I keep thinking I see a Bald Eagle from time to time around here, but it doesn't really fit the landscape. There is a small river with some fish in the area I normally think I see it, but it doesn't seem like enough in my mind for and eagle. I can't ever get close enough and from the looks of various pictures it's probably a vulture. Nice picture.

 

The spring melt is here.


Just a little cap of snow is left on the hills.

 

A common grackle that clearly would not hesitate to eat any one of us if he didn't expect to die in the attempt. I am glad I am not someone smaller than he†‡.

† I suddenly couldn't bring myself to type "him" there, though that is perfectly good and common usage it just felt wrong to go against the logic of the language.

‡ Just to be clear, that's a "dagger" up there despite the appearance similar to a particular symbol commonly seen in the US, everywhere. This one is a "double dagger". In a more traditional font, they look just like their names.

​

 

A common grackle

Grackles are common in Texas, I've been hearing their calls all my life, but I haven't known the name for them since I was a kid. You unlocked a memory with this one.

I've always had issues with sensory overload but as a kid I didn't handle it as well. I was maybe 6 or 7? My aunt took me with her running errands and she had to stop by the county courthouse for something. When I opened the car door I was immersed in a mind-wiping cacophony of shrill noises. Thousands of them were in the low branches of the big oak trees surrounding the courthouse. I just locked up, half way out of the door. My aunt came around the car and started saying something I couldn't process, and eventually (gently) pulled me out of the car and escorted me inside. Once inside she repeated herself, "that's just grackles, honey. They can't hurt you. No need to be scared." She assumed I was terrified of them. That wasn't it; I couldn't articulate it then, but I can now. It wasn't that I was scared, it was more like they were jamming a toothpick into my reset button hole at a frequency several times faster than my boot-up time.

So, that day I learned their name and apparently only knew it for that day. 30 years later I learned it again.

 

I've always had issues with sensory overload but as a kid I didn't handle it as well.

I also have this problem but for me it seems to have been milder as a child. Two of our sons—the first and fifth (oldest and youngest of six)—suffer from it to a potentially debilitating degree, the oldest more than the youngest.

I’ve observed that quiet, that is something akin to silence, is a luxury. It is an artifact, nature isn’t silent. In the cities silence is rare and expensive because the overall noise of civilization in the cities is prodigious. To escape it, you need insulation or distance. Each costs a lot.

Living in a cheap apartment near the ground is going to expose you to a lot of noise. A more substantial apartment will cost you a lot more since it requires thicker walls and better windows, and moving up away from the noise reaches its pinnacle in the high rise penthouse. So, the rich get to have quiet and the further down the socioeconomic ladder you go the closer you get to the noise with less and less protection from it.

Even in the wild it is noisy. Birds and other animals, trees, moving water, wind—it can be very noisy, But with the possible exception of an appropriate cave* it will never be as quiet as a highrise penthouse in any of the great cities. That‘s because silence is manufactured, it is an artifact and maybe that‘s because it is something humans need, like bread or art.

This is not to say that the sounds of nature can‘t be soothing or pleasing. In its way, the sound of rushing water is a kind of silence. It is white noise and masks sounds your brain can‘t otherwise ignore. The bird song can be pleasurable (though not the dawn chorus when the redwings, starlings, and grackles have rolled into town. Throw in a couple of catbirds and mockingbirds and you‘ve got auditory chaos not the music of “nature”.

So, I value the (approximated) silence my location and house frequently afford me. Quiet time in the house is ~32dBA ±2dB, which is not silence but it’s very quite, and it is low enough that hearing protectors (or ear defenders for my mates in the UK) or noise cancelling headphones just running the noise cancelling can make it truly silent. Though the experience of covered ears isn’t the same as the pressure-relieved experience of something like an anechoic chamber.

—
* I might have just understood for the first time why contemplative spiritual figures were so attracted to cave dwelling.

 

The four peregrine falcon chicks will be banded today, May 18th, around 1:00pm EDT, 1700 UTC.

Ok, gang, today some humans will come and take you inside the hotel, give you a health checkup, a name and an ankle bracelet. Don't be afraid and I'll see you back on our ledge later with a nice freshly caught dinner.



If you wish to watch a live stream of a member of the Canadian Peregine Foundation rappel from the rooftop of the Hamilton Sheraton Hotel, go to the FaceBook link posted below.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hamiltonfalconwatch/

Hamilton Community Peregrine Project

 

 

Team Lead/Lead Programmer: https://tms.ogpc.info/Games/Details/864f28f5-f6c8-4a28-b901-b999fdcf37a8

 

This double rainbow was my reward for staying outside working through the rain.

View attachment 20230520_194710.jpg

Just before it disappeared entirely, the setting sun came and added some color.

View attachment 20230520_200516.jpg

EDIT: apparently the server likes my pictures enough to allow upload, but not enough to embed them on the page. These were shot in panoramic mode on my phone; maybe it doesn't know what to do with the nonstandard height & width? You can see them by clicking on them though.

 

 

"Have smartphones replaced cameras?"

No. First, let me acknowledge that they have certainly almost completely replaced point-and-shoot cameras. But that's a market segment. They haven't and can't replace large sensor interchangeable lens cameras whether DSLR or mirrorless. (As an aside, mirrorless will replace DSLRs and not very long from now.)

The graph is also very misleading. A smartphone does have a camera in it, but it isn't a camera. So the two plots are not commensurate. As a result it greatly overstates the situation. The two should be scaled using some reasonable factor if possible.

The point that phone cameras have replaced the point and shoot is a real one, but the generalization and presentation are misleading. In fact they didn't even show the introduction of and changes to the point-and-shoots which would be appropriate.

Right now, there really is no prospect that smartphones will replace the large sensor cameras. But with computational photography, it seems possible that some day they could. Except, if you can use computational photography with small sensors to get quality like single large sensors and interchangeable optics, then you can apply those same techniques to the larger sensors and lenses and...

Some cameras currently not threatened by the phone cameras will almost certainly become obsoleted by future versions, but others just can't be. The only way I see such a thing happening is if people just stop caring about images that are not on small screens.

 

Mind and body.
https://flic.kr/p/2oCJ5jA https://flic.kr/p/2oCEi7q

 

Visiting the ol' alma mater. Daughter got the admissions tour. What fun!

 

Party central for 4 years:

 

Visiting the ol' alma mater. Daughter got the admissions tour. What fun!

View attachment 294991

Be careful, they might try to brainwash her.

 

Be careful, they might try to brainwash her.

I got to her first.

 

I got to her first.

Enjoy.

 

What frosts my bagel: they've eliminated the SAT/ACT testing requirement.

I suppose they just choose at random.

 

I love my lake early in the morning when the air is still. Night mode, break of dawn, in the Upside-Down:

 

The wife got very lucky at the local tribal casino. We won a $1000 random prize and was comp'd a room for the night.


A fantastic view of Mt Saint Helens in the distance and I-5.