View from my perch

Mindfulness book

I've recently read a book entitled Mindfulness by Harvard social-psychologist Ellen Langer. I also have it as an audio-book and am finishing listening to it as well. The book is not about mindfulness in the Buddhist sense, per se, although the concepts are related. Instead, the book is essentially about the fixed mindsets we tend to have and how to break out of them. More information about the book may be found via these links: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~langer/books2.html, and http://www.slackermanager.com/2007/10/how-to-manage-with-mindfulness.html.

For an example of this kind of mindfulness in action in the world of design, checkout the work of the folks at Ideo.

Real Pooh

In August 1914, a Canadian soldier and veterinarian named Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, en route to a training camp in Quebec, purchased a black bear cub in White River, Ontario, which he named Winnipeg. First a regimental mascot for Canadians training for wartime service, Winnie then became a star attraction at the London Zoo, and -- in capturing the heart of Christopher, son of A.A. Milne -- ultimately inspired one of the best-loved characters in children's literature.

I've just ordered a book, The Real Winnie: A One-of-a-Kind Bear, by Val Shushkewich (from Natural Heritage Books), which tells the story. I'm hoping for a fun and interesting read.

I came upon the Natural Heritage Books website in the course of searching for information about early passenger steamship transport in the Great Lakes. Really. The question I'd like to answer is: "Would it have been possible to travel from Chicago to Manitoulin Island by steamship in 1918?". "Winnie the Pooh" is a bit far afield!

South to the Pacific

I am reading David McCullough's book Brave Companions and just finished the chapter "Steam Road to El Dorado," about the building of the (first) trans-Panama railroad, begun in 1850 and completed in 1855.  The Panama Canal roughly follows the route of that railroad. Surprisingly, the route from the Atlantic to the Pacific is close to due south, since the isthmus tends east-west. The island of Barro Colorado lies within Lake Gatun, which forms part of the canal. Barro Colorado is where ornithologist Frank Chapman lived and worked and which is referred to in his books Autobiography of a Bird-Lover and My Tropical Air Castle.

Stalking the Water Ouzel

That's Ouzel, not Weasel.

A Water Ouzel is a bird, also known as American Dipper, Latin name Cinclus Mexicanus. I saw one for the first time today, near Forks, Washington. (Yes, I'm on "holiday", traveling in western Washington state.)

I thought of the name Water Ouzel -- instead of America Dipper -- because that is the name John Muir used for it in his writing about the bird which I recalled reading. That would be The Water Ouzel, Chapter 13 of Muir's The Mountains of California, those mountains being the place I naturally expected to see my first Water Ouzel.

Apparently "American Dipper" is the more common common name. To paraphrase Kenn Kaufman in Birds of North America, it is a "stubby gray bird which flies low over mountain streams, pauses to bob up and down on a rock, then jumps into the water, swimming and diving, then walking on the stream bottom." The one I saw was finding plenty to eat in its aquatic foraging.

The Cairngorms, Chris, Lana, and the Keystone Cops

The Cairngorms

The Cairngorms National Park, the largest in the UK, is in Scotland. It came to my notice via a BBC News article relating the publication of a book entitled  The Nature of the Cairngorms, which among much else, documents  the discovery there (in 1997) of a new insect species. As article describes it: "The tiny black Christii fly measures just 2mm long and lives under the bark of dead aspen trees." 

It is surprising to me that new species are yet to be discovered in readily accessible places on  the planet.

The Park's website includes a brief video. It looks like a wonderful place to visit.

Images from the Edge

I came across the Images from the Edge website in some connection with The Cairngorms. It describes itself as "Pictures and stories of wild nature ... from northern and Baltic Europe." And they are beautiful pictures and interesting stories from an unfamiliar part of the world. You must free-register to use the "light-box" feature which allows e-mailing and saving of images.

Chris, Lana, and Keystone Cops

After finding the movie Falcon and the Snowman playing "on the telly" again recently -- and attempting to watch only parts I didn't remember from last time -- I realized that I had confused the names of the characters. I had thought of "Chris" as the name of the Falcon's girlfriend when in fact it is  the first name of the main character Christopher Boyce. The girlfriend's name is "Lana", played by the lovely actress Lori Singer.

Sean Penn (as Andrew Dalton Lee, aka "The Snowman") was less lovely, but brilliant in his performance.

Apparently I didn't remember the story very well. A little surf to Wikipedia lead to minor enlightenment, then on to the transcript from an in-prison interview of (the real) Boyce by one Ray Martin from the Australian version of "Sixty Minutes". Borrowing a little snippet:

    CHRISTOPHER BOYCE (on how he got some classified documents back into TRW): ... I went to the gardener and told him to go out to my car and bring in the potted plant and put it in the Security Area.

    RAY MARTIN: So the gardener brought back the documents?

    CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Yes.

    RAY MARTIN: Was there no trouble?

    CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Keystone cops.

    RAY MARTIN: Pardon?

    CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Keystone cops.

    RAY MARTIN: But was there no trouble, in terms of getting that out I mean, if you are really determined to take out one of these top secret documents, you can do it?

CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Yes.

The expression "Keystone cops" was clearly meaningless to the Australian interviewer. Trivia question then: what is the origin of that expression?

To Lick at last

We are back home to Orange today, Sunday the 11th, from our travels of the past week. Following is a re-cap to help us remember the trip.

We left on Saturday, June 5th, and spent the night with my parents in Lancaster.

On the drive to Lancaster, while on Hwy. 14, a hawk -- presumably a Red-tailed Hawk -- flew over the highway carrying a snake in its talons. Its grasp was at one end of the snake, leaving the perhaps two-foot length of it dangling below.

