1972 Soviet postage stamp commemorating the Mars 2 probe

worth a read

Mars For The Rest of Us — a weekly-or-more deep dive on the technical side of Mars exploration: rocket propulsion, microbiology, mission architecture, and everything in between. Written by Maciej Ceglowski.

Read it on Substack →

Dead Programmer's Cafe

Tag: Zoology

  • Extraordinary Pigeons

    The author and photographer who opened a glorious window into the world of exotic birds with his hugely successful Extraordinary Chickens and its well-received follow-up, Extraordinary Pheasants, continues his startling photographic exploration with another singular and charming book. The striking images in Stephen Green-Armytage’s first book showed that “the world of chickens is a world of wonders” (New York Times Book Review). Now this arresting new volume-a look at pigeon breeds from around the world-captures as we have never seen before the eccentric and often surprising features of these amazing creatures.

    Pigeons of all sizes, shapes, and colors parade through these pages-from the Volga Tumbler Pigeons to the Philippine Bleeding Heart Doves (doves are actually pigeons, just small ones), from the flamboyant Jacobins who wear their lavish feathers like a boa, and the Pouters who puff out their chests to absurd proportions, to the Trumpeters who sport floppy crowns reminiscent of moptop 1960s pop groups. The astonishing color photographs, enhanced by a brief, informative text, make this a perfect gift for birders, breeders, animal lovers, and photography buffs alike.

  • Subwaycat

    When I lived in Odessa, Ukraine, I once encountered a most strange cat. Odessa used to have a huge open air book market, right in the middle of the city. Kind of like a much larger and organized version of the street booksellers in front of NYU. Me and my dad spent a lot of our time and money there. On one of our trips, my dad pointed out a cat sitting in a tree near the book market. On a number of our visits there that stretched over weeks and months, the cat was still there. Water and food dishes appeared there. Somebody told us that the cat apparently went a bit crazy and refused to leave the tree (even though it wasn’t a very high one). Kind hearted booksellers started to feed the cat. I am not sure exactly how long the cat stayed in the tree, or if he or she ever left it.

    New York has strange cats of its own. Subway cats. The most famous one of those, Schatzie the cat that lives in the Fulton Street station, according to Randy Kennedy’s book “Subwayland : Adventures in the World Beneath New York.” The mice and rat population must make living near the deadly third rail and moving trains possible for cats. Sadly, eating those rodents must be pretty dangerous too, because they are frequently poisoned.

    Well, I found a subway cat of my own under the platforms of the Kings Highway station.

    Actually I spotted two, a tabby and a tuxedo, but was able to take a picture only of the tabby. She sat there calmly, not bothered by my flash. I hope she’ll stay safe there.

  • What Good Is a Blog Without Cat Pictures?

    Tilde the Cat thinks she is people: today she reported for work in her own cubicle, just like her master.

  • Cubozoans

    “Box jellyfish, or cubozoans, are bizarre, highly poisonous predators (New Scientist, 8 November 2003, p 34). “These are fantastic creatures with 24 eyes, four parallel brains and 60 arseholes,” says Dan Nilsson, a vision expert from the University of Lund in Sweden.”

    So, cubozoans is another name for bubble-era web startups.

  • Mr Monk And The Mystery Of The Parrots

    The ubiquitous monk parrots live near the Brooklyn College power plant from the previous post. The grass near the athletic field is teeming with them. I wrote about the parrots before.

  • Nautical Nonsense

    This ad for a new jellyfish exhibit at Brooklyn Aquarium was on the side of a bus (and the bus was moving when I took the picture). I guess the blurb applies not only to jellyfish, but also to the graphic designer who masterfully placed the Pepsi logo in that corner.

  • Escape From Petland

    It’s well known that Disney is well known for popularizing certain animals. It actually benefits some of these animals, as for instance many kids would not let their fathers hunt “Bambi”. But if there is a potential for the animal to become a pet, then it’s a different story.

    My wife told me that there was a huge demand for spotted dogs after “1001 Dalmatians” hit the big screen. And apparently Dalmatians are not low maintenance pets. So after a while there was a whole surplus of abandoned Dalmatians in dog shelters.

    And now requests for the “Finding Nemo fish” are driving a pet store employee posting in nuts. Remember, saltwater fish are a maintenance nightmare (as the owners of the Amazing Netscape Fishcam which was once near the Tent of Doom would definitely tell you).

    In any case, there will me a massive number of clown fish deaths in the following months. This is doubly ironic because in the cartoon the fish wants to escape from an aquarium.

  • Did I Mention that Purple is the Official Brooklyn College Color?

    I wrote about Monk parakeets before.

    Well, it looks like the Brooklyn College Environmental Education Science Masters Program. members are involved in some cutting edge research:

    “On the athletic field we saw 5 birds perched on the lamp post on the right side. They were flying back and forth. While we watched their flight we viewed one of the birds relieving themselves. We approached the ramp and examined the droppings. We counted 11 droppings and saw a distinct color change in its appearance. This change was not the same as what we had previously viewed, it was purple in color.”

    “On East 23 and Avenue J we saw three birds eating acorns and making a lot of noise. “

    This reminded me:

  • Porgie and Bass

    Went fishing on Pastime Princess. This time, besides a single skate and a few cunners I caught no throwback fish. I did catch three fat porgies and half a dozen sea bass. The one tog that I caught was short (under 14 inches) :(

    What sucked, was that the captain had trouble positioning the ship over shipwrecks (that’s where all the fish are) all morning. Finally, in the very last hour he anchored the ship correctly and people were catching “double headers” (two fish at a time) , but then it was time to go.

    And now it’s time for a game show! Let’s play “What the heck is this fish?”

  • We’ll Take Your Money

    No, I am not talking about NYU here, even though “We’ll Take Your Money” is its unofficial motto. The official one is “Perstare et Praestare” – “To Persevere and Excel”. Yep, not PowerPoint. Excel.

    Hmm, I wonder what other interesting unofficial mottos other colleges have. Brooklyn College’s official motto is “Nil Sine Magno Labore” – “Nothing Without Great Effort”. I know that firsthand. This is especially true about registering for classes. There is no popular unofficial motto, but if there was one, it would probably be pretty profane.

    Cornell’s “Deus Et Humanitas” – “God and Humanity” is sometimes mistranslated as “God Went To Cornell”. And MIT’s “Mens et Manus” doesn’t mean “A man and his hand”. Well, what can expect from them, their mascot is a beaver.

    Whoops, I got sidetracked. I wanted to write about charities. You see, I use Yahoo!Shopping a lot. As you spend money, they give you points. You can get some crappy merchandise for those points or you can also donate the points to a charity from http://www.guidestar.org. There are 850,000 charities in their database. Pretty interesting. If you search, let’s say, for “goat”, you can find “American Dairy Goat Association”. Search for “butt” brings forth hilarious results, like
    “Friends of the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library”
    “Charles C. Butt Foundation”
    “HE Butt Foundation”
    “Hurl Butt Street School House, Inc.”
    and absolutely bizzare
    “AMERICAN LEGION SN345 COLE-OGLE-BUTT”

    And they all can take your money.

    Me? I am going to donate those points to my usual charity – The International Dark-Sky Association.

1972 Soviet postage stamp commemorating the Mars 2 probe

worth a read

Mars For The Rest of Us — a weekly-or-more deep dive on the technical side of Mars exploration: rocket propulsion, microbiology, mission architecture, and everything in between. Written by Maciej Ceglowski.

Read it on Substack →