Jobs I want: Everglades backcountry volunteer

I just saw a program on the National Geographic Channel about the Everglades. There was a brief segment on a couple who lives on a houseboat in the middle of the Everglades backcountry for six months of the year, rescuing lost paddlers (and getting lost themselves: they said the key was to get lost first thing in the morning so you have all day to find your way back). For a number of reasons, this lands high on the list of Jobs I Would Love To Have, Though Perhaps Only For A Short Time, for the following reasons:

• Critters. Birds with fun names like "roseate spoonbill". Turtles. Gators. Fish. Manatees.
• Isolation, with a twist: any people you meet are likely to be really happy to see you. I bet the wilderness houseboat volunteers have some great stories about the people they meet and the circumstances in which they meet them.
• Man skills. If it breaks, you better fix it: ain't no callin' a plumber or electrician. If it can't be fixed with hose clamps and duct tape, you probably didn't need it.
• Clarity of purpose. Every morning, there are clear-cut reasons to get out of bed: first, to take necessary measures to avoid being eaten by alligators, and second, to rescue disoriented wilderness paddlers from a similar fate.
• Science. I don't know if the volunteers are specifically asked to make scientific observations (weather & water levels, critter counts, or other surveys), but it would be cool to contribute to the understanding of the area.
  
• The enveloping beauty and weirdness of the whole Everglades environment. I can't help be fascinated by a place where flowing water is disguised as a prairie. I don't think I can adequately describe how totally weird the 'Glades are.
  

More descriptions of south Florida weirdness at www.nps.gov/ever/.

More words that make me yearn for the days of grunts and hand gestures

Here are a few more words and expressions that seem to actually impair communication, presented as a follow-up to "Verbing weirds language."

• Use of "2.0" outside the concept of version control

  The worst offender here is the ghastly phrase "Web 2.0". My understanding is that the phrase is used to broadly describe web sites and web applications based on user-generated content. However, this does not represent a version change. It's not a major upgrade in the sense of version control. It may be an important change in the way people interact with each other via electronic media, but the analogy to a software or hardware upgrade falls apart. I challenge the world's linguists, programmers, and technology writers to come up with a better description - and don't you dare call it a "paradigm shift."
  

  In 2004, a Holland, Michigan couple gained press for naming their son with the suffix "2.0" instead of "Junior" or "II". It may be cute now, but imagine the beatings this poor kid will get in high school. Also, I question whether anything that regularly craps its pants can be considered a major upgrade.

• It's really aggravating when the word "technology" is used strictly to mean "electronics" or "computing". "Technology," from the Greek techne, "art" or "skill," is any invented device or system that does something. I won't even limit the definition by saying "does something useful." If I use a rock as a pounding device, that's a technology. If I build a device that transmutes goat urine into gasoline, that's also a technology (pat yourself on the back if you caught the Blues Brothers reference). Clean drinking water is a technology; so are sanitary sewers. I don't think it's much better to use "high-tech" to refer to computers and electronic devices, either. Herein lies another challenge for wordsmiths.

• "Blogosphere." This word should be used only to refer to the personal space bubble around the governor of Illinois; furthermore, that should be spelled "Blagosphere." See below:
  
  
  



• Excessive/inappropriate use of the word "hack."

  I just saw an article suggesting that a new first-person video game "is the first game to hack your proprioception." Proprioception is, loosely speaking, the sense of the position of your body in space. The writer was presumably trying to convey that the gameplay was so realistic that it made him feel as though his body was moving. That is indeed remarkable. But how is it a hack? It's not a modification beyond an intended design, nor is it an ungraceful solution to a problem, nor is it a clever prank, in the sense of the "MIT hacks." Surely the players' proprioception was not somehow "rewired" by playing the game. Although, if it were, maybe it would take the form of synesthesia - wouldn't it be neat if playing the game enabled one to suddenly taste or smell where one's hand was in space? Ok, maybe not.
  

  Incidentally, the same article confused "retch" (verb, to vomit) with "wretch" (noun, a miserable person). That makes me (a wretch) want to vomit (retch).

