Friday Hodgepodge
Friday, April 03, 2020
Four Things
Four things I learned about as a result of the epidemic, but which aren't about the epidemic...
1. NASA at Home looks to be a fantastic site for those who have kids, or are kids at heart. Embedded below, for example, is a video about how to make a cloud in a bottle.
2. The Vienna Opera has opened its archive for free streaming. I haven't tried this myself so far, but the landing page notes that performances will be available for streaming for up to 72 hours. The thread about this at Hacker News mentions several other similar sites.
3. Julio's Seasoned Corn Chips, which I'd somehow never heard of before, were the only available brand of tortilla chips the last time I went shopping. My son likes "Daddy chips" and I was out.
He didn't like them, but I sure do!
Coincidentally, on the same day I blogged about H-E-B's heroic efforts to stock their shelves during the pandemic, I looked up the brand -- and discovered that H-E-B stocks their shelves with them:
Julio's Corn Chips are legend in these parts, and can be found on shelves of every H-E-B Grocery Store. Seasoned with a Tex-Mex mix of garlic, paprika, cumin, and lime, these 100% stone ground corn chips are robust without being overdone. Enjoy this classic by itself or with Julio's hot or mild home-style salsa for a savory snack anytime.I was a little disappointed to learn that their presence at a Jacksonville Walmart may have been fluke, but I'll keep an eye out for them in the future, anyway.
4. The Biodiversity Heritage Library has recently released over 150,000 illustrations into the public domain:
The collections are a feast to the eye. Among them, you'll find a digitized copy of Joseph Wolf's 19th-century book Zoological Sketches, containing about 100 lithographs depicting wild animals in London's Regent's Park. You'll also find watercolors depicting flowers indigenous to the Hawaiian islands, and an 1833 DIY Taxidermist's Manual. [links omitted]The environmentalist slant of the rest of the article tempts me to joke about taking up taxidermy with the kids while we're all home together...
-- CAV
6 comments:
Yo, Gus, along the same lines of finds provoked by but not directly about coronavirus, here's a link to download a free book (in PDF) on historical debates over the Black Death--752 pages that historians, medical people, and perhaps few others will find at all interesting, but that I have to say I'm eager to get into.
Wow. I did not realize there was any debate at all about what the disease was...
Taxidermy is hard to get into--expensive, lots of chemicals and sewing, etc.
Collecting bones, however, is fairly easy. You can find them in any wooded area. You can also strip flesh off of roadkill in a variety of ways. Fair warning, most are smelly--humans are hard-wired to dislike the smell of rotting flesh--but if you can get past that it's a pleasant and potentially useful passtime. It's called masceration, and is something paleontologists and biologists do all the time. Collections from private bone collectors have been used for centuries to assist in all sorts of biological investigations, from species identification to isotopic investigations.
You can also preserve small critters. My son recently found a half-rotten lizard and brought it to me (I've got a background in paleontology, so this isn't as weird as it sounds!). We're attempting to dry it. This child also has a collection of snake skins, some found around the house and some given to him by a zoo volunteer who saw how excited he was to learn about snakes. I keep a packet or two of those silica desiccant packets in the jar with them.
You can also get owl pellets (regurgitated bones and fur) commercially. It's really interesting to see what they ate, and to see the condition of the skulls and bones. You can usually find a whole skeleton or two in one pellet.
Then there's your standard bug collection and leaf collection, but what fun are those? :D
And yes, my wife has objected to these hobbies. My response has been, and remains, she knew who she married.
Dinwar,
My wife was a bug collector. If there was ever any argument between us, it would more likely be whether I could make a gumbo out of the carcass or she could preserve it. (Just kidding. Even I have my limits.)
The kids went to a science summer camp last year and had great fun with owl pellets.
This weekend, I am hoping to get a small container garden going with the kids.
Gus
Yo, Gus, an amusing note. I mentioned [mumble mumble search around...] about 8 months ago that my grandson hid a coaster of my wife's. Well, I'm pleased to say we found it today, stashed for super-safe keeping in one of the books on her desk, as we were doing super-duper spring cleaning.
I like the fact that it was on her desk the whole time.
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