Just in time for this lovely cold front, we're finally posting some pictures from our trip to St. John last month. It was much different this year than last because we were there during spring break. We didn't think college kids would be interested in the park because it's hard to get to and there isn't much to do besides snorkeling and hiking once you get there. But there were lots of spring breakers around -- college kids and families with school aged kids.

We only took our small digital camera this year and we had a waterproof housing for it, but on the day with the best snorkeling the housing started leaking (Murphy's Law of underwater picture taking?) So we don't have very many pictures (or a small digital camera anymore) but here are a few.








There was also a neat incident with a donkey. They are like bears in the National Park and enjoy eating camper's food. Last year we didn't see any at the campsite, but they must have been brought in by the large population of campers this year. We were sitting at our campsite playing cards when we heard a crash and realized that the donkeys had pushed our neighbors food bin off their picinic table and started munching on all their goodies. It was a mom and her baby -- perhaps she was teaching her offspring how to find it's own food? Our other neighbors said a donkey had poked it's head inside their tent earlier in the week while they were in bed and tried to break into their food bin.

Happy Friday!

Friday is like pizza, how can you have a bad friday? Well, here's one way:

It's tourist time in the city

It's spring here now and the tourists have invaded. If it's still snowy and cold where you are, have hope -- warm weather is coming your way eventually.

Fishing for Pirates

French authorities are cracking down on illegal fishing by tracking downpirate fishing boats from space. They use satellites to spot the pirate vessels, and then they send patrol boats to intercept the illegal operations and enforce the law.

The French authorities started the program two years ago to deal with operations that illegally took Patagonian toothfish from waters around a French territory in the Southern Indian Ocean. The toothfish yields a big profit on the black market, and it's being depleted by illegal operations. French fishing boats were licensed to take six or seven thousands tons of toothfish from the territorial waters every year. According to some estimates, illegal fishing took six times more than that. The French government worked with a satellite company known as CLS. Antoine Monsaingeon works with CLS. He says land-based radar was not sufficient for law enforcement around the remote Kerguelen Islands."You need radar that can see at night, through the clouds, and on a longrange -- and only satellite can do that."Monsaingeon says the company relied on two different satellites. One was used by Canada to track icebergs; the other was used by the European Space Agency to monitor oil spills."It very often happens that when you launch a satellite, you launch it for one given purpose and then you discover later that it can be used for something else."In this case, the strategy paid off immediately. In July of 2004, the satellites detected a vessel that was in French waters illegally. The Navy sent a patrol boat to track it down and fire a warning shot across its bow. The approach worked. Last year, the French government reported that the surveillance system has cut illegal fishing by 90 percent.

Author: Adam Hinterthuer
SOURCES: "Envisat radar surveillance protects endangered prehistoricfish" news release from the European Space Agency: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMPLU638FE_Protecting_0.html CLS, a subsidiary of the French Space Agency; online at: http://www.cls.fr/welcome_en.html

Fun and addicting

Hello everyone,
Some time when you need a stress reliever try this out. http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

Fun. Try grabing a part of the body and wing it around. Fun to watch and interactive.

Kevin

Dream Smaller

This semester I am taking an environmental policy class. The final project for the class is to develop an ecologically sustainable model comprehensive plan for a fictitious region. We are currently in the research phase and this website (http://www.newdream.org/) was recommended to us. I haven't fully perused it I am intrigued by the consumer portion that may provide guidance about ways to "buy green."

Food for though...

I have been thinking about alternative education and in doing so I am reading "Understanding Waldorf Education Teaching from the Inside Out" - Jack Petrash. One of the quotes from it is appropriate for the stumpies that will read it.

If one could ask a tree which of its two worlds was the more real- the world above ground, of leaves, blossoms, and sunlight; or that below the ground, where the taproot reaches for who-knows-what- what would it tell us? For those who undertand the tree's message, it clearly states that there are no reality for the one "world" without the other. What is a tree without a taproot? What is a taproot without a tree?
Communication between the two "worlds" of the tree, so necessary for mutual growth and development, is a private inner process. Dirt cannot be sprinkled on a leaf to nourish it; direct sunlight will not benefit a root. Only the tree itself, through its own mysteries, can convey the nourishment of one distant "world" to the farthest reaches of the other (Higgins, Beyond Words, 1970, p. 87).

This ties to Waldorf edu in that a child's emotional life is obviously unseen, and yet a vital part of learning. If the heart is in the learning, the child will care about it, about people and about its surroundings. Kind of cool

Ok, I'm done...just wanted to share...

