For years, mistletoe (Genus Phoradendron) has suffered from a split reputation: either the decorative prelude to a Christmas kiss or the tree-killing parasite that must be mercilessly excised for the good of the forests. At least 24 different species of Mistletoe grow in the United States.

Now a recent scientific studies (Mistletoe as a keystone resource) have come up with new understanding of the evergreen plant: It is a key to keeping forest life healthy. Not only should it not be cut out of the forests it affects, but it could also be introduced in injured woodlands to restore them to health.

The mistletoe makeover stems from an experiment started in 2004 in a small woods surrounded by farmland in the upper Billabong Creek area of Australia’s New South Wales. David Watson, an ecologist at Charles Sturt University in Albury, New South Wales, reasoned that the only way to discern the role of mistletoe was to remove it from 17 woodlands and compare them with 11 woodlands where the mistletoe remained and 12 woodlands naturally devoid of the plant.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

It was a massive task to eradicate the parasitic mistletoe, involving cherry-pickers, loppers, a dozen people and two seasons of work, made all the tougher because the Australian mistletoe mimics the trees it takes root on. Moreover, while mistletoe, with its 1,400 species in five families, lives on every continent except Antarctica, it is sparse within each forest. Dr. Watson found only a few plants in every acre in the woodlands where he worked.

In all, his team members removed more than 40 tons of the plant, leaving it on the ground for livestock to consume. Then they waited for three years.

Dr. Watson, known in academic circles as “the mistletoe guy,” had long suspected that his favorite plant was a keystone species, meaning it punches above its weight, ecologically speaking, but even he was unprepared for the results. He had supposed that creatures that fed or nested on mistletoe would be affected by its removal. Instead, he found that the whole woodland community in the mistletoe-free forests declined.

Three years after the mistletoe vanished, so had more than a third of the bird species, including those that fed on insects. Bird diversity is considered an indicator of overall diversity. Where mistletoe remained, bird species increased slightly. It was a similar story for some mammals and reptiles, but, in another surprise, particularly for those that fed on insects on the forest floor.

Analysis showed that species of mistletoe play an important role in moving nutrients around the forest food web. That has to do with their status as parasites.

Nonparasitic plants suck nutrients out of their own leaves before they let them fall, sending dry containers to the ground. But because the vampiric mistletoe draws water and nutrients from the tree stem or branch it attaches to, it is more nonchalant about leaving that nutrition in falling leaves. That means the fallen leaves still contain nutrients that feed creatures on the forest floor.

Not only that, but mistletoes make and drop leaves three or four times as rapidly as the trees they live off of. As evergreens, they also do it throughout the year, even when trees are dormant. It is like a round-the-calendar mistletoe banquet.

While no similar mistletoe excision experiments have been performed in North America, where fossil pollen grains suggest the plants have lived for millions of years, scientists in the United States say they, too, have noticed mistletoe's positive effect on forest life.

For example, van-sized “witches’ brooms” formations in old-growth Douglas fir trees in the northwest United States produced by dwarf mistletoe parasites were once pruned away. Today, the brooms are protected because they are important nesting sites for the endangered northern spotted owl.

Some scientists believe it is possible that introducing mistletoe into a damaged forest could help restore it to health.

But introducing mistletoe onto trees could prove controversial. While the parasites are like Robin Hood, stealing from rich trees to feed the forest poor, they can spoil individual trees for lumber. That is especially true of the deforming dwarf mistletoe. Mistletoe is still widely known as the “thief of trees.”

Still, recent studies add a touch of science to the folkloric view of mistletoe as a tantalizer, inducing people to wait under it for a kiss at Christmas. The custom stems from the ancient Druids, who believed mistletoe could work magic because it grew high in bare oak trees in midwinter where nothing else did, seemingly out of thin air. They cut it down with golden sickles, never letting it touch the ground, and hung it in homes to foster fertility.

The Australian study suggests that the plant does seem to work ecological magic of a sort.

What We've Read:
99% of Supposed Holiday Deals are Rip-offs
Check prices at Amazon or check Amazon's prices at Camel Camel Camel before falling prey to blockbuster sales at name brand stores.

The Health Benefits of Going Outside
Ecotherapy has emerged as a way to help rebuild our relationships with nature.

Bees and Wasps in Britain Have been Disappearing for More than a Century
Changes in agricultural practices since the 19th century may be a major culprit in the pollinator's decline.

Patch Tuesday: Keeping Up with Windows Update
What is Microsoft fixing every month when I get Windows Update notices on my PC and what is the meaning of Patch Tuesday?

Are Mac's Immune to Malicious Software?
Scanning a Mac for Malware: I thought they were immune.

We're Following:

@natgeo

Baby Leopards

@stevewinterphoto

Coyote

@ladzinski

Lion

@beverlyjoubert

Mother Cheeta and Cub

@FransLanting

Mountain Lion

@drewtrush

A small Boswellia sacra (Frankincence) plant at Miniatree Garden in Tuscon.

In the history of baffling Christmas presents, none may be stranger than the three gifts of the Magi: gold, frankincense and myrrh. The gold, in traditional interpretations, represented God’s splendor and power. The frankincense, burned for purification, suggested divinity. Myrrh, a funereal spice, prefigured the crucifixion and the anointing of the dead.

Thus the holiest plant of the Christmas season may be a raggedy shrub with peeling bark that seems to grow best in the most inhospitable of climates. Boswellia sacra is better known as the Frankincense Tree. The shrub’s gum resin is one of the biblical gifts that the wise men bestowed on the infant Jesus.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

Until recently, Americans who wished to cultivate their own frankincense could only hope for another biblical house call. Marc Hachadourian, who manages the Nolen Greenhouses at the New York Botanical Garden, describes frankincense seed as hard to find and harder still to grow.

“In horticulture, there are a few plants that we joke about that have a miserable life,” he said. “Boswellia is only happy in its native environment. And even then, it’s not as happy as it could be.”

Flowers and branches of the Boswellia sacra tree, the species from which most frankincense is derived.

In the Frankincense family (Burseraceae) there are 19 species of the genus Boswellia Roxb. ex Colebr. Five or six of these species are endemic to theIsland of Socotra, Yemen, a Unesco World Heritage site, near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, which has a ban on botanical exports. The island is very isolated and through the process of speciation, a third of its plant life is found nowhere else on earth. Other Boswellia reside in the anarchic hinterlands of Yemen and Somalia.

Boswellia sacra is not much of a looker. The paired leaves appear small and crinkled. But the exfoliating bark is something else again: ocher and papery, like a sheet of baking parchment scorched in the oven.

Some appreciate the plant less for its beauty than its deeper botanical riddles. It is said one can predict rain from the swelling of the nodes along the branches. When the barometric pressure drops, Boswellia take every opportunity to grow, flower, and to set seed.

Harvesters slash the trunk with a hatchet and collect the dried beads of sap. Researchers in Eritrea, writing in the Journal of Applied Ecology, observed that frequent resin-tapping in another Boswellia species (B. papyrifera) lowered the number of seeds and lessened their viability.

Accounts from the ancient world make frankincense sound like a cross between aspirin, penicillin, Xanax and Viagra, with a touch of duct tape and magic.

Burning Frankincense

When cut, a white bead of sap forms at the wound. Egyptians, according to “Plants of Dhofar,” believed this to be “the sweat of the gods, fallen to earth.”

The aroma hints at cypress and citrus and maybe witch hazel. But at the same time, it seems like nothing else in the American garden or forest.

Tips for Growers

If you want to grow Boswellia sacra at home it helps to have a desert in the backyard. Failing that, the best place to start might be Jason Eslamieh’s book,“Cultivation of Boswellia: Sacred Trees of Frankincense” (A Book’s Mind; $33).

Gardeners across the sunbelt — in Orlando, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles — may be able to keep Boswellia outdoors year round. When the temperature falls below 40° (4½° C.) for a day or two, Boswellia drops its leaves. In colder weather, the plant quickly dies. Given a choice, it doesn’t like to be confined to a pot.

Pumice is the preferred soil medium, if you can find it. Some gardeners have had luck substituting Turface MVP (a baseball diamond supplement) and Oil-Dri absorbent (a garage cleaner). Make sure to change the soil every year or two, lest a buildup of salts and minerals starts to poison the pot.

It is possible to grow Boswellia under lights. But it’s easier to shut the plants down for the winter on a shelf in the bedroom.

Myrrh

(Commiphora myrrha)

The other plant-gift of the Magi is a rangy assemblage of vicious thorns, called myrrh (Commiphora myrrha). Also a member of the Frankincense family, Myrrh is probably harder to cultivate outside its native range. Myrrh is native to Oman, Yemen and the Horn of Afrida (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Northeast Kenya). It only grows at an altitude of between 800-4,000 feet above sea level (250-1300 m), with a yearly mean rainfall of about 9-11 inches (230-300 mm) in thin limestone soils.

Commiphora myrrha or Myrrh

Technically, myrrh is the aromatic oleoresin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which grow in dry, stony soil. An oleoresin is a natural blend of an essential oil and a resin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum.

When a tree wound penetrates through the bark and into the sapwood, the tree bleeds a resin. Myrrh gum, like frankincense, is such a resin. When myrrh is harvested the gum becomes hard and glossy. The gum is yellowish, and may be either clear or opaque. It darkens deeply as it ages, and white streaks emerge.

Myrrh was so valuable in acient times that it was equal in weight value to gold. During times of scarcity, its value rose even higher.

Frankincense tree facing uncertain Future

Ecologists have warned that the production of the fragrant resin could decline by half over the next 15 years.

The festive fragrance is produced by tapping the gum of trees in the Boswellia genus.

The findings, based on a study carried out in Ethiopia, have been published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

"There are several reasons why [the tree species Boswellia papyifera] it is under threat," explained co-author Frans Bongers, an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

"The forests that remain are declining because the old individuals are dying continuously, and there there no new individuals coming into the system. That means that the forests are running out of trees."

"In places like Oman and Yemen, it is being cut down systematically. Now, in Ethiopia, it is being cut down as land is being turned over to agriculture."

The small trees, which generally reach a height of no more than five metres (16ft), grows in steepy, rocky habitats, providing cover for other plant species.

A SENSE OF FRANKINCENSE

Frankincense is an oily gum resin from 16 different species of tree of the Boswellia genus
Incense extracted from the resin is used in religious rituals, but has also been investigated for its medicinal properties. It is believed to be an anti-inflammatory
The name frankincense is derived from the old French "franc encens", meaning pure incense

Each year, up to about 3kg of resin can be tapped from an individual tree. After about five years of tapping, management techniques suggest that the tree should be rested for a similar period in order to maximise future yields.

The genus Boswellia, overall, is generally classified as Vulnerable as a result of habitat fragmentation and poor levels of rejuvenation, explained Prof Bongers.

"If the tree germinates, then there is a small plant coming out of the ground, but then in the next dry season it goes down again because it is too dry," he told BBC News.

Frankincense burning in a church (Image: AFP)

Rachel WebsterCurator of botany, Manchester Museum

Frankincense is tapped extensively wherever theBoswellia trees grow. Its high value comes mainly from the fact that it is used extensively in religious rituals, particularly in the Islamic, Hebrew and Christian religions.

The species focused on in this study, Boswellia papyrifera, grows in African drylands. It grows in arid areas so any small, deleterious change could have quite devastating effects on the regeneration of the trees.

In this case, it appears to be either fire or over-grazing, but with the general pressures of people and trees depending on the same land, trees tend to lose.

If these trees did disappear, it would be a great loss to the local people who tap the trees to sell the resin and to the ecosystem it grows in.

"Then in the wet season it comes up again. Yet in the next dry season it goes down again. That happens for a number of years, and we don't know how many years this happens - we know that it is at least six years.

"But it may be 10 years and we do not know what triggers what makes it come up above ground forever - maybe it is some sort of reserve, some sort of starch in the soil or root system.

"We are measuring this but we do not have real data, so it is complicated to manage the seedlings."

Prof Bongers added that the encroachment of more opportunistic tree species was also affecting the long-term survival of the frankincense forests.

"In the landscape, these tree has been the dominant species. That is why we can call it a frankincense forest, just like we can refer to beech woodlands in the UK," he said.

"In these woodlands, 80% of the individuals are frankincense trees. Yet some areas at the verges of the distribution of the species, there are other species coming in.

"What we are seeing at the verges of the populations we are following is that that the frankincense trees are phasing out and other species are coming in.

"All the young individuals in the forests are from other species, such asAcacia. We just see the forests running out of frankincense - other species are taking over."

'Alarming' decline

The study examined 13 two-hectare plots, which involve monitoring more than 6,000 trees and collecting more than 20,000 measurements.

Using this data, the team modelled the fate of the species, and found the current levels of frankincense production is set to halve in the next 15 years.

"Current management of Boswellia populations is clearly unsustainable," Prof Bongers warned.

"Our models show that within 50 years, populations of Boswellia will be decimated, and the declining populations mean frankincense production is doomed. This is a rather alarming message for the incense industry and conservation organisations."

He added that tapping the trees for the valued resin was unlikely to be the main cause of the decline. Instead, there were a number of other things affecting the long-term future of the trees.

"Frankincense extraction is unlikely to be the main cause of population decline, which is likely to be caused by burning, grazing and attack by the long-horn beetle, which lays its eggs under the bark of the tree.

In the areas they studied, the team found that older trees in the population were not being replaced because few Boswellia seedlings survived to become saplings.

"The number of fires and intensity of grazing in our study area has increased over recent decades as a result of a large increase in the number of cattle, and this could be why seedlings fail to grow into saplings. At the same time, a large proportion of trees we studied died after being attacked by the long-horn beetle," Prof Bongers observed.

In order to ensure future rejuvination, he suggested that areas should be set aside for up to a decade so young Boswellia trees can become established.

It's Summer in Australia

Forecast for Christmas Day in Sydney is Mid-80°s (29°C) and sunny. Of course it might be hotter in Florida this year. Current forecast for Orlando area on December 25? Low 80°s (28°C).

@Aussiebum_team

Aussiebum.com

@aussieBum

AUSSIEBUM

Yes, the Arctic is warming fast, but what about the rest of us?

In Florida temps are still in the mid-80°s (29°-30° C) as we approach

the new year, and worse yet it virtually hasn't rained since last May.

Photo and commentary: ©Phillip Lott, phillipsnaturalworld.com

The Arctic saw the warmest temperatures ever recorded in 2016, according to an The Arctic Report Card: Tracking recent environmental changes relative to historical records, released December 14, 2016 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Air temperatures were 2° Celsius — 3.6° Fahrenheit — higher than their 1981-to-2010 average in the months between October 2015 and September of 2016, a time period that coincided with a strong El Niño event, NOAA reported. According to the agency, since 1900, temperatures have risen even than that in the Arctic: 3.5° C (6.3° F). All of this means temperatures in the region continue to climb at double the rate of the planet as a whole.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

Intense Florida Sun

December 2016

Photo: ©Phillip Lott, phillipsnaturalworld.com

“The average surface temperature in the Arctic from January until September of 2016 was by far the highest we’ve observed since 1900,” said Jeremy Mathis, who directs NOAA’s Arctic Research Program. “And this is a critical point, there were record temperature highs set in January, February, October, and November of 2016.”

