Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Planes on vegetable oil
BBC News reports that Air New Zealand has followed Virgin Atlantic in biofuel tests:
A passenger plane has successfully completed a two-hour test flight partly powered by vegetable oil.
Interesting to note that the test used fuel derived from jatropha fruit, whereas Virgin used oil from babassu nuts and coconuts. Jatropha is considered a superior oil, with zero impact on food-grade products:
…jatropha can be grown in soil that is not suitable for most food crops.
“Even under harsh drought conditions with minimal amount of water or moisture, it will survive,”…
The Silver Minnow
Fly fishers have long known that the “Incredible Silver Minnow” is a favorite food among important species.
They wax on about the way its appearance would coax even the smartest salmon out of hiding, and they call it things like a “deadly” lure.
Here is a recipe, apparently from 1965:
Incredible Silver Minnow
Hook: No. 6, 2XL
Tail: A small bunch of gray stripped mallard herl or grizzly hackle.
Body: Wound tightly with lead wire. The wire body is covered and tapered with silk floss of any color. This is covered completely by a double overlay of embossed flat silver tinsel.
Throat: A small bunch of long crimson rooster hackle, the longest ones extending to the point of the hook.
Wing: A very small bunch of white bucktail, over which a very small bunch of blue (dyed) impala hair. Over this is a gray mallard flank feather tied on flat on top of the hair so it surrounds all of the hair. The elements of the wing extand half again as long as the hook.
Head: Built up to minnow-shape with 00 nylon thread, painted silver. Small painted black eyes, with yellow dot in center.
One might think that this would have generated a great deal of concern over the fate of the real Silver Minnow in the past 30 years. Alas, the opposite has happened and minnow populations have been decimated by development and water use. Today the minnow lives in just 5% of its former habitat on the Rio Grande, for example, and conservationists have been trying to reintroduce the Silvery Minnow. Only a few days ago a half million were released. Best of luck to these little ones.
Photo by Aimee Michelle Roberson
RIAA stops suits
ComputerWorld reports that the “RIAA shifts gears on music piracy, says it won’t file more suits”:
In a surprise about-face, the Recording Industry Association of America said today that it will no longer pursue its controversial legal strategy of filing large numbers of lawsuits against individuals for alleged music piracy.
…the strategy of sending out pre-litigation letters asking alleged copyright violators to settle or face legal action will stop, the group said. Also, the RIAA will no longer file “John Doe” lawsuits in which it lists an IP address and charges the person to whom that address is assigned.
The article covers several key issues such as how the RIAA ran investigations without an appropriate license.