I was talking to my dad about Flickr’s many bird-oriented photo pools, and he asked me to point him to them. He’s always been a birder, from back in his duck-hunting days to his current conservationist outlook. My sister got infected with the birdwatching bug, as well, and they go off to the many local bird spotting spots together. It’s fun to go with them, and see them geek out about which species is which.

So anyway. Here are the groups I was telling you about, dad:

Field Guide: Birds of the World gives you enough for an ID.

Best of the Birds lets you post one bird picture, hopefully your best. As you take better ones, you delete your old entry and add the new one.

Your Best Bird Picture: Same deal.

Birds of Prey features lovely raptors and owls, and also lengthly discussions about which birds count as ‘birds of prey.‘

And: Here’s a really nice hummingbird shot, and the amazing hoopoe.

AmericanFrontiers, a border-to-border trek exclusively through public lands.

Two teams, one starting at Glacier NP, and the other in the Gila NF. They eventually met up at Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, UT.

It wasn’t just hiking. Horseback riding and 4x4s and boats and lots of corporate sponsorship. Cheaters.

I got to them through publiclands.org, looking for info on Umpqua NF.

Yesterday: A trip to ‘the other ANWR,’ Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.

It’s quite the cool place if you’re into looking at birds. It’s got all the standard Texas Gulf Coast shorebirds, and a notable non-standard exception:

That’s a Whooping Crane, one of the rarest bird species you can still find. Any rarer and there wouldn’t be any. The population is on the rise, however, and that’s good news if you’re one of the real endangered species: People who care.

Anyway. That bird and two other whoopers came down on the beach near where I was taking pictures. I got some shots, and then they flew away.

That’s an eight foot wingspan.

I took lots of other pix of birds, such as this Green Kingfisher, presented here as a contrast in size. He’s about 4 inches tall. He’s going to dive-bomb right off that branch and into the pond below to catch a fish.

Over on the flickr account, I posted a re-tweak of an image I’ve posted here before. Here’s the new version:

Oddly, I can’t seem to find the old one here on Xanga.

Looking around on the web for something to put in the description field for the picture (which is of nuclear-powered heat-exchange airplane engines for really huge airplanes that were never built), I discovered a web site that attracted me instantly: The Bureau of Atomic Tourism. Now I want to go to all those places and experience the madness as firsthand as a tourist can experience it.

The proposed airplanes, by the way, were so huge that in order to be able to fly, they were designed without radiation shielding, meaning that whoever was piloting the thing would be exposed to the radiation from the on-board nuclear reactor. War makes people crazy.

I was browsing through houston.craiglist.org, and I found a listing for a job title at the Apple stores: Creative. You’re like the Genius, except you know how all the software works together, and how to accomplish things. You’re expected to know how to work current versions of major software packages, and then be enthusiastic about it in front of customers.

Anyway, the job listing is for an Apple store in Memorial City mall, which is about a mile away from where I’m sitting. And it just so happens that the other day I went to that mall and walked around a bit to reminisce about it it. However, I didn’t see an Apple store.

So off to Apple’s web site to see if it’s there, or if they’re just in the hiring phase. I couldn’t find out, because I couldn’t find the listing of retail stores. Being on dialup doesn’t help. O well.

But I noticed that they’re already advertising the new Macs with Intel processors. They have a ‘MacBook’ now. It’s not a PowerBook any more since there’s no PowerPC in it. But check this out: They say it’s 4x faster.

4x faster. If you’re one of the MacReligious, you know what a slap that is.

Recently, I’ve been researching regional magazines, to find out what kind of market they might be for stock photography. This all came about because my parents get Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine, Texas Highways, and Texas Co-Op Power. So I’m looking through their magazine basket, and it’s got a lot of outdoor photography from a variety of sources.

Anyway. The point here is that the rest of the country seems to not have the rich variety of local magazines as Texas does, especially when it comes to state government and public utility publications, like the ones that end up cluttering my parents’ coffee table. I keep searching, but nothing comes up. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places.

Arizona has Arizona Highways, which is pretty good, but I don’t have a lot of opportunity to take pictures in Arizona.

So imagine my delight to see Oregon Magazine in the search results… Only to discover that it’s just Some Guy With A Website who seems to have some connection to the Shiloh Inns motel chain. The lead article: AARP Is Just Another Liberal Front. The substance of the article, once you peel away the puffery, is that they named Harry Belafonte as Person of the Year, so therefore they’re a ‘liberal front.’ Hey, you know what? Harry Belafonte is old and he does a lot and he’s tremendously influential, so it makes sense that the AARP would honor him. If there were some crotchety old uber-conservative who was as influential, perhaps the AARP would honor them, too.