“The story in the Arctic has been warming in the summertime, you have this big loss of sea ice in the summer….but now we’re seeing temperature records being shattered in the wintertime,” Mathis continued. “And so we’re seeing that this persistent heat is now staying around year round. The fact that we’re breaking temperature records on the warm side in the winter months is what’s really indicating that these trends are what’s here to stay.”

Unprecedented Warm Air and Ocean Surface Temperatures in 2016

The report, which is peer reviewed for its statements up through September, included a special non-peer reviewed addendum to cover the months of October and November of 2016 — perhaps because they were so extraordinary, featuring record low levels of Arctic sea ice heading into deep winter. (The Artic is the region of the planet north of 60° latitude.) Here, the document noted the “record breaking delay in the freeze up of the sea cover in Fall 2016 is associated with unprecedented warm air and ocean surface temperatures.”

In 2016 overall, warm Arctic temperatures led to the second lowest level of Arctic sea ice ever recorded at the summer minimum in September (many individual months saw all-time record lows), the second earliest beginning to the melt season for the Greenland ice sheet, low snow cover, and much else.

Intense Florida Sun

December 2016

Photo and commentary: ©Phillip Lott, phillipsnaturalworld.com

“The 2016 Arctic Report Card further documents the unraveling of the Arctic and the crumbling of the pillars of the global climate system that the Arctic maintains,” said Rafe Pomerance, who is chair of the group Arctic 21 and sits on the Polar Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences. “Governments must urgently work together to establish a future Arctic that minimizes ever greater warming from the loss of sea ice and snow cover and thawing permafrost, and massive sea level rise from the shrinking Greenland ice sheet and other Arctic glaciers.”

Weather Extremes Magnified by Weakening Jet Stream

One of the most watched — and most controversial — aspects of this rapid Arctic change involves the jet stream. There’s a prominent theory, advanced by Rutgers University’s Jennifer Francis, that the decreasing temperature difference between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes as the Arctic warms is slowing this stratospheric air flow and causing it to take a more elongated and loopy path, which can in turn lead to more weather extremes as weather systems become stuck in place for longer.

NOAA isn’t officially endorsing this theory yet, but it is studying it closely, Mathis said. “As the Arctic destabilizes, these cold air masses can start sliding down into the lower 48 that can give us extreme weather,” he said.

All of this is happening due to global warming resulting from the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But in the Arctic itself, the NOAA report notes, permafrost soils currently contain twice as much buried carbon as resides in the air. And one of the most striking parts of the NOAA report is that this region “appears to be releasing net carbon to the atmosphere,” even after an increase in plant growth in the Arctic that partially offsets soil losses.

Trump Nominates Oil Man to be Secretary of State

The news about the record warm Arctic comes as president-elect Trump has named Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, as his secretary of state. As head of the world’s largest private oil company, Tillerson and Exxon “had begun a drilling program in the Arctic’s Kara Sea, where Exxon made a find, and had agreed to explore shale oil areas of West Siberia and deep waters of the Black Sea,” note Steven Mufson and two Washington Post colleagues today. But this was halted by sanctions on Russia.

The irony is that if Arctic drilling goes forward, the resulting fossil fuels will surely make global warming even worse — but global warming, by reducing the amount sea ice, will also have also made drilling easier to pull off. Add to that Trump seems bent on pushing a policy of maximum population growth which is the ultimate driver of global warming as a growing population consumes more resources. By vowing to eliminate abortion rights and appointing social conservatives to key government positions Trump has signaled that population growth is a paramount goal of his administration.

Arctic/Antarctic Links

Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP)

Antarctic Treaty System Handbook

The Arctic Council

Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS)

The Byrd Polar Research Center

Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory

Directory of polar and cold regions organizations

International Arctic Research Center — University of Alaska Fairbanks

International Arctic Science Committee

International Council for Science Statement on Polar Research (pdf)

International Permafrost Association

International Polar Year 2007-2008 Links:
US National Committee to the International Polar Year (National Academies) US Government IPY site (archived)
International IPY site

NASA Cryospheric Sciences Branch

National Science Foundation — Office of Polar Programs

National Institutes of Health — National Library of Medicine's Arctic Health

National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Arctic Theme Page

The Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, U. of Washington

Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research

US Arctic Research Commission

Photo: ©Phillip Lott, phillipsnaturalworld.com

We've Read

Scientists are frantically copying US climate data fearing it might vanish under Trump

Progressives have felt a call to arms, finally. We need to be outspoken.

A New Theory For Why Trump Voters (the Minority) are so Angry—That Actually Makes Sense: Blame Everyone But Oneself

The theory doesn't explain the horribly bleached blond females (think Kellyanne Conway) who gravitate to the President-elect, but it is a start to explaining rampant racism in the ignorant backwoods of America.

There’s been great thirst this election cycle for insight into the psychology of Trump voters. J.D. Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” offers a narrative about broken families and social decay. “There is a lack of agency here — a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself,” he writes. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild tells a tale of perceived betrayal. According to her research, white voters feel the American Dream is drifting out of reach for them, and they are angry because they believe minorities and immigrants have butted in line.

Cramer’s recent book, “The Politics of Resentment,” offers a third perspective. Through her repeated interviews with the people of rural Wisconsin, she shows how politics have increasingly become a matter of personal identity. Just about all of her subjects felt a deep sense of bitterness toward elites and city dwellers; just about all of them felt tread on, disrespected and cheated out of what they felt they deserved.

@aussiebum_team

We're Following

Sydney Swelters Through the Hottest December Night in 148 Years

A minimum of 27.1°C (80.8°F) was recorded in Australia's largest city early Wednesday, December 14, 2016 according to the Australian Bureau of Meterology. Records have been kept at Sydney's Observatory Hill weather station since 1859. Later in the day the temperature topped 38°C (100°F). Some handle the heat better than others.

@andrew_pap_

@brandyboy

The red eyes in this image were caused by my camera's flash.

The true color of this Barred Owl's (Strix varia) eyes is black.

The different color of owls' eyes do more than help you identify the species. Eye color seems to be an indicator of when the owls prefer to hunt, whether it's at night, during the day or in the soft light of dawn and dusk. Regardless of eye color, owls tend to have excellent eyesight and the ability to see in the dark.

Owl Eyes

Instead of being round, like human eyes, owl eyes are longer and more tube-shaped. This lets more light in so owls can see better in the dark. The shape restricts the movement of the eyes, however; instead of moving their eyes side to side like a human can, owls must turn their heads to see to the sides. They have adapted to stationary eyes by being to turn their heads up to 270 degrees.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on twitter

@philzcatz

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

Eye Color and Activity Times

Although not accurate with every owl species, eye color tends to indicate what time of day the owls prefer to be active. There are always exceptions, but most owls hunt around the same time as other owls with the same color eyes, according to Raptor Rescue, a bird-of-prey rehabilitation charity. The link is not fully understood but it's pretty reliable: Species eye color correlates to daily activity periods.

Orange Eyes

Most owls that sport orange eyes are active around dawn and dusk, which is known as being crepuscular. These owls, such as the Eurasian eagle owl and the great horned owl, can be found around the world. Large owls, often up to about 22 inches long, they hunt prey such as mice, rabbits and birds. The great horned owl is populous in the United States and is common even in urban areas.

Dark Brown or Black

Owls that have dark brown or black eyes typically are nocturnal, which means they prefer to hunt at night. The dark color doesn't help the owls see in the dark, but it might help camouflage them better than brighter-colored eyes. Owls with dark eyes, such as the northern spotted owl, barred owl and barn owl, follow the trend of hunting at night, although they are sometimes seen out in daylight, especially on cloudy days. According to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, barn owls can even catch prey in total darkness by using their hearing to help.

Yellow Eyes

Yellow eyes often appear on owls who are diurnal -- they prefer to hunt during the day. The great gray owl, topping out at about 30 inches long, is an example of a diurnal owl with yellow eyes. In addition to excellent eyesight, these birds can hear mice or other small rodents moving beneath the snow and swoop down to grab them with their talons. Short-eared owls are a bit smaller, about the size of large crows, but they are powerful hunters during the day.

Freeing Animals From Our Evolutionary Traps

James Snyder noticed one day that a frog had climbed onto a tree in his backyard in southern Florida and swallowed one of his Christmas lights (above). He snapped this eerie photo in which the light glows through the frog’s stomach, like a herpetological holiday ornament.

This frog’s behavior seems weirdly stupid. But there’s actually a wisdom of sorts in swallowing a Christmas light–if you’re a Cuban tree frog, that is. For thousands of years, the only glows your ancestors ever saw on a tree came from luminescent insects. If they responded to a little glow by attacking, they got a meal. They were more likely to survive and have baby frogs. The frogs that didn’t respond? Some of them may have done just fine. But others may have gone hungry. The males might have struggled to attract a mate; the females might have laid small eggs that failed to develop.

Natural Selection and the

Cuban Tree Frog

Cuban Treefrogs (Osteopilus septentrionalis) are whitish in color and much larger than Florida's native green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea)

Natural selection laid down this response in Cuban tree frogs, in other words. Christmas lights have only recently come into their lives, and natural selection has shown no sign yet of striking the “attack glowing light” behavior off the menu.

Ecological Novelty and the Emergence of

Evolutionary Traps

Snyder’s glowing frog is one of the prettiest examples of a surprisingly common thing that happens when animals come into contact with humans. We have altered the environment in a vast number of ways, both small and large. And when animals try to read the cues from our human environment, they can get tricked. They can end up doing something that kills them, loses them the opportunity to reproduce, or simply wastes their time. Scientists call these situations evolutionary traps.

In the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Bruce Robertson of Bard College, Jennifer Rehage of Florida International University, and Andrew Sih of University of California, Davis, take a look at a lot of documented examples of evolutionary traps and try to come up with a theory for them. They would like to be able to predict when traps will occur, and find a strategy to prevent evolutionary traps from endangering species.

Some evolutionary traps, like the Christmas lights, play on the visual strategies animals use to find prey. Albatrosses will peck at brightly colored pieces of plastic floating in the water, for example. It’s a response that used to give them energy but now can fill their guts with trash. Some of the species we’ve moved around the planet are tricking native predators. A native North American wasp used to lay its eggs in a native ladybird insect species. We’ve now imported a new species, which the wasp now prefers. Unfortunately for the wasp, the defenses of the alien ladybird are so strong that it can kill the wasp’s eggs.

Evolutionary traps can even fool animals looking for a mate. In Australia, male beetles of the species Julodimorpha bakewelli, are attracted to the gleaming brown surface of female beetles. Beer bottles, it just so happens, look a lot like female Julodimorpha bakewelli, and so male beetles can often be found furiously trying to mate with them.

Julodimorpha bakewelli Cop a Root with a discarded beer bottle

The males of this species have the habit to aggregate on and attempting to copulate with discarded brown "stubbies" (a type of beer bottles). The males are apparently attracted by the refraction of light produced by the glass bumps of the bottles, resembling giant females with a very similar color and surface. Consequently to this evolutionary trap the species is threatened

Artificial light can set evolutionary traps not just by creating the illusion of prey, but by throwing off an animal’s navigation. When caddis flies become adults and are ready to mate, they need to get to a body of water. Without Google Maps to help them, they do what their ancestors have done for countless generations: they take advantage of the fact that ponds and streams change the reflection of moonlight, altering its polarization. Unfortunately, large plate glass windows can polarize light in the same way, with the result that caddis flies will sometimes blanket the glass, mate, and lay their eggs there.

Sometimes, an evolutionary trap is fairly harmless. Cuban tree frogs don’t swallow Christmas lights that often, and Snyder found that his hapless visitor was actually still alive and eventually spat out its mistaken prey. But in other cases, a mistake can be catastrophic. Some beetles lay their eggs in fallen trees. If they make the mistake of laying their eggs in trees that people have cut down for lumber, their offspring will end up dead in a mill.

Super-Attractive

Evolutionary Traps

These evolutionary traps can be especially dangerous when they are more attractive than their natural counterpart. Beer bottles, it turns out, throw male beetles into a mating frenzy, because they have exaggerated versions of the visual cues on female beetles. Super-attractive traps lure away a greater fraction of a species to their doom. Robertson and his colleagues surveyed 445 scientific studies of evolutionary traps and found that 86 percent of the severe ones involved this combination of danger and heightened attraction.

The scientists also ranked the ways in which we humans create traps. Invasive species top the list. Next comes agriculture and forestry. Some birds, for example, usually prefer to build their nests at the edges of forests, so that they can fly a short distance to find food in open spaces. These birds are attracted to thinned forests and the edges of cleared land. Unfortunately, so are mammal predators that eat them. Buildings and roads create traps, as well as artificial lighting that goes with it. Sea turtles that lay their eggs on beaches near hotels may head inland instead of going out to sea, fooled into thinking hotel lights are the moon over the ocean.

Cuban Treefrogs will often try to "mate" with humans. For naturalist and photographer the unusual behavior is fun. For others it might lead to death of the frog.

Evolutionary restoration projects can also create evolutionary traps for the very species conservationists are trying to save. To increase the eggs laid by Coho salmon, conservation managers have attracted the fish to streams where farmers later draw down the water for their crops. The salmon that hatch from the eggs get stranded and die.

Any explanation of evolutionary traps has to account not just for why some species fall into them, but why so many don’t. Fortunately, there’s been a lot of research on how animals respond to different stimuli, and so Robertson and his colleagues have adapted these findings to the question of when evolutionary traps work. They predict that evolutionary traps are more likely to work the more they resemble a cue animals relied on in the past–especially if that cue was reliable. Some cues are especially important for animals to respond to, the scientists also point out. Rejecting them can have disastrous consequences. If an ecological trap resembles one of these essential cues, animals will be less likely to reject it.

Species Have 2 Choices:

Escape or Doom

Once animals fall into a trap, they may go in one of two directions: escape or doom. Some animals may be able to learn from experience that a cue they used to rely on now brings them grief. Of course, some lessons are easier to learn than others, and some animals are better at learning than others.

Evolution can also spring animals from an evolutionary trap. If an animal is born with genes that lower its preference for a cue, it may be less likely to die–and more likely to pass on its genes. Even if animals don’t evolve this new behavior, they may still persist. There may still be enough good habitat where they can reproduce, so that their entire population doesn’t get sucked into a trap. But if a trap is too potent and animals can’t lose their attraction to it, extinction is a real risk.

One way to reduce that risk is to get rid of the trap. Take away the beachfront lights that fool sea turtles, for example, or block them by restoring sand dunes. Move lumber out of forests before rare beetles try to lay their eggs in them.