Kelly and I celebrated St. Patricks day as it should be done: with good friends, and corned beef and cabbage and beer, eh? We spent the weekend in Albany with Kevin and Carrie, and on Saturday mornin' Kelly and Jingles needed a bit of a lie-in. Notice the empty dog crate behind them. I guess that sums it up why you have puppies. I also must add Kevin's kilt is much more impressive in person; he took the time to do it right and I would say its durn near professional looking.

Quote of the day, round 2

Here is another quote of the day. I read this one and found it struck me.


Quote Of The Day
"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We growold by deserting our ideals."*Samuel Ullman

Anybody know who Samuel Ullman is/was?

Irish??

Hello all,
I have some pictures to share. In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I finished my kilt today. I have it on right now. It feels a bit strange but very comfortable. I made it over two days, which totaled about 6 hours. Chris and Kelly are coming on Friday and Chris and we are going to where them out to to the pub. Very cool.

Also, I am including a picture for Jon that was on the side of a building here in Albany. What this to be your first brownfields project?

Kevin

Red Jr.

BBC Science news is just so cool.

Jupiter is growing a new great red spot.

They also have a listing of the science books nominated for the Aventis Prize. Collapse is the only book I've read on the list (it rocks!) but I might check a few of the others out. Anyone have any other book recommendations?

Quote of the Day

Hello all,
Just a brief quote that I think is wonderful. My work, Plug Power, posts a quote of the day on the company website. I would like to share this one because I like it so much:

Quote Of The Day
"The best way you can predict your future is to create it. (Stephen Covey)

Ahhhh very good...very good!

Talk to ya'll later.

Kevin

First Post from the Orginal Wild Tequila Dance Creator

Hello everyone -

Welcome to my first blog post. JoAnna and Bill have graciously walked me thru this very complicated process... Here is a link to the school website I "manage" as part of my GA position. Someday soon we might post the Stafford County town center plan I have been putting together with other classmates. Bill and I just finished playing raquetteball. We are going to make pizza's now.

The post about living upstream was interesting because I am working on a ecological regional plan for my environmental policy class. Thanks to whoever posted it.

Well, someday I will do more blogging. Until then, don't hold your breath.

You Are What You Eat

By: Alison Coulson
Some birds give literal meaning to the phrase, "you are what you eat."
-------
Up until a few decades ago, cedar waxwings were distinguished by theiryellow-tipped tails. But beginning in the 1960s, these birds began toshow some orange in their tail feathers in the Northeast.Author Marie Read says the new color came from changes in the birds'diet. Read says cedar waxwings started eating orange berries fromhoneysuckles, a non-native ornamental shrub."The pigments that are in these introduced honeysuckles end up makingthe tail orange, so in this respect it really is kind of 'you are whatyou eat.'"

Read, a wildlife photographer, has written a new book, "The Secret Livesof Common Birds." Read says cedar waxwings aren't the only birds thatchange color according to the foods they eat."There is a lot of evidence that cardinals, northern cardinals, thewonderful red birds that we see, if you look at them as individuals, youlook at a lot of different ones, some of them are very bright red, someof them are deep crimson, some of them are more orange and some of themare kind of washed-out looking. Well, that apparently is due to thekinds of things they are eating."The varying shades of red and yellow in most birds result from theamount of carotenoid-based pigments they get from their diet.

And a bird's color, especially in males, serves a purpose far beyond vanity.Take that northern cardinal. Scientists say more brightly colored maleshold territory with more abundant food, and they attract higher qualityfemales. So which comes first: do the brighter males get betterterritory because of their color? Or does their better red result fromruling over the best food sources? Scientists say they don't yet know.

Living Upstream

I read this article today in the OnTap magazine and really liked it.

"This article, adapted from remarks Dr. Shinn made at Berea College's Fall Convocation, reminds us about individual and collective responsibility in creating a sustainable future."

Tasty Treasure from the Carribean

We got our diving pictures back from our trip to St Croix, USVI. You can find them all of them posted here, but below is a handy selection, as well as my overdue self-portrait. I had forgotten to turn on the camera before I put it in its underwater case for our night dive, so Kelly was not able to get a shot of me collecting this fine specimen for dinner at 75 feet down. The diving we did was our best ever. The north side of St Croix drops off suddenly to 13,000 feet deep, and we dove this wall 3 times, once at night. The dropoff continues to over 28,000 feet in the Puerto Rican Trench, which is the deepest part of the Atlantic.

