Diary of a Mad Natural Historian

I’ll have one of these:

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and one of these:

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and one of these:

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Semi-seriously, I wonder how expensive the bell jars are.
via Making Light.

Also - do not miss the most recent Curious Expeditions post - Austrian/Bavarian hunting charms. Fantastic!

Curious Expeditions have posted a Flickrset taken at the Haus der Natur in Salzburg, Austria. Included are a bunch of wonderful gaffs - certainly worth a look.

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There’s also a nice group of Papuan skull pix - something that ties back (indirectly) to a project I’m working on.

I wish I could get back down to Brooklyn on November 2 for The Secret Science Club’s third annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest - looks like a ton of fun.You can see some work done by last year’s winner, Takeshi Yamada, here.

I traveled down to Brooklyn last weekend - it was Homecoming/Parent’s Weekend at Pratt Institute, a Certain Design Student’s base of operations. While there, he took me to see the Engine Room. What a place! It currently generates electricity in the winter - exhaust steam goes to the main heating system. It’s the most beautiful co-gen facility imaginable.

Some notes cribbed from the handout that details the Engine Room’s history along with some pictures:

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Three 75KW generators driven by one-cylinder steam engines. Installed in 1900, they replaced two steam engines driving three generators. Originally a third engine powered machine shops via the classic flywheel/belt arrangement.

In 1927 the switchboard reached it’s current size.

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Sometime during the 1980’s the three steam machines passed the million hour running time mark. Planned obsolescence? Nay - back then, they built to last.

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Feline staff members are well taken care of. They have their own entrance, there is a wall of ribbons recognizing their achievements, and one has her own memorial.

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COOP’s post and Flickrset caused me to dig out my (very) old box of Matchboxes, Corgis, etc. I took one set of photos, but the sun isn’t above the big pine tree in the back yard yet - I don’t have any fancy flash equipment - so I’m going to start over in an hour or two. The pictures will be uploaded here; in the meantime, something to prime the pump:

A very neat artist/caddis collaboration (via ectoplasmosis). I guess at nugget and wire scale the density of gold isn’t an issue. Any fisherpeople visiting New Hampshire in late June should make a point of getting up to Errol to catch the Alderfly hatch - Alderflies are medium-large caddis that emerge in huge numbers. Also - I’ve got to get a subscription to Cabinet!

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Goldfarming was a popular topic last week. I heard a reasonably good explanation on NPR in the context of South Korean gaming and some law-making around same. Then a BoingBoing post (great title - “Gold-farmers beat ad-ban by spelling URL in dead gnomes”) pointed me at this crazy video.

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Charlie Stross weighed in with a great little essay about explaining the video above to someone from the distant past - say, 1977. I can’t end a goldfarming item without a hat tip to Cory Doctorow’s great story on the topic - Anda’s Game.

Finally, on a personal note, things are going well (knock wood) with Luz, preparations are being made for the shorthair pup, and the summer is flying by. My energy has been very critter directed over the past few weeks - expect posts to be either linky (like this one) or snapshots of falcons, dogs, etc.

Steampunk.

• “The Tomorrow That Never Was”: Retrofuturism in the Comics of Dean Motter - good essay on (obviously) retrofuturism. via BB
• This is my new desktop wallpaper. It’s a little busy, but I rarely see the desktop anyway… via Paleo-Future.
• Incredible eBay auction (via Wired). The artist’s website is Many Dead Things - warning: disturbingly gruesome in at least one instance. I will be keeping an eye peeled (hee, hee) - one of his upcoming projects? “At the mountains of madness case (a lovecraft themed project)” .

Ink.

The only thing I’ve seen that might redirect my desire for a Pazyryk bird head-antlered elk:

Needs more Trieste!

Privacy.

• If you think the advice in an earlier post on maintaining anonymity online was tinfoil hat stuff, take a look at the EFF’s suit against AT&T. (more info here and here - 2nd link is a PDF)

In 2003 AT&T built “secret rooms” hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company’s popular WorldNet service and the entire Internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the Internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

• The Panopticon Flickr group (shudder).

ATT + NSA makes a pack of shoggoths look benign. A palate cleanser:

I walked into the classroom across the hall from my office this morning to water my plants and saw some objects that were begging to be photographed. The middle school science teacher/friend/coworker whose room this is lets me keep some of my orchids, bromeliads and carnivorous plants in a sunny window; I like going in to check out the latest projects in process - kids working on rockets or IDing dragonfly nymphs - you get the idea…

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There were (and are) people who collected eggs. Not chicken eggs, but eggs from songbirds, raptors, cranes, waterfowl, and they did not collect casually, but voraciously, obsessively. A friend and coworker inherited a collection and he displays it to inform people about the practice and it’s effects. I took a few pictures of a representative sample today.

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Shed a tear for Martha, the last of a very gregarious species, as she waited out her time in the Cincinnati zoo almost a hundred years ago. Not her’s, but it is a passenger pigeon’s egg:

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I’m prone to wax a little, well, obsessive over bits of nature and outdoor pursuits; I am relieved to report that this mania does absolutely nothing for me, except to make me sad and a little wistful. Others continue the chase - bah!

‘Bookshelf’ as a title for the post wouldn’t cover it. Books, bones, blankets and more from Steve and Libby’s home in New Mexico:

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Notice the thimble in the upper right (at least that’s what they’re called up here - would not be surprised to find there’s a great Spanish word that would be more appropriate in this case).

Another great bookshelf shot can be found here (click it, dammit). A range of interests? Yes!

If other folks have posted book-shots, I’d love to know - leave a comment or something. Technorati is only so-so at tracking links to a low traffic blog like mine…

Later - to clarify, picture credit belongs to Steve - he emailed the picture to me for posting here. Though I wouldn’t mind spending some time in the southwest (understatement!), the last time I was there (assuming that hill country Texas and front-range Colorado don’t count) was a looooong time ago.

I like maps - old, new, fanciful, technical, you name it. I was very happy to stumble across the strange maps blog this morning (thanks, Bruce); this one’s going to get added to my netvibes portal and to the blogroll.