I am working on two chapters for a new book, but have been searching out new links for your delight or dismay in my off time. Let's see...
Before the usual, congratulations to
Rebecca, who is moving with her menagerie to Northern California to take up a high position in Ducks Unlimited. If anyone has ideas on housing in the Sacramento area please contact her through her blog or mine.
Serious first:
Registan gives a balanced and temperate view of events in Georgia. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am FAR from a pacifist, but it always amazes me when people who couldn't find Georgia on a map if their lives depended on it are vigorously ready to go to war over its fate. Putin is not Stalin and deservedly or not is the most popular leader Russia has ever had. In these times we need Machiavelli more than we need... certain candidates, whether naive or belligerent.
OK, enough politics, which I tend to avoid (Georgia, more Asian than European, makes it in by virtue of that, and as a plug for Registan which any student of Central Asia should bookmark). Let's stay in the Russo- Asian area for a bit.
Here is a tour of Baikonur Cosmsodrome in Kazakhstan, oldest and biggest spaceport in the world. I don't know but I find the desert spacepunk esthetic of working rockets, cosmic trash piles, and camels irresistible, and hope to go there someday.
And here is a
gallery of American license plates made to spell out phrases in Cyrillic, often with no connection to English. I find it interesting that so many are on luxury cars-- are Russians natural entrepreneurs or are these the vehicles of.. let's say, people in shadowy trades?
Somewhat linked in subject: New Mexico SF writer Walter Jon Williams
takes a tour of Cheyenne Mountain, which used to be the place from which a nuclear war would be fought (he brought back a Teddy Bear). You should also read his new novel
Implied Spaces, which is a post- Singularity tale that is technically dazzling, utterly original, and often funny.
Vegans are now
debating the morality of honey. " The bees are forced to construct their honeycombs in racks of removable trays, according to a design that standardizes the size of each hexagonal chamber... keepers control the animals by pumping their hives full of smoke, which masks the scent of their alarm pheromones and keeps them from defending their honey stores. And some say the bees aren't making the honey for us, so its removal from the hive could be construed as a form of theft...any vegan who eats honey but avoids milk is making the tacit assumption that
the pain experienced by a bee counts for something less than the pain experienced by a cow. It's exactly the sort of compromise that so appalled Watson and the early vegans. Once you've allowed yourself to equivocate on animal suffering, how do you handle all the other borderline cases of insect exploitation? What about silkworms and cochineal bugs."
Actually, as Konrad Lorenz knew and Ingrid Newkirk doesn't, there ARE differences in suffering between such extremes. Anyway, it doesn't bother me much if they all try to photosynthesize, and die...
Speaking of diets: efforts to make Komodo dragons eat "naturally"
have turned them into maneaters. HT
David Zincavage.
Pythons
may not take over the southern half of the US. Though the part of me that loves monsters is just a bit disappointed, I never quite bought the idea-- the arid parts of southern Texas and New Mexico seem too barren for a reptile from southeast Asia.
Carl Zimmer discusses
bizarre rearing strategies in Penduline tits, and why they make evolutionary sense. Pluvi, this one is for you!
For lack of a better word. society: Michael Blowhard discusses why
suburbs may be something new in human history.
Chas
wonders why crime fiction writers can't get guns right, (especially since the characters they write about WOULD). I suggest that honorable exceptions are Michael Gruber and Steve Hunter.
Finally, art: Lord Whimsy pauses in his perusal of flowers and arthropods to look at
a maker of classic decoys.
