Friday photo

Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park. February 2003.

Southeast Michigan has new snow today, but not this much.

Coywolves?

Ralph Maughan's Wildlife News reports on a draft research paper which finds that, in New England, a sample "coydog" hybrids doesn't contain any domestic dog DNA. Instead, they are hybrids of coyotes and eastern timber wolves (canis lycaon). Interesting stuff that I knew nothing about ....

The good ol' days

The 1960's were truly a golden age in the United States. Summers lasted forever, the weather was perfect every day, and I had the run of the block. At Vick's dime store, penny candy still cost a penny and a Snickers bar would set me back a nickel (a hefty 33% of my weekly allowance, but a worthy splurge on occasion).

Of course, I didn't know that I was born just after my Dad had suffered two years of unemployment, or that my comfortable little block was the last white bastion in an increasingly black neighborhood. I had heard mention of some unpronounceable substance that could make people do crazy things like walk out into the street and try to stop traffic, but I never saw any drugs. I never heard a word about the RFK and MLK assassinations in 1968; I was six.

John Oliver nails the wingnuts on their incessant lament on the loss of the America the once knew. When was this golden age? Over and over again, "When I was a kid ...."

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Life, the universe, etc.

On the Maps listserv, Brendan Whyte of the National Library of Australia points to this atlas of the universe from the Hayden Planetarium:



Also check out the FAQ's, where you'll find interesting answers to questions like "Why should life be carbon based?", where Saavik Ford explains how carbon atoms have the ability to bond with four other atoms at once, thereby making long and complex molecules that are capable of causing interesting chemical reactions.

Tough jobs

It's part of a military guard's job to look menacing - like the slightest misstep will just piss him off and put your own sorry self in mortal danger. It helps if he's pulled duty in the middle of China's biggest snowstorm in the last 50+ years: