Archive for the ‘Birds’ Category

Bagatelle (#88)

Thursday, June 1st, 2023

Shot: “Restaurant Review: The Peking Duck at Juqi Passes All the Tests“.

Chaser:

Obit watch: March 10, 2023.

Friday, March 10th, 2023

Robert Blake. LAT. THR.

Yes, yes, “Baretta” and Bonny Lee Bakley. Also: “The Court of Last Resort”, “The F.B.I.”, “Electra Glide in Blue”, and “12 O’Clock High” among other credits. I’ve seen “In Cold Blood” but it was a long time ago. (I think I actually rented it on VHS.) I’d like to see it again: my recollection is that it was an excellent adaptation of what I consider to be a very good book, with some astonishing cinematography.

I can’t tell if Blake was the last surviving “Our Gang” member or not. If he wasn’t, he was certainly pretty darn near being the last one.

(And on a side note: “Fred” was actually played by two different Triton cockatoos: “Lala” and “Weird Harold”. “Weird Harold” was a “stunt double” that they only used when “Fred” was flying. I don’t know if either one is still alive, but the San Diego Zoo website claims that, with proper care, cockatoos can live anywhere from 60 years to a full century.)

The Reno Air Races. At least, in their present form. (Hattip to FotB RoadRich.)

The first major step in its demise happened Thursday when the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority’s board of trustees voted unanimously to authorize its president and CEO, Daren Griffin, to negotiate final terms for the event.
It calls for the event this year from Sept. 13 to 17 to be the final air race at Reno-Stead Airport, with an air show in 2024 to celebrate its 60th anniversary.

But:

Although the Stead location is off the table, the Reno Air Racing Association – which organizes the event – sent out an email Thursday afternoon saying, “We are committed to finding a new location so that the event can continue. In fact, we are currently exploring several other possible locations to host the event in the future but it starts with making this year’s event the biggest and most successful it can be.”
Among the challenges cited in this decision was an increase in insurance costs for the event from $780,000 to $1.3 million and regional growth that makes hosting it at Reno-Stead Airport more challenging.

I’ve been to Reno fairly recently, but have never been to the air races. (Always wanted to go, though.) I hope they find a new location. But I’m having a lot of trouble, just based on what I saw when I was in the area, visualizing a location that has the required infrastructure and space to support all those planes, as well as having enough hotels/motels/campgrounds to house the crowd coming in for the races. Perhaps the plan is to move to another location in Nevada? Or out of Nevada? I have a vague memory that there was talk about doing air races in South Texas some time ago…

Frank Mansfield, call your office, please.

Wednesday, January 18th, 2023

According to some rooster men, the game fowl, or fighting chicken, was almost chosen to be the national bird of America. “And it should’ve,” a breeder once told me. “An eagle ain’t nothing more than a glorified buzzard.” Such game-fowl lore and sentiment abound: George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were devoted rooster fighters. Union and Confederate soldiers put aside their differences on Sundays during the Civil War to pit their chickens against one another. Abraham Lincoln was given the nickname Honest Abe after he displayed impartiality as a cockfighting judge. Whatever the (dubious) historical merit of claims like these, they are meant to establish the deeply American identity of game fowl. “They fought them right out on the White House lawn,” says David Thurston, president of the United Gamefowl Breeders Association, a national nonprofit dedicated to the birds’ preservation.

(Alternative link for the NYT challenged.)

(Title reference explained.)

Scientific progress goes “Crap!”

Friday, February 7th, 2020

This is my favorite recent scientific paper:

Will Any Crap We Put into Graphene Increase Its Electrocatalytic Effect?

That’s the actual title, of an actual paper (not an April Fool’s joke) published on January 14th, although it isn’t clear to me if it was peer reviewed or what other publication controls exist on the “ACS Publications” website.

I’m not a chemist, much less a graphene chemist, but I’ll try to summarize: Graphene (“an atomic-scale hexagonal lattice made of carbon atoms“) has interesting properties for catalyzing electrochemical reactions. The authors of this paper seem to feel that there’s been a recent trend of adding impurities (“doping”) graphine to see how it behaves, and discovering that pretty much anything scientists add increases the electrocatalytic properties of graphine. They also seem to feel that this trend has become absurd.

One may exaggerate only a little by saying that if we spit on graphene it becomes a better electrocatalyst.

But instead of whinging, they decided to prove a point, by doping graphene with…guano. Yes, bird crap. Thus the title.