We left Lancaster on Sunday and arrived at San Luis Obispo that afternoon. Hwy. 138 westward to I-5, then north. On the way, we stopped briefly at Fort Tejon State Historic Park.

We drove from the I-5 westward toward the 101 on Hwy. 58. Many dead squirrels on the road and many Turkey Vultures as the clean-up crew.

At Santa Margarita we stopped and had lunch at a funky cafe called Solomon's Porch. Great food. And a very pretty young woman singing and playing her guitar. From Santa Margarita we proceeded to 101 and north to San Luis Obispo.

On Monday, I worked -- or attempted to work -- from the hotel via their Wireless high-speed Internet service.

Toward evening on Monday, we visited Montana de Oro State Park and Morro Bay. Drove right to the rock, which I had forgotten was possible.

On Tuesday, we drove from SLO up U.S. Hwy. 101 north to San Jose. On the way we stopped at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. It was a difficult place to find, but interesting and enjoyable once found. I don't specifically recall reading Steinbeck although I think I must have in school. (I have had The Log from the Sea of Cortez -- by Steinbeck and Ricketts -- on my reading list for a while.) There was more to see than we had time for.

We stayed at the Crowne Plaza hotel in downtown San Jose for three nights, Tuesday through
Thursday.

Our stay at the hotel coincided with a rugby-coaching conference sponsored at least in part by USA Rugby. I only know that rugby is something like American football.

On Wednesday we visited Lick Observatory. On a previous trip to the area we attempted with too little time and too little gas to make it up Mount Hamilton. This time, we made it, and enjoyed our visit.

I have had a long-standing interest in astronomy, and lately especially in the early history of its pursuit in the U.S. As mentioned in a previous post, I had been reading about Percival Lowell and his observatory at Flagstaff. In conjunction with the Lick visit, I have been reading James Lick's Monument: the Saga of Captain Richard Floyd and the Building of the Lick Observatory, by Helen Wright (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Other related books of interest are: Eye on the Sky: Lick Observatory's First Century, by Osterbrock, Unruh and Gustafson (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988), and The Generous Miser: the Story of James Lick of California, by Rosemary Lick (The Ward Ritchie Press, 1967).

On Thursday, we visited the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and Planetarium in San Jose. The museum (borrowing from the website), architecturally inspired by the Temple of Amon at Karnak, houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on exhibit in the western United States -- including objects from pre-dynastic times through Egypt's early Islamic era. A fascinating place, located in beautiful Rosicrucian Park. The facilities are associated with the Rosicrucian Order AMORC.

On Friday, we began our return trip, spending the night at Paso Robles.

On Saturday, we drove back to my parents' place in Lancaster, this time using Hwy. 46 to go between the 101 and I-5, then again, Hwy. 138 from I-5 to Hwy 14.

No canal zone

Percival Lowell, founded Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona in 1894. He is famed for "seeing" canals on Mars. He was not the first, but he became the best know and, seemingly the most strident advocate at the time of the belief that they were artificially created. I have been reading a book about the history of Mars observations. The author of that book concludes that Lowell's canals were illusory. His mind made what he mostly glimpsed indistinctly fit the Martian-made canals he believed were there.

On this topic I have recently read The Planet Mars: A History of Observation & Discovery by William Sheehan -- up to the chapter on Mariner 9, which changed everything. I heartily recommend the book and may check out others written by Sheehan. Very well written.

I began reading a book entitled Lowell and Mars by William Graves Hoyt but found it goes into a more in-depth treatment of Lowell than I wanted at the time and abandoned it for the aforementioned Planet Mars.

Lowell's vision of an inhabited Mars served as an inspiration to H.G. Wells to write War of the Worlds. A wonderful book on the earlier history of science fiction is Brian Aldiss' Billion Year Spree.

Not so bright

Our Moon -- when "full" -- has always looked pretty bright to me. But it turns out that -- in relative terms -- the Moon is not so bright. Flipping through Pale Blue Dot a few days ago, I came across a montage of pictures taken by the Galileo spacecraft showing both Earth and the Moon as they would appear from the same distance. The Moon appeared notably darker than the Earth on average. In fact, the average surface reflectivity (known as the albedo) of Earth is roughly four times greater than that of the Moon. For Earth, clouds -- being highly reflective -- contribute markedly towards the average reflectivity.

This could easily be expanded and segway into a discussion of "earth-shine"; how it is observed, relates to albedo, and may be applicable to climate monitoring. Perhaps more on that later.

Searching the web for "albedo Moon Earth" will yield links to sources of more details.

---

Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. New York: Random House, 1994.

Torreys

That's right, Torreys, not Tories.

In my recent reading I've encountered the names of two men named Torrey, Bradford and John.

Bradford Torrey (1843-1912) was a nature writer and editor of the writings of Thoreau. See Bradford Torrey for more information. A true biography of Bradford Torrey seems not to exist.

John Torrey (1796-1873) was a botanist and chemist known for his extensive studies of North American flora. My familiarity with his name comes chiefly from his mention in Audubon to Xantus: The Lives of Those Commemorated in North American Bird Names, by Mearns and Mearns.

Torrey Pines State Reserve, north of San Diego, is named for the Torrey Pine tree, which was named for John Torrey.

Bradford was born at Weymouth, Massachusetts, while John was born (and died) at New York City. Bradford died at Santa Barbara in 1912, after living as a reclusive in a hotel. His burial location seems to be unknown.

As far as I can tell, these Torreys were not closely related.