The Urban Pantheist

It's possible that he's a little too awesome.

Too bad John McCain hasn't agreed with John McCain since he won the nomination. Thanks to roaming and barackobama2008 for the link. (EDIT--It's only fair to point out that this clip is from 2000, and he's referring to GW Bush's negative ads.)

(Only four more weeks folks, then it's back to complaining about the weather. ;) )

I post videos a lot lately, but I haven't yet posted a link to a video of my brother buying two girly fruit drinks from a girl in a bra at a drive-through espresso shack. Now I have:

http://www.reviewjournal.com/media/video/sexpresso.html


Only in Vegas!

(and Seattle-Tacoma)

A little taste of Boston. Not my video: I wish.

According to someone on the Boston Critical Mass group:

*Name: Louie
*Birthday: 11/27
*Age: 54 years old
*Likes: The Red Sox, Mozzarella sticks, The Rattlesnake bar and grill,
Dick's last resort, Miller High Life (that's how you know hes a good man).

*Bike information: The sticker on the back says "kryptonite", frequents
Back Bay Bikes for repairs..

*Siren: apparently he's saying "move, move" which would make sense to
those who have been hit

*VIDEOS of Louie in Action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqcYdS0x_2w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Ke-miqHs8&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhEb73t-Stk


If I remember correctly, he has cerebral palsy so he needs leg braces,
which would probably prevent him from riding a two-wheeler.


http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/01/07/keeping_the_wheels_turning/

Pygmy Hippopotamus Hexaprotodon liberiensis

The pygmy hippopotamus is about a fifth of the mass of its huge cousin, the Nile hippo. A pygmy hippo is about the size of a small pig, on the average about 500 pounds. Pygmy hippos spend far less time in the water compared to Nile hippos, instead deftly and quietly moving through dense rainforests, feeding on fallen fruit and other vegetation. Also unlike Niles, pygmy hippos are solitary, coming together only to mate. They leave messages for one another by defecating and rapidly wagging their tails to disperse the fecal matter. Pygmy hippos are found in a relatively small range of jungle habitat in western Africa, the largest amount concentrated in Liberia. They are preyed upon by leopards and humans.

This is Cleopatra, a fifteen year old pygmy hippo who comes from the Toronto zoo. She is on loan to Zoo New England, and is on exhibit in the Tropical Forest building.

( pics from Toronto )

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Greenhouse slug.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Silverfish.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Tree of Heaven. Another top ten species! My favorite urban tree, and one of the reasons I started writing about urban nature.

By our last day on Kauai, we had driven as far up the east coast road as you can, all the way to the end of the road that goes into the canyon, and almost all the way up the west coast road. The west coast road peters out in a scrubland near a military base. The last stores and stuff are miles behind, and the road just continues up into this weird dense vegetation, former sugar cane fields that have turned into unlovely tangles. It felt very much like the set-up for a horror movie. All we would need is for the car to break down, then we would have to survive in the thickets (we would have needed about 4 other people with us, so that we could get picked off one by one).

We knew that there was a beach up there somewhere, the last accessible place on the road before the Na Pali coast. We found the turn-off for it and went away. The road gave way to a packed sand trail, wide enough for cars, but so rutted and textured that an atv would have been a better choice than our rented Corolla. I wouldn't have thought it was a place we were supposed to be at all, except that there was a fair amount of traffic on it. I tried to steer around the biggest potholes, accelerating to 10 or 15 mph when we found smooth patches, but most of it was very rough going.

We kept seeing clearings in the vegetation, thinking, "Okay, there's the beach, right around the next bend," but the road kept on. Several times I thought we should probably turn around, before we got stuck out there. After about a half hour of slow driving on five miles of bad road, we got to the destination. A little park bathroom building and a handful of cars marked the parking area. I got out and immediately noticed that the car had lost a hubcap on the bumpy road. Dad and I discussed how much the rental car company would charge us for it, and we agreed that after we went over to the beach, we should probably make an effort to find it. A quick trip to the bathroom to relieve a bumped up bladder, and then we headed over a sandy ridge to the sound of the ocean.

The conditions weren't right to make the sands bark, but that's okay. I'd seen a lot of sandy beaches that week, but nothing quite like this. ( a )

They're much bigger and ganglier than this now.