It’s also possible to take away an evolutionary trap’s allure. Solar panels, for example, turn out to be very attractive for aquatic insects because their polarized dark surfaces resemble water. But scientists have discovered that all it takes is a thin white border around a solar panel to make it unappealing to the insects.

From Instagram:

Michaelango's David Transformed

We've Read:

Above: David Pocock of the Australian Wallabies

and no relation to the "Budgy Nine," looking

great in sluggers emblazoned with the Wallabies' team logo.

Whether they are Budgy Smugglers or not seems irrelevant.

What do Muslims Have Against Budgy Smugglers?

A group of Australian tourists, branded the "Budgie Nine," were charged with public nuisance, which carries a fine but no jail time. The men were detained after posing in Budgy Smuggler swimwear decorated with the Malaysian flag to celebrate Australian Daniel Ricciardo's win in a Grand Prix Race.

Canada's 150th Birthday Gift To You

. . .not only easy immigration in the age of Trump. . .

nor Ryan Reynolds. . .nor Steven Amell. . .

better still. . .

Free Pass to all National Parks

On July 1, 2017, Canada turns 150 years old. Kicking off the festivities on New Year's Day, the stewards of the country's protected natural treasures, Parks Canada, has a gift for all: a free, multiuse pass to the country's 47 national parks and national park reserves. The free Discovery Card is good from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2017. You order it online, hang it on your car's rear-view mirror and enjoy.

See Parks Canada's Discovery Card, (888) 773-8888 or email information@pc.gc.ca

And While Loosely on the Subject of Ryan Reynolds:

How Ryan Handled That Major Deadpool Buck-Ass Naked Fight Scene

Best Christmas Cards 2016:

A Cat's Christmas

by David Price

A Florida Christmas

by David Price

A Southern Christmas

GFS Computer Forecast Model simulation of temperature difference from normal for Thursday, December 22, 2016

It’s not normal, and it’s happening again.

For the second year in a row in late December and for the second time in as many months, temperatures in the high Arctic will be freakishly high compared to normal.

Computer models project that on Thursday, three days before Christmas, the temperature near the North Pole will be an astronomical 40-50° warmer-than-normal and approaching 32° F, the melting point.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on twitter

@philzcatz

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

On some forecast maps simulating Arctic temperatures, the color bar does not even go as high as predicted levels.

GFS Computer Forecast Model forecast temperature difference (in Celsius) from normal in the Arctic on Thursday, December 22, 2016. (University of Maine Climate Re-analyzer)

The warmth will be drawn into the Arctic by a powerhouse storm east of Greenland. The European weather model estimates its lowest pressure will be around 945 millibars, which is comparable to many category 3 hurricanes.

“That’s pretty intense,” said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist with WeatherBell Analytics.

European model forecast low pressure center of 946 millibars east of Greenland Wednesday, December 21, 2016, helping draw mild air into the Arctic through the Nordic Sea. (WeatherBell.com)

Maue explained that depleted sea ice cover east of the Nordic Sea helps create a passageway for warm air to surge north uninhibited. “You have more real estate available to advect the warm and moist air northward,” he said.

Simulation of high altitude temperatures from the European weather forecast model shows mild air from the south streaming through the Nordic Sea towards the North Pole on Thursday, December

22, 2016. (WeatherBell.com)

Arctic sea ice levels are at a record lows. In November, the Arctic usually gains ice, but over a period of five days it saw 19,000 square miles of ice cover vanish, which NOAA called “almost unprecedented”.

Zachary Labe, a doctoral student researching the Arctic at the University of California-Irvine, said that the lack of ice in this region has allowed ocean temperatures to warm to levels well above normal.

“The warm ocean acts as a buffer to keep the air temperatures from getting colder,” Labe said.

Air temperatures in the Arctic above 80 degrees north (latitude) have been much warmer than normal since roughly September.

(Danish Meterological Institute, adapted by Capital Weather Gang)

The “persistence and magnitude of above average Arctic temperatures continues to remain quite impressive” Labe said on Twitter.

The month of November was an incredible 18 degrees warmer than normal in the Arctic, the National Snow and Ice Data said.

Richard James, who holds a doctorate in meteorology, found November produced the most anomalously warm Arctic temperatures of any month on record after analyzing data from 19 weather stations.

[Abnormally warm Arctic spurs planet to second-warmest November on record]

Temperature difference from normal in Arctic in November 2016. (Climate.gov)

In the middle of the month, the temperature averaged over the entire Arctic north of 80 degrees latitude spiked to 36 degrees above normal.

[The North Pole is an insane 36 degrees warmer than normal as winter descends]

Ted Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said that he was struck that an area “the size of the entire contiguous U.S. had temperatures that far above the norm, all at the same time.”

The anomalous warmth to close out 2016 follows a very a similar event at the end of 2015 when Arctic temperatures surged over the melting point.

Play the Global Temperature Anomaly Video at NASA.gov

[From Dec. 2015: Freak storm may push temperatures over 50 degrees above normal at North Pole]

The question the research community is grappling with is whether these huge temperatures spikes are becoming more common.

“I don’t think anyone can for sure say,” said Labe. “The variability in the Arctic is tremendous. It usually does bring in brief periods of very warm weather [compared to normal].”

WeatherBell’s Maue agreed, saying the big Arctic storms which have drawn mild air into the Arctic both this year and last year are part and parcel of Atlantic weather variability.

A study published in the journal Nature on Dec. 15 said these events have happened once or twice a decade going to back to the 1950s.

While it’s premature to say if these events are becoming more frequent, the intensity of the warm air reaching the Arctic is almost certainly increasing.

“[T]he warmest midwinter temperatures at the North Pole have been increasing at a rate that is twice as large as that for mean midwinter temperatures at the pole,” the Nature study said.“It is argued that this enhanced trend is consistent with the loss of winter sea ice from the Nordic Seas that moves the reservoir of warm air over this region northwards making it easier for weather systems to transport this heat polewards.”

When these excessive warm anomalies occur in the Arctic, the cold air which is usually present must go somewhere. In November,it piled up in Siberiaand that is poised to happen again:

And eventually some of the cold air in Siberia crossed the pole and dived into North America in mid-December. Only time will tell if history is to repeat itself. But don't tell Donny and his crew of climate change deniers, they believe its all a hoax and the only solution is to burn more fossil fuels.

We've Read:

Pedro Almodóvar's radiant melodrama 'Julieta' is a work of subdued mastery

Manuela Velasco and Antonio Banderas in Aldómovar's c1987 hit 'La Ley del Deseo'

This is a film by Almodóvar where women and men (but mostly women) inhabit spaces beautifully designed to complement and amplify their emotions, and where even the accidental presence of ugliness or non-designer clutter amounts to a cardinal sin. By this point in his career, he has more than earned the right to point out his own indulgences, especially when he does it with such a modest, unpretentious sense of fun.

Sara Jiménez, left, and Adriana Ugarte in the movie "Julieta."

(Manolo Pavon/Sony Pictures Classics)

Vegan Seafood: Something's Fishy in the Faux-Meat Aisle

Big Food has taken notice of faux-meat products. But there's another piece of the nearly $5 billion plant-based food economy: Vegan Seafood

Lonely Planet's 7 Great Places to Spend New Years Eve—

that aren't Las Vegas or New York City

9 Souvenirs You'd be Surprised the US Government Could Confiscate

Interactive World's Biggest Data Breaches Chart

From Hillary's email to the colossal Yahoo Breach of over 1 Billion Customer Records (that took 3 years to report). You can spend hours playing with this tool seeing how many places your data has been stolen from and when. Breaches in orange have a particularly interesting stories attached.

We're Following:

@africaguide

Wouter van Spijker

Professional overland safari guide in Southern and Central Africa

African Barred Owlets (Glaucidium capense), one of the smallest owl species in Africa, only about the size of a Shrike.

Crimson-breasted Shrike (Laniarius atrococcineus), the most beautiful bird of the Kalahari.

Spotted Bush Snake (Pilothamnus semivariegatus). The snake is often misidentified as being a male of the highly venomous Boomslang, which looks very similar in size, coloration and appearance, but the snake is actually harmless.

Young lion

@africaguide

Foreign governments concerned about climate change may soon be spending more time dealing with Sacramento than Washington.

President-elect Donnie J. to be Climate Change Denier-in-Chief

President-elect Donnie J. has packed his cabinet with nominees who dispute the science of global warming. He has signaled he will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. He has belittled the notion of global warming and attacked policies intended to combat it.

But California — a state that has for 50 years been a leader in environmental advocacy — is about to step unto the breach. In a show of defiance, Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and legislative leaders said they would work directly with other nations and states to defend and strengthen what were already far and away the most aggressive policies to fight climate change in the nation. That includes a legislatively mandated target of reducing carbon emissions in California to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

“California can make a significant contribution to advancing the cause of dealing with climate change, irrespective of what goes on in Washington,” Mr. Brown said in an interview. “I wouldn’t underestimate California’s resolve if everything moves in this extreme climate denial direction. Yes, we will take action.”

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on twitter

@philzcatz

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

CALEXIT

Don't F@#! With California

Among other Powers California Possesses:

California is the 6th Largest World Economy (behind US, China, Japan, Germany and UK).

California's GDP in 2015 was $2.5 trillion.

The prospect of California’s elevated role on climate change is the latest sign of how this state, where Hillary Clinton defeated Mr. Trump by more than four million votes, is preparing to resist the policies of the incoming White House. State and city officials have already vowed to fight any attempt by Washington to crack down on undocumented immigrants; Los Angeles officials last week set aside $10 million to help fund the legal costs of residents facing deportation.

The environmental effort poses decided risks for this state. For one thing, Mr. Trump and Republicans have the power to undercut California’s climate policies. The Trump administration could reduce funds for the state’s vast research community — including two national laboratories — which has contributed a great deal to climate science and energy innovation, or effectively nullify state regulations on clean air emissions and automobile fuel standards.

“They could basically stop enforcement of the Clean Air Act and CO2 emissions,” said Hal Harvey, president of Energy Innovation, a policy research group in San Francisco. “That would affect California because it would constrain markets. It would make them fight political and legal battles rather than scientific and technological ones.”

And some business leaders warned that California’s embrace of environmental regulations — from emission reductions to new regulations imposing mandatory energy efficiency standards on computers and monitors — could put it at a disadvantage, all the more so as conservatives elsewhere move to roll back environmental regulations.

“If the other states pursue no-climate-change policies, and we continue to go it on our own with our climate change policies, then we would be at a competitive disadvantage for either relocating companies or growing companies here, particularly manufacturing factories,” said Rob Lapsley, the president of the California Business Roundtable.

Extraordinary Heat and Dry Continues in Florida

These are three different perspectives on Christmas Day 2016 surfers along Florida's East Coast, south of Daytona Beach, where temperatures have been 20° above normal making Christmas feel more like May Day (Memorial Day) than the dead of winter. Worse still, the historic dry continues unabated with now 6 months of driest weather on record for the peninsula of Florida, home to 20+ million thirsty inhabitants and countless millions of daily tourists.

These surfers were about a mile from my position on the north jetty at Ponce Inlet. Using a variety of lenses I made them look closer or further away. The condos and hotels of Daytona Beach are in the background and the curve of the Florida east coast is apparent in these long lens images.

When California enacted its climate reduction standards last year, it drew fierce criticism from state business leaders.

The bills “impose very severe caps on the emission of greenhouse gases in California, without requiring the regulatory agencies to give any consideration to the impacts on our economy, disruptions in everyone’s daily lives or the fact that California’s population will grow almost 50 percent between 1990 and 2030,” the California Chamber of Commerce said.

Democrats relish the prospect of challenging Mr. Trump on climate change, noting that other states have followed California in trying to curb emissions. And California has the weight to get into the ring: It is one of the 10 largest economies in the world, with a gross domestic product of approximately $2.5 trillion.

“California more than ever is strongly committed to moving forward on our climate leadership,” said Kevin de Leon, the leader of the State Senate. “We will not deviate from our leadership because of one election.”

California at Forefront of

Climate and EnergyPolicy

for more than 50 years

The state has been at the forefront of climate and energy policy for more than half a century, beginning with setting appliance and vehicle emissions standards in the 1960s. Those policies will continue, analysts said, in no small part because they are overwhelmingly popular here: 69 percent of Californians said they supported the law requiring the state to roll back emissions in a July survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California.

“This is not something that’s going to be fueled by dislike of Donald Trump,” said Adrienne Alvord, the western states director for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This will be fueled by people liking these policies and wanting to see them continue. Our leadership and the people of California support the science.”

Ms. Alvord said that in the new political climate, the fossil-fuel industry may feel emboldened to take on some of the state’s energy and climate initiatives. “But they would be fighting a very uphill battle,” she said. “Politically, it’s going to be very difficult to really slow this train down.”

California’s economy is powered by a high-tech industry and prominent research institutions that make it well placed to continue to lead on energy and climate. The state has already taken on an international role. Mr. Brown has spearheaded the Under 2 MOU initiative, backed by a coalition of state, local and regional governments in 33 countries — more than 160 jurisdictions with a total population of more than 1 billion — that have agreed to deep emissions cuts to try to keep global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Could Florida be any more opposite California on climate change? Talk about carbon friendly. There are even car traffic lanes on Daytona Beach, while a game of footy (soccer) is played along the shore Christmas Day, 2016.

California’s cap-and-trade program, which imposes a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and allows companies to buy and sell emissions credits, is linked with one in Quebec. The program has suffered recently from weak sales, and it is facing a legal challenge from the state Chamber of Commerce. Its future is likely to be the subject of debate by the Legislature. State officials have also had discussions with other countries, including Mexico and China, about joining forces on cap-and-trade policies.

Domestically, California has long been a leader on vehicle emissions. The federal Environmental Protection Agency allowed it to have tougher standards under the 1970 Clean Air Act, and more than a dozen states have adopted its standards. The Trump administration could deny the state a new waiver, as the George W. Bush administration did, which would lead to a court fight.

Sea Fog is Florida's Only Hope for Moisture in the Short Term

We've Read:
Sugar Bombs Hide in Popular Food

Putin Agrees to Receive Intelligence Briefings in Trump's Place

In what Donnnie J's transition team members are calling a further example of international cooperation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to receive daily U.S. intelligence briefings in the place of the President-elect.

HR 6506 Introduced

to Stop $500,000 day

Welfare Payments to Trump

Donald Trump is turning into the biggest welfare queen of all. He hasn’t even been sworn into office yet, and he’s already hitting up the taxpayers for $500,000 a day – to guard just one of his properties. Trump Towers, New York. $500,000 per day in security costs, now being paid by the taxpayers of New York. While the Secret Service ponders whether to rent out two entire floors, also at taxpayer expense. In response Florida House Member Alan Grayson introduced HR 6506 which says:

SECTION 1. PRESIDENT’S RESPONSIBILITY TO PAY FOR ADDITIONAL SECURITY COSTS ON PROPERTY OWNED BY THE PRESIDENT.