Of tapirs and monkeys

On a visit to Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo in the summer of 2007, I was fortunate to see some of my favorite critters in action. Imagine my surprise, though, when I saw a monkey (I don't know what species) climb atop a Baird's tapir (Tapirus bairdii) and go for a ride. Yes, A MONKEY RIDING A TAPIR. I almost peed my pants.

The sociable simian went on to (apparently) groom the tapir.


Note that this was a Baird's tapir, native to Central and South America, not to be confused with the distinct, but similarly compelling, Mayalan tapir (Tapirus indicus) featured in my 2007 post, "The screaming hose-nose."

Apparently these behaviors are not uncommon, at least in zoos; for example, this fellow observed a gibbon apparently grooming a tapir. These observations in monkey-tapir interactions are strangely comforting to me - that is, I'm glad to know that I'm not the only primate who finds tapirs so compelling. Let the record show, however, that I do not aspire to ride or groom tapirs myself. Even David Attenborough kept a respectful distance from a tapir in the "Plant Predators" episode of The Life of Mammals - apparently they can be rather vicious when they feel threatened (tapirs, that is, not Sir David, though I honestly can't be sure about the latter).

I'll post a movie of the monkey-tapir interaction when I get around to it.

State Capitol #30

About a year ago, I visited my 30th state capitol (Carson City, Nevada). Unless something truly unexpected occurs, 2008 will pass by as the first year since 2004, when my capitol quest began, in which I did not visit a state capitol I hadn't visited before, though, to be fair, I did visit the national legislature in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Below is a map of my quest thus far. The states in which I completed the capitol visit ritual (i.e., doing a little dance on the capitol steps, getting a GPS lock, taking appropriate photos) are colored blue. The green states are those in which I have visited the capital city but not actually taken care of business, as it were. Photos of the 30 state capitols (plus one Canadian provincial legislature building) are up on the web album.


Here are some highlights:

My personal favorite overall: Madison, Wisconsin (capitol visit #20). The capitol is the center of downtown, on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona.

Assorted capitol tales:

• In Topeka, Kansas (capitol visit #22), the capitol tour takes you all the way to the top of the dome. I highly recommend it.
• The state house in Annapolis, Maryland (capitol visit #7) served as the Federal capital for a time.
• In Tallahassee, Florida (capitol visit #25), the new capitol complex was built around the Classical-style old capitol. The old capitol is now a museum.
  
• In Carson City, Nevada (capitol visit #30), the state legislature doesn't meet in the capitol building. Only the executive branch uses the capitol.
  
• Only five state capital cities are not directly served by the Interstate highway system (and no, Honolulu is not among them):
• Dover, Delaware (capitol visit #8)
  
• Carson City, Nevada (capitol visit #30)
• Jefferson City, Missouri
  
• Pierre, South Dakota
• Juneau, Alaska
• When I visited Montgomery, Alabama (capitol visit #26), I couldn't go inside: it was closed for Jefferson Davis Day, a state holiday.
  
• There is a statue of Abraham Lincoln on the capitol grounds not in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois (capitol visit #3), but in Charleston, West Virginia (capitol visit #19). Lincoln signed the enabling act admitting West Virginia to the Union on December 31, 1862.
• Finally, should you visit the capitol in Montpelier, Vermont (capitol visit #13), remember that the mugs outside the chamber are personal property of legislators and not for public use:

Of coastlines and cervids

I went to a conference in Seaside, Oregon earlier this month, and I was fortunate to have an afternoon off to explore the Oregon coast. That alone would have been sufficiently awesome, but, as if to increase to the sweetness to unbelievable levels, I encountered some elk in the early phases of the rut. The bulls were bugling and sort of circling a group of cows, but the bulls seemed to still be tolerating each other. Elk bugling is surely one of the most distinctive and awesomely weird sounds in nature.

Oregon Coast photos, including scenery, elk, and tidepool critters, are up in the web album.

In other news, the whitetail deer here in Cook County are gearing up for the rut and for winter. They're increasingly fearless - I must have seen a dozen individuals (including the fine specimen at right) along the North Branch bike trail last weekend, chowing down in broad daylight, mere steps away from the busy trail. I also saw three individuals in a residential neighborhood in Evanston yesterday, two blocks from the Northwestern campus: one spike buck, one mature buck, and a doe.