Life, Technology, Science, and stuff that matters to me. Your mileage may vary.
Ang’ and I went to the Phoenix Zoo, where she met with one of her illustrator friends and had a short visit with one of her Zoo friends.
There are a few new walk-in enclosures since we were there last. In one, these Ibis came right up to us…
…before sparring with each other using those long beaks.
There is also an enclosure with Squirrel Monkeys.
Upon leaving the enclosure, we were cautioned to wash our hands. The monkeys like to mark everything in it, including hand-rails and door handles.
But it was fun to watch them play leap-frog over each other as the climbed across the tight-rope.
Although we think we walked the whole circuit, I’m sure there are animals we missed, some because they were sleeping, some because the exhibit was closed. And even though it was a relatively cool day, the it was still rather intense in the sunlight.
We’ve decided that we’ll have to go back, probably in January.
It’s like they know me.
Found this guy crossing my allergist’s semi-busy parking lot. I stopped and chaperoned him across the lot to ensure he didn’t get run over.
When he got to the other side of the lot, he kept going back and forth, against the curb.
I wasn’t sure if the square curbing confused him or if he was just getting his bearings, so I gave him some gentle assistance over the curb and he immediately headed into the landscaping, taking refuge in the shade of a cactus.
We don’t see many of these guys, so I always try to look after them if I can. Their days are usually numbered as it is.
Storm clouds rolling up from the south.
The clouds lit up at sunset, as seen from our back yard this evening.
One of my favorite mini-stories in a Fururama episode…
vimeo.com/25246686
Nap-time in the Jayne-nasium, otherwise known as my office. Still half-wild while awake, but so damn cute while sleeping. (what you can’t see are the tips of his feet wiggling while he dreams)
The damage is evident in the light, but surprisingly everything appears to be functional. No double vision, no dead spots. It happened in a dim parking lot a few days ago — I think I’ve pretty much come to terms with it, now. Still, it’s terrible. The feeling invoked by sound. Glass breaking long seconds after you felt the phone slip from your fingertips.
The annual Perseids meteor shower is going on now. Right now. It will be at it’s most spectacular on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.
The Perseids are a meteor shower that radiates, or appears to originate, from a position below Polaris and Cassiopeia, just below the Double Cluster and should be visible from just about anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Although you should be able to see them all night long, they likely be most visible during the wee hours of the morning as that’s when this seciton of the sky has rotated farther up, allowing us to see the entire meteor show. Those of us in the southern states, should have a much easier time viewing them. Provided, of course, that there isn’t any cloud cover in our way.
Unfortunately for us in Phoenix, this means we probably won’t be able to see them this year since rain is forecast for Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning.
So you’ll have to tell me how spectacular the show was.
References:
Perseids — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meteor Showers Online: Observing the Perseids
Universe Today: Fear Not the Moon, Perseids Always a Great Show
The clouds regularly come in from the North, but bunch up at the mountains just above Carefree highway. Unless we’re in for a huge storm, they won’t continue into Phoenix, but will slide off to the East and follow the mountains South until finally breaking loose over Mesa. Its a real shame when they’re raining.
Adam Savage shares his newly acquired robot spider:
To help you get a sense of his scale, that wall he’s sitting next to is the 1.5-2 inch high edge of our back porch slab.
Found this guy on our back porch tonight. He’s just a bit larger than a quarter — perhaps the size of a half-dollar. We think he’s a trapdoor spider, but it’s unusual to see one out and about. They normally hide in their hole, behind a trapdoor, waiting to snatch prey as it passes by. So no telling how he ended up on our porch — perhaps something ran him out of his lair?
Here he is from another angle: 
Plastic may be with us a lot longer than we thought. Not only is it clogging up landfills and getting trapped in Arctic ice, some of it has into stone. A new type of rock cobbled together from plastic, volcanic rock, beach sand, seashells, and corals has begun forming on the shores of Hawaii. In fact, plastiglomerate, as researchers call it, may become so pervasive that it may become part of the global geologic record.
Geologist Patricia Corcoran of the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, says some of the plastic is still recognizable as toothbrushes, forks, ropes, and just “anything you can think of.”
Other geologists have indicated that plastiglomerate may become the geologic marker for when humans came to dominate the planet, scattering our refuse in enormous quantities.
Reference:
Science Magazine: Rocks Made of Plastic Found on Hawaiian Beach
Always Hungry? Perhaps it’s because your fat! Here’s a new (?) theory that we are not fat because we overeat, but we overeat because we’re fat — as our bodies store more and more calories in fat cells, fewer are available for bodily use, thus we are compelled to eat more to compensate.
ift.tt/1keqWH7
Link: ift.tt/1keqWH7
(via facebook.com)