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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| An important breakthrough in science and pity from Popular Science: The phrase “the world’s smallest violin” is dripping with sarcasm and reserved for disdain, but for some researchers it’s a mark of pride. Thanks to the latest nanotechnology tools, a team at the United Kingdom’s Loughborough University recently crafted what is literally the world’s smallest violin. Okay. I get how people think they can use "literally" for emphasis, or to really mean "not literally." I don't like it, but I get it. What I won't abide is deliberately confusing an image of a thing for the thing itself. Cela n'est pas un violon.  Don’t expect to hear any scaled down sonatas, however. In this case, engineers designed a nanoscale image of a violin instead of a playable instrument. I didn't do the math, but I suspect that if it were real and could be played (one wonders where they'd get the hair for the bow, not to mention what fingers would dance upon the neck), the sound would be way too high-frequency for humans to hear. The rest of the article goes into more detail about the image of the violin, why they'd do such a thing, and its implications for computer science or whatever. Don't get me wrong; it's pretty cool, but a bit outside my range. But we all know why they chose a violin instead of, say, a guitar, or a cat: so they could say (however wrongly) that there exists a world's smallest violin, and it's playing just for you. |
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Nonetheless, I was only peripherally aware of René Magritte and his painting so thank you for, once again, expanding my limited exposure to the world. 