(a) In General.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President shall be personally responsible for paying for any additional security measures, including protection from the United States Secret Service, with respect to property that the President holds a direct or indirect ownership interest. In this subsection, the term “property” includes any property from which the President receives or may receive any actual or potential revenue, including royalties, interest, dividends or distributions.

We're Following:

Discover Australia's Summer

AussieBum on twitter

@aussieBum

AussieBum on Facebook

@aussiebum

AussieBum on Youtube

@aussieBum

AussieBum on Google

AussieBum

Aussiebum on instagram

@aussiebum_team

AussieBum on Bing

@aussieBum

Just hours after the winter solstice, a mass of energetic particles from the Sun smashed into the magnetic field around Earth. The strong solar wind stream stirred up a display of northern lights over northern Canada.

With the “day-night band” (DNB) of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), the Suomi NPP satellite acquired this view of the aurora borealis on December 22, 2016. The northern lights stretched across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nunavut, and Northwest Territories, areas that often fall under the auroral oval.

The DNB detects dim light signals such as auroras, airglow, gas flares, and reflected moonlight. In the case of the image above, the sensor detected the visible light emissions as energetic particles rained down from Earth’s magnetosphere and into the gases of the upper atmosphere.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on twitter

@philzcatz

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

The collision of solar particles and pressure into our planet’s magnetosphere accelerates particles trapped in the space around Earth (such as in the radiation belts). Those particles are sent crashing down into Earth’s upper atmosphere—at altitudes of 100 to 400 kilometers (60 to 250 miles)—where they excite oxygen and nitrogen molecules and release photons of light. The results are rays, sheets, and curtains of dancing light in the sky.

References

Carlowicz. M. and Lopez, R. (2002) Storms from the Sun: The Emerging Science of Space Weather. The Joseph Henry Press/National Academies Press.

Miller, Steven D. et al (2012, September 25) Suomi satellite brings to light a unique frontier of nighttime environmental sensing capabilities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 109, Number 39, 15706–15711.

NASA (2002) Aurora: fabled glowing lights of the Sun-Earth Connection. (PDF) Accessed December 24, 2016.

Even Earth’s skies were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day this year. On March 17, 2015, a severe geomagnetic storm—the strongest of the past decade—painted the sky with green, red, and blue auroras from New Zealand to Alaska. The storm conditions provided a fantastic opportunity for aurora viewing from above and below.

On Sunday, March 15, a coronal mass ejection exploded off the Sun towards Earth, as observed by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) instruments. By March 17, the burst of solar particles and energy reached Earth and kept the solar wind stream at potent levels for more than 24 hours. The storm reached a G4 or “severe” level on NOAA’s geomagnetic storm scale, and the Kp index—a metric for global geomagnetic storm activity—fluctuated between 6 to 8 on a scale that goes to 9. The “northern lights” reached as far south as the central and southern United States.

People first started reporting aurora sightings on Twitter from Colorado, Alaska, New Zealand and Australia. The storm’s peak intensity occurred during daylight hours in the Western Hemisphere, but aurora hunters in some regions still experienced a vibrant display at nightfall.

Using the “day-night band” (DNB) of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), the Suomi NPP satellite acquired this view (above) of the aurora borealis around 1:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on March 18, 2015. Auroras appear as white streaks over Hudson Bay, southern Canada, and the northern United States. The DNB sensor detects dim light signals such as auroras, airglow, gas flares, city lights, and reflected moonlight. In the image above, the sensor detected visible light emissions as energetic particles rained down from Earth’s magnetosphere into the gases of the upper atmosphere.

While Suomi NPP was observing from above, skywatchers on the ground captured some spectacular views (below). The first photo was taken by Chris Ratzlaff from Olds, Alberta, after sunset on March 17. The second was taken by Derick Wilson earlier that day (3 a.m. local time) in Paradox Valley, Colorado. The third image was captured by Janin Ober, who spotted the aurora on March 18 from Brandenburg, Germany.

The images were submitted through a project called Aurorasaurus, one of the first citizen science efforts focused on the northern lights. It is designed to improve a person’s chance of seeing the aurora by collecting and sharing observations reported via Twitter, the project’s website, and iOS and Android apps. For instance, Aurorasaurus has an algorithm that scrapes Twitter for aurora borealis and aurora australis reports. The project assembles those tweets and reports in real-time and places them on a map, along with information about cloud cover and the extent of the auroral oval—the region centered around each Pole where the aurora is estimated to be visible.

For the Saint Patrick’s Day storm, Aurorasaurus gathered 35,000 aurora-related tweets and reports, and users verified more than 250 of them as positive sightings. The project sent more 361 real-time notifications alerting users that an aurora might be visible near them.

The project intends to use the citizen science observations as “ground truth” for improving auroral oval models. Aurorasaurus is a research project supported by the National Science Foundation and designed by researchers from the New Mexico Consortium, NASA, Pennsylvania State University, and Science Education Solutions.

References

National Geographic (2015, March 17) Solar Storm Could Dye Skies Green For St. Patrick’s Day. Accessed March 20, 2015.

NASA (2002) Aurora: fabled glowing lights of the Sun-Earth Connection. (PDF) Accessed March 20, 2015.

NASA Earth Observatory (2011, September 27) Fires in the Sky and On the Ground.

We've Read:

American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos), long listed as endangered, make a comeback in Washington State

The Washington State Fish and Wildlife Commission recently changed American white pelican's status from "endangered" to "threatened." The state has only one breeding colony; the pelicans nest at Badger Island in the Columbia River upstream from McNary Dam near Wallula in the McNary National Wildlife Refuge.

George Michael's duet with Aretha Franklin helped other see his transition into a 'serious' artist

In 1987 Michael teamed with Aretha Franklin for an assured duet, "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)," which won a Grammy Award for best R&B performance. Clearing a path later followed by Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber (among once-disparaged dreamboats), Michael made the rare successful transition to artistic adulthood.

Partying in Miami with Justin Bieber on New Year's Eve Comes with $500,000 Price Tag

For New Year's Eve, those looking to celebrate lavishly can head to Miami to enjoy a five-night stay at Fontainebleau Miami Beach. The "celebrity lifestyle" package not only carries the price tag of $500,000 but also promises the ability to rub shoulders with A-listers such as Justin Bieber and Skrillex. Bringing the price down a little, the package is available for up to 10 guests, meaning each person would pay only $50,000 for the "experience."

A 'Cautionary Tale' for America: 'The Man in the High Castle' Season 2

The shows premise—what if the Allies lost World War II?—is only slightly more unnerving than our current reality: What if Donald Trump was elected president of the United States? But here we are.

Why Paul Ryan and GOP are so Desperate to Vote on Obamacare Repeal Quickly

A debate could expose enough about the consequences to scare off the public—and maybe Donnie J. too.

We're Following:

@rufskin

Shop the Styles Found on Instagram

@RUFSKIN

Model: Logan Swiecki-Taylor

@lswieckitay

Model: David Mcintosh

@king_david85

Model: Wirth Campbell

@wirth

Frigid air will grip an unusually large portion of the Lower 48 states in just over a week’s time. The cold is predicted to consume almost the entire nation, from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast, sparing only Florida.

While some parts of the country are forecast to experience temperatures 30 to 50° colder than normal, the cold snap will be most remarkable for the amount of real estate it is predicted to cover.

Only Florida to Be Spared the Cold

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on twitter

@philzcatz

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist based in Alaska, noted Thursday that the National Weather Service’s six- to 10-day temperature outlook (below) projected the nation’s largest area with high confidence (90% probability) of below-normal temperatures in 15 years of issuing such outlooks.

The cold will take the better part of next week to reach the East Coast, first arriving in the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Rockies this weekend.

Some of the coldest air, relative to average, will focus on the region from the Pacific Northwest to the Northern Plains early to the middle of next week. Cliff Mass, an atmospheric science professor who blogs about Seattle weather, wrote that the cold snap could be “far colder than we have seen in many years. ”

Before the cold air reaches the eastern half of the nation, abnormally warm air (30° to 35° above average) will first surge northward between Monday and Wednesday.

On Tuesday, high temperatures could rise to 60° as far north as southern New England.

But Ryan Maue, a meteorologist with WeatherBell Analytics, said an elongated jet stream will “allow chunks or blobs” of the frigid air to work their way east. “It’s clear by Day 10 [Jan. 8] that there is a very strong cold signal (10° or colder anomalies across entire U.S. coast to coast) except for Florida," he said. Florida has suffered through record heat and dry for most of the past 12 months.

Rare Jet Stream Configuration

Matt Rogers, a meteorologist with Commodity Weather Group, said it takes a rare jet stream to deliver cold air to both coasts simultaneously. “Typical jet stream wavelengths are too narrow to allow cold outbreaks to reach coast-to-coast nearly simultaneously,” he said. “The width of this upper level trough pattern is impressively large.”

The jet stream configuration will result from twin areas of high pressure over Alaska and Greenland, which, together, will force the flow of air southward over North America — from the Arctic toward the Gulf of Mexico.

The nation also experienced such coast-to-coast cold air during the winter of 2013-2014. But that cold was more intense than what is predicted for next week. “Unlike the polar vortex event of January 2014, the main center of the polar vortex is kept over the Hudson Bay and unable to penetrate the Midwest,” Maue said.

This kind of pattern happens more frequently during La Niña events like we’re seeing now, according to Michael Ventrice, a meteorologist with the Weather Company. But he cautioned that it would not be a “permanent fixture” of the winter. He concluded: “This winter will be a winter of extremes, with violent swings between Arctic cold and much-above-average temperatures for the eastern two-thirds.”

We're Following:

Andrew Papadopoulos

@andrew_pap_

If you've checked out Andrew "Pap" Papadopoulos or AussieBum on Instagram, then you'll know Andrew needs little introduction when it comes to his fitness ability. This guy is never afraid to push his limits and create new boundaries. It's this extreme drive that leads him to motivate all his clients, in person and online, to do the same. Owner of ActiveLIVE and Battle Fit Australia, Andrew brings a very special type of expertise to the ActiveHIIT community. His training method is built on camaraderie, mental discipline and team work—all while having fun.

on facebook

@S4HPap

Battle Fit Australia

@AussieBum_Team

Active.LIVE

Top Training Tips from Andrew 'Pap' Papadopoulos

Metro Atlanta Prepares for

3 Inches of Snow

Officials say they are not taking any chances on the predicted snow this weekend turning into another Snowmageddon.

The Georgia Department of Transportation is loading trucks with brine to salt roads in metro Atlanta ahead of the anticipated storm, spokeswoman Natalie Dale said, hoping to avoid another massive Snow Jam like the last time snow visited Atlanta in January of 2014.

Snowzilla (2003, 2009, 2010, 2014. . .take your pick). Its always a mess when Snowpocalypse visits the South.

Metro Atlanta and parts of North Georgia could get between 1 and 3 inches of snow and a mix of ice and freezing rain this weekend, according to the latest projection.

The best chance for snow is Friday night and into Saturday morning, Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Brad Nitz said Wednesday afternoon on twitter (below).

Snowmageddon Redux?

The last major snowstorm to hit Atlanta, on January 28, 2014, became known by some as "Snow Jam" and others as "Snowmageddon" because it paralyzed Atlanta for days.

There is a 60% chance of precipitation Friday and an 80% chance Saturday, according to Channel 2.

A brief, light wintry mix is possible Friday morning.

Cold rain is expected to enter North Georgia on Friday afternoon before heading south to Atlanta. About 4 a.m. Saturday, snow could become widespread in parts of North Georgia and metro Atlanta. It is expected to end about 11 a.m.

With temps forecast in the 20°s, Nitz said expect the snow to stick. Saturday’s expected low is 27°.

The storm has the potential to deliver heavy snow, causing slippery travel along a 1,000-mile swath in the southern United States spanning Friday and Saturday, January 6-7, 2017.

Arctic air will plunge into the Southern states and lay the path for the winter storm.

The storm, which delivered feet of snow over the Sierra Nevada in California early this week, will sweep over the Southwest into Friday.

The storm will then ride along the southern edge of the arctic air in the Southeast.

How strong the storm becomes will affect its ability to throw precipitation into the cold air over the region to end the week.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

on the web

@phillipsnaturalworld

The exact track of the storm would also be a factor and could cause the area of heaviest snow to shift farther to the north or to the south.

Where snow occurs, it will initially melt on the roads. However, as colder air invades during and shortly after the storm, icy conditions can develop in some communities and along some highways.

At this time, the area at greatest risk for some snow, a wintry mix or flash freeze includes the cities of Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Atlanta; Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Raleigh, North Carolina; and Richmond, Virginia.

The realm of possibilities range from a simple change to cold air and dry conditions to snow, ice and dangerous travel over the interior South in areas that typically receive little or no snow during the winter.

In the scenario where a storm forms but fails to become very strong, spotty snow and ice can cause slippery travel around some southern U.S. communities from Friday into Saturday.

Florida Stays Unseasonably Warm

Should the storm develop to its full potential, then several inches of snow and some ice could occur from parts of northern Georgia to upstate South Carolina, central and northern North Carolina, central and southeastern Virginia, lower Maryland and southern Delaware.

In the extreme case, travel and activities could be disrupted for days during and in the wake of the storm in the southern U.S.

Regardless, freezing air is likely to stop short of reaching the immediate Gulf coast, South Texas and the central and southern parts of Florida in the wake of the storm.

We've Read:

What Scientific Term or Concept Should Be More Widely Known?

Considering the "Election" of Donald Trump we should all understand entropy, evolution and the second law of thermodynamics. Disorder is more probable in our ever-evolving world.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in an isolated system (one that is not taking in energy), entropy never decreases. (The First Law is that energy is conserved; the Third, that a temperature of absolute zero is unreachable.) Closed systems inexorably become less structured, less organized, less able to accomplish interesting and useful outcomes, until they slide into an equilibrium of gray, tepid, homogeneous monotony and stay there.

In its original formulation the Second Law referred to the process in which usable energy in the form of a difference in temperature between two bodies is dissipated as heat flows from the warmer to the cooler body. Once it was appreciated that heat is not an invisible fluid but the motion of molecules, a more general, statistical version of the Second Law took shape. Now order could be characterized in terms of the set of all microscopically distinct states of a system: Of all these states, the ones that we find useful make up a tiny sliver of the possibilities, while the disorderly or useless states make up the vast majority. It follows that any perturbation of the system, whether it is a random jiggling of its parts or a whack from the outside, will, by the laws of probability, nudge the system toward disorder or uselessness. If you walk away from a sand castle, it won’t be there tomorrow, because as the wind, waves, seagulls, and small children push the grains of sand around, they’re more likely to arrange them into one of the vast number of configurations that don’t look like a castle than into the tiny few that do.

Shit Happens

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is acknowledged in everyday life, in sayings such as “Ashes to ashes,” “Things fall apart,” “Rust never sleeps,” “Shit happens,” You can’t unscramble an egg,” “What can go wrong will go wrong,” and (from the Texas lawmaker Sam Rayburn), “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.”

