I don’t know precisely where in Saudi Arabia this video was taken. Google Translate appears to say it was on King Fahd Street in Abha Abha(?). Since I’m not a Muslim, I guess I’ll never have the opportunity to check it out first hand, but actually it looks like a pretty squalid place. The streets are paved, but only just barely, and the buildings all look like they should say “Checks Cashed Here” or (ironically) “Liquor.”
(The video link comes from JWZ, who titles it “buzzard bait.” Judging from how careful the drivers are to avoid the ostrich, he may be right. But it’s fun to watch the bird just trotting along. Wikipedia says they can run up to 43 mph. Based on that, I’d guess the bird in the video isn’t even breaking a sweat.)
We’re about 80% of the way done with the extreme pruning project for the oleanders that ring our backyard.
We never did find a store that sells Ladybugs’n'Stuff, but we did find one that sells Aphid-Be-Dead in great quantities.
That only leaves one thing: the bees under the shed. They don’t want us messing with any of the oleander bushes on the east side of the property line. The good news is that a properly-treated bee sting hurts less than a scratch inflicted by an oleander bush. The bad news is that I have one sting and Mrs. Jones has two, so we’re knocking off…for the time bee-ing.
About half the houses in my neighborhood are empty. Well, it’s actually more like 20%, but it seems like half. So what could make owning a home in Yucca Valley even less appealing?
One final vacation photo: looking down on Tanaya Lake from Olmstead Point. If facing this way is 12 o’clock, then Half Dome (the non-iconic side) is about 4:30.
Dr. McCarron and his colleagues analyzed surveys from 33 countries around the world and reported that, despite wide differences in diet and culture, people generally consumed about the same amount of salt. … The results were so similar in so many places that Dr. McCarron hypothesized that networks in the brain regulate sodium appetite so that people consume a set daily level of salt.
The rest of the article is about efforts to regulate salt in foods. What if that finding were correct? Imagine trying to set up a regulatory environment to achieve “safe” salt levels if there was a neurological trigger in the brain to get a different amount. When we prohibit alcohol and drugs, it doesn’t work, but at least it fails differently for different people.
My mother-in-law sent me a link to this video. It’s pretty impressive: Stephen Wiltshire takes a helicopter tour of Rome, seeing it for the first time, then draws a panoramic view of the city from memory.
The second title is a game attempt to make something arcane and abstract timely and relevant. The first title is better. Imagine if, instead, it said, “Born seers: how your brain creates a visual representation of the universe.”
We had snow this morning, so it took me a bit longer to get going. (I had to phone people who might have come to a meeting and tell them not to.) When I got outside, I saw the quails had already run every which way:
Note that my Canon Powershot A620 seems to have gone missing — I had it Saturday. Monday morning I couldn’t find it. — so these photos are taken with my venerable A60. Sigh.
