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Mating Dance of the Ostrich | Ze Frank Video

January 12, 2020

Whatever you might have thought it looked like, you didn’t imagine this.

If no film or link appears in this email, go to the blog to view it by clicking on the blog title above. If the film stops & starts in an annoying manner, press pause (lower left double bars ||) to let it buffer and get ahead of you.   [Chuck Almdale]

Amazing Effects of Sleep (And Lack of it) | PBS BrainCraft Video

January 10, 2020

To sleep or not to sleep

In her latest video Vanessa mentions Z, a 24-year-old guy who claims sleep is a habit that can be broken. After 9 days straight of being awake, Z composed the following poem. The researchers said “It is the best evidence we have that offers definite proof of lack of impairment of higher mental functions at the end of the vigil.”

This is taken from page 8 of the study:

On the last day of the experiment Z composed the following verse directed to two of the women who had assisted in the observation during the experiment. The verse, together with his explanation of the first two lines, is as follows :

“F unctions that hamper and gifts that requite
M ust, by their nature in women unite.

 R eckless compounding of accent with flush
A ttacks like a limen, basic in hush
A ttacks in the crystal, survives in the light
R ecoils and assembles ‘twixt mystic and trite.

N ew fashions go leering, old modesties blare
I comin the springtime, their tortoise shell dare :
O ver insistence, and collect what you may

E voke pleasures of night to sustain in the day.
Northward the lust and the yearning conspire
S weet south, how delightful sensed form to attire.”

“The rim is composed of a woven acrostic of the two names. The first couplet sets the general theme, that women and possession are not an unmixed blessing, that the fact that as women they must require things of men that set the men from the progressive work they as men set themselves, that moreover the women might be finer things if the racial needs that lurk in their smiles and frowns, supplenesses and awkwardnesses did not compel them, their own insight lacking, to demands of this delaying sort. The hampering and the functions thus are on several levels of operation, and poetry, to the proper reader conveys much of this, more besides, and epitomizes the fact in addition.”

This is an installment of the PBS – BrainCraft series created by Vanessa Hill. If no film or link appears in this email, go to the blog to view it by clicking on the blog title above. If the film stops & starts in an annoying manner, press pause (lower left double bars ||) to let it buffer and get ahead of you.  [Chuck Almdale]

King Tides this Weekend

January 8, 2020

Photo: Complements of the California Coastal Commission

For those of you who live right on the coast, or for anyone who is interested in watching others’ houses wash away, this is the King Tide weekend of the year.

This site has lots of interesting information. Apparently people like to get together and watch the big ones roll in and suck away the beach furniture.
https://www.coastal.ca.gov/kingtides/

You can join in, sign up, and send them photos of the high water crashing in and personal possessions vanishing out to sea.

Here’s a link to a map of the entire California coast (right now, anyway – who knows what it’ll look like next week).
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1lS8SEF6LfcWqRErr-g2hngubrL_IoX42&ll=36.9621538986668%2C-120.41667655000003&z=5

It has a lot of red markers. Zoom in and click a marker for that locale’s high tide data. For example, the marker for Santa Monica says:

Santa Monica
Jan. 10, 2020
high time / height: 8:13 AM / 6.60 ft.
low time / height: 3:33 PM / -1.41 ft.
Jan. 11, 2020
high time / height: 8:53 AM / 6.67 ft.
low time / height: 4:13 PM / -1.47 ft.
Jan. 12, 2020
high time / height: 9:36 AM / 6.53 ft.
low time / height: 4:54 PM / -1.35 ft.

But if you sleep through this weekend’s King Tides, don’t fret.
They’ll be back on February 8 and 9.

Feb. 8, 2020
high time / height: 8:04 AM / 6.60 ft.
low time / height: 3:12 PM / -1.58 ft.
Feb. 9, 2020
high time / height: 8:46 AM / 6.66 ft.
low time / height: 3:49 PM / -1.56 ft.

All kidding aside, people better get used to this sort of event.
They’re being brought to you complements of Climate Change.
[Chuck Almdale]

 

Meeting a Wormlion Is the Pits | Deep Look Video

January 5, 2020
tags:
by

Straight out of science fiction, the fearsome wormlion ambushes prey at the bottom of a tidy – and terrifying – sand pit, then flicks their carcasses out. These meals fuel its transformation into something unexpected.

This is another installment of the PBS Deep Look series. If no film or link appears in this email, go to the blog to view it by clicking on the blog title above. If the film stops & starts in an annoying manner, press pause (lower left double bars ||) to let it buffer and get ahead of you.   [Chuck Almdale]

How Nature Works: Catbird Mimicry | Cornell Lab of Ornithology

December 30, 2019

A remarkable Gray Catbird mimics dozens of bird species (and a frog too!) in northern California. Listen as Greg Budney, audio curator at the Macaulay Library, dissects the recording and notes each snippet of mimicked song.

A film from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. If no film or link appears in this email, go to the blog to view it by clicking on the blog title above. If the film stops & starts in an annoying manner, press pause (lower left double bars ||) to let it buffer and get ahead of you. The Lab is a member-supported organization; they welcome your membership and support.  [Chuck Almdale]