While you were inside huddling from the cold, the New England Mid-Winter Surf Championships were taking place at Narragansett's Town Beach
There were also big wins from Cambridge and Boston residents.
In another sign that the Charles River is becoming healthier otters have been seen in the Charles River near Needham.
Iconic New England poet Robert Frost supported himself and his family by raising chickens in New Hampshire for a time and began to write stories about them
Above: One of Jim Clark's virtual videos of Frost reading "The Road Not Taken"
Beautiful circles of ice form in some rivers including the Charles. With warmer weather the river ice might break up and and reform with chances to see ice circle. Although rational theories have edged out aliens as explanations there still seems to be uncertainty about
The New England Cottontail, found in New Hampshire and Maine, is facing a range of problems including habitat loss and competition from the rival invasive species, the Eastern Cottontail.
The 41st Annual New England Mid-Winter Surfing Championships will take place on February 21st at the Narragansett Town Beach in Narragansett, Rhode Island
Bundle up to watch the surfers hit the waves and imagine you're in Hawaii.
Chewbacca throws out the first pitch at Fenway in 2005, part of GalacticBinder's Top Ten Star Wars Sports Crossovers.
Couldn't they do a better job of matching the head fur to the matted body outfit? The head looks like it just had a shampoo and blowdry and the body looks like the found it in a Lansdowne Street dumpster.
(via Metafilter) (Image: Jim Davis via GalacticBinder)
Adding to the the achievement of rescuing that US Air flight in New York is just how deadly birds can be to a jet. The most deadly took place at Logan when a flight hit a flock of starlings.
ExxonMobil Pipeline will pay $6 million for spilling 150,000 gallons of diesel into the Mystic River and Boston Harbor.
What may be the world's oldest insect imprint was found by Tufts student Richard Knecht:
"It's not a dragonfly but picture a dragonfly-like body. We're looking at something related, maybe a mayfly. They have the same body plan," said the discoverer, Richard Knecht, a geology student at Tufts University in Massachusetts. (Image: Jacob Benner-Tufts University)
Harvard has its collection of early drawings by John James Audubon online as he worked toward becoming the artist he is now known to be. The drawings are also available in the book Audubon: Early Drawings.
Buy: Audubon: Early Drawings. (Image: Crested Mergansers by Audubon from the Harvard collection).
A Russian wild boar, unusual in Massachusetts, was hit on route 2 in Lancaster, only about 35 miles from Boston.
(Image: Poster of the Hogzilla movie, based on the country's most famous giant pig).
Trees produce electricity that can power small devices and an MIT team has discovered more about this phenomenon.
One study involves listening to the ultrasonic complaints of
drought-stricken, beetle-infested piñon pines, yielding new insights
into the tree’s plight. In another line of research, investigators have
solved the mystery of how trees produce low-level electrical power.
This opens the way to using trees’ own electricity to power sensors
that can provide early fire detection in even the most remote forest
regions.
Shuguang Zhang at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
co-workers recently explained tree electricity in the PloS ONE, an
online journal from the Public Library of Science.
None of the obvious suspects such as tapping into emissions from power lines or broadcast radio waves turned out to be responsible. Trees generate electricity from an imbalance in acidity between a tree and the soil. As the MIT announcement last week noted, this is the same simple process that generates electricity from a potato or lemon at high school science fairs.
Dr. Zhang explains that, while tree power is weak, it can supply a “trickle charge” that “just like a dripping faucet, can fill a bucket over time.” Thus trees can be a reliable power source to recharge batteries in embedded sensors.
The course on maritime pollution is an experiment from the Academy
While the course isn't for everyone it shows how online education and free online education is really proliferating.
In a symbolic gesture, Harvard will install a wind turbine above the Holyoke Center in Harvard Square.
Interestingly, the Holyoke Center itself was built to improve a passageway that was described as a "wind tunnel." (Image of the Holyoke Center by Paul Kelleher)
Nice photos by Scott Alpert of wild turkeys at World's End in Hingham. (Image: Scott Alpert)
The battle between summer-residents and year-rounders over the disappearing Sconset beach and whether a fortune should be spent to preserve its quickly eroding shoreline.
"But if the scientists are right, if the sea levels continue to rise incrementally and storms become not only more frequent but also more powerful, maybe the only thing Nantucket property owners can do is allow nature its destiny. Jim O'Connell, a coastal geologist for the Sea Grant program at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, believes that Nantucket's fate is sealed. "I did a lecture out there last year," he says. "I showed aerial and ground photos and talked about what I was seeing and what the data showed. I began with a picture of the open ocean and announced, 'In 8,000 years this will be your island, and until you get to that point, every house is going to enjoy a spectacular ocean view.' I got only a few chuckles."
(Image: Wikimedia)
The Museum of Science ventures into the misty regions of cryptozoology with a lecture by Loren Coleman, the most famous researcher into bigfoot and other great folkloric creatures.
Time: Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008, 7:00 pm
Location: Museum of Science, Boston/Cahners Theater
Cost: Free "Seating passes are available to the general public in the Museum lobby beginning at 5:45 pm the evening of the program. First come, first served."
