hayden

these are normally dumb

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:23:47 GMT

LJ Interests meme results

avocados:
the holiest of all holy fruits. beautiful, in fact.

goes well on sandwiches, as guac, or just plain with a little hot sauce and salt. and so fatty, like nature's cheeseburger.
cigarettes:
also like nature's cheeseburger, except more expensive/cancerous.
magic:
...
maps:
who doesn't love maps? i want to get a mercator projection of the globe tattooed around some limb, and topographical maps on my chest shoulders.
naive art:
"SEE THROUGH IT Kant style be smart avoid the stash
and once and for all fuck the tiny awt syndicate with a sour stick. so weak it makes me want to be a jock" - sm
nutritional yeast:
nutritional yeast may be my favorite thing that i've discovered in the northwest.
squid:
squid are just endlessly cool. cutest things ever.

"And hey there, mr. happy squid, you move so psychedelically
You hypnotize with your magic dance all the animals in the sea
For sure"
the cold and rain:
i might want to go back on this. it was so cold last night i couldn't feel my hands, i need mittens. the rain is still cool though.
the sea and cake:
last show i saw in florida before i left. talented dudes, they make music that doesn't scare old people yet doesn't bore us fickle young people.
tortoise:
another great chicago band. and an animal that lives like, forever right?

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

message left on white board when i got home tonight

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 04:52:33 GMT

hayden-

steven hawkin [sic] is making a rare public appearance in seattle on november 16th. he will be discussing his new theories of the origins of earth. ticketmaster is selling tix

life is grand.

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 08:23:24 GMT

i want a big thick book (or volume of) on the history of anything.

any suggestions? even for the anything?

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 07:55:29 GMT

awesome!

spiders and crisp, salty hair

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 08:22:41 GMT

the spiders are everywhere.

mother has had her babies and i have to admit they're actually pretty cute.

as i type this, there's a little guy floating across my screen, clinging to the glowing vertical abyss to the distant sounds of beck singing sad songs. i can not help but think of the surreal world he is living in; but then i remember that i am also living in that surreal world.

anybody who is reading this and is equally prone to/fans of periods of diverted attention should check out livejournal user: thewonderboy. keep in mind that homeboy is eight. i discovered this little chunk of magic because apparently myself, him and one other are the only three in the livejournal community interested in "the 21st century".

1. i didn't end up reading the other person's livejournal
2. three people??

i went to the ocean randomly this afternoon/evening and although i was absurdly cold on the ride home, riding through aberdeen smoking cigarettes made me feel more like i was living in another century. i can understand the longing for less wide awake times, without televangelists (!!!) preaching revelations and homicide side by side, when the hum was out of mind, when the world wasn't out of it's mind. or as the song says: "it feels like i'm watching something die".

but come on, it seems like nothings really moving except for the details.
and they're always moving, right? we might only be disappointed if we try to fight.

but maybe we're moving through them, in which case why not embrace the ride?

or maybe we're all the same, we view snapshots of ourselves in the details.

either way, i've got a great case of beach hair going on that needs to be slept in to shape.

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 06:39:55 GMT

PARIS (AFP) - Japanese zoologists have made the first recording of a live giant squid, one of the strangest and most elusive creatures in the world.

The size of a bus, with vast eyes and a querulous beak, Architeuthis has long nourished myth and literature, most memorably in Jules Vernes' "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," in which a squid tried to engulf the submarine Nautilus with its suckered tentacles.

Until now, the only evidence of giant squids was extraordinarily rare -- from dead squids that washed up on remote shores or got snagged on a long-line fish hook or from ships' crews who spotted the deep-sea denizen as it made a sortie near the surface.

But almost nothing was known about where and how Architeuthis lives, feeds and reproduces. And, given the problems of getting down to its home in the ocean depths, no-one had ever obtained pictures of a live one.

Scientists went to extreme lengths, backed by TV companies, to be the first.

In 1997 the US
National Geographic Society attached video cameras by a temporary cord to sperm whales in the hope that this would get pictures of a whale dining on one of the giant cephalopods.

In 2003, New Zealand marine biologists laid a sex trap.

They ground up some squid gonads, believing that the scent would drive male giant squids wild as the creatures migrated through New Zealand waters.

The hope was that a camera would squirt out the pureed genitals and a passing squid, driven into a sexual frenzy, would then mate with the lens -- a project that, some may be relieved to hear, never came to fruition.

The breakthrough has come from Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum in Tokyo and Kyoichi Mori of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association.

Writing in a British scientific publication, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Kubodera and Mori describe how they also used sperm whales as a guide.

Whale watchers on the Ogawara Islands, in the North Pacific, had long noted the migratory patterns of sperm whales, observing in particular how the mammals would gather near a steep and canyoned continental shelf, about 10-15 kilometers (six to nine miles) southeast of Chichijima Island.

By attaching depth loggers to the whales, the watchers found the creatures made enormous dives of up to 1,000 metres (3,250 feet) -- just at the depths where the giant squid is believed to lurk.

They then set up a special rig, comprising a camera, stroboscope light, timer, depth sensor, data logger and a depth-activated switch attached to two mesh bags filled with a tempting bait of freshly mashed shrimps.

Suspended from floats, the rig was lowered into the water on a nylon line, with flash pictures taken every 30 seconds for the next four to five hours.

At 9:15 am on September 30 2004, squids as we know them changed forever.

At that moment, 900 metres (2,925 feet) down in the Stygian gloom, an eight-metre (26-feet) specimen lunged at the lower bait bag, succeeding only in getting itself impaled on the hook.

For the next four hours, the squid tried to get itself off the hook as the camera snapped away every 30 seconds, gaining not only unprecedented pictures but also precious information about how the squid is able to propel itself.

After a monstrous battle, the squid eventually freed itself, but left behind a giant tentacle on the hook.

When the severed limb was brought up to the surface, its huge suckers were still able to grip the boat deck and any fingers that touched them -- testimony indeed to the myths of yore, that spoke of monstrous arms that grabbed ships and hauled them to their doom.

Kubodera and Mori have carried out a DNA test from the tentacle, and the result concurs with that of other samples taken from washed-up squid.

Their deep-sea pictures suggest that the squid is far from being the "sluggish, neutrally buoyant" creature that it has traditionally been deemed to be.

Quite the opposite, say the Japanese duo. It is an active predator that attacks its prey horizontally, and its two long tentacles coil up into a ball after the strike, rather like pythons that rapidly envelop their prey in their sinuous curves.

Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 02:31:56 GMT

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.

'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?'

Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan.

The mystery surfaced when a separate group of dolphins was washed from a commercial oceanarium on the Mississippi coast during Katrina. Eight were found with the navy's help, but the dolphins were not returned until US navy scientists had examined them.

Sheridan is convinced the scientists were keen to ensure the dolphins were not the navy's, understood to be kept in training ponds in a sound in Louisiana, close to Lake Pontchartrain, whose waters devastated New Orleans.

The navy launched the classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission in San Diego in 1989, where dolphins, fitted with harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea.

Criticism from animal rights groups ensured the use of dolphins became more secretive. But the project gained impetus after the Yemen terror attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Dolphins have also been used to detect mines near an Iraqi port.