Clan of the cave honey badger. I don't speak Italian, but I'm real good with Google translate. Jati member of the friendfeed bardo. Frotfeathers, quince liquor, etc.
Jenny H
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Thanks to the awesome travel French press Amanda gave me and the Peet's coffee my fellow friendfeeders gave me for my birfday, I am enjoying a magnificent cup of coffee this morning! Yum. Gooooooood morning, friendfeed! I'm feelin' the love! :)
Eivind, \(^_^)/ is how I felt pretty much all day yesterday. :D JA, yeah, the snow will stay in the higher elevations in the mountains until mid-May, probably (the peak of Mt Charleston will have snow until June). It's getting warm and melting fast. I was surprised to see it on the west side, which usually melts by now. Pleasantly surprised, I should add. :) The Spring Mountains (and Red Rocks) are like these little treasures outside the wasteland of the Las Vegas valley. I am extremely lucky to be able to call this my other office. :D
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Jenny H
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The Natural Resources staff on my district, L-R: Dudley-Monty, fish (celebrating his 1st birthday), Marisa, restoration ecologist, me, wildlife biologist, Jennifer, botanist, Jim, temp supervisor/soil scientist. We are a sloppy bunch, eh?
Jenny H
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A neuropteran (green lacewing) decided to join me in my bathroom this moring. Don't know why, but I am always happy to see them :)
"In theory, the behavior of inbred mice reared and housed under seemingly identical conditions should be as similar as their perfectly matched genes. But, to the frustration of researchers, the rodents don't act like exact copies of each other. Of the possible explanations for such differences, researchers have found evidence for a particularly unexpected one: jumping genes in the brain. Formally known as transposable elements, they are small bits of genetic material that can move around the genome. They have generally been seen as troublemakers; when they jump, they can land in places that cause mutations or otherwise skew the expression of important genes."
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"But some researchers argue that such changes might have a positive side, helping to generate diversity in brain cells. Such diversity might be important in brain development, they think, providing the raw material for building a flexible organ able to react to new environments and situations. And because a transposable element creates a slightly different genome each time it moves, it could explain why genetically "identical" mice aren't identical after all. It's far from a proven idea, but it has started to gain attention among geneticists who study jumping genes."
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Funniest safety video EVER. Starts out a little slow, but I swear I laughed solidly through the last 4-5 minutes. You do not need to understand German to appreciate this video.
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"The specialization does not stop there, either. Since 2003, researchers have discovered that what they thought was one moth is actually two distinct species, each specially adapted to pollinate one of two subtly different varieties of Joshua tree.
As Smith wrote in 2009, it is "almost as if the moth and the tree were made for each other."
It's what he calls a "textbook example of co-evolution," the process by which two or more species mutually adapt to one another.
And Smith means that literally. In evolutionary biology textbooks, the section on co-evolution often features a picture of the Joshua tree and the yucca moth.
"The current best estimate" is that the unusual relationship between yuccas and yucca moths has been around for about 30 million years, said Smith, who is an assistant professor of biology at Willamette University in Salem, Ore."
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"It is the iconic plant of the Mojave Desert, its name immortalized with a national park and a U2 album. But there would be no Joshua trees at all without an easily overlooked moth about the length of a pencil eraser. None other than Charles Darwin himself called the relationship between the yucca moth and the Joshua tree "the most remarkable fertilization system ever described.""
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I prefer something with a little more meat. Chipmunks are too much work to skin and gut with too little pay off. ;)
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I'm sorry, MICHAH. I forgot you were trying to send a profound message (ala double rainbow) in your photo. My bad. Thank you, Spidra.
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"Cattle rustling sounds like a quaint notion from the 19th century American West, but in South Sudan — soon be the world's newest nation — it's a very modern and very real problem. Sudanese cattle raiding isn't like the Old West with Winchester rifles. It's the African Bush with automatic weapons — and high body counts. Panyang used to be a cattle camp in the scrub of Southern Sudan. In early January, 500 tribesmen came with AK-47s and just shot the place up. Between this camp and another one, they took about 5,000 head of cattle, killed a dozen people and wounded another 24. Skeletons still lie in a dry riverbed nearby, bits of clothing still clinging to the bones. Cattle herding is a way of life here. Amid clouds of gray smoke from dung fires, herders release their cows each morning to graze. They fiercely protect the animals; in South Sudan, cattle are currency.
Want to marry a woman? Better have a dowry of 25 to more than 100 head of cattle.
People used to steal cattle with spears, but now they use AK-47s left over from the war. The result is carnage."
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"In 2009, the United Nations estimated that 2,500 people died in tribal violence in Sudan's southern region, much of it from cattle raids. Local governments are beginning to crack down.
Leg irons scrape across the floor of a jail in South Sudan's Lakes State. Their captive is a man who was arrested for stealing 86 cattle in January. Maj. Madol Samuel Rin is one of the local police chiefs there and says when neighboring counties tip him to cattle raids, he sets up ambushes to catch the returning thieves. Earlier this year, he cornered one group that fought back.
"When they see us, they started also shooting us," Rin recalls. "Two among them were wounded and one killed."
More than 200 miles to the east in the neighboring state of Jonglei is Akobo County. Like most places in South Sudan, it's most easily accessed by air charter. The roads are made of earth and impassable in the rainy season. Goi Jooyul Yol is the commissioner of Akobo. Yol fled the area as a child during the civil war and eventually went to college in Kentucky. Now, he's back, trying to bring peace to his ancestral home.
In 2009, 700 people were killed here, many in cattle raids. "But the cattle raiding went bad," Yol says. "Some communities started abducting children.""
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"The ancient ice gouged out Kenai's fjords, creating habitats for throngs of sea animals. About 20 species of seabirds nest along the rocky coastline; the most charismatic of the birds are clown-faced puffins. Bald eagles swoop along the towering cliffs, and peregrine falcons hunt over the outer islands. Seabirds, by the tens of thousands, migrate or congregate here.
Approximately 23 species of mammals, including harbor seals, northern sea lions, and sea otters, live here. Moose, black bears, wolverines, lynx, and marten roam narrow bands of forest between the coast and icefield. And just above them, on the treeless slopes, climb surefooted mountain goats."
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"Distill the essence of coastal Alaska into one place—wild, dynamic, and scenic, rich with the signatures of glaciers, light with the marks of people, unforgiving in stormy seas, unforgettable in warm sunshine—and you have Kenai Fjords, the smallest national park in Alaska. Here the south-central part of the state tumbles into the Gulf of Alaska; here the land challenges the sea with talonlike peninsulas and rocky headlands, while the sea itself reaches inland with long fjords and hundreds of quiet bays and coves. The Harding Icefield is the park's crown jewel, almost 700 square miles (1,813 square kilometers) of ice up to a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick. It feeds nearly three dozen glaciers flowing out of the mountains, six of them to tidewater. The Harding Icefield is a vestige of the massive ice sheet that covered much of Alaska in the Pleistocene era."
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Springtime in eastern NM always brings fire danger. Tinder dry conditions and high winds aren't a good combination. They are safe for now, but I hope firefighters are able to get a handle on this before more structures are burned. :-/
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Well, I tried adding you as a friend on Facebook just so you could move those percentage points but it won't let me. I'm not saying Facebook is evil but I am really.
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Jenny H
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Happy birthday to the best friend a girl could ever ask for! Happy birthday, Amanda H/Tinypants! I hope this day is a good and memorable one for you. (P.S. I love this picture of you!) <3
