Happy Love Day!
Bring Me a Higher Love:
The Inuits (you may know them as Eskimos) have many words for snow- given their depth of experience with the subject.
In the same vein, the ancient Greeks hade many words for love, and today while we celebrate the romantic kind- replete with roses, chocolates and valentines- I would like to do a shout out to another kind of love- love of humanity!
For a change, I agree with popular culture assessments and with Time magazine selecting him as Person of the Year.
Check this out:
Optical illusions by Russian painter Oleg Shuplyak:
This is genius!
This week in La Jolla:
Awesome wildlife pics right in our backyard and hidden in plain sight
Underwater and hunting for fish, the Brandt’s Cormorant moves like a snake. The reptilian analogy is not misplaced since it’s ancestors were closely related to T-Rex (like all birds, truth be told). This fellow is in mating plumage doing his best to catch the eye of an interested party. It’s now thought that the big dinosaurs may also have sported vibrant colors to attract mates. Some had feathers too. We’ll have to wait until some paleontologist finds intact DNA in a Tyrannosaur fossil and we resurrect one.
Another living dinosaur. I’ve gone in close here so we can make out the pale blue eyes of the Brown Pelican. During the DDT years (50s through 70s) this bird flew perilously close to extinction. It has made a marvelous recovery and its numbers are soaring, although it’s under stress at the moment from a fairly severe sardine and anchovy shortage. There is some chance that the same persistent high pressure system that is causing California’s drought is also forcing the fish elsewhere. The data is preliminary, but CA could be in for a rough ride if history repeats itself in the form of a phenomenon called the pacific decadal oscillation. Yes, they can shift the weather for decades.
Hard to miss the aesthetic quality of a California Sea Lion. Evolutionary forces made this creature sleek and highly maneuverable underwater. Different than seals because of features like the ear flap (quite visible in this shot), sea lions are sometimes called eared seals. The males can get up to 8 feet and over 600 pounds. Females, like this beauty with her pup, come in at about 220 pounds. Sea lions can dive to a depth of 1,000 feet. In 2012 researchers discovered that they collapse their lungs at around 600 feet to store air in the upper passages and to stave off decompression sickness after ascent.
The more you see, the more you’ll look.
Thanks this week to Ken D, Larry H and Charles S.
Love and Happiness!
Neville
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
Greek Proverb
Happy Soul Food Friday! 