 

Share and share alike:

There are lots of very interesting and original pictures/videos/writings/thoughts, etc. posted to this blog for all the world to see. Not that mine are, or that anyone will ever necessarily want to use any of my pics or vids elsewhere, but just in case, I do give my permission; every post/pic/video/etc that I've added to this blog in the past, as well as in the future (unless otherwise noted) can be used under the general terms of the Creative Commons license linked below:



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike2.5 License.

Here is my Cap'n Kev. Not a self portrait, but a portrait none the less...

Vikings Unite

Thought this would be of some interest. And mayhaps cool to attend!!! AAARRRRGGGG!!
http://www.up-helly-aa.org.uk/

Remember when police whacked the giant snow penis? Here's some more...

Link.
The Wooden Phallus of New Cross. (sfw)

Self-portrait theme week?

Bill took this mega cool self-portrait a few weeks ago, which inspired me to take the two below. Does anyone else have a photo you've taken of yourself (that you are willing to share)?

Jingles

This is Jingles. She was one of 8 puppies in the third "J" litter of 2005. (They are all named in order of the Alphabet, like Hurricanes). Only one of her litter-mates was released after the intial round of evaluations. She was born on November 30th so she is still really young, but almost as big as Maple. It wou't be long.

Tonight will be her second night with us -- she is still adjusting to being "on her own" and not in a pile of puppies to sleep with. Maple is also adjusting- She doesn't seem to appreciate the whining all night long when she is trying to sleep and is a little grouchy-- but they have also played with all of the dog toys and wrestled around together.

We will be bringing Jingles to Puppy-K every saturday so can practice her stuff so she can be a guide dog when she grows up.
:)

Project Finished and other stuff

Hello all, I wanted to post some pictures of my project that I just finished. Since Christmas, Carrie and I have been in the sewing mood. We received a very old (antique) sewing machine from the 1910's from my great-aunt and have been using it to make various projects. I made some reusable shopping bags and a backpack for my nephew. But I just finished my cloak and , if I do say so myself, looks great. It is made of 35% wool felt on the outside and some blanket-like cotton material on the inside. The symbol on the back is my ancestor’s family crest. It is from Ireland and is for the O'Riordan family. I wore it around today and got many great comments. Check it out!!On a different note, the outside door for our apartment (to the house) has been decorated and will be each month. Last month was a Christmas wreath while this month is a feather boa heart created by our downstairs neighbors. It certainly makes our door distinctive.

Enjoy the pictures, Kevin

you need your camera for this one...

I noticed something this weekend about Bill and my picture taking styles, and now I'm taking a poll...

Which eye do you use when you take pictures with an SLR? I've always used my left eye (which is now causing a problem as I get nose grease on the display screen of our digital SLR - obviously made for people who use their right eye). When I pointed this out to Bill he thought I was crazy and that all people used their right eyes when looking through the view-finder.

I am wondering if using different eyes accounts for the differences in the photos we take as well. So we sat down and picked out some photos that we thought were typical of our style.

Here are some of Bill's:







And here are some of mine:







The differences are even more apparent when we take pictures of the same subject, such as DC's panda statues that were all over town:

Bill:



Me:



I did some searching around and found info from the American Psychological Association that gave this background in an article:

...prior research, which has indicated that the left hemisphere is adept at processing visual "parts," while the right hemisphere is more adept at analyzing visual "wholes."

Bill likes wholes:



And I go for parts:



Now this seems contradictory as we know the left side of your body is controlled by your right brain, and this is the opposite of our apparent styles (unless in art you are looking for something to explain what your brain is lacking?). But this might be an oversimplification - this site (Figure 3) has some info and so does photo.net.
Our vision can be broken into four parts - left and right sides of left eye and left and right sides of right eye. What you see from the left side of each eye goes to your right brain and the right sides of each eye go to your left brain. So maybe I favor the right side of my left eye?

I really want there to be something cool in all this, so I'm taking a poll...

Which eye do you use when taking photos and how would you describe your photographic style? (And show us some pictures to prove it)

Bug Juice

An insect pest that causes millions of dollars in damage might turn out to be a cheap source of fuel.

Termites eat wood and, unlike most animals, they can extract energy from it. But they don't do it alone. A variety of bacteria living in theinsect's gut do the work. Some of them break down wood fiber and produce sugars for the termite. That process produces hydrogen as a byproduct,which is then used by other bacteria in the gut. Falk Warnecke is a microbiologist with the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute in California.These microbes make termites the most efficient hydrogen producers on the planet: From a single sheet of printer paper, a termite can produce two liters of the valuable gas.