Guano has a great advantage for doping over using synthetic chemicals. It is available at low cost, it contains a plethora of elements (including N, P, S, Cl, etc.), and its use for graphene doping can be handled by a nonchemist. We show that we can create high-entropy, multiple-element-doped graphene with outstanding electrocatalytic properties for two industrially important reactions: oxygen reduction used in fuel cells and hydrogen evolution used in electrolyzers.

I especially appreciate the author’s callback to Haber–Bosch: after all, the whole reason the Haber–Bosch process exists is because of an impending world-wide shortage of guano for fertilizer.

Headline of the day.

Wednesday, April 24th, 2019

From the HouChron:

A giant bird killed its owner. Now it could be yours.

Bonus: Florida man!

Double bonus:

Bill Grotjahn, who investigated the death for the Medical Examiner’s Office, said Hajos had died from trauma inflicted by the bird. He called it “such an unusual situation.”
“I’ve been doing this for 18 years and I’ve never had a thing like this,” he said. “I’ve had them killed by alligators and snakes but never by a bird like that. I know ostriches and emus have their moments, but cassowaries are an extremely, extremely dangerous bird. You don’t want to fool around with them. They have no sense of humor.”

…this doesn’t look like any ostrich attack that I’ve ever seen.

(Yes, yes, I know: cassowaries are not ostriches or emus. But unless I’m badly misreading Wikipedia, they are in the same family.)

Random notes: February 22, 2016.

Monday, February 22nd, 2016

Two from the NYT:

Save the endangered Long Island skeet!

Harper Lee was a big fan of Opus. Yes, the penguin, from “Bloom County”.

Mr. Breathed could barely believe what he was reading: “How ironic is that here, she is desperately upset that I’m letting my character die for her when millions around the world, for generations, have been upset that she let her characters end?” he said, referring to Ms. Lee’s never publishing another book until the contentious release of “Go Set a Watchman” last year.

Borepatch left a most gracious note on the last obit watch, which was much appreciated. I’ve been feeling like all I do is write obit watches these days. It also feels kind of lazy sometimes; but I like to think that there’s some historical value, if not now perhaps in the next few years, in noting these deaths and how they were covered.

And every once in a while you find an obit for someone who didn’t get the attention that Harper Lee or Scalia got, but deserves some attention. Speaking of that…

And speaking of lazy, I do have some longer pieces I want to write. Some of them are still in draft status, waiting for things to come together. Then there are some things that I expected to be able to write longer form entries about that just haven’t materialized yet.

I’d love to be able to write about my ongoing experiences with the Austin Police Department Citizen’s Police Academy, for example. But we’re only two sessions in and the first one was mostly back-patting. I’m hoping that there will be things that are worth writing about (and that I can write about without breaking any rules) soon. (If you’re really interested in the actual police academy and the training process, there’s a set of videos up on YouTube.)

Quick movie note: Lawrence and I went to see “Hail, Caesar!” yesterday. Lawrence liked it more than I did. I don’t think it is a bad movie, but it seemed slight and insubstantial.

We watched “Burn After Reading” a few weeks ago, and I liked that a little more: it may have something to do with almost everyone in “Burn” being utterly insane. (Especially John Malkovich’s character; but then, Malkovich adds that extra special touch to everything he’s in. I’m still not going to see “Zoolander 2”, though.)

TL,DR: wait for “Hail, Ceaser!” on streaming.

Random notes: July 16, 2015.

Thursday, July 16th, 2015

The Birdman of Altiplano.

“There is already a significant problem every single weekend with widespread, out-of-control peeing,” Mr. Johnson, who represents much of Manhattan’s West Side, said.

(I love the “Citations for public urination” graphic that goes along with this article.)

I’m a little surprised this one hasn’t made FARK yet: local police find an unresponsive man in a car. He had bite marks on his wrist, and there was a non-venomous snake (and other animals) in the car. Man dies.

And it seems like his venomous cobra snake may be on the loose. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

(Huh. I didn’t realize that Frederick Forsyth won an Edgar for “There Are No Snakes in Ireland”. That’s not a bad story, but I like “The Emperor” from the same collection a little better.)

Edited to add:

Austin Animal Services is not actively searching for a missing monocle cobra that may have killed an 18-year-old Temple man on Tuesday.

You know what this means, folks. If Animal Services isn’t actively searching for it, it’s up to the rest of us to be on the lookout. Get that Taurus Judge out of the gun safe and load it up with snake shot! Fun for the whole family! At least, until someone gets bitten…

The monocled cobra causes the highest fatality due to snake venom poisoning in Thailand. Envenomation usually presents predominantly with extensive local necrosis and systemic manifestations to a lesser degree. Drowsiness, neurological and neuromuscular symptoms will usually manifest earliest; hypotension, flushing of the face, warm skin, and pain around bite site typically manifest within one to four hours following the bite; paralysis, ventilatory failure or death could ensue rapidly, possibly as early as 60 minutes in very severe cases of envenomation. However, the presence of fang marks does not always imply that envenomation actually occurred.