Not sure what else there is to say about this. Two great things put together.
Info:
Time: September
20th, 11:00am - 4:00pm
Location: Borderland State Park, Sharon, MA
Cost: $4 + $2 parking
Boston is turning off the lights in its skyscrapers in an environmental stunt that will be of help to migrating birds that can be confused by city lights.
"We have an incredible array of birds that migrate along the East Coast, and it's clear the bright lights confuse them and cause them to circle or run into buildings," said Laura Johnson, president of Mass Audubon. "A lot of species are threatened, so if we can do anything to help them along the way, then we should do it."
The NYTimes investigates how declining lobster prices are affecting Boston lobstermen and restaurants.
“In a year where our fuel costs are almost doubled and bait costs have gone up 50 to 60 percent as a result of fuel,” Mr. Feeney said, “it’s a squeeze from both ends.”
Partly as a result, young people are not going into the lobstering business, he said, adding that the average age of a fisherman in Massachusetts is 59.
“There aren’t many young entrants,” said Mr. Feeney, a past president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. “The startup costs of this business are astronomical compared to what they used to be.”
Ellen Ecker Ogden has written a new guide to Vermont cheese that helps provide background on the Vermont Cheese Trail.
Following the Vermont Cheese Trail, this book covers each region of Vermont for you to explore the geography, discover the history, and experience the local agriculture, combined with the farm experience. On the cover, our state flower the red clover is symbolic of the diversity of the wild flora that thrives in healthy soil, providing nourishment to the animals, and is ultimately reflected in the taste or terroir of the cheese.
Another resource for those interested in local food as well as a nice marketing effort for Vermont cheesemakers helping to establish their brand.
Daniel Gross explains more about the great lobster price decline that we've written about.
“At root, the global forces that are driving up the price of food don't significantly affect the vacation lobster business in Maine. Commercial and consumer demand doesn't vary much for off-the-boat lobster. Sure, many lobsters are sold to processing plants. But unlike other seafood products—think of canned tuna, or clam sauce, or frozen fish fillets—lobster is not produced or marketed on a mass global scale, which also means there are no speculators trying to make a killing on lobster futures. The fact that people are eating more and better in China and India isn't much boosting the demand for lobsters from Maine. Even in the United States, lobster remains to a large degree a regional product.
Now Joachim is expanding the scope and reach of the cell program.
"In order to better understand people, I need
to listen to them," Joachim explains. In order to better
understand nature, "if we can create easily accessible channels
through which we can listen to nature, we might get meaning and
information that we wouldn't otherwise know."
Joachim
started out by trying a series of tests to see if networks of
advanced cell phones, equipped with GPS and compasses to monitor
their position and orientation and connected to special arrays of
directional microphones, could replace human volunteers in assessing
owl populations.
Experiments in Connecticut and Maine showed
that the system did work -- the owls responded to playback of
recorded owl sounds through the cell phones, and their responses
could be detected through the phones almost as accurately as when
people on the ground listened for their calls and wrote down the
results.
Great news although some experts say the overall rise in species
population doesn't take into account issues with particular groups of
whales, like the 1000 or so who feed from Cape Cod Bay north to Maine. (Image: NOAA)
Preserve Mass Barns works to preserve one of the most evocative symbols of Massachusetts' agricultural past, its barns.
"A barn is an expression of the people who built it. When we lose one, we’ve lost a part of our history, a part of ourselves."
The invasive Asian longhorned beetle has been found near Worcester. The beetle infests hardwood trees. Once they are present, the only method to stop the infestation is to cut down the affected trees as was done in Chicago.
"The Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis, "ALB"), a pest of hardwood trees including maple, birch and horse chestnut, was recently discovered in Worcester, Massachusetts. An astute resident of the Greendale section of Worcester reported the sighting, and it was confirmed by entomologists from USDA APHIS-PPQ earlier this week.
The Asian Longhorn Beetle is an invasive species native to China. It was first discovered in the U.S. in New York in 1996, and has also been found in Chicago and New Jersey. The beetles cause damage by tunneling within the trunks and branches of trees, disrupting the sap flow and weakening and eventually killing them.
This pest attacks a wide variety of hardwood trees, particularly maples, and is considered a serious threat to the nursery, lumber, wood products, maple syrup, and tourism industries in our state. If it became established over a large area, it could also significantly disrupt the forest ecosystem."
You can submit photos and a report if you think you see the beetle. (Image: Jennifer Forman Orth, Mass DAR)
A multiple vehicle accident on Rt. 395 south ripped open the refrigerated truck and spilled 11,000 pounds of live lobsters and fish and about 150 gallons of diesel fuel.
Some of the fuel spilled on the seafood in the crash leaving it exposed without refrigeration for hours, prompting Webster's director of public health to order the load destroyed Sunday."
Sarah Zurier set up Green Zone, a "wartime" garden installation, at Firehouse 13 in Providence.
"America has a long tradition that links cultivating gardens on the homefront to wartime conservation. Posters and other propaganda from World Wars I and II show Uncle Sam urging Americans to grow their own food in Victory Gardens. On the other hand, in the aftermath of September 11 and throughout six years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Uncle Sam says: "Go shopping." The message persists in 2008, via stimulus checks from the IRS, despite worldwide food shortages and record-high food prices.