The trick is to figure out which bacteria make hydrogen, and which enzymes they use to do it. With this information you could replicate those enzymes in mass quantities to produce hydrogen on a commercial scale. What's more, you could fuel the process with agricultural and industrial waste -- lumber-mill tailings, scrap cardboard, and the endless tons of corn husks and sugarcane stalks that are burned or discarded because they're too tough for farm animals to eat. "It's kind of recycling, making use of what's already there," says Warnecke.

SOURCES: U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute; online at:http://www.jgi.doe.gov/

"Bug Juice: Could termite guts hold the key to the world's energyproblems?" in the Eastbay Express (September 7, 2005); online at:http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2005-09-07/news/feature.html

How they play it on the West Coast...

Only because I posted the Chronic-WHAT-cles of NARNIA!!! video a while back, here's the West Coast response... let the rap battle commence!!!!!!!

Favorite Place: US Virgin Islands National Park

Our favorite National Park....

The island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands is a nature lovers
playground.



St. John and the rest of what we now know as the US Virgin Islands were named by Christpoher Columbus while on his second voyage in 1493. Originally settled byw he native Ciboney, Carib, and Arawaks, the islands underwent several changes of European management until they became Danish colonies in 1754. During World War I, The US purchased the islands from Denmark, fearing that they would otherwise become a German submarine base. By the 1930s, St. John had built a reputation as "the untouched jewel" of the Carribean. Seeing this a Rockefeller boutht up most of the land on the island and built a resort at Caneel Bay. The rest of the land ,some 5000 plus acres I believe, including the most desireable north shore beaches, was then transferred to the US government for use as a national park, thus ensuring that the Caneel Bay resort would have minimal competition and the island would remain pristine.



The US Virgin Island National Park now occupies over 60% of St. John and extends well off shore to protect the coral reef communities. During his last days in office, President Clinton, seeking greater protection for coral reefs, established the Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument, which includes 12,708 acres (51 km²) of federal submerged lands within the 3 mile (5 km) belt off of Saint John.

We visited St. John last April, and will do so again this coming March, and perhaps we will every year! While there, we camped in the National Park at the Cinnamon Bay campground. The campground (named for the native cinnamon trees) provides sturdy, semi-permanent tents (with 4 cots each), picnic table, propane lantern, stove, dishes, linens, etc. for as little as 55.00 a night. They also have bare sites if you choose to bring your own tent and gear for much less, and rigid cabin type accomodations with electricity and ceiling fans for a bit more. Getting
to St. John requires a 5 hour flight from DC to St. Thomas (STT), followed by a 20 minute cab ride to Red Hook or Charlotte Amalie, and a 30 or 45 minute ferry ride to Cruz Bay on St. John. Figure on it taking 8 hours to get to the park from the East Coast, but with airfare for as low as 99.00 per person each way from DC, it is highly affordable. Getting around on St. John is very easy and affordable, by "taxi", but you can also rent a 4x4 jeep very easily from one of the many local
rental shop in Cruz Bay for a few days and tool around a bit yourself (can be scary... steep, windy roads)


Activities - Once you get there, pretty much involve being outside. Hiking (tallest point on the tiny island is at ~ 1800 feet - climb to the top!), searching for wild oranges / coconuts / mangoes, etc..., birding, chasing anoles and iguanas, talking to donkeys and mongoose, lounging around, checking out the archeological sites ( ruins of 17th and 18th century sugar plantations ) drinking rum, but mostly...
snorkeling. The snorkeling is superb, largely due to the protections the island has historically enjoyed. There is a guided underwater snorkeling trail at Trunk Bay, which is considered to be one of the 10 finest beaches in the world. This beach is also the busiest beach, by far. It can become quite populated with cruise ship tourists on excursions from their ships that have made port at St. Thomas. Watching them can be amusing though! Elsewhere on the island, it is not difficult to find an empty beach. Even at Cinnamon Bay near the campground, there will be very few people at the beach, and it is not uncommon to be the ONLY
person on the beach!!!




Some of the best sorkeling we saw was around Waterlemon Cay. It's here that we saw barracuds, a 5 foot shark, several stingrays, a spotted eagle ray, and a green sea turtle, and giant sea stars, all in water that was 10-40 ft. deep with a forest of different corals and thousands of different fish. It is also here that a mongoose unzipped our backpack and ate our lunch. It is also here than a donkey tried to take our pretzels, the only part of our lunch that the mongoose left us!



It was for us, a trip of pure relaxation; wake up, go snorkeling on a deserted beach, have some lunch, take a hike, go snorkeling some more, watch the stars, go to sleep. If you are turned off by the megadeveloped Carribean cruise ship destinations, I would highly suggest checking out St. John and the USVI National Park. You can spend an entire week there for only ~$1000.00 per couple, airfare included!