Scientists appreciate that the Second Law is far more than an explanation for everyday nuisances; it is a foundation of our understanding of the universe and our place in it. In 1915 the physicist Arthur Eddington wrote:

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations—then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

In his famous 1959 lecture “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” the scientist and novelist C. P. Snow commented on the disdain for science among educated Britons in his day:

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?

And the evolutionary psychologists John Tooby, Leda Cosmides, and Clark Barrett entitled a recent paper on the foundations of the science of mind “The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the First Law of Psychology.”

Why the awe for the Second Law? The Second Law defines the ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order. An underappreciation of the inherent tendency toward disorder, and a failure to appreciate the precious niches of order we carve out, are a major source of human folly.

To start with, the Second Law implies that misfortune may be no one’s fault. The biggest breakthrough of the scientific revolution was to nullify the intuition that the universe is saturated with purpose: that everything happens for a reason. In this primitive understanding, when bad things happen—accidents, disease, famine—someone or something must have wanted them to happen. This in turn impels people to find a defendant, demon, scapegoat, or witch to punish. Galileo and Newton replaced this cosmic morality play with a clockwork universe in which events are caused by conditions in the present, not goals for the future. The Second Law deepens that discovery: Not only does the universe not care about our desires, but in the natural course of events it will appear to thwart them, because there are so many more ways for things to go wrong than to go right. Houses burn down, ships sink, battles are lost for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Poverty, too, needs no explanation. In a world governed by entropy and evolution, it is the default state of humankind. Matter does not just arrange itself into shelter or clothing, and living things do everything they can not to become our food. What needs to be explained is wealth. Yet most discussions of poverty consist of arguments about whom to blame for it.

More generally, an underappreciation of the Second Law lures people into seeing every unsolved social problem as a sign that their country is being driven off a cliff. It’s in the very nature of the universe that life has problems. But it’s better to figure out how to solve them—to apply information and energy to expand our refuge of beneficial order—than to start a conflagration and hope for the best.

We're Following:

Александр Девятченко

Alexander Devyatchenko

@alexdzev

Александр Девятченко
Art-director/Stylist

Above and Below: Musée d'Orsay, Paris

@Musée d'Orsay

photographed by #alexdzev

Александр Девятченко

Alexander Devyatchenko

@alexdzev

#dzevarmy

below the same pose, more or less in real life

French Canadian model Kevin Côté photographed by Vincent Chine

in "Voglia"

@kevin_cote

and below from a different angle, by @rickdaynyc November 2016 in Montreal

After a record-breaking hot fall and early winter temperatures are falling across the Florida peninsula tonight, finally, on January 7, 2017. This ties with last year's latest cool outbreak ever across the central peninsula of Florida. May be a trend?

Dark blue line represents the cold front moving down the Florida peninsula this afternoon.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

on the web

@phillipsnaturalworld

Freeze line across North Florida January 8, 2017 (in red)

While the cool-down is greatly appreciated, it could put an end to the sunflowers which have been in full bloom all winter if frost forms tonight or tomorrow night. Near-freezing temperatures are forecast with colder wind chills but these plants (Tithonia diversifolia) are sensitive to temperatures below 40° (4½° C). And killer frost could arrive if the winds die down, as Miguel de Unamuno said so eloquently in his book The Tragic Sense of Life (1912). . .

Warmth, warmth, more warmth! for we

are dying of cold and not darkness. It is

not the night that kills, but the frost.

Why Does Frost Form

When Temperatures Are

Above Freezing?

To explain why frost forms when temperatures are above freezing one first must understand the nature of frost.

What is Frost?

Frost is ice that sublimates directly on the surfaces on which it is found. Sublimation occurs when water vapor transforms from a vaporous state to a solid state.

To understand frost deposition one must think in terms of energy. Water vapor is in a higher energy state than liquid water and liquid is in turn in a higher energy state that solid water (ice). For water to be maintained in a vaporous state there must be a certain amount of energy available. As emergy is removed from the atmosphere (as the air is cooled) the gasses lose heat. Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, Argon, Water Vapor and all the other components of the atmosphere lose energy as they are cooled. Eventually when enough energy is removed the vapor changes state and it becomes either liquid or solid. Each liquid water molecule has less energy than each vapor molecule and each solid water molecule in turn has less energy than liquid or vaporous water.

And What is Dew Point?

The temperature where a change of state occurs as the air is cooled is called the dew point temperature when the change of state occurs at a temperature above freezing.

The temperature of condensation or sublimation is determined by the amount of moisture in the air. The greater the amount of water vapor, the higher the condensation temperature. During summer it is not uncommon to have a dew point of 75° (24° C) or higher in Central Florida. But in cooler seasons the dew point can be much closer to freezing.

Tonight, the dew point temperature in Orlando is 36° (2° C). Currently the air temperature is 40° (4° C) so it won't take much more cooling to start producing a lot of condensation across Central Florida as the humidity currently hovers around 86%.

DEW or FROST TONIGHT?

So will there be dew or frost tonight?

The forecast calls for patchy frost

in an arc all around Orlando (below)

Whether dew or frost will form is determined by two factors:

1. If the amount of moisture in the air causes the condensation temperature to be above or below freezing and

2. If the temperature will cool to the condensation temperature.

One can assume that across a large part of Central Florida the temperature will drop to at least the condensation temperature (36°) tonight with patchy frost forming in areas that are protected from the light breezes and especially in areas far from large lakes and rivers.

But the low temperature is only

forecast to be 36°

How will frost form?

What is important is not what the temperature was at the thermometer but what the temperature was where the frost formed, and if frost formed the local temperature was below freezing.

A thermometer indicates the temperature where the thermometer is located, usually a few feet above the ground. Because cold air sinks relative to warmer air and because the ground can cool very quickly, the temperature at ground level can be cooler than a few feet higher where the thermometer is located. Thus, even though the thermometer never reaches freezing, it can easily be below freezing a few feet lower or in pockets of lower elevation, on rooftops, car tops, etcetera.

Why is frost on my car

but not in the garden?

Certain materials like glass and car metal radiate heat quickly and therefore cool quickly. Also, areas like rooftops or hills, because of their exposure, lose heat through re-radiation very quickly and tend to receive frost before sheltered areas.

On marginal nights, like tonight, frost may only be seen on rooftops and cars and spotty grassy areas. Because of material makeup some areas could cool below freezing while nearby areas remain just above freezing and receive no frost.

Some Areas Have Dew,

Others Have Frost, Why?

The amount of water vapor can vary from place to place considerably. An exposed parking lot may have less vapor than a nearby garden because the plant canopy of the garden traps water vapor and plants transpire (emit) water vapor.

In the garden there may be enough vapor so the condensation temperature is a dew point temperature while in the nearby parking lot the condensation temperature is at or below freezing producing frost.

So what does any of this have to do with my sunflowers?

Most of these sunflowers are sunflower trees (Tithonia diversifolia), growing to 20-feet or more (7 m). They are a tropical species that is sensitive to frost and cold temperatures. If the temperature drops low enough for frost to form on the flowers, buds, or leaves of this species they will die back considerably and we won't expect blooms again until late spring at the earliest.

The few real sunflowers in the garden (Helianthus annus) are resistant to cold and frost and will be fine, but they are short this time of year and insignificant. Because of the short daylight hours they grow only about 3 feet (1 m) before blooming in Florida's winter.

I won't mind so much if the sunflower trees are damaged as they have grown super-tall and spindly this year with some reaching heights approaching 30 feet (10 m), due to the extremely warm temperatures and calm weather (no hurricanes, no thunderstorms, no weather at all to speak of in summer-fall 2015).

Above, a Bella Moth (or Ornate Moth, Rattlebox Moth; Utetheisa ornatrix) resting on a Sunflower Tree flower.

Above, a battered and worn-looking female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), on Sunflower Tree. Notice that she has lost most of the tails on both wings either to predators, age, whatever.

Above, an upside-down flying male Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) with Sunflower Trees.

REDNECK

Doesn't Know its Winter

The turtles and frogs have been active through this winter. The two nights of cool weather will send them into hiding. Above and blow, Redneck, the red-eared slider turtle doesn't seem to know its supposed to be winter. Something odd is going on in the image below. There is an extra foot protruding from underneath Redneck's shell.

Click on this or any other image for a larger view.

Below, Redneck's red-stripe is more visible when he is in the water. His colors fade on land. He spends very little time on land, ever, but especially in winter. Normally he should be in hibernation until at least the first of April.

Below, the bullfrogs have also been active this winter, mating as if it were spring.

Below, I like the images of Redneck's nostrils. Two perfect little holes. His expression changes little. He is unimpressed with me, that is obvious.

This bullfrog won't be seen for a while after tonight's cool.

We've Read:

@plasticjesus

Shooter Kills 5 at Fort Lauderdale Airport, Motives Unclear

Is Trump a Russian Spy?

Given his statements and actions leading up to inauguration isn't it about time Trump be declared a Russian spy?

Raccoons Invade Brooklyn
Though New York may be better known for its rat population, the city abounds in raccoons. Their precise numbers are not known, but their encounters with people have increased.

Raymond Domenech : « Zidane n’est pas un gentil mec »

Zinédine Zidane is not a nice guy, and that's what makes him a Football God, according to Raymond Domenech.

Mosquito Born Zika Virus:
A Peril to Babies in Brazil
Prompts Government to Discourage Pregnancies Months Before the Olympic Games
A little known virus spread by mosquitos, Zika, has caused a huge surge in babies born with microcephaly, a rare, incurable condition. No one knows precisely when the Zika virus made the leap to Brazil from Africa, its place of origin. Some researchers suggest it could have arrived during the last big sporting event held in Brazil, the 2014 World Cup. Of more alarm to Americans, the virus has now made its way as far north as Barbados.

Why Do We Feed Wild Animals?
A sense of personal redemption is intimately tied up with the history of bird-feeding. The practice grew out of the humanitarian movement in the 19th century, which saw compassion toward those in need as a mark of the enlightened individual.

Pietro Boselli Does Venice Beach

Photo Ark
Capturing Endangered Wildlife Before its Too Late
US photographer Joel Sartore is spending a decade taking portraits of the 12,000 species in captivity worldwide with an emphasis on those facing extinction.

Welcome to the Anthropocene
5 Signs Earth Is in a Man-Made Epoch
The evidence of global changed caused by humans speaks for itself. Check out the Bloomberg Carbon Clock.

While some snakes spend the winter gathered in dens, they disperse widely the rest of the year, making it difficult to find food or mates. To survive, snakes have evolved the forked tongue. They use it to collect scent molecules, which they process within special organs, to discern whether they are nearing a food item or a deadly foe. Male snakes can also judge whether a female snake is of the same species, how ready she is to mate, and—from the intensity of the scents on each fork—in which direction she is moving.

Follow Phillip

on Instagram

@majikphil

on Facebook

Phillip's Natural World

on Twitter

@philzcatz

Florida Moves to Outlaw some Snake Species

To live in South Florida is to make peace with flying cockroach behemoths, brigades of lizards that dart across walls (bedroom and otherwise) and frogs the size of cannonballs that loiter on driveways.

But even in a state as hospitable as this one to scaly, slithering creatures, enough is enough. Florida has the highest number of nonnative amphibians and reptile species, according to a recent University of Florida study, and some of them are obliterating native Floridian creatures.

Florida’s Congressional delegation is now trying to yank the welcome mat from at least some of these “exotic” species, namely nine kinds of large constrictor snakes, which include the Burmese python, the boa constrictor and the green anaconda.

The 6 Venomous

Snakes of Florida

The 17 Most Common Non-Poisonous

Snakes of Florida

A federal Fish and Wildlife Service rule that would list the snakes as an “injurious species” has lingered for three years and still requires the approval of the Office and Management and Budget.

The snakes, particularly the large and powerful Burmese python, have proliferated in the Everglades, a trend that began in the 1980s but worsened after Hurricane Andrew destroyed several reptile houses in 1992. There are thousands of them in South Florida, although precise numbers are elusive. Today, the snakes are often sold by pet stores or online. They typically make it into the wild when they escape their homes or when owners release them because they can no longer care for them.

Hot day, warm sunset over Indian River Lagoon, December 31, 2016

Climate Change

Sends Snakes North

Up the Kissimmee Valley
and the Indian River Lagoon

South Florida has been invaded by nonnative wildlife, which disturbs the fragile ecosystem and preys on native species. But honestly, the 5,000,000+ humans do far more environmental damage than some exotic snakes. Regardless legislators argue that Florida is spending billions of dollars to restore the Everglades and if additional invasive snakes are allowed to establish themselves, the native wildlife will be decimated (as if the human population and Sugar farms around Lake Okeechobee weren't doing enough damage all by themselves).

Now paranoid legislators are fearing the snakes travels north up what's left of the Kissimmee River Valley and the Indian River Lagoon into Central Florida as climate change makes Central Florida winters balmy and a perfect temperature for exotic snakes. Reportedly pythons have been found in the wild as far north as Flagler and Marion Counties.

Legislators are not equally afraid of the non-stop bulldozing and development of the remaining wilds of Florida. In a generation there will be little remaining at the current pace of development.

Reticulated Python

Of the nine snakes on the list, Burmese pythons pose the largest threat. Impressive because of their length — some here grow to 16 feet — Burmese pythons can eat all manner of small animals like birds, other snakes and rodents. In some cases, though, they overindulge.

In October, a work crew tending to plants in the area spotted a 16-foot Burmese python on a little island not too far from Everglades National Park. The python bulged cartoonishly in its middle. Turns out it had eaten a 76-pound female deer, which was discovered by biologists during a necropsy. (The python was killed, as regulations allow.)

Another python was found dead with a six-foot alligator jutting out of its mouth. More serious, a 2-year-old girl in Oxford was strangled in her bed in 2009 by a pet Burmese python after it got loose from its terrarium.

The snakes, which favor the warmth and humidity of Central-South Florida, typically hide out in the brush. During mating season, which is occurring now, they often sun themselves on levies near canals.

Last year, Florida tightened the rules on six kinds of pythons and the Nile monitor lizard, making it against the law to buy them as pets. People who already owned them were allowed to keep them, with a permit. But only licensed reptile dealers, researchers and exhibitors can sell them out of state. The federal rule would ban the importation and interstate trade of these snakes altogether.

Florida wildlife officials have grown more adept at tracking and killing invaders in the past decade. The state now holds an amnesty day for pet owners who want to give up their snakes and giant lizards for adoption to other people or facilities that can care for them. There is a hot line to report sightings. And the Python Patrol, a team of snake-loving volunteers run by the Nature Conservancy, routinely scours the Everglades looking for pythons.

Some other species that may be loose in Florida . . .

Black Mamba

Named for the color of the inside of its mouth, the black mamba strikes repeatedly with venomous fangs. Widely considered the world’s deadliest snake, it continues to take human life in its native habitats in southern and eastern Africa, despite the development of antivenin. A resident of rocky hills and grasslands, the black mamba is also among the fastest snakes in the world, moving at up to 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) per hour.

