Today in My History

2000:  The Family Vacation
2001:  'Tis the Season
2002:  Too Mean to Die
2003:  A Bit of Kryptonite
2004:  Aussie News
2005:  Why I'll Never Make It in Photojournalism
2006:  Kakeeroo and Kartudus
2007:  Heroes
2008:  It Seems So Long

BITTER HACK
Rose Colored Glass

Books Read in 2009
 
Updated: 6/3
"Blood Work"

Ned's Video with excerpts from the FTS picnic

and on You Tube

Look at these videos!
Wallace & Gromit--Matter of Loaf or Death
ACLU responds to Prop 8
Former Interrogator refutes Cheney on torture
Alexandra Billings' Bea Arthur Story
One Voice, One Messsage
Waterboarding

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New on My

The Paul Picnic

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Mirror Site, for RSS feed:
Airy Persiflage

Bev's 65 x 365

 

 

CRUEL SUMMER

3 June 2009

With all the regular season television shows now either in reruns or off until God knows when (24 won't be back until next year, nor will Lost...and who knows about Desperate Housewives?), it's slim pickings for a TV addict at night.  It's really pathetic when you find that you're counting the days until the start of I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here and wondering who is going to win Top Groomer on Animal Planet.

(Yes, I'm really THAT pathetic.  I planned to watch I'm a Celebrity just to watch the return of American Idol's Sanjaya....

...and I couldn't in my wildest dreams, even in desperation, see myself watching it regularly, but then found (most of) those celebrities so ridiculously annoying that I got hooked, at least for one more episode.  What the hell is The Hills anyway and why would anybody watch Heidi and Spencer do anything?)

(Not that I think anybody reading this -- except possibly Ned -- watched this stupid show, but FWIW, I think the two spoiled brats are crazy like foxes and playing this thing to the hilt for ratings)

However, there are some up sides to the dearth of quality prime time television shows...it's time to reacquaint myself with nature.

Quite by accident, I stumbled upon the last two episodes (of five) of Nature's Most Amazing Events on the Discovery Channel last night and sat here mesmerized for two hours.  Lemme tell ya -- if you think man has dominion over beasts, or that man is the only "intelligent" being in God's universe, just see if you can find this series being replayed and watch it.  If you are not a regular viewer of nature videos, this will make you marvel at all of the beasts around us, from the smallest speck of sea life to the largest mammals.

Anybody watching the video of a mother seal trying to lift her dead baby, holding it in her mouth over and over again and then crying, and then picking it up again and trying again, or watching the reaction of elephants to the death of one of their own will never again say that animals don't feel the same emotions that humans do.

The scenes of the blossoming of the arctic spring are amazing, how everything works together to continue the species.  Watching the murs (birds) corral herring into a ball and push them to the top of the water where the gulls can get them, and the gulls and murs keeping the herring into a ball that the whales devour was incredible...and later, watching humpback whales work in groups to form a bubble "net" around herring and then, when the fish were frenzied by the increasingly loud whale sounds and not able to leave the surrounding bubbles, a whole pod of whales leaping up like a bunch of synchronized swimmers to swallow the fish...well, it is just breathtaking.  (See embedded video as Photo of the Day -- someone else's video, not from the TV special.)

The photography is incredible...and be sure to stick around for the "how they did it" clips and watch how the shot of the whale eating a ball of herring got on film.  Those photographers deserve some sort of medal for hazard pay!

PHOTO OF THE DAY

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MILES TO NOWHERE:  111 miles