So much of science and nature media is selling newly acquired knowledge, it’s nice to see Wired publish an article about what we don’t know. My personal questions have more to do with the mysteries of human consciousness, but questions like “Is time an illusion?” confound me frequently.
Hopefully someone will write a better headline for this story. And someone will work it into a movie scene for sure. There have been more mountain lion attacks near California’s urban areas in recent years, leading me to theorize about the animal kingdom battling our encroaching civilization, but this happened way up north in Prarie Creek State Park, a place where I’ve hiked and camped alone…
The American Canoe Associations hosts an online database of water trails. No maps or anything, but the first resource I’ve seen for paddlers.
(Via The Adventure Blog)
This makes for a nice way to browse outdoor locations. That would be a good layer to have for the Outdoor Map.
(Via Google Maps Mania)
I’d always hoped to see the mysterious phenomenon of ball lightning outdoors. Now it’s possibly less mysterious, a very similiar phenomenon having been created by Brazilian scientists.
The first person to ride around the world on a bike may not have been along the lines of Alastair Humphreys’ ride this past decade. The great Wikipedia tells us Thomas Stevens did it on a penny farthing in 1884. Gears are for sissies.
(Via GoBlog)
This is a rescue story I can relate to - a woman crosses the Gila River in New Mexico, it rains, and she is unable to get back across, turning a two-week trip into a 5-week wait-a-thon. The Gila runs in a fairly tight canyon in many places - I can imagine it’s possible to get pinned in. Still, I’d like to know more about why she didn’t search for an alternate route out.
This is another “share your trip” site. The interface seems to offer a lot, but after playing with it a bit I’m not really sure what it delivers. Not intuitive. It does have one distinction, though - it’s a completely open-source project, hosted on SourceForge. It will be interesting to see which tactics win out in the end.
They are microscopic algae that may someday be prized for their glowing pigments.
“In fact, the divergence of this group from known organisms is as great as the difference between land plants and animals,” Connie Lovejoy, a biologist at Universit Laval in Canada and another member of the research team, said in a statement.
A species of turtle not seen in Thailand for two decades was caught and sold for soup, luckily to a conservation-minded citizen who turned it over to a district fisheries office to be raised in captivity.
A site that aggregates information from individual traveler’s blogs, among other traveler features. There’s a new mapping feature as well - not sure if this creates a map automatically from your blog’s geoRSS feed, but that would be cool. I think blog aggregration is a technique that’s going to start popping up everywhere.
This bat with adhesive feet is considered a new species, related to the only other known sticky-footed bat that lives in another part of Madagascar.
Dominic Gill calls his adventure take a seat. He’s riding a tandem bike from Alaska to Argentina, trying all the way to convince people to take the extra seat on the bike and help him along…
(Via Alastair Humphreys)
The world’s only naturally migrating flock of whooping cranes has grown from 15 to 237. Part of the reason is cited is a mild Canadian winter. The article doesn’t mention global warming.
These birds are headed for extinction with fewer than 300 counted in the world, but researchers recently found 7 of them in Syria, where they haven’t been seen in 70 years. National Geographic has an excellent video summary.
Mountain climbers know that goats can vie with humans when it comes to climbing rocks, but I never knew that goats can climb trees too.
(Via J-Walk Blog)
Congrats to 14-year-old Michael Perham, who has successfully sailed across the Atlantic by himself. Wow!
(Via Alastair Humphreys)