Edited to add 2:

Oh, thank God. They’re going to start an organized search. I was afraid they’d be engaging in a disorganized search.

(Hattp: the Austin Cobra Twitter. Hattip on the Austin Cobra Twitter to the great and good Joe D. in the comments.)

Wings clipped.

Friday, July 3rd, 2015

The St. Louis Cardinals fired director of scouting Chris Correa yesterday.

Why do I bring this up? Granted, it is sportsfirings.com, but I don’t cover every minor executive firing.

But this is special. Correa is apparently the team’s first sacrifice in the great hacking scandal.

St. Louis attorney Jim Martin, a former federal prosecutor who is conducting the Cardinals’ internal investigation, declined to say if Correa’s dismissal was linked to the FBI case.
However, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Correa acknowledged breaking into the database to determine whether the Astros had stolen proprietary data from the Cardinals.

If he actually did admit “breaking into the database”, I think being fired is probably the least of his problems…

Obit watch: June 24, 2015.

Wednesday, June 24th, 2015

For the record: Don Featherstone.

Frances Kroll Ring has died at the age of 99. The significance of this is that she was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s personal secretary at the end of his life, while he was working on “The Last Tycoon”.

Random notes: March 6, 2015.

Friday, March 6th, 2015

Pigeon King International sold breeding pairs of pigeons to farmers with a guarantee to buy back their offspring at fixed prices for 10 years. Initially, Galbraith told farmers that the birds were high-end racing pigeons and that he planned to sell the offspring to the lucrative markets that support the sport overseas. Later, Galbraith changed his story, telling farmers that the birds were part of his trailblazing plan to elevate pigeon meat, known as squab, from a fringe delicacy in North America into the next ubiquitous chicken. But in the end, “they were neither,” the prosecutor said; Galbraith never sold a single pigeon for sport or meat. He seemed to have merely taken the young birds he bought from Pigeon King International farmers and resold them, as breeding pairs, to other Pigeon King International farmers, shuttling pigeons from one barn to another. And this meant continually recruiting new investors so he would have the cash to buy the pigeons his existing investors produced every month. When Galbraith’s scheme finally fell apart, Pigeon King International had almost a thousand breeders under contract in five Canadian provinces and 20 U.S. states. He’d taken nearly $42 million from farmers and walked away from obligations to buy back $356 million worth of their baby birds, ruining many of those investors. A forensic accountant determined that signing up enough new pigeon breeders to pay off those contracts would have dug him into an even deeper, $1.5 billion hole.

Speaking of fringe delicacies, your yearly slideshow of rodeo food from the HouChron is here. The deep-fried bacon-wrapped Reese’s peanut butter cup sounds interesting, but it looks a little small; I have to wonder what the value proposition is. Deep-fried Nutella also intrigues me, as does deep-fried pecan pie.

Obit watch, continued: Albert Maysles, noted documentary filmmaker. A/V Club.

Confession: I have a fair number of Maysles’ films on Criterion DVDs. I tried to watch “Grey Gardens”: I got about 10 minutes into it and just couldn’t watch any more. I’m not exactly sure why, but there was something about it that just made me extremely uncomfortable…

Angry bird.

Saturday, February 15th, 2014

A peacock was shot dead in northwest Houston Wednesday after a Harris County deputy was called to a residence near Kluge and Dale Rd. near Huffmeister.

A peacock? My grandmother had peacocks around when I was a child; I don’t remember them being particularly vicious.

While the deputy was speaking with a female resident, the peacock began to attack the resident. The deputy made the decision to shoot the colorful bird with a stun gun.

Stun guns: not just for high school students.

The peacock was seemingly unaffected by the jolts and the owner of the mad bird made the sad decision to dispatch the peaock with his own shotgun.

Joe Biden, call your office please.

A recent KHOU-TV story detailed a neighborhood not too far from this shooting incident, where peacocks have roamed free for decades.

I have no joke here, I just like saying “feral peacocks”.

TMQ Watch: February 4, 2014.

Wednesday, February 5th, 2014

And thus we slog to the end of another NFL season, and the end of another TMQ season. Surprisingly (at least to us) TMQ avoids any discussion of unrealistic television shows, but there’s a lot of discussion of books. Speaking of which, did you know TMQ had a new book out?

After the jump, the last TMQ for the 2013 NFL season

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