Month: January 2006

No, it’s not me – shock! It’s Mishka. Every now and then, I buy cookies from the grocery store bakery. They come in this plastic container. At first, I thought he just loved the sound the plastic made when he gnawed on it. But no, it’s the cookies. Five minutes after bringing them home, he finds them and starts attacking. One night, I made the mistake of leaving the container on the counter-top when I went to bed. I woke up to half eaten cookies and crumbs all over the place. Tonight, I was emptying out the dishwasher. I opened up the plate cabinet and discover a container with 3 cookies left in it. I put them up there last week to keep them “safe” and then forgot about them. (I know!) So, I toss them in the trash can and go back to my flickr.com obsession in the other room. Ten minutes later – crash! Bang! Boom! Mishka had knocked over the trash can and was trying to get at the cookies. *sigh*

Mishka

Mishka in the window by my bed. This is the site that greated me when I woke up this morning.

Building and hangar

I found out there were more old airport buildings out there just waiting to be photographed and so I went today. The sky was horrid and we had just had our first good soaking rain in ages. I ended up covered in mud, but it was still fun.

Cold water

My friend Jess and I had lunch at The Omelettry today. I bored her with my recent photography obsession. Hey, I liked the colors in the table top.

Here’s short article about some fascinating photos.

It’s often hard to convince people that Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs are real. They look uncannily like hyperdetailed models, absent the imperfections of reality.

Taken at a little league ball park just after sunset.

Fairies stop developers’ bulldozers in their tracks

Villagers who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again.

Evolutionary Trade-Offs: Big Brains or Big Balls?

A recent scientific paper reveals that as sexual selection pressures increase in promiscuous bat species, males evolve larger testes and smaller brains. But in bat species where females remain faithful, males had comparatively smaller testes and larger brains. Conversely, male sexual behavior had absolutely no effect on either brain or testes size.

Originally uploaded by seizethedave.

I found this image on flickr – it’s adorable, well done, a bit creepy and just plain cool. Great job, seizethedave.

Study: College students lack literacy for complex tasks

More than half of students at four-year colleges — and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges — lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.

Exit

I had so much fun today at the old Austin airport. Even though the last flight left the airport in 1999, it officially closed in 1993. It’s usually barricaded and marked with “no trespassing” signs, but that’s changed recently, so I decided to check it out. You can see more pictures here.