Burningbird“When my dad wakes up today, the first thing he will notice is that he is dead. But he’ll take that in his stride, because my mom will be cooking bacon downstairs and getting the coffee ready and these divine smells will keep him from worrying too much about it.”
Halley Suitt’s poignant and warm farewell to her father on his death, Tuesday.
I was going to Point Reyes for a walk today but ended up at Golden Gate and Crissy Field instead. I picked up a new photo, nothing special but it adds a bit of color.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
According to Dictionary.com, triangulation is:
The location of an unknown point, as in navigation, by the formation of a triangle having the unknown point and two known points as the vertices.
When I studied history in college I had a college professor tell me that the only way to discover the truth behind an event is to read three completely different interpretations of the same event. Somewhere in the middle of all these interpretations, you’ll find the truth.
Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to only listen to one viewpoint, one interpretation; listening to those who are like minded and speak with one voice is less disruptive than seeking the truth.
Ha! Shannon and I have a co-fearer of spiders. Kath details her terror at an encounter with a monster spider in Florida.
My favorite generator of terror? The Tegenaria gigantea. Don’t let its harmless common name of House Spider fool you — this arachnid can reach sizes of 18mm for the male. And if you live in the UK, yup it’s the same spider.
Yes, I know that these spiders control pests, are shy, don’t harm people, don’t bite, don’t sting, don’t make noise, and don’t poop on the carpet. Doesn’t matter. Put one in the same room with me, and I’ll pass out after first shattering your ear drums with my screams.
Guaranteed.
Update I did a little more research and found this article on spiders in Seattle. It is the giant house spider that can get up to four inches. And I also found out that all spiders do bite and all are venemous, but most spider bites have no impact on humans. And the harmful spider in Seattle is the Hobo spider, not the Brown Recluse. Sorry, I get my spiders mixed up.
BTW — do I redeem myself in all of your eyes by telling you that I like snakes and lizards, and once owned an Iguana named Heratio, and a Chameleon named Godzilla?
Before I started messing around with my site and doing things such as alphabetizing my blogroll, I had the Australians on the list separated into what I called the Australian Delegation — a separate list of weblogs owned and maintained by those we affectionately refer to as Aussies.
In a surge of nostaligia, as well as an attempt to stay with one single theme for an entire day’s postings, I’m declaring today to be Australia Day at Burningbird.
All day long I’ll feature postings about all things Australian as well as postings introducing you to the members of the Delegation, who though now merged in with the other Plutonians, can still be spotted with their +17 hour rating.
Speaking of the hours, note that the Australians used to have a time difference of +19 from my home base in California (Pacific time), and now have a +17 hour difference. Why the two hour change?
Well, Australia’s Daylight Saving Time started last year in October, the Aussie Spring; it ended in March, the beginning of the Australian Fall. This chopped one hour off the time difference because their clocks were turned back one hour. When we in the States started our DST, we moved our clocks forward one hour, chopping a second hour and leading to the +17 hour difference you see today.
I am finding that Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is easier to understand than international Daylight Saving Time. That’s what happens when you muck with Mother Time.
To make things even more interesting, not all areas of Australia participate in DST, same as in the States. However, since the Australian Delegation members are from New South Wales and Tasmania, both of which participate in DST, all of the Delegation’s hours were impacted.
More Down Under to come…