Oh well. I guess I won’t be selling any stock photos to Oregon Magazine.

And if any of my two remaining readers have any leads on regional magazines, especially ones put out by state governments to promote the region, please leave some info in the comments. Thanks.

Cities, a MUD-like web-based game. Severe time sink. Warning.

Update: No, seriously. Don’t start.

We’re about to go to war with Iran.

The rhetoric is taking us down that path, and I just want to revisit some of what I said about the run-up to Iraq, trying to get some perspective and learn a few things.

When George W. Bush announced that he promoted a policy of ‘regime change’ in Iraq, I knew we were going to invade. This is how the Bush administration operates; they decide something, and then they engage in some fake debate about it, and then they do it. They do their best to pretend to have considered the issue, but the fact is that they’ve already made up their mind. This is how I know we’re about to go to war with Iran.

Initially, I thought it was plausible that Hussein might have been developing WMD. But a cursory examination of how much money was flowing into Iraq showed me that the strategy of containment, while brutal to the Iraqi people, had effectively stopped weapons development. This guess was vindicated later; Bush had to adopt the vocabulary of ‘weapons-related program activities’ in order to pretend to declare victory. Those ‘weapons-related program activities’ included drawing bombs on coctail napkins. Iraq wasn’t a threat to the US, and had no way of becoming a direct threat to the US.

Which leads us to the next argument put forth: Iraq could send terrorists, perhaps even terrorists who have their own WMD. But of course this was stupid and silly, because terrorists hated Hussein, and Hussein hated terrorists. Hussein would never attack the US in such a way, because he couldn’t take credit for it. And the Islamist terrorists propped up as bugaboos for the American public hated Hussein because he was secular. In fact, Osama Bin Laden was reportedly very happy with the American invasion of Iraq, because it meant that Hussein was gone, and radical Islamism could begin to flourish.

And lo and behold none of these things turned out to be true. The Bush administration and assorted stenographers in the press advanced these ideas, but they’re all bullshit. They were propped up to justify what was already a fait accomplis. The Bush administration was going to invade, and even UN weapons inspectors couldn’t change that (Bush had the inspectors pulled out before they could reach a conclusion about Iraq’s weapons).

So here we are again. Iran is in the crosshairs, because they have nuclear weapons programs. Militarily, the US can very easily invade Iran. But we’re already unable to effectively occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran is much larger. As a military plan, it’s a bad one, especially because there will be no exit strategy.

What BushCo wants is to control the oil economy at the source. We’re invading and occupying OPEC nations. They even tried to get rid of Hugo Chavez, president of OPEC nation Venezuela. That’s what military action in Iran will really be about, just as it was in Iraq.

Back when wi-fi first came into being, there developed a phenomenon called ‘warchalking.’ The idea was that if you found a spot where you could steal someone’s wi-fi access, you’d mark the spot with a chalk diagram not unlike the brand in the above picture. It was a throwback to hobo signs which showed where to find a free meal, what streets not to walk down, and where it’s best to just not get off the train in the first place.

This picture was taken at a rest area on I-10 near Columbus. I find it kind of amazing that TX DOT is giving travellers another reason to make extended stays at rest areas. That said, I hope it catches on and becomes a trend.

The irony here is, of course, that branding cattle was a way to *prevent* rustling, rather than advertise it, so a ‘warbrand’ would be the opposite of the original intent.

Right around new year’s day, I said here on the ‘blog that 2006 would be the year to play to my strengths.

I have a list of what I think those strengths are, but I don’t feel like revealing it. Instead, I’m interested in the notion of how people get stratified into thinking that they’re doing the right thing. As in: You think that Attribute X is a strength, but it’s actually working against you. You’re pushing this attribute but no one’s recieving.

People move to Hollywood to become stars. People try things based on their dreams. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but the message is that you’re still supposed to try.

And I can agree with that. I think that part of being an integrated person is to at least try such a stunt, because regret is worse than defeat. I’m not moving to Hollywood, but I have plans.

Basically, the equation works out to risk versus organizational skills. What I want to do demands that I be organized, and not just a little bit but a whole hell of a lot. I’m not bad at coming up with organizational schemes, but I’m horrible at implementing them. Thus: Organization is not a strength, and it’s not a strength I can play to. But I have to play organization to my other strengths if I want it to work.

And getting back to Attribute X: I can push my own version of this, but no one will receive, unless I’m organized. Organization is the magic elixir that will make it work.