Spectacled Cobra

The spectacled cobra, named for the eyeglass design on its flared hood (seen here), shares with the Russell's viper the infamy of causing more human deaths than any other snakes. Both are highly venomous and are found in the midst of vast populations of people in Southeast Asia. The spectacled cobra eats rats, poultry, and frogs and is known to enter houses when hunting.

Mozambique Spitting Cobra

The Mozambique spitting cobra can eject venom up to 8 feet (2.4 meters) away. It spits from any position, raised or on the ground, and often goes for the eyes. Untreated, its venom can cause blindness. Considered the most dangerous snake after the mamba, the spitting cobra sometimes feigns death to avoid molestation.

Anaconda

Awkward on land but agile in water, the anaconda lives in the swamps and tropical rain forests of South America. This green anaconda is the largest of several varieties; in fact, it is the largest snake in the world by weight, capable of reaching 550 pounds (250 kilograms) and measuring 12 inches (30 centimeters) in diameter. With flexible jaws and muscular bodies, these nonvenomous constrictors squeeze their prey to death and swallow it whole—whether it’s a bird, a wild pig, or a jaguar.

Desert Death Adder

Often colored in rusts and yellows to match its sand and rock surroundings, the desert death adder of western Australia lures prey by wiggling its thin black tail tip. When a lizard approaches, the snake strikes, delivering powerful venom. Australia is home to 17 of the world's most venomous snakes, including the death adder. Even so, snakes only cause one or two deaths a year there.

Green Tree Python

A green tree python, native to the rain forests of New Guinea and northeastern Australia, emerges from its shell. Most newborn snakes, which must free themselves from tough, leathery eggs, come armed with a single egg tooth, located on their head or snout. The egg tooth is used to tear through the shell and is discarded when the snake first sheds its skin. Thirty percent of snakes, however, give birth to live young. Egg-laying snakes usually live in warmer climates, which helps incubate their eggs.

King Cobra

King cobras avoid humans, but when cornered they can deliver enough venom in their bite to kill 20 people. They can also move forward while looking a 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) person in the eye, a third of their body raised up off the ground. Found in India, southern China, and Southeast Asia, king cobras are the only snakes in the world to build nests for their eggs.

We Can't Look Away from the Twitter Storm over Trump's Golden Showers and Hooker Parties in Moscow and St. Petersburg

Here are of our favorite tweets

BBC is Currently Reporting a 2nd Reliable Source is Backing up the Bribery and Pee Allegations in the Trump Dossier

#theresistance

#PEETUS

#GoldenShowers

#goldensnowflake

We've Read

London Pride

Edina and Patsy Open London Pride Festivities

Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as Edina and Patsy surrounded by look-a-likes opening London Pride. Oh how we miss our Ab Fab!

@LondonLGBTPride

. . . and made the front page of the Sunday Times

June 26, 2016

Pride London Festival

2018 is just around the corner

time to save America and Save Medicare

Ichetucknee Springs

Ichetucknee Springs State Park is a 2,241-acre (9.07 km2) Florida State Park and National Natural Landmark located four miles (6 km) northwest of Fort White off State Road 47 and State Road 238. It centers around the six mile (10 km) long Ichetucknee River, which flows through shaded hammocks and wetlands into the Santa Fe River. The park contains hardwood hammock and limestone outcrops. Like many rivers in this part of North Florida, the Ichetucknee is fed by natural springs which boil up (in various holes) from the aquifer. There are a total of 7 springs along the Ichetucknee River. Several of those springs are pictured here.

Park wildlife includes white-tailed deer, raccoons, wild turkeys, wood ducks and great blue herons. There are also fish and reptiles: i.e. turtles, water snakes, American alligators, North American river otters, West Indian manatees in the winter months, crayfish, bream, bluegill, largemouth bass, alligator gar, mullet, catfish, several types of minnows, and the occasional humans in various stages of dress (or undress?) as we encountered on a recent afternoon.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

The Water in Your Glass

Might Be Older Than the Sun

All the photos below were taken this week in Ichetucknee Springs State Park or in the nearby Fort White Wildlife Preserve along the banks of the Ichetucknee and Santa Fe Rivers

Earth is old. The sun is old. But do you know what may be even older than both? Water.

It’s a mystery how the world became awash in water. But one prevailing theory says that water originated on our planet from ice specks floating in a cosmic cloud before our sun was set ablaze, more than 4.6 billion years ago.

As much as half of all the water on Earth may have come from that interstellar gas according to astrophysicists ’ calculations. That means the same liquid we drink and that fills the oceans may be millions of years older than the solar system itself.

The thinking goes that some of the ancient ice survived the solar system’s chaotic creation and came to Earth. To demonstrate that, researchers analyzed water molecules in oceans for indicators of their ancient past.

The clue comes in the form of something known as “heavy water.” Water is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. But some water molecules contain hydrogen’s chunky twin, deuterium. (It contains a neutron in its nucleus, whereas regular hydrogen does not.)

Deuterium-rich water is found on other planets and moons, even here on Earth, but researchers are not sure where it came from. One idea is that much of the heavy water formed in the interstellar cloud and then traveled across the solar system.

Using a computer model, the scientists showed in a 2014 paper that the billions-of-years-old ice molecules could have survived the sun’s violent radiation blasts, and gone on to bathe a forming Earth and its cousins.

They concluded that remnants of that ancient ice remain scattered across the solar system: on the moon, in comets, at Mercury’s poles, in the remains of Mars’ melts, on Jupiter’s moon Europa — and even in your water bottle. Now that’s something to raise your glass to.

Plants Remember if You Mess With Them Enough (Too Much?)

Many North American plants are dormant now, but in Florida, spurred by summer-like warm temperatures and increased light plants are budding and blooming, in January. This could be dangerous if cold weather were to suddenly materialize.

But are plants smarter than we give them credit? Do plants “remember” what to do, when to sprout and when to remain dormant? Maybe so. In 2014, Dr. Monica Gagliano and colleagues at the University of Florence in Italy decided to see if they could train a plant to change behavior.

The researchers chose Mimosa pudica, more commonly known as the touch-me-not, which curls up its leaves in response to physical stimulation. Test plants in their pots were dropped onto foam from a height of about six inches to elicit the flinching response.

After repeated exposure with no major harm, the plants no longer recoiled. Even after a month left alone, the plants “remembered” the falls weren’t harmful and ignored them. Dr. Gagliano, now at the University of Western Australia, concluded from the experiment that plants could “learn” long-lasting behaviors, sort of like memories.

But a review published last year in Science Advances suggests that one can look at it another way as well: the mimosa pudica could be learning to forget. Peter Crisp, a molecular plant biologist at Australian National University and author on the review, suggested that plants “forget” to flinch when it turns out that the threat does no harm. Forgetting has a purpose, Dr. Crisp and his colleagues say: It allows plants to save energy.

You Are at the Center of the Universe, Even if Your Surname is Not Trump

Misconception: The universe started someplace.

Actually: The Big Bang didn’t happen at a place; it happened at a time.

“Where did the Big Bang happen?” I am often asked, as if the expansion of the universe was like a hand grenade going off and the solar system and our Milky Way galaxy were shards sent flying.

The universe didn’t start at a place, it started at a time, namely 13.8 billion years ago, according to the best cosmological data. It’s been expanding ever since — not into space because the universe by definition fills all space already, so much as into time, which as far as we know is open-ended.

Our Eyes are Time Machines

It is true that everything we can see now, out to 13.8 billion years of light-travel time, was once the size of a grapefruit, buzzing with hideous energies, but that grapefruit was already part of an infinite ensemble with no edge, except one made up of time. When we look out, we look into the past, the farther we look, the more deeply into the past we see. At the center is the present. Alas there is no direction in which we can look to see the future — except perhaps into our own hearts and dreams. All we know is right now.

So where is the center of the universe? Right here. Yes, you are the center of the universe.

When Albert Einstein married space and time in his theory of relativity back in 1905, he taught us that our eyes are time machines. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit, and so all information comes to us, to the present, from the past.

Everywhere and Nowhere

And so Einstein’s relativity teaches us that the center of the universe is everywhere and nowhere. It is the present, surrounded by concentric shells of the past. History racing at you at 186,282 miles per second, the speed of light, the speed of all information. Your eyes are the cockpit of a time machine, filmy wet orbs looking in the only direction any of us can ever look: backward. Everything we see or feel or hear — now that gravitational waves have been discovered— took some time to get here, and so comes to our senses from the past. The moon, hovering over the horizon, is an image of light that left its cratered surface traveling at the speed of light a second and a half ago. The sun that burns your skin is eight minutes and nineteen seconds in the past.

The Jupiter we see, glowering orange at the zenith these nights, is about 414 million miles out there as of this writing, or 37 minutes away in the past. The light from the center of the Milky Way, hiding behind the thick star clouds and dust lanes of Sagittarius, takes 26,000 years to get here. While it was on the way the first primitive ice age villages grew into skyscrapered metropolises. Your lover, brushing your lashes with his or her breath, is a nanosecond gone.

This is more than poetry. Mathematically, in Einsteinian terms, all the information and history available at any one place in the universe is known as a light cone. Everybody has one and everybody’s is slightly different, which means in effect that everyone’s universe is a little different.

There will always be some piece of information that has reached your lover but not yet you, let alone E.T. over in the next galaxy. It gives a new definition to being alone with your thoughts.

As T.S. Eliot put it:

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

As a result every spot in the universe is unique. There will always be a piece of it you haven’t seen yet and a piece that you have seen but that nobody else has. There is no place to stand if you want to claim universal knowledge. We all need each other in order to overlap our knowledge. We don’t have to stay in our prisons. Working together and sharing, we can know everything.

Or as Bob Dylan once put it, “I’ll let you be in my dreams, if I can be in yours.”

Cryptothecia rubrocincta lichen (aka Christmas Lichen) is in the Arthoniaceae family of fungi. Found in subtropical and tropical forests in the Southeastern USA. The red pigment, called chiodectonic acid, is one of several chemicals the lichen produces to help tolerate inhospitable growing conditions.

We've Watched:

Phillip's iPhone videos
on YouTube

@phillipsnaturalworld

#TURNHIMOFF

Join Cher's Anti-Inaguration Campaign and Turn Off The Nonsense

Instead Check out These Two Alternate Realities

A Transfer of Power in HOMELAND

Situation Normal, for Now

Thankfully we have Homeland. The Showtime Series new season is set during a transition to a female president whose relationship to intelligence advisers is dicey. But poor Quinn, what more could they do to this guy? We want to see him break out this season.

Sly, Sinister, and a Whole Lot of Fun

The Young Pope Stars Jude Law as a Smirky Pontiff

(two episodes currently available on demand)

The show examines what it means to have absolute power and be extremely handsome.

Sunday's premiere of The Young Pope showed a whole lot of its title character.

Notice the attention to little detail in the shower scene. The crucifixes are used as towel (or robe) holders.

Jude Law's full bum is put on display not once, but twice within the first five minutes of the first episode.

The 44-year-old actor stepped into the villain-you-love-to-hate role effortlessly, and looked good doing it during the show's debut on January 15. Now we know what's underneath the robes, and it looks pretty good. Notice later in the episodes that the Papal robes are at times see-through on Jude and he appears to be going au natural underneath. Love it!

In what eventually is revealed to be a dream sequence, American-born Lenny Belardo — who, through divine intervention or woeful human error, becomes pope of the Catholic Church at the tender age of 47 — is seen taking a shower, his silhouette illuminated in the glass panel.

The smoking, rule-breaking, breath-of-fresh air character played by Law was created by Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, who directed and wrote the 10-episode series.

The Medici Lions of Florida

Florida's Medici lions once again proudly protect the Bridge of Lions that spans Matanzas Bay between St. Augustine and Anastasia Island.

I made a bit of a fool of myself getting these shots. Some of the photos were made with fish eye lens to get a broader perspective and to emphasize different parts of the marble lions. There's a lot of spatial distortion with a fish eye so I walked right into the statue while trying to get the best angles with the fish eye camera. The thousands of motorists behind me, trapped in a massive traffic jam caused by protesters (yes, Donnie, the crowd was HUGE and it was 99% anti-Trump) surely thought I looked a bit odd. I'm quite lazy about setting up a tripod and prefer to just snap a lot of photos and hope that I get the one.

The Bridge of Lions c1925 is a product of the exuberance and excesses of the 1920s Florida land boom. It is also one of the greatest remaining landmarks of that era. It was designed not merely to carry cars, but to be a work of art. And as such, it cost ten times as much as more prosaic bridges constructed nearby at the same time.

The bridge was renovated in the early 2000s, modernizing the structure while retaining all of the artistic elements of the original bridge. The current bridge's west entrance (above) features manicured gazebos, landscaped palm walkways and a new publicly accessible dock extending into the bay. See video of the area on my YouTube channel @phillipsnaturalworld.

The Medici lions are a pair of marble sculptures, exact copies of the originals located a the Loggia dei Lanzi (aka Loggia della Signoria) in Florence. The first lion originates from a 2nd-century marble that was first mentioned in 1594, by the sculptor Flaminio Vacca. The second lion was made and signed by Vacca, also in marble, as a pendant (one of two art works that forms a pair) to the ancient sculpture at a date somewhere before 1598 (as variously reported in the literature).

The original lions were required by Ferdinando I de'Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had acquired the Villa Medici in 1576, to serve as majestic ornaments for the villa's garden staircase, the Loggia dei leoni. The Bridge's lions conception are attributed to Henry Rodenbaugh, the vice president and bridge expert for Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway. In the early 1920s Rodenbaugh organized the bond issue to finance the new bridge and selected engineer J. E. Greiner to design it.

Above, notice how to fish eye gives a broad perspective with me and the lion more-or-less as we appear in real-life, but the outer edges of the image are distorted and the light posts lean inward.

Castillo de San Marcos

A few hundred yards down the promenade from the Bridge of Lions is the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental USA c1672. The fort was designed and built while Florida was a part of the Spanish Empire.

The fort's elegant, artistic-looking points are called bastions, angular structures projecting out from the curtain wall. This style of fortification was dominant from the mid-16th century to mid-19th century. Bastion fortification offered a greater degree of passive resistance and more scope for ranged defense in the age of gunpowder artillery, compared with the medieval fortifications they replaced.

At various times in its past the moat was water-filled (below). Today it is not, but surely with climate change and rising seas it will again be water-filled some day soon.

The masonry star fort is made of a stone called coquina (Spanish for "small shells"), made of ancient sea shells that have bonded together to form a type of stone similar to limestone. In several places along the coast of Florida this coquina is above ground and once-available for mining.

The coquina for the Castillo de San Marcos was mined from across the Matanzas Bay on Anastasia Island's King's Quarry (today Anastasia State Park). It took 23 years to construct the fort using Cuban and Native American laborers.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

on YouTube

@phillipsnaturalworld

Two different views of the San Carlos Bastion. On this day this was my favorite shot as there were fewer tourists to get in the way and the light and shadows were very nice.

