A slippery slope

That I am at least mildly obsessed with natural history is well established. I relish opportunities to watch the various types of macrofauna I might encounter, whether in the wild or at a zoo.

Lisa's fear: "Honey, I'm afraid you're becoming a birder."

I'm not a birder, I'm a guy who likes to watch birds. But I acknowledge that I'm on a slippery slope.

• I now own two books which cover the identification and basic natural history of the birds of the Hawaiian Islands (more on the book problem later)
• I may start to attend Chicago Audubon Society meetings - this is because they help manage the Forest Preserve site where I work
• The prospect of starting a "life list" of critters I've seen in the wild has crossed my mind more than once

I recently bought a new camera (a Canon Powershot SX110 IS) and I'm completely in love with it. The optical zoom is fantastic. The photo at left shows the result of my first opportunity to play with the new camera: a northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) high up in a tree. I estimate the base of the tree was about 50 feet from me.

The picture was taken in late March at the Dwight Perkins Woods, a Cook County Forest Preserve District parcel in northwest Evanston. It's less than two miles from my home, but I had no idea it existed until very recently. Anyway, the Perkins Woods is a remnant of the "Big Woods" that once stood throughout Evanston.

Just last weekend, I went a little crazy at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I got a few fantastic pictures of a common grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) and an American robin (this familiar passerine is saddled with the unfortunate binomial Turdus migratorius).

Am I doomed to slide from "a guy who watches birds" to to "a birder?" Unless the City of Evanston establishes a slothpital or some kind of municipal tapir sanctuary, it seems likely that birds will become the primary source for my natural history fix. I'm going to write my alderman about that.

Math agnosticism

Here comes another rant inspired by a Calvin and Hobbes strip - this one ran on March 6, 1991.

I'm not a math atheist, but I am a math agnostic: math may or may not exist, but there's no way to know, and it doesn't affect my daily life.

Perhaps surprisingly, this attitude has only rarely impacted my engineering career thus far. When something comes up that I don't understand - which occurs often - I'm often willing to accept it as a deus ex machina solution that magically brings everything to a tidy conclusion. My father, a man both smart and wise, pointed out that this is indicated on process flowcharts by the symbol TAMO - "Then A Miracle Occurs." Sounds good to me!

Maybe that means that rather than adopting a systematic math theology, I, like so many others of my generation, identify as "spiritual, but not religious."

Arboreal skunks and other surprises

Three things blew my mind while watching "Is that Skunk?" on the PBS program Nature.

1. Spotted skunks (Spilogale spp.) commonly climb trees to forage and hide.
2. Skunks are not members of family Mustelidae, the weasels, as was long thought. Apparently skunks compose their own family, Mephitidae.
3. Skunk spray is highly flammable. Significantly, this was reported by an organic chemist rather than a field researcher.
   

Bonus: "For these orphaned skunks, Jerry is acting in loco parentis. However, many would call him just plain loco." Oh, Omniscient PBS Narrator, you're so clever.

Pi

My algebra teacher gave extra credit to students who would memorize pi to one hundred decimal places or some other ridiculous precision. This Toothpaste for Dinner cartoon pretty much says all that needs to be said about that.