Ministry of Silly Walks

The helmeted guineafowl is capable of strong flight, but it is mainly terrestrial often choosing to run rather than fly. They typically roosts in trees. 

This diurnal bird calls with a rasping, stuttering, grating "keerrrr." Lives in flocks of up to hundreds of birds, and forages on open ground

Helmeted Guineafowl are both monomorphic and monochromatic meaning that both males and females are similar in size, appearance and color.

These birds tend to form breeding pairs that are highly monogamous.

Guineafowl are mentioned in Greek mythology. Meleagros was the son of Oeneus, King of Calydon. According to legend, upon his death, his sisters were transformed into guineafowl.  --- SeaWorld

What Will Happen in the Senate?

“A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”  --- Alexander Hamilton – Federalist #65 (Lawyers, Guns & Money)

Red Sky at Morning - Take Warning

We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” 

That arc does not bend by itself, its course is changed by the moral gravity we impart to the universe.  Keep in mind there are other forces that are at work to bend that moral arc away from justice.

Snow Leopards and Global Warming

In the great mountains of central Asia, the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is facing the consequences of climate change. In Pakistan the snow leopard’s range is being impacted by warmer temperatures that both reduce the population of prey animals and open the snow leopard high mountain range to common leopards (Panthera pardus). Common leopards are more aggressive than snow leopards which makes them poor neighbors in the high mountain ranges that were once the sole province of the snow leopard.

The snow leopard has a wide habitat range of about 80,000 square kilometres in Pakistan and mostly lives above the treeline. In the Hindu Kush range, it is found in the Chitral district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and in the Karakoram range it is found in Gilgit, Ghizer, Hunza-Nagar, Skardu and Ghanche districts. Mehmood Ghaznavi, the conservator with the government of G-B’s Parks and Wildlife Department said that the estimated population of the snow leopard in Gilgit Baltistan is around 200.

Photo traps are providing evidence that common leopards are using the same game trails as snow leopards.

“We couldn’t believe that it was the camera trap photo of a common leopard captured in prime snow leopard habitat,” Hussain said. “The common leopard has never been reported in the Chitral Gol National Park before.”

According to Hussain, field experts believe that it is likely that climate change caused the common leopard to intrude on the snow leopard’s habitat.

“There is a likelihood that the common leopard might have come from the closest common leopard habitat, but that is yet to be known. The presence of the common leopard in the snow leopard’s territory can be dangerous for the snow leopard due to its aggressive nature.”

If you interested in snow leopard conservation, check out this site.

Taal Volcano Makes Lightning

Volcanic lightning is a somewhat common phenomenon (common relative to how often volcanic eruptions take place). Volcanic lightning arises from particles of volcanic ash (and sometimes ice) ejected in the atmosphere. These particles generate static electricity within the volcanic plume, triggering a “dirty thunderstorm.” --- ZME Science

Everything They Say is a Lie

I love the first snow of the year as much as the next gal, but whoever was in charge of the White House Twitter account could only have been one of three things: mistaken, lying, or hallucinating. That’s because on Sunday, the weather in D.C. rose to a balmy 70 degrees F. The day before, January 11, was even warmer — 61 locations across the East Coast broke or tied their record high temperatures that day. The picture was actually taken about a week earlier, when a flurry of snow did reach D.C.

It’s quite possible that whoever manages Trump’s social media prescheduled the tweet last week without bothering to take a look at the weekend forecast. But it’s also possible that the Trump administration — which has rolled back environmental regulations, gutted federal science agencies, propped up a dying coal industry, and slashed funding for renewable energy — is so deeply in climate change denial that it made a point of lying about snow falling on the hottest day of winter.   ---  Grist

Not Bad On His First Day

Wolf Cukier, a 17-year-old NASA intern, distinguished himself when he discovered a planet just three days into an assignment. Originally, the teen was instructed to look into the brightness of certain stars captured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, but he ended up finding what is now being called TOI 1338 b, a planet that’s estimated to be almost seven times bigger than the size of Earth.  --- Hypebeast