Looking at the lovely angles all laid out for eternity in coquina, Florida's only available stone at the time, facing SE toward the San Pablo Bastion.

Above and Below: The San Carlos Bastion as seen from (above) the top of the moat) and below from within the moat.

Below, the obligatory photo in front of the entrance sign. Only 89 more National Parks and Monuments to go, then I will have seen them all. Being a Floridian, this was of course not my first trip to the Castillo but it was perhaps my warmest trip ever. It was 85° (29½° C) on January 22, 2017. Yeah, this is winter now. The long sleeves, hat, long pants are to protect my fair skin from the blistering hot sun.

Matanzas Inlet Birds

After protesting against Trump, posing with the Medici Lions, touring the Castillo and lunch at Longhorns, we decided to head out to the beach and check out the Matanzas Inlet Seagulls. It was not disappointing.

There were several hundred humans on the bluffs of what remains of the spit of sand between the two Matanzas inlets (the main inlet and a second low-lying area that is flooded in storms). This area is called Rattlesnake Island by locals. The several hundred houses along the beach of Rattlesnake Island are barely hanging on to what remains of this sand spit today. Thousands of tons of boulders have been brought in to shore up old SR A1A but one more big storm and it will all be washed away.

I had to climb down a clumsily constructed stairway and wade through the surf to get out to a point where I could photograph the birds.

Of course I could not resist walking through the flocks of birds which sent them swarming around me in a scene like Hitchcock's 1963, THE BIRDS.

Video of the birds is on my YouTube Channel @phillipsnaturalworld

We the People

'Hope' artist Shepard Fairey reveals new posters to protest Trump

Greater than Fear

Artist Shepard Fairey has released a set of three politically charged posters titled "We the People." The posters feature a Muslim woman, a Latina woman and an African-American woman.

How Progressives Can Use the Tea Party Playbook to Stop Trump

An interview with one of the authors of "A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda."

Since the election, progressives have been huddling on social media to plan ways to stymie, if not stop, President-elect Donald Trump. Last week, new inspiration came in the form of a link leading to a 23-page Google document titled "Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda." In clear, confident prose, it lays out a well-reasoned, step-by-step strategy for building a grassroots movement to challenge Trump and his Republican allies in Congress. And it openly acknowledges that its playbook is cribbed from a surprising source: the tea party.

Donald Trump is the First Demagogue of the Anthropocene

Spend enough time with some of the worst-case climate scenarios, and you may start to assume, as I did, that a major demagogue would contest the presidency in the next century. I figured that the catastrophic consequences of planetary warming would all but ensure the necessary conditions for such a leader, and I imagined their support coming from a movement motivated by ethnonationalism, economic stagnation, and hatred of immigrants and refugees. I pictured, in other words, something not so far from Trump 2016.

I just assumed it wouldn’t pop up until 2040.

This kind of worry is speculative—very speculative—but it is not ungrounded. A large body of scholarship suggests that climate change could exert grave effects on international politics this century. Planet-wide warming will dry out regions of the world already riven with ethnic and political strife, all the while impoverishing and destabilizing the Western powers that backstop global order. A recent study even argues that climate-triggered environmental shocks will exacerbate the very divisions that authoritarians have historically sought to exploit.

So to now watch a demagogue ascend to the presidency, after running a campaign that appealed to racism and xenophobia, has felt less like the sudden apparition of an unfathomable nightmare and more like the early realization of a seasonal forecast. You can hear the long-predicted gusts, the rain pounding on the roof and the groaning thunder. It’s all just happening four decades earlier than the weather person said.

Angry Democrats Study the Tea Party's Playbook

Freshly energized protesters are taking to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, members of Congress are being confronted in their districts by constituents angry over health care, and wealthy donors are turning fear into action.

Eight years after Republicans united after a stinging electoral defeat to oppose President Barack Obama, Democrats are channeling an even deeper anxiety over President Trump—and a far shallower defeat—into a newfound burst of organizing

We've Read:

Family Feud

Aaron Rodgers Connects With His Hometown, but the Family Huddle Is Broken

How a long-simmering Rivalry Between Quarterback Aaron Rodgers and His Brother the Reality Star Jordan Rodgers Tore Their Family Apart

The feud involves a woman, and Aaron is not on speaking terms with the rest of his family. Hummm. . .

Olivia Munn reportedly at center of Aaron Rodgers' family feud

The Walking Dead

After a Stunning Drop in Ratings

The Walking Dead changes course with its February 12, 2017, mid-season premiere

and. . . the gang fight their way back from nearly dead. . .

. . . but will it be enough to bring viewers back or has the show run its course?

7,000,000 viewers tune out from this awful season of The Walking Dead

I took a trek around 3 of Central Florida's best parks this afternoon. I'm almost reluctant to share too much information because I don't want the parks spoiled by too many visitors. The image above was shot at the serene Katie's Landing on the shore of the Wekiva River near where it discharges into the St. Johns River near Debary.

Blue Spring State Park

Hundreds of Manatees slowly make the trek into Blue Spring every night to escape the cool waters of the St. Johns River. Manatees have difficulty in water colder than 66° (19° C). The waters of Blue Spring, in Orange City, are 72° (22° C) year round making them a perfect natural warming station for manatees. Manatees are herbivores and unfortunately there is nothing to eat in the blue spring run (no aquatic plants) so the manatees must exit the spring by day to eat then rush back to the warm waters by nightfall through most of February, generally the coolest month in Florida.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

on YouTube

@phillipsnaturalworld

Adjacent to the worst traffic nightmare in Florida, the I-4 bridge over Lake Monroe (in Volusia-Seminole Counties) is Lake Monroe Wayside Park. It offers some history, some great vistas and peace and quiet only a short distance from the infamous I-4 nightmare bridge.

Further to the north there is another park on the Debary side of the river that connects with the Spring-to-Spring Trail which follows a greenway all the way up to Gemini Springs in Debary. Definitely one of Florida's finest despite the swirl of humanity all around.

We've Watched:

GoldenShowerGate

THE TRUTH: Inside Trump’s alleged #GoldenShowers romp at the Ritz.

We’ve got REAL PROOF, @BuzzFeed! pic.twitter.com/Vc4un8U0Iv
— IN THE NOW (@IntheNow_tweet) January 12, 2017

CIA dastardly doings

“Do as we say, not as we do.”

The CIA’s dastardly doings appear to have come full circle pic.twitter.com/xsBovLRYTC
— IN THE NOW (@IntheNow_tweet) January 19, 2017

Welcome to Hell

Welcome to Hell:
Giant hole in Turkmenistan desert burning for over 45 years! pic.twitter.com/UumUnglT6u
— IN THE NOW (@IntheNow_tweet) January 26, 2017

Why are we engaging fascists?

Why are we engaging with fascists all of a sudden?
If you see a Nazi PUNCH THEM.@willmwhiteman pic.twitter.com/UFN1NFFqv3
— IN THE NOW (@IntheNow_tweet) January 30, 2017

We've Read:

The always insightful

and sometimes wickedly

funny, Mike Luckovich

Selections from Mike Luckovich's Round File for January 2017

Look Forward Georgia examines Pulitzer Prize-winning work and civil rights in Georgia

Featured interviews with Pulitzer Prize winners include Mike Luckovich, who won Pulitzer Prizes in 1995 and 2006 for his editorial cartoons in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Check out

The Mike Luckovich Blog

Mike Luckovich on Facebook

@mikeluckovichajc

We're Following:

Chad Hurst

Sydney

on instagram

@chad_hurstt

on facebook

@chadhurst13

on 👻Snapchat👻

@c_hursty

The 2017 Daytona 500 buildup has already begun. Historically you could expect cool weather for the February 26, 2017 Super Bowl of races, but this year expect the weather to be sunny and hot. And as to that most-asked question about Daytona 500 weather. Yes, you can get a wicked sunburn in Daytona in February. For that matter you can get a sunburn in Daytona just about anytime of year when the sun is shining.

The 500 is Bonfire Season

February nights are generally cool in Central Florida. Mid-60°s is typical (18° C). This year, however, there has not even been any frost. Expect nights to be balmy and days hot by the end of February. Also, rain has been nearly non-existent for the past few years so wildfires are a real possibility.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

on YouTube

@phillipsnaturalworld

#impeachtrump

#resist

Daytona 500 Politics Heat Up

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

NASCAR's Most Popular Star

Joins Forces With Progressives

to Bash Trump's Immigration Edicts

"America is created by immigrants."

Earnhardt, the proud descendant of German immigrants, who also happens to be NASCAR’s most popular star, spoke up about his heritage and President Trump’s ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

“My fam immigrated from Germany in [the] 1700s escaping religious persecution,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted over the weekend in a reply to @GelarBudidarma, who identifies himself as a Muslim “mostly from” Bandung, Indonesia. “America is created by immigrants.”

Earnhardt, who missed half of last season because of a concussion, said his reply was motivated by “compassion.” But it was also clearly a slap in the face to Conservative NASCAR fans who have been some of the new administration's biggest supporters.

“I felt like I wanted to show him some compassion and I looked at his profile and saw he was a NASCAR fan; I just felt like reaching out,”he told reporters in Arizona, where he was making a test drive at Phoenix International Speedway.

The Significance of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Immigration Tweet

It says a lot about the current political climate that a simple tweet showing common sense and humanity from Dale Earnhardt Jr. is considered noteworthy.

There’s a pretty good chance your family, like Earnhardt’s, emigrated to the United States at some point throughout our country’s history. And even if that occurred generations ago, it’s impossible not to have empathy for everyone affected by the executive order enacted late Friday unless you’re blinded by the cult of personality currently occupying the White House.

And perhaps that noteworthiness says a lot about NASCAR too; its most popular driver showed compassion in the face of what a Republican president did. The same Republican president who was endorsed by the sport’s CEO (and other drivers) in February, and the same person who — it’s safe to say— a majority of his fans supported in the 2016 presidential election.

Daytona 500 Traffic

Expect Nightmarish Traffic Jams

Already, it is near-impossible to get anywhere in Central Florida without sitting in a massive traffic jam. Expect those conditions to worsen as the big race nears. For alternate routes from Daytona to the attractions considering taking I-95 south to the 528 Toll Road that runs east-west from the Cape to Orlando. Also consider the 417 Toll Road accessible from just west of the I-4 St. Johns River bridge at Sanford. The 417 will take you all the way south to near the entrance of Disney World without the traffic in the ridiculously congested Orlando metro area. It will also cost you about $10 down and back, but well worth it to avoid the traffic snarls on the non-toll roads.

Today, February, 1, 2017, was typical. There was a major accident with fatalities on I-4 (the free expressway that runs from Daytona to Orlando to Tampa). Traffic backed up into all the cities and towns along the route as tourists and locals sought alternative routes. In turn the traffic further snarled and more accidents occurred. At one point the Florida Highway Patrol was reporting 6 major accidents along the I-4 corridor between Daytona and Orlando, a short 45 mile drive that today was taking 4-6 hours. Just another day in the neighborhood.

The worst section for accidents is the I-4 St. Johns River bridge between Deltona-Debary and Sanford. For some reason this area is a bottleneck and there are almost daily traffic snarls that cause traffic jams spreading for miles in all directions.

Almost as bad, I-4 is under construction through the entire length of Orlando to the attractions. It is a painfully slow crawl to get through that traffic most days.

Florida Highway Patrol

Traffic Incidents by Region

Check the Florida Highway Patrol Traffic Incidents by Region before you go! Daytona-Orlando and the beaches are in "Troop D." Click the link above and then click Troop D for real-time reports.

We've Read:

Who has Trump Offended Today?

Social Media Turns Trump Orders

Into Memes with Hilarious Results

peenut pic.twitter.com/YSoZm83Wkf
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) February 2, 2017

mickee mouse pic.twitter.com/y9AHeMoSwd
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) February 1, 2017

The @TrumpDraws parody account mocks the president's art skills https://t.co/3hcfnMBOWb pic.twitter.com/iy6GjczokJ
— CNET (@CNET) February 2, 2017

my feelings pic.twitter.com/cRTfRKtsoc
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraw) February 1, 2017

We're Following:
PPRL
We don't know much about this artist nor their models but we love the use of black and white and male nudes in R-rated scenes that always surprise and enchant. Please follow the link below each photo to see more of this elusive French artist's galleries.

@pascalpprl
PPRL
www.pprl.book.fr

Millions vacation in Florida to soak up the state’s famed winter mildness—but this year’s snowbirds may feel more like they flew into a summer sauna. The winter of 2015-16 featured periods of exceptional warmth in Florida, yet even that high bar is being eclipsed by the persistent simmering that’s gone on for most of the last two months. In Miami, the average temperature of 74.65°F (23.7° C) for the two-month period of Dec. 2016 - Jan. 2017 is a full degree above the 73.6°F (23° C) record from 1971-72 in NOAA/NCEI data going back to 1948, and it also tops any two-month Dec-Jan interval in NWS/Miami data going back to 1895. Likewise, Key West averaged 75.25°F (24° C) for the two-month Dec-Jan period, besting the record of 74.8°F (23.8° C) of 1990-91 in NCEI records going back to 1901.

The two cities also racked up an impressive pile of daily records along the way. Between Dec. 1, 2016, and Jan. 31, 2017, a total of 11 warmest highs for the date and 6 warmest lows for the date were tied or broken in Miami, where record-keeping began in 1895. In Key West, 5 daily record highs and 6 daily warmest-low records were set. Another sign of this winter’s persistent warmth: Miami has yet to dip below 50°F. It’s only the third time in Miami history that a winter has gone this late without reaching the 40s at least once. Hand in hand with the extremely warm air, sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) in the adjacent Gulf of Mexico and northwest Atlantic have also been unusually high. As reported by Brian McNoldy, on January 27, the water temperature in Miami's Biscayne Bay was 80.2°. The average for the date: 70.8°.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

on YouTube

@phillipsnaturalworld

Fading La Niña

La Niña may have played a part in Florida’s summerlike winter. The last several months of 2016 featured weak La Niña conditions in the Pacific, and temperatures across the United States were very consistent with that: generally cooler than average toward the northwest and milder than average toward the southeast, including Florida. However, the current La Niña event appears be on ending: the cooling of the tropical equatorial Pacific has weakened and retreated to the central Pacific, while unusually warm SSTs and sultry air invade the coast of Peru and Ecuador, producing conditions more akin to El Niño than La Niña. Daily low temperatures over the weekend of around 77°F (25° C) were among the warmest on record in Lima, Peru.

The latest roundup of international climate models by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology shows that full-fledged El Niño could be in place as soon as this summer, even by the more strict Australian definition (SSTs in the Niño3.4 region of at least 0.8°C above average, vs. the 0.5°C required by NOAA).

