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Good Morning
Jan. 19th, 2017 07:47 am
Will be a fairly buy busy day today.
Jan. 19th, 2017
Will be a fairly buy busy day today.
Deal and Hythe Visits
Jan. 19th, 2017 05:10 pmA couple of visits dome today - Deal and Hythe, both charity shops and now feeling a little strummed out. Music please.
Picked up a few cheap books but mostly CD's today.
Jherek Bischoff - Composed (Leaf)
Sigor Ros -Agaetis Byrjun (Fat Cat)
Deamau5 - For Lack Of A Better Name (Mau5trap Recordings)
Nitin Sawhney - Human (V2 Music)
M.I.A.- Matangi (Interscope)
Air - 10,000 Hertz Legend(Virgin France).
Here is one by Jherek -
Jherek Bischoff - Cistern (SCRAPE Quartet + Jherek Bischoff)
Jherek Bischoff co-curated the Bang on a Can Marathon in Seattle on February 15, 2015. Jherek and members of Seattle based SCRAPE stopped by our studios to preview a few of their favorite tunes.
Here’s “Cistern,” composed by Jherek Bischoff
Picked up a few cheap books but mostly CD's today.
Jherek Bischoff - Composed (Leaf)
Sigor Ros -Agaetis Byrjun (Fat Cat)
Deamau5 - For Lack Of A Better Name (Mau5trap Recordings)
Nitin Sawhney - Human (V2 Music)
M.I.A.- Matangi (Interscope)
Air - 10,000 Hertz Legend(Virgin France).
Here is one by Jherek -
Jherek Bischoff - Cistern (SCRAPE Quartet + Jherek Bischoff)
Jherek Bischoff co-curated the Bang on a Can Marathon in Seattle on February 15, 2015. Jherek and members of Seattle based SCRAPE stopped by our studios to preview a few of their favorite tunes.
Here’s “Cistern,” composed by Jherek Bischoff
Just Wondering
Jan. 19th, 2017 08:48 pmWhat was the last funny video you saw?
What is your horoscope sign, baby (sorry, couldn't resist)?
Do you feel it's right on the money or not really you at all?
What is your horoscope sign, baby (sorry, couldn't resist)?
Do you feel it's right on the money or not really you at all?
Dave Goulson "A Buzz In The Meadow" (Vintage)
Dave Goulson is a fine natural history writer, and an important conservationist. His work centers around the less glorious taxa, the insects that underlie the world’s ecosystems yet receive less attention. He has a talent for expressing scientific results, when too often the findings are confined to a bubble where only people specializing in a certain field will read and understand the results. Books like “A Buzz in the Meadow” are needed if you feel you don’t know enough about large groups of life forms like plants and insects. However, if you don’t like thinking about insect parts and reproduction (or that of animals in general), know that this is not for everyone. Still, Goulson is a very good communicator, and this is an excellent book.
At the beginning of each chapter, he gives the date, amount of time he spent running, number of humans seen (usually none), number of dogs (usually more than one) and number of butterfly species and any interesting notes to accompany them. Often a literary quote follows, to precede the chapter. He saves footnotes for the end of the chapter, which I think makes for smoother reading. For North American readers, we have to keep in mind that Europe has different sets of species, diverged from the common ancestors of those over here, in similar ecological niches. Even a naturalist like Goulson was unable to pinpoint the “wack-wack” bird, one of two prominent unidentified creatures in the meadow.
Many stories come from previous research he conducted or supervised, relating to the species now seeing in the meadow. Campions are his example for male and female ratios (also humans have the same thing going on, more or less), and there is a cool study of handedness or its analogue in insects, as well as learned behavior – and the chlorophyll-less yellow rattle. He mentions the soot of the Industrial Revolution that caused a moth’s two color morphs to drift in favor of the dark one as opposed to the pale one that stood out. House flies in hen houses also serve as an example of evolution in action, reminiscent of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” – which is especially relevant in a later chapter on neonicotinoids, and the science and struggle to show their effects short- and long-term. Island biogeography and metapopulations again see bees (and butterflies) as examples, but this isn’t an information dump – each story helps demonstrate a process that can be observed scientifically. Reading this book also gives a good feel for the many sides of scientific publishing.
The last chapter is the least about the meadow but the most about conservation, to which Goulson is already dedicated. Not depressing or preachy, it stays informative.
I recommend it.
Dave Goulson is a fine natural history writer, and an important conservationist. His work centers around the less glorious taxa, the insects that underlie the world’s ecosystems yet receive less attention. He has a talent for expressing scientific results, when too often the findings are confined to a bubble where only people specializing in a certain field will read and understand the results. Books like “A Buzz in the Meadow” are needed if you feel you don’t know enough about large groups of life forms like plants and insects. However, if you don’t like thinking about insect parts and reproduction (or that of animals in general), know that this is not for everyone. Still, Goulson is a very good communicator, and this is an excellent book.
At the beginning of each chapter, he gives the date, amount of time he spent running, number of humans seen (usually none), number of dogs (usually more than one) and number of butterfly species and any interesting notes to accompany them. Often a literary quote follows, to precede the chapter. He saves footnotes for the end of the chapter, which I think makes for smoother reading. For North American readers, we have to keep in mind that Europe has different sets of species, diverged from the common ancestors of those over here, in similar ecological niches. Even a naturalist like Goulson was unable to pinpoint the “wack-wack” bird, one of two prominent unidentified creatures in the meadow.
Many stories come from previous research he conducted or supervised, relating to the species now seeing in the meadow. Campions are his example for male and female ratios (also humans have the same thing going on, more or less), and there is a cool study of handedness or its analogue in insects, as well as learned behavior – and the chlorophyll-less yellow rattle. He mentions the soot of the Industrial Revolution that caused a moth’s two color morphs to drift in favor of the dark one as opposed to the pale one that stood out. House flies in hen houses also serve as an example of evolution in action, reminiscent of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” – which is especially relevant in a later chapter on neonicotinoids, and the science and struggle to show their effects short- and long-term. Island biogeography and metapopulations again see bees (and butterflies) as examples, but this isn’t an information dump – each story helps demonstrate a process that can be observed scientifically. Reading this book also gives a good feel for the many sides of scientific publishing.
The last chapter is the least about the meadow but the most about conservation, to which Goulson is already dedicated. Not depressing or preachy, it stays informative.
I recommend it.
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