Archive

Science of Sinkholes: 20 Percent of U.S. Lies in Susceptible Areas - includes pointers to USGS resources about sinkholes toward the bottom.

Mothers of Invention -- Women who made it happen - I’d known about most of them…but there were a few that were new to me. It’s always interesting to get a quick slice of historical perspective this way.

Uplifting Posters Show One Positive Thing We Can Do Every Day - art of the positive

Get your Shit Together - life and death planning: low effort, high reward

Daylight Saving Time is Rife with Human Suffering - why do we put ourselves through the twice yearly time change?

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 09, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

What’s Happening to Great Lakes Ice - Compare 2010 and 2013 then watch the video of ice forming this winter

Vibrant Paint Patterns Brighten Up Urban Landscapes - Color in Beirut

The Science of Smart - Infographic.

Visual Storytelling through Intricate Paper Designs - Design in cut in paper always seem appealing to me. I probably include collections of them in my gleanings every time I find them. these are by Australian artist Emma Van Leest.

'Behind The Brands' Oxfam Report Evaluates Social, Environmental Impacts Of World's Largest Food Companies - None of them are doing very well when it comes to women, small scale farmers, farm workers, water, land, climate change, or transparency.

Education Indigenous to Place: Western Science Meets Native Reality - Article from the Alaska native Knowledge Network from 1999. The argument for integrative thinking relative to place rather than deep specialization (which has been the trend for some time in the sciences and medicine) is beautifully made in this article.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #38 - My favorite is oriental dwarf kingfisher. The size and shape of the head/beak make it clear that it is a kingfisher but the colors are extraordinary. I am in awe of photograhers that capture birdlife so vividly. My most recent (and poor) attempt is at the right; at least you can tell that it is a redwing blackbird.

Namibia: The Big Empty, part 1 - A short video from National Geographic

First Confirmed Sighting Of Rare Whooping Cranes At Natchez Trace Parkway - Hurray! Maybe an effort to establish an Eastern Migratory Population of these cranes is succeeding.

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud - TED talk