There are no other Everglades in the world.
They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them: their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass.
From Steve Jobs, on the plans for Apple’s new headquarters:
One of his lingering memories was of the orchards that had once dominated the area, so he hired a senior arborist from Stanford and decreed that 80% of the property would be landscaped in a natural manner, with six thousand trees. “I asked him to make sure to include a new set of apricot orchards,” Jobs recalled. “You used to see them everywhere, even on the corners, and they’re part of the legacy of this valley.”
More of this, please.
Male Leafy Sea Dragon laden with eggs
The Logarithmic Spiral
Now all you guys who are like “Yeah man the Fibonacci spiral is awesome” can just take a back seat here, because here we have the coolest of all spirals: the logarithmic spiral. Truth be told just about every time you’ve heard someone talk about the Fibonacci (or more accurately known Golden Spiral) they’ve been talking about this guy and just not realized it. The logarithmic spiral is given by the equation r=ae^(bθ) where r is the radius, a & b are positive constants and θ is the angle around the origin.The logarithmic spiral also pops up quite often in nature, being the mathematical pattern behind such things as nautilus shells, Romanesco broccoli, spiral galaxies, the Mandelbrot set, storms, ferns and even sea horses.
This is a rimed snow crystal. I’m posting it in an effort to confront my fears of images like this. These things freak me out. There’s something terrifying (to me) about nature’s ability to create something so engineered but still look organic and broken.
As You Pass That Palm Tree, Heads Up! - voiceofsandiego.org: Neighborhoods“Autos constantly pick up so many berries they sound like they’re fitted with snow tires,” he said in an email. “Berries and fronds crash on parked cars causing damage to paint and breaking windows. The sound goes on all night.
“It’s like being in a war zone.”
For months, Roberts tried to get the city to trim the palm trees. He wrote the Mayor’s Office without response, but he did hear back from the office of his councilmember, Todd Gloria.
The councilmember’s suggestion: Do it yourself.
…
Instead of cleaning up sidewalks full of the slippery berries, it will inform residents that it’s their responsibility, in the hope of transferring liability for injuries to property owners, and not the city.
These are city owned trees being discussed. Will the city allow property owners to have the trees removed if they don’t want to clean up after them? I somehow doubt it.
I understand it feels like a punt, but I’m glad to have our city ask its citizens to rethink the social contract—it’s so refreshing to have an elected official tell a voter to play his part. I feel like this is a small step away from treating the government like a vending machine.
San Diegans: if you want trees, you’re going to have to pay for them one way or another. I prefer the idea of citizens figuring it out together, relying on a mixture of volunteerism and hired help, to spending tax dollars on (most likely) overpriced city labor.
Finis Mitchell | Cold Splinters
I’d never heard of this guy until now, and I love him. Everyone should read Cold Splinters.Finis Mitchell (1901–1995) was an American mountaineer and forester based in Wyoming. During the Depression, he and his wife stocked lakes in the Wind River Range with over 2.5 million trout. He served in the Wyoming House of Representatives from 1955 to 1958. At the age of 67 he retired from his job as a railroad foreman and dedicated himself full-time to exploring and writing about the Wind River Range of mountains.
Over the course of his life, Mitchell climbed all but 20 of the 300 peaks in the range. At the age of 73, while on a glacier, he twisted his knee in a snow-covered crevasse. He hacked crude crutches out of pine wood and hobbled 18 miles to find a doctor, and was able to resume climbing until the age of 84, when further injury to the knee from a fall put an end to his solo climbing career.
In 1975, he published a guidebook to the range called Wind River Trails, and in 1977, the University of Wyoming gave him an honorary doctorate. Congress named the mountain Mitchell Peak after him — one of the few landforms to ever be named after a living American.
CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year Top Winner: Flight of the Rays by Florian Schulzof
I'm Jed Sundwall. This is my blog, which you can follow on Tumblr or via RSS. You can talk to me on Twitter.
