Gray Bird

As I mentioned back in August, this year’s crop of Cardinals includes one that is gray. 

It was then, and it still is today, and it still manages to evade getting photographed.  I watched it on the feeder for several minutes this morning, and of course the camera was in the office at the far end of the house.

I’m assuming it’s female since all the young males are mostly red by now, but it doesn’t look much like its sisters either.  It is the right shape and size, and the other Cardinals accept it as one of their own, but where they are tan to reddish brown, it is pale gray to almost black. 

It has a slight rose blush to its beak, and when the light is right, you can see a hint of red in the tail feathers on the underside of its tail.  Otherwise, it looks for all the world like a charcoal drawing of a Cardinal from some ornithologist’s sketchbook.

 

Cicadas

After life underground – most of it as a big fat grub worm – Cicadas are popping up all over the Boggy Thicket.  The nymphs look like a big wingless bug, and they make their way up a tree trunk or the wall of the house.  Once there, they sit until the outer shell splits and the adult Cicada emerges.  That’s what is supposed to happen, but at our home, only a tiny fraction of them make it to the wall. 

That’s because they are delicious! – just ask our two miniature dachshunds. 

Tinker and Dusty have been scarfing up Cicadas constantly for the past week.  Apparently, they can hear them digging or smell them underground, because they don’t always wait for the bugs to emerge. Our pups have dug dozens of little holes to get to the bugs while they’re still underground.

Tinker gobbles them down immediately, but Dusty, the more finicky eater, will play with them for a while first.  She picks them up, drops them, rolls them around with her paws and eventually eats them.  Apparently Cicada legs tickle the roof of her mouth, because she will only pick them up to eat them when they are right-side up. 

 

Safe Drivers

Ask just about anyone who has ever been behind the wheel, and they will probably tell you that they are the safest driver on the road, and that guy in the next lane is probably the worst.  Statistics, and common sense, prove that is not true.

Allstate Insurance has just released their tenth annual Best Driver Report.  In reviewing millions of claims, and taking into account city density, population and weather, researchers compiled a comprehensive list of cities that hold the country’s best and worst drivers.

According to the Good Hands people, drivers Ft. Collins, Colorado are the best in the country are the best in the country – 29.6% less likely to be involved in an accident than the national average.

Other cities in the top five were Brownsville, Texas; Boise, Idaho; Kansas City, Kansas; and Huntsville, Alabama.

Most likely to be in a wreck were drivers in  Worcester, Massachusetts, who are involved in a collision, on average, once every 4.3 years.  Boston isn’t far behind its neighbor to the north. It’s the most densely populated city in the Top 5, and motorists there are involved in a collision on average once every 4.4 years. Washington D.C. follows behind Boston, and all of the worst five are  older cities on the East Coast.

The frequency of crashes doesn’t necessarily correlate with danger. Drivers in Washington D.C. had a fatality rate of 2.37 deaths per 100,000 people, and that’s the safest rate in the nation.

Just A Thought

Nothing new to report today, so just a passing thought -

Have you ever wondered how any democratic form of government could possibly be successful when half the population is of below average intelligence?

# Gibraltar

It has been two years since scientists discovered the pattern above carved into the wall of  Gorham’s Cave on the shoreline in Gibraltar, but it was just made public yesterday. 

Archaeologists have determined that the carving, approximately 39,000 years old, is the work of one of the Neanderthals who lived in that area from about 200,000 to 30,000 years ago. They have also proved that it wasn’t made by accident – carving this with stone tools would have taken hours of painstaking effort.  "This was intentional — this was not somebody doodling or scratching on the surface," said study researcher Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum.

Why the Neanderthal disappeared has been a mystery, but it has long been assumed that they were not as intelligent as Homo Sapiens and couldn’t compete.  Recent discoveries seem to call that theory into question as we learn that they were more like modern humans than previously thought.  It’s been found that Neanderthals buried their dead, for example, and they used pigments and feathers to decorate their bodies.

No one knows the significance of the carving – what it represents or what it was for – but there is lots of speculation.  Was it a religious symbol, a map, or abstract art? 

We may never know for sure.

I think it proves that  those stupid Neanderthals invented Tic-Tac-Toe, or maybe even Twitter.

J J $$$$

Everybody who knows anything about football has been saying that J.J. Watt, stuck in the terms of his rookie contract, was the most underpaid player in football.  Today, Number 99, who,has proved to be the best defensive player in the game, will become the highest paid defensive player in NFL history.

Watt, who was voted NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 2012, and has become one of the most popular players in Houston football history,  had no real leverage to negotiate.  He had two years left on his contract, and the Texans could have used the franchise tag on him after that. They say they redid his deal because he’s a great player who outplayed his original contract.

Texans general manager Rick Smith does not do contract negotiations during the regular season because he feels they are too big of a distraction, so team management and Watt’s agent, Tom Condon, worked all day and into the night to reach an agreement. 

Details are supposed to be announced at a press conference today, but the dollar amounts are pretty sweet.  Watt will be a Texan through 2021, and the new contract will pay him $100 million, with almost $52 million of that guaranteed.

Read at Your Own Peril

“The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.”

These words open (they are actually the second sentence of) the first and last pages of each of the books in  the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy. 

Of course, I’m only assuming that they appear in the third book, and that is the problem.

After seeing an offer on Amazon.com to pre-order Doors of Stone, the third and final book in the series (with a publication date of mid-October) I was finally ready to tell you to beg, borrow or buy, but for goodness sake read Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, the first two novels in the series by Patrick Rothfuss. 

Today, that page  no longer appears on the Amazon website, and speculation on the web is that  actual publication of that final book might not happen this year, or even in 2015. 

One writer, supposedly in a position to know, claims that the entire trilogy was written before the release of Name of the Wind in 2007, and that Rothfuss is merely editing, tweaking, and refusing to release Doors until he’s satisfied that he got it right. The author’s own blog seems to support that – in an interview, he says “When I finally finished, I looked back and realized I had a trilogy's worth of material.” Both his website and his blog mention the book but give no real answer as to when it will become available.

I fell in love with Name of the Wind ,  It is easily the best book of this genre I’ve ever read. Having just completed it for the 4th time, I can confirm that this is one of those books that just keeps getting better.  You can’t help becoming immediately invested in the main character.  It is a delightful tale told with some of the most elegant prose I’ve ever read.  I would say that it is poetic, but the protagonist, like his father before him, considers poets to be unfortunate creatures who lack the talent for music.

The Wise Man’s Fear continues the story, and is just as compelling.  It has been around since 2011, when it was #1 on the New York Times best seller list.  That’s long enough for readers to be suffering from severe symptoms of withdrawal. 

I would love to recommend the  Kingkiller Chronicle series, but I won’t.  In good conscience, I can not.  They – the first two - are wonderful books, but I can only tell you to read them at your own risk.