St. John is so wonderful, I could go one all day. For a short video clip of some activites (mostly us standing around..., drinking rum) in St. John, click HERE.

Ants teach

This is cool.

Ants Are First Non-Humans to Teach, Study Says

...they raced along a tabletop foraging for food -- and then, remarkably, returned to guide others.

Time and again, followers trailed behind leaders, darting this way and that along the route, presumably to memorize landmarks. Once a follower got its bearings, it tapped the leader with its antennae, prompting the lesson to literally proceed to the next step.

The ants were only looking for food, but the researchers said the careful way the leaders led followers -- thereby turning them into leaders in their own right -- marked the Temnothorax albipennis ant as the very first example of a non-human animal exhibiting teaching behavior.

I once read, but have not been able to verify, that if you look at a species brain size in proportion to the rest of their body that ants have a bigger brain than any other speices, including humans.

Favorite City

Bill is going to post on my favorite National Park in a bit. And my favorite “off the beaten path” kind of places are dynamic. So I'll take a stab at favorite city -- with the disclaimer that Arlington is a county and not a city. Therefore, while I really love where I live, I can't vote for it.

Two summers ago Bill and I took a week to drive around the south to see where we would end up. Our first stop was Savannah, GA where we spent two nights – one in a campground and one in a hotel with air conditioning. The campground very hot which might explain why a little snake that we met (not more than 2 feet long) was so active. We can't positively ID him, but Bill considers him a baby garter snake, even though he was the most aggressive little thing we'd ever seen – including the lazy alligator we met at a nearby wildlife refuge (see video).

We spent some time biking around Savannah's squares (see Forrest Gump) and looking at all the old houses and Spanish Moss which make the city very moody. We ate at Clary's Cafe (read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) for breakfast and I tried grits, which were gross. For dinner we stopped in a little cafe and I had scallops to die for and the best summer drink known to man...a mint julep. I don't know how I lived life without them for so long and I've considered moving to the deep south in order to really enjoy their amazing restorative powers. Mmmmm.

Savannah was also the first place where I've ever had a drink while walking down the street. There are no open container laws so you can go to a bar and get drinks to go!! At night we went to the tourist area where street performers play by the river and gift shops sell the hokiest things you've ever seen. But its all very nice when you take it in with a slushy alcoholic drink in your hand!

My favorite part was when we were on our bike ride and it started to rain. I loved sitting under a tree in a square with ridiculous humidity while listening to church bells chime and the rain fall. Savannah rocks!

Favorite Place

I have started working again on my "to go" list of places that I would like to visit/spend time in at some point. Chris and I used this format when we lived in KY and made a list of all the places nearby that we wanted to get to while we lived in that part of the country. Then when we had time for a trip, we picked a place of the list based on distance, time, etc.

Lately we've noticed that there are a lot of places in NY that we have not explored yet. So I started new list of places local and beyond. Its a growing list, but I could use other input and recommendations.

I would love to hear what everyone's top 3 favorite places are- Categories are:
1) National Park/Forest/Etc.
2) City
3) Rural town/off-the-beaten path


Thanks!!

Photos of Gettysburg or Bellingham, Washington or the Mount Baker region?

I have a friend from high school who works for a company that publishes travel guides. On occassion she needs additional photos for the books they publish and she sends out a call for help. Currently, she is in need of picts from Gettysburg and Washington State. You don't get any money for your photo, but you would get a free copy of the book and you'd get to see your name in print! If you have any photos of the sort, let me know and I can put you in contact with Jen.

If anyone is interested I can post any of her future requests here too. She sends them out every couple of months.

Cheers!

Meme of the week:

You may have all seen this already, this week's meme brought to you by SNL:

Mr. Pibb plus Red Vines = CRAZY delicious!

Blogger Web Comments for Firefox

Just testing this out....

A new firefox plugin compiles blog comments about any webpage you are on and displays them in a little box on the lower right.

I'm adding a comment at the moment and am curious as to how it will appear on our blog. Looks like it's got a few kinks still (this little box is odd ) but it could be cool...

Read more at www.google.com/tools/fi...

Good Start to 206

Just wanted to say that Kevin and I had a really good time with everyone this New Year! It was very nice to relax in good company and not have to thinking about what we left behind. I always enjoy the conversations, laughter, and good food. Thank you, JoAnna and Bill, for setting it up this year and thank you to all of you who were great cooks. Hope everyone has a good week back at the desk.