Green Zone at Firehouse 13 is an organic vegetable, herb, and flower garden planted in the detritus of wartime consumption: old tires, shopping bags, shoes, and other repurposed containers. The plants are mostly leafy (herbs, kale, beet greens, lettuce) or develop their fruit underground (radishes). Most of the tires were pulled out of the Woonasquatucket River during the Earth Day cleanup in April 2008.
Green Zone grows all summer long. Firehouse 13 residents will share its produce. Stop by anytime this summer, and look out for Provflux V, August 7-11. Special thanks to Southside Community Land Trust for starting many of the plants from seed"
"Officials told [one man who asked] that it would be too dangerous and that he could be arrested for trespassing, but, to him, it seemed easy enough to hire lifeguards and allot an area along the beach designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Officials said it would ruin the serenity of the pond to have children screaming and splashing, even though he thought it could be limited to a few months and be regulated by time and numbers. Officials told him it was a backup for the city's water supply, but the 68-acre, spring-fed pond has not provided water to the city since 1848 and would have to be treated if it were ever reconnected to the system."
Gerry Wright, director of the Jamaica Park/Olmsted Park Project, says"allowing swimming to return would threaten the delicate ecology, now in Zen-like balance, along the 1.5-mile trail surrounding the water."
Maybe but it would be interesting to get some independent confirmation that the "delicate ecology" actually is in "Zen-like" balance.
"[Toni Pollak, commissioner of the Boston Parks and Recreation Department] "worries that swimmers would endanger local wildlife, such as the snapping turtles, mallard ducks, and double-crested cormorants that frequent the pond. Then there are the potential liability issues."
Although none of those species seem to be endangered.
""Can you imagine the deafening din of children from every corner of the city descending on the pond? Yikes!" yelped Patrick Lally.
""It would become brackish and dirty with children and adults using it as their bathtub," said Emily Tisei Moscol, 28, of Dedham. "Not allowing swimming is one way of actually preserving the pond.""
Because dirty people want to use it to bathe.
(Image: Wikipedia)
79-year old Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, who caused controversy in the '70s with the idea (now conventional wisdom) that genetics influenced human behavior) is at work on his first novel and causing new controversy with the idea of group-level selection that "natural selection operates at many levels, including at the level of a social group" rather than with genes alone.
A nice essay by Bill McKibben (from the Patagonia catalog) on the return of the moose to the Northeast, including Massachusetts, and how moose symbolize wildness.
"There’s something prehistoric about the moose – his size, his nearsighted manner, his lack of concern. The fact that he’s been able to roam back into this most relentlessly civilized of all North American regions makes us realize it’s not quite the place we’d thought. Its presence here can’t be taken for granted. Indeed, warming temperatures mean it’s unlikely to get much farther south, and there are already signs of its range starting to constrict as temperatures rise in the upper Midwest. But for the moment, the moose is a tonic symbol that the place we live in isn’t entirely civilized. That’s the idea that conservationists most need to get their work done, the sense that this is still a natural place, indeed more natural all the time. With a moose standing insouciantly in the nearest swamp, our constricted East Coast imaginations have precious freedom to roam."
Mullen did a great job with these ads for the Sharks and Rays exhibit at the New England Aquarium from the viral video of a shark chasing a duck boat on the Charles (and its corresponding ad) to using local landmarks like the Make Way for Ducklings statute, Weeks Footbridge and the Hatch Shell the campaign is both fun to look at and on message.
David Rogers' Big Bug sculptures return to Garden in the Woods in Framingham from July 12 through October 31. With familiar insects like bees and ants as well as the less familiar praying mantis and assassin bug it looks like it will be good. And the sculptures look great. More images here.
(Image: 2008 New England Wild Flower Society/William Cullina)
Over 40 Somerville gardens will be open to the public on Saturday June 21.
"More than 40 private and public settings featuring fruit trees, fountains, sculpture, stone walls, moss, terraces, arbors, mosaics, murals, ponds or planters, will be on display. Some incorporate found objects and art; others are designed for children and are family friendly spaces. At one you will find a little-known certified Natural Wildlife Habitat. The garden club's own sites at the Powderhouse Rotary, the Main and West Libraries, are also marked on the map. The combined talents of master gardeners and the cultural influences of the diverse communities of Somerville create a unique event. Rain or shine, it promises to be a wonderful afternoon. "
Cost: $12
Tickets:
"Advance ticket sales: June 1-June 20: Program booklet [$12.00 admission], containing a map and individual garden descriptions, will be available June 1: Pemberton Garden Center, 2225 Mass Avenue, Cambridge, Sherman Café, 257 Washington St., Union Square, Somerville
Event Day Locations and Ticket Sales: Saturday, June 21st 11:30AM - 4:00PM: Davis Square, opposite T entrances, intersection of Elm and Holland Streets, VNA Assisted Living Community, 259 Lowell St. The VNA also has a 1/4 acre wildlife habitat that is part of the tour."
Cool image of a jellyfish-saturated Boston Harbor by LauraLiz
