I don’t normally watch reality tv, but I’ve recently started watching one show. Filmed high up in a tree in Decorah, Iowa, two cameras record the lives of a family of bald eagles. This weekend saw some excitement, with the hatching of two of the three eggs mom laid about 40 days ago. Here’s a…
Purr-sonality
As any pet owner will tell you, lots of non-human animals have their own personalities. Even within the same species, individual animals can have specific behavioral traits, such as tendency to be shy or playful. In the case of zoo animals, knowing a creature’s personality could help zoo keepers improve its well-being in captivity and…
Surf city tsunami
The effects of Japan’s Honshu earthquake reached as far as Santa Cruz on the Californian coast. On March 11 the waves came and left tens of millions of dollars in damage to the harbor. On spring break, I wandered down to take a look. This is what I found . . . One week after…
Stormtroompas
During winter quarter I interned at the San Jose Mercury News. On my last day, I saw ROBOTS. In the *building*. The bots keep the presses plied with newspaper, but really they’re plotting to take over the world (just a hunch). In a cavernous back room, the Merc hides an army of paper-toting automatons that hoist…
Good morning
Who needs an alarm clock when you’ve got the Whomping Willow wailing on your deck? Or Whomping Pine Tree as it were… The part that smashed into our house around 10:30 last night completed its ground assault early this morning (7:30am), waking everyone in the house. It also took our neighbor’s power line with it….
What was that thud?
We’ve been having some intense weather today. Wave after wave of hail woke me up this morning – little stones clattering on the roof. Anything that isn’t nailed down has been wildly bouncing in the wind. Our power started to flicker off and on earlier in the evening. I was speaking with one of my…
Open Your Heart (and your ribcage)
Someone I love is scheduled for triple bypass open heart surgery tomorrow. “Bypass surgery.” It’s one of those phrases I’ve heard a million times, never truly knowing what it meant. They’re not going to build a freeway interchange inside his chest. At least not literally. Heart valves are a little like metering lights at a…
weekend warrior seeks tutus ‘n trees
For the past two weeks, I’ve been parked in front of my computer. Yesterday, I finally went stir-crazy and listened to my pleading, sorely underused muscles. “I’ve had it!” I thought, and promptly began stomping around. It was time to get moving. So I did some ballet for the first time since busting my ankle during…
What is taking so long?
Dotting the desert landscape of southern Afghanistan, there are 12 U.S. Marine Corps outposts. Two of them are fairly large Marine Corps bases, approximately 10 miles in diameter, and 2,000 to 3,000 Marines live and work there. They have cinderblock buildings, green circus-sized tents, and hundreds of little white rectangular trailers that serve as living…
Feeling violated at the airport
Coming back from last week’s AAAS 2011 Annual Meeting in Washington D.C., some of my classmates and I went through Dulles International Airport. After a fun, but stressful, three-day meeting, I was ready to come home. But as airport security herded my fellow travelers and I towards the metal detectors, I wound up facing those…