Lights That Go Bump In The Night

Afghanistan's First National Park

Afghanistan is taking the first steps to creating a national park in the mountainous region west of Kabul. The park is to be called Band-e-Amir and consists of several mountains and valleys along with scattered lakes. The project was aided by environmental scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society. The area was a well-known destination for camping and hiking during the 1950's, 60's, and 70's but was neglected during the several wars and Taliban occupation that took place. The park still has a surviving population of wolves, wild sheep and goats.

Photo from NY Times.

Cuba Then and Cuba Now

Just stumbled upon this really interesting though seriously way-too-long feature piece from the New York Times Magazine. The article by Roger Cohen delves on the rapidly changing nation and how so many aspects of it have been reformed, reworked, revamped and tweaked every which way even if other aspects remain untouched since Castro declared the revolution.

Photos from New York Times Magazine website. Check out the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/magazine/07cuba-t.html?ref=magazine

Can elephants detect seismic vibrations with their feet?

http://nhmag.com/master.html?http://nhmag.com/homefeatures/0402_home.html

In an article for Natural History, Alan Burdick looks into the research behind the theory that an elephant's vocal calls generate both sound and vibrations in the ground. The vibrations can be detected by another elephant's feet for up to 20 miles away. This type of signaling is supposedly used by an elephant to declare its presence, warn of approaching danger, or attract mates.

Solitary Confinement: Just how bad is it?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande

This New Yorker piece by Atul Gawande is an insightful and in-depth look into the practice of putting prisoners into solitary confinement and the resulting psychological trauma. From experiments on loneliness with primates to the delusional behavior that confined inmates display, Gawande explores the question of whether solitary confinement really is a justifiable punishment . Toawards the end, one is left to wonder if solitary confinement actually disciplines anybody or just exacerbates paranoia and destructive behavior.
Gawande has written numerous pieces for the New Yorker about the delicate and not-so-delicate intricacies of a surgeon's life. He was made a staff writer in 1998.

Doug's Oasis of Cairns

Towards the very bottom of New York's forgotten borough (Staten Island), spread along the beach of Mount Loretto, lies a whole different world. Rock walls, benches of driftwood, rock cairns and pyramids of rusty car parts line the beach. Walking among these sculptures transports any mindset to something fantastical and otherworldly.
Douglas Schwartz is 59. He is employed by the Staten Island Zoo as a zookeeper and he has worked on his beachfront cairns for the last 13 years. His work has been accused of being a "sophmoric prank." It has been accused of being a "devil worshiping ground." It has remained vulnerable to windy days, changing tides, and the boisterous antics of preteens with their first sip of King Cobra.
"What I made as a bench for the happy children to sit on, they saw as a sacrificial alter," he told the New York Times in 2006.
Schwartz's work is constantly changing, being blown over and knocked down, then rebuilt at some other point in some other way. It grows in height, it expands to other parts of the beach, it gets swallowed by the lurping waves of the ocean, it collapses onto itself. With the passing months and years, one might begin to think that it had a life of its own. You can almost feel it breathing when you sit down on one of those driftwood benches and run your fingers over the contradictory saviness of a rock. A rock with rough sandpaperlike texture and smooth fractuations, acute and compacted towards a northern degree while blunt, porous and shedding the dust of its crumbling semblance all points east and west.
"It's a concrete, real gesture," Shwartz told the New York Times. "People see this and they think, 'He must really believe in something.' They're not sure what it is, but they know it must be something."

Now what about Bonnie and Clyde?

Bonnie Parker was 23 and Clyde Barrow was 24 when their stolen Ford V8 sedan came upon a police ambush outside of Gibsland, Louisiana. A total of 130 rounds from six police officers riddled the car with the infamous duo inside.
Next month marks the 75th anniversary of Bonnie and Clyde's grim demise. Along with another accomplice named W.D. Jones, Bonnie and Clyde spent three months terrorizing banks, mom n pop stores, and anybody who got in their way.They made themselves known all across Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.
When the pictures that W.D. had taken of the couple were discovered by police, Bonnie and Clyde quickly became "criminal superstars". It was then that they joined the ranks of Al Capone, Ma Barker, John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd.
They were both young and unmarried. They stole cars whenever they needed one and switched the plates to remain undetected. Bonnie smoked cigars. Clyde could shoot an M1918 Browning automatic rifle. Bonnie was able to load the weapon quicker than Clyde. Clyde knew how to drive the living hell out of any car. Bonnie could navigate them anywhere. Together they would make history.


http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Indelible-Images-Notorious.html?c=y&page=1