Category: Miscellany

The last day of the Mayan Long Count calendar is December 21, 2012.  Some folks believe this marks the Mayan’s prediction of an apocalyptic end of the world and are preparing for the worst (who hasn’t seen the movie 2012, yet?), while others are planning travel, holidays, and vacations around this date in order to celebrate it.  And, of course, the government of Mexico is working to take advantage of this unique opportunity by promoting their “Mundo Maya 2012” tourism campaign which is expected to draw about 52 million tourists to the Chiapas, Tucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Campeche regions this year.  If you are wondering where to spend the your last tourist dollars just before the end of the world on December 21, Mexican President Felipe Calderon hopes you choose Mexico!

So, again, what are your plans for the end of the world?

If you’ve looked over my blog, you’ve probably noted that the one thing that stands out, above everything else, is that I very rarely post anything.  I’d like to change that and post more often. 

Experts say that if you follow through with something for 21-28 consecutive days, it will become a habit.  So my personal challenge to myself is to post at least once a day for the entire month of January. If I’m successful, I should be creating a new habit that will carry on the rest of the year.

Here goes something …

From our gargoyle, to yours.

I’m fortunate to occassionally be able to work from home — this is much closer to how those mornings go than I would like to admit:

Here’s a video Nick Tort made of driving into a recent desert dust storm — apparently called a “haboob” after similar storms in the Middle East — in the Chandler area recently.  Although it makes for good footage, I must point out that this really is a dangerous thing to do. 

Those of us who have grown up here have had it drilled into us since we were first able to peek over the steering wheel: “Don’t drive in a dust storm — pull over to the side, as far off the road as you can, and shut off your engine and lights.”  Unfortunately, it seems that most people have either forgotten this safety tip or, having migrated from other parts of the country, may never have heard it.

In the video, you can see a small number of people pulled to the side, but still with lights on.  And when Nick’s car becomes completely enveloped in the storm, you see why it’s so important.  Visibility drops to practically nothing, the only thing visible in the film is the occasional light and sometimes the road immediately in front of his vehicle.

But with all that said, it is still a pretty cool piece of video:

We have a very long driveway and many of our furred, feathered, and scaled neighbors like spend time on it.  Some of them move immediately out of our way when we drive along it, but a surprising number simply run away from us. Down the drive. Yesterday, it was a family of quail — four adults and a dozen or more peeps. It’s fun to watch them run along as we creep down the drive behind them.

I once heard that “Hamsters, like sheep, know they’re food.”
Well, I, and this little guy, would have to disagree:

Evil Hamster Attacks Russians – Watch more Funny Videos

What I particularly like is that, although one of the guys was apparently bit pretty good, he doesn’t seem to hold any hostility toward the little guy, and that when they were done filming him, they made sure he was safely off the road.

Timelapse Montage from Mike Flores on Vimeo.

This is a montage of timelapse footage set to some very dramatic music.  Personally, I think the section with the truck rebuild is visually disruptive, but the rest of it is very cool.

Over at Treehugger, they have a very interesting article about how Lockheed is re-purposing some of it’s C-130 bombers as mass tree planters.

Apparently they’ve built pods, or “cones,” each with a small sapling, that can be dropped from 1000 feet in the same manner they use for dropping mines.  When the cones, which are pointed at one end, hit the ground, they bury themselves to about the same depth they would be had they been planted by hand.  The cones also contain fertilizer and an absorbent material to help draw moisture from the surrounding ground.  Although they’re metallic, the cones are supposed to rot away rather quickly so the tree’s roots can easily reach the soil.  You can find out more about the sapling cones at How Stuff Works.

Lockheed says that they can drop … err, plant … about 125,000 trees a flight, planting around 900,000 trees a day. 

I don’t exactly know why, but while reading this article I find myself feeling a slight sense of dread.  Repopulating a forest is a very large project and, although I’m sure this method would cut the time down significantly, I can’t help but begin to think of all the little mis-calculations or things that could go wrong, causing all sorts of disasters. 

It sort of brings to mind another large project that didn’t quite work out as planned.  Such as when the Oregon State Highway Department tried to remove a dead whale from a public beach using dynamite.

But the Tree Bombs are cool.  No, really!

With the pieces arranged one way, the entire area is covered.  But when arranged another way, a hole is left uncovered — where does the space go?  Don’t think about it too much, or it’ll make your head hurt, too.

Radivoje Lajic’s house, in the northern village of Gornji Lajici in Bosnia, was recently hit by a meteorite.  An event so rare that it makes for a good story.  But that’s not all of it.  This is the sixth meteorite to hit his house since the first one struck in 2007. 

What are the odds of that?  They are, in fact, so high that they seem to rule out coincidence.

Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed that the rocks are meteorites and scientists have been trying to determine what it is about his house that seems to attract them.

Resources:
Man hit by six meteorites is being ‘targeted by aliens’

Rather than let the A/C condensation that drips out to just soak into the ground, I placed a small bowl under it allowing it to collect, creating a sort of “watering hole” for the animals around the house.  Here are a couple of critters I caught with my Flip UltraHD one morning about a week after placing the bowl there.

Things happen in our yard and on our porch. We’re aware of some of it … some of it may be aware of us.