Shake Your Booty

I searched for them all summer (starting in May). I even begged the manufacturer to sell them to me direct. I finally ordered them on Sept. 3rd and now... they have arrived... real winter boots and warm ones too. So now I don't have any excuse to bail on taking photos of the northern lights just because my feet are cold... but I can still use the excuse that my hands are cold.

In other "new arrival" news. I just got updated to Picasa3 - which has a rather neat tool for removing blemishes from photos. You can actually try out a bunch of different spots and pick the nicest replacement. Otherwise, aside from the interface and the icons... it still is the same old simple, but useful Picasa Software and its free :D can't complain about that.

I also want to post up a few really cool links that I shared with my Wildlife CTS class.

http://www.daversitycode.com/ - fun cartoon spoof on the Davinchy Code (and I know that is spelt wrong) that talks about human responsibility with respect to the web of life.

http://www.daversitycode.com/earthscope/ - a nice set of slide show intros combined with some nice overview information on a bunch of different environmental issues. Related to the site above

http://assets.panda.org/downloads/worldstop10riversatriskfinalmarch13_1.pdf - I actually used the version that you could browse through from the WWF website, but its nice to find a pdf of the entire section. This covers the 10 most at risk rivers in the world and does a nice job of summing up the troubles facing rivers.

http://kiggavik.typepad.com/the_house_other_arctic_mu/2008/11/trapped.html - this is a nice piece about the Narwhals trapped in Pond Inlet on one of my favourite blogs. It sums up nicely the actual situation and there is a haunting video clip of panicking Narwhals gasping for air at a small hole. I've lived in enough different parts of this country to know that there is definately different feelings about hunting in different parts of the country. Both here and in the maritimes, hunting or other wild harvesting (fish, seals, lobsters) are key parts of the the economy and also an important source of food in many places. Where I grew up, hunting was something that no one I knew took part in.... and even the killing of cows for steak was enough to make some folk uncomfortable. I like how this piece somes up the practical end of the problem. There is no reasonable or natural way to save them, so the only reasonable thing to is make their deaths count.

Anywho... I must go test out me boots and play with math.

:D and maybe throw up another picture or two to tide everyone over until the weekend - unless I catch the northern lights on the way home.

JP