O greatest long distance earthly wanderers,
Travelling limits of seemingly limitless seas.
Superlative endurance, Olympians of the sky,
Extreme in size, Royal’s tip-to-tip 3.5 metres.
Hale wise airborne centurions!
Light as a feather, lifetime at sea,
Furthermost range, pure gliders, windiest oceans.
Lifting force to air resistance astoundingly 40:1.
One hundred and twenty-thousand kilometres annually,
Eleven million eight-hundred thousand kilometres lifespan!
Before year 2020, what does not kill me makes me stronger. After the year 2020, it mutates and tries again. Freedom in the Unites States means you can choose to die if you wish. You have the right to refuse to wear a mask, and the organizations that you visit have the right to refuse you entry into their property if you decline to wear said mask. The reason these organizations have the right to refuse your entry is because you do not have the right to infect other people. When your rights impose a risk to other citizens, it becomes a societal problem.
Historically, free speech in the United States has seen limitations. You cannot shout “fire” in a crowded theatre. Free speech ends when it threatens lives of other citizens. Citizens have been tried for manslaughter when they urged other citizens to kill themselves. The great thing about the United States is that you may listen and follow the advice, no matter how naïve, of other citizens. If that advice results in your demise, then the mistake is yours, a decision you are free to make.
You may believe that you have the right to consume intoxicants and operate a vehicle, but if your behavior threatens the safety of other citizens, that right impinges on other citizens who have the right to be protected from your behavior. As a citizen, you have the right to refuse vaccination, which in some cases, has cost people their lives. Social media has become saturated with uncredentialed self-proclaimed “experts” who have found numerous reasons why you shouldn’t be vaccinated. These experts have reasons too long to discuss in this essay. Statistically speaking, there is, and I will not deny it, a small amount of risk if you get vaccinated, since the vaccine has not been tested on millions of people, but that risk is very, very small.
Keep Reading
Welcome to Witsuwit’en territory!
Keepers of the great watershed Widzin Kwah,
Generations immemorial honouring yin tah, earth.
Land living, breathing beings, intelligent creatures,
Respect, understand, harmony, the natural world.
Mysterious adventurers, epic long-distance voyagers,
We landlubbers marvel at your Royal Highnesses.
Marbled gray, sleek tapered head, streamlined robust body,
A dozen knuckles supporting eighty thousand pounds,
Barnacles, sea lice, ecosystems within gray’s ecosystem. Hallelujah!
The “Alfred Burt Carols” are a marvelous collection of fifteen Christmas songs. They were written by Alfred S. Burt from 1942 and 1954 and annually distributed to friends as Christmas Cards. After learning about them in high school choir, my buddy Dave and I decided we would follow suit. We each wrote a little ditty, hand-copied ten or twelve copies, and mailed them out, vowing to continue to do so every year hence. I’ve lost touch with Dave, but I know I haven’t done it again since.
Keep Reading
O pinnacle of piscine evolution,
Pointed snout, plump middle, crescent caudal,
The ultimate predator, bluefin tuna.
Counter-shaded, dark topside, light below,
Blue, green, silver befitting only the regal.
Olympians inhaling ramjet oxygen-loaded seawater,
Travelling a distance equal to length each second.
Sampson-like heart 10X other’s size.
Gracefully cruising 46 knots, top-end 55 knots!
Night schooling, slower, musing, bunched.
MEXICO CITY – Our comrades, the bees, are intriguing wee creatures and vital to a healthy natural world.
Nobel laureate Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) was the first to discover that the elaborate language of honeybees revolves around complex dances. In addition to deciphering their communications, von Frisch was also able to train honeybees to arrive at feeding stations in three, four and five separate periods within 24 hours. The fact that bees possess a memory for time is astonishing.
Years later, my colleagues from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama showed that social bees have a bigger brain area for both learning and memory compared to solitary bees. And like people, bees show the effects of aging. For example, honeybees’ memories fade and their ability to learn decreases. One way we both can slow down aging is by getting restorative sleep.
Terrified Asian honeybees, just like us, other primates, birds and meerkats, shriek when faced with a life-threatening situation. When giant Asian hornets attack the hive, honeybees release a “rallying call for collective defence”. It eerily sounds like bloodcurdling human screams. When these colossal merciless hornets storm the colony, they feast on larvae, decapitate adult bees and feed severed body parts to their young.
Keep Reading
Like Tesla, Edison, Bell, Marconi and DaVinci, you have so soon after your too-early departure, become one of history’s great innovators. Unlike those other great minds, you changed the world – twice! Miles changed music twice and that is impressive, but you, you changed the entire world – twice. And while the introduction of the personal computer was ground-breaking and civilization-changing, it is the smart phone that will be your most enduring legacy. And I’ve got a bone to pick:
We are prisoners. Some succumb much more willingly than others, but willing or not, we are prisoners. We are now dependent upon these little monsters to get us where we’re going and remind us that we need to be there. We rely on them to do simple arithmetic, correct our spelling and grammar, and document our lives. We literally can’t get in the door to see our dentist without a flurry of intrusive text messages that require a response and often the completion of ill-formatted forms and questionnaires prior to entry to the sacred place. We simply – as the old ad used to claim – “don’t leave home without it”.