Cooler air finally moved into the state over the last week of January 2017, producing a chilly, rainy Sunday. Fort Lauderdale tied its record lowest high for the date (62°F), as did West Palm Beach (59°F). South Florida then saw the lowest temperatures of the winter thus far, including 51°F in Miami (Mon), 51°F at Fort Lauderdale (Mon & Tues) and 43°F in West Palm Beach (Tue). The cooldown was short-lived, though, as upper-level ridging quickly ushered in more extreme warming.

Scarce Rainfall Continues

Over 60% of Florida is abnormally dry. Rivers, lakes and swamps are quickly disappearing as the heat and dry combine to cause high evaporation. When will it rain? Not much rain is forecast for February, the heart of the Florida "dry" season.

Trump's New Tactic on Climate Science Denial

Earth has just experienced three consecutive warmest years on record—2014, 2015, and 2016—which has made it difficult to find politicians who continue to deny the reality of global warming and climate change. However, denial of climate science has shifted to a new tactic: to claim that the indisputable heating of the planet is primarily a natural phenomenon, and that there is major uncertainty among scientists on the issue. These assertions are false. Based on the evidence, more than 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening; scientists’ “best estimate” is that ALL of the global warming since 1950 has been human-caused, primarily through an increase in carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels. Many prominent members of the Trump administration, who all have ties to the fossil fuel industry, have been making false claims about about scientists’ understanding that global warming is human-caused.

For example:

- During his hearing in January 2017 to become the new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt claimed: “There is a diverse range of views regarding the key drivers of our changing climate among scientists.”

- Former Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who is now President Trump’s Secretary of State, claimed in his confirmation hearing: “I agree with the consensus view that combustion of fossil fuels is a leading cause for increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. I understand these gases to be a factor in rising temperatures, but I do not believe the scientific consensus supports their characterization as the ‘key’ factor.”

- On the February 21, 2014, edition of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, host Chuck Todd asked future Vice President Mike Pence if he was “convinced that climate change is man-made.” Pence responded:“I don't know that that is a resolved issue in science today.” Pence similarly stated on the May 5, 2009, edition of MSNBC’s Hardball that “I think the science is very mixed on the subject of global warming.”

- Rick Perry, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Energy, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee in January: “I believe the climate is changing. I believe some of its naturally occurring and some of it is caused by man-made activity.”

Above: Global annual temperatures up to the year 2015 (thin light red, with an 11-year moving average shown as a thick dark red line) have increased steadily, even though the total amount of energy from the sun (the annual Total Solar Irradiance, thin light blue, with an 11-year moving average shown as a thick dark blue line) has decreased slightly. Climate in past eras has seen many instances of global warming, which have been caused by an increase in heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide or an increase in the amount of solar energy being absorbed by the Earth. Since solar energy cannot be to blame for the increase in global temperatures since 1950, scientists are confident that the steadily rising levels of heat trapping gases like carbon dioxide due to human activities is causing the observed global warming. Image credit: skepticalscience.com.

The best science says: ALL of the warming since 1950 is human-caused

Based on the evidence, more than 97% of climate scientists have concludedthat human-caused climate change is happening. That’s about the same certainty with which scientists link smoking cigarettes to lung cancer. The latest 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report—the enormous consensus scientific summary of the science of climate change prepared once every six years said this about the observed warming of Earth since 1950:

“The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.” In other words, ALL of the observed warming after 1950 (0.6°C, 1.1°F) is due to humans. A total of 0.85°C (1.5°F) total global warming has been observed since 1880. The IPPC further quantified that human activity is extremely likely (at least 95% chance) to be responsible for more than half of Earth's temperature increase after 1950."

Related news and links
Climate change denial is not dead (January 31 op-ed by climate scientist Michael Mann.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/science/climate-change-republicans.html(February 3 article by Justin Gillis of the New York Times.)

Here’s how we know Trump’s cabinet picks are wrong on human-caused global warming (January 30 article from Dana Nuccitelli of The Guardian.)

The Trump Administration Is Filling Up With Koch Allies (December 2016 post from Ben Jervey at DeSmogBlog.)

Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) files brief to protect NOAA climate scientists (CSLDF post on February 1.)

Trump’s war on EPA regulations will kill jobs and a lot of people: Clean air and water standards create jobs, spur innovation, and save lives (January 25 post by Joe Romm of ThinkProgress.)

If You Liked the Inquisition, You'll Love the House Science Committee (January 31 article from Mother Jones.)

The March for Science is set for April 22 (Earth Day) in Washington D.C.

The People's Climate Movement is happening in Washington D.C. on April 29.

We're Following:

we're 1 of 600,000 following

Charlie Matthews

on instagram

@charliem015

on YouTube

@CharlieMatthews015

www.charliematthewsjewels.com

And if Charlie isn't to your liking. . .how about a cute puppy or cat to distract. . .anything is better than news of the Trumpkins and their ridiculous, embarrassing antics. How about today's latest. . .

Melania Trump's Monthly Security Costs 2x NEA's Annual Budget

Eric Trumps Business Trip to Uruguay Cost US Taxpayers $97,830 in Hotel Bills

yea. We need distraction. . .

Both of these adorable animal images are

from Roy Fire's instagram feed.

Roy is editor in chief at ADON magazine.

We love ADON and Roy's quirky view of life.

See more at:

on instagram

@royfire7

on twitter

@royfire7

One of the requirements for heavier-than-air flying machines is a structure that combines strength with light weight. This is true for birds as well as planes.

Birds have many physical features, besides wings, that work together to enable them to fly. They need lightweight, streamlined, rigid structures for flight. The four forces of flight—weight, lift, drag and thrust—each affect the flight of birds.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on twitter

@philzcatz

on YouTube

@phillipsnaturalworld

Physical features

Flying birds have: lightweight, smooth feathers – this reduces the forces of weight and drag a beak, instead of heavy, bony jaws and teeth – this reduces the force of weight an enlarged breastbone called a sternum for flight muscle attachment – this helps with the force of thrust light bones – a bird’s bones are basically hollow with air sacs and thin, tiny cross pieces to make bones stronger – this reduces the force of weight a rigid skeleton to provide firm attachments for powerful flight muscles – this helps with the force of thrust a streamlined body – this helps reduce the force of drag wings – these enable the force of lift.

Wings

The shape of a bird’s wing is important for producing lift. The increased speed over a curved, larger wing area creates a longer path of air. This means the air is moving more quickly over the top surface of the wing, reducing air pressure on the top of the wing and creating lift. Also, the angle of the wing (tilted) deflects air downwards, causing a reaction force in the opposite direction and creating lift.

Larger wings produce greater lift than smaller wings. So smaller-winged birds (and planes) need to fly faster to maintain the same lift as those with larger wings.

Wing loading tells you how fast a bird or plane must fly to be able to maintain lift: wing loading = weight/wing area (kilograms per square meter).

A smaller wing loading number means the bird/plane can fly more slowly while still maintaining lift and is more maneuverable.

Gliding

When a bird is gliding, it doesn’t have to do any work. The wings are held out to the side of the body and do not flap. As the wings move through the air, they are held at a slight angle, which deflects the air downwards and causes a reaction in the opposite direction, which is lift. But there is also drag (air resistance) on the bird’s body, so every now and then, the bird has to tilt forward and go into a slight dive so that it can maintain forward speed.

Soaring

Soaring flight is a special kind of glide in which the bird flies in a rising air current (called a thermal). Because the air is rising, the bird can maintain its height relative to the ground. The albatross uses this type of soaring to support its multi-year voyages at sea.

Flapping

Birds’ wings flap with an up-and-down motion. This propels them forward. The entire wingspan has to be at the right angle of attack, which means the wings have to twist (and do so automatically) with each downward stroke to keep aligned with the direction of travel.

A bird’s wing produces lift and thrust during the downstroke. The air is deflected downwards and also to the rear. The bird reduces its angle of attack and partially folds its wings on the upward stroke so that it passes through the air with the least possible resistance. The inner part of the wing has very little movement and can provide lift in a similar way to gliding.

Obtaining thrust

Birds obtain thrust by using their strong muscles and flapping their wings. Some birds may use gravity (for example, jumping from a tree) to give them forward thrust for flight. Others may use a running take-off from the ground.

Different flight abilities

Different birds have different adaptive features to meet their flight needs:

Some birds are small and can manipulate their wings and tail to maneuver easily. Others, like the hawk, with its large wingspan, are capable of speed and soaring. Gannets and seabirds are streamlined to dive at high speeds into the ocean for fish. Godwits, although small, are equipped to fly long distances, and so on.

We're Following:

Comedians May Be the Best Line of Defense Against Power-hungry Trumpkins

Melissa McCarthy's Knock-Out Performance

Melissa McCarthy’s frustrated, unhinged parody of White House press secretary Sean Spicer on last weekend’s SNL unsettled the White House and bothered Trump, and her performance was seen as potentially hurting Spicer’s longevity in the job, Politico reported, citing people close to the president.

Melissa McCarthy was the perfect choice to play White House’s Sean Spicer on SNL

Yes, a late-night comedian’s performance could affect what Trump does as president — and this is exciting progressives the world over.

Sean Spicer Says Melissa McCarthy Needs to “Dial Back,” and SNL Is Too “Mean”

Perhaps he's in the wrong line of work. Defending demagoguery is not for the thin-skinned

Why Melissa McCarthy Made A Great Seam Spicer

The casting of McCarthy as Spicer was a stroke of comedic brilliance, a perfect fit. She got the mannerisms down pat: the pugnacious fighter’s scowl, the verbal gaffes and nonsensical spin tactics, the scorn sprayed indiscriminately at the press corps (a metaphor made literal by the inspired use of a Super Soaker loaded, supposedly, with soapy water), and, most of all, the flicker of fear behind the fury, that mark of the schoolyard bully who knows he’s going to be whupped himself as soon as he gets home. The sketch has now been viewed tens of millions times on YouTube.

PLAY FULL VIDEO CLIP HERE

👇🏿👇👇🏾👇🏼

Draft Melissa for President!

on instagram

@melissamccarthy

on twitter

@melissamccarthy

From Streep to McCarthy, why women are the ones getting under Trump's skin
Could Rosie O'Donnell be Trump's Next and Most Powerful Nemesis

Rosie O’Donnell, longtime adversary of President Donald Trump, trended on Twitter this week as “Saturday Night Live” fans urged the show to cast her in a key role.

Some suggested O’Donnell play White House chief strategistSteve Bannon while others ― no doubt remembering her 2006 impression of Trump on “The View”― were hoping she could play the president himself.

Meanwhile Conservatives Have This Latest . . . What Can Best Be Called Anti-Progressive, . . .Regressive. . .anti-feminist. . .Fumble to Deal With

Melania's Planned Beauty Empire Imperiled by Rumors Illicit Past

Plans to profit from her husband's presidency cited in latest lawsuits filed against media outlets that cited rumors of her past occupation

Any veneer of plausible deniability about the Trump family’s greed and their transactional view of the most powerful job in the world was shattered this week by a defamation lawsuit the first lady, Melania Trump,filed. Mrs. Trump is suing The Daily Mail’s website in New York State court over a story published last year that included an allegedly baseless claim that the rarely seen first lady once worked as an escortMelania Trump missed out on ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ to make millions, lawsuit saysIn her own lawsuit Mrs. Trump acknowledged plans to profit from the presidency.

Fairchild Oak

Located at Latitude 29.38829, Longitude -81.13088 about 8 miles NNW of Ormond Beach Florida in the Bulow Creek State Park

Truth behind the tree

Fairchild Oak's history, name a mix of myth, fact

Norman Harwood was a big man, heavyset and so tall he had to stoop to walk through most doorways.

His neighbors never took to him. Rumors of unpaid debts, jail time and cattle thieving swirled about him. His death inspired tales of poison and a haunting.

Though he lived in the Halifax area just five years, he left a legacy: a two-story, board-and-batten house and an even bigger tree that bore his name for decades. The house stood more than a hundred years before it was torn down. The tree still stands.

In the end, though, he would lose that, too.

A tree by any name

The tree stands alone at the edge of a large clearing. You could find a live oak taller than its 68 feet, but a trunk about 24 feet around and a crown of branches stretching out more than twice its height imbues it with a certain presence.

This is a tree worthy of a name

In the shade of the tree, a bronze plaque set within a large coquina block dedicates it to the memory of the renowned botanist David Fairchild, who helped bring the flowering cherry trees to Washington, D.C.

How the tree got Fairchild's name is a story as tangled as its gnarled branches, interweaving the lives of Harwood, Fairchild and a local woman with a drive to preserve natural treasures.

Separating fact from myth where the Fairchild Oak is concerned has never been easy, though.

A touch of myth can even be found in the plaque, which proclaims that the tree "gladdened man's heart for 2,000 years," though arborists working for the state have estimated the age of the tree to be between 300 and 2,500 years old. The tree has never been core dated for fear of damaging the spectacular specimen.

That makes the oak a relative newcomer; archaeologists have found Native American artifacts on the site dating back to approximately 2,000 B.C.

Relatively high and dry, with rich soil and two small springs nearby that flow year-round, the land was a natural choice for early settlers, including James Ormond, who came around 1800 and built a house just a stone's throw from the tree. The family abandoned the site in 1829 after the death of James Ormond II, whose tomb can be found at Ormond Tomb Park.

When Norman Harwood bought the land in 1880, he built his home near the shade of the great oak.

parts of this brief history paraphrased from Derek Catron, link above

We took a little ride on the Old Dixie Highway, through rural Volusia and Flagler counties and up to Flagler Beach. There are a few stretches that are still unspoiled, very few. Bulow Creek State Park and the other preserved areas just north of Ormond Beach offer some glimpse of what Florida was like when I was a child. The rest of it is strip malls, housing developments, highways, big box stores, litter, trash, trailer parks and all other manner of humanity run amok.

The Fairchild Oak is the most prominent tree in this area of great trees. It is a Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) approximately 2,000 - 2,500 years old. The tree has never been core dated for fear of harming it but its age can be estimated based on its circumference of 297 inches (almost 25-feet; 7½ meters), its crown spread of 149 feet, 45½ meters), and its height of 82 feet, 25 meters).

A nearby very large live oak

maybe 1,000 years old?

Today the tree and this part of the park look pretty sad. The tree was quite beat up from Hurricane Matthew in October of 2016 and none of the debris from that storm has been moved from around the tree. As with most of Florida, the park is also moderately trashed. We spend more time in Florida State Parks picking up litter than we do observing the wildlife and natural features.

This section of Old Dixie between Bulow Creek and Highbridge is my favorite. It can be a little confusing in this area. Old Dixie runs north-south. If you want to get to the beach you need to head east on Walter Boardman Lane and then take a hard right onto High Bridge Road (above). These Canary Island Date Palms were likely planted in the 1910s along what remains of Highbridge Road. To the left is the vast salt marsh that feeds from Matanzas Inlet to the north and Ponce Inlet to the south.

Looking east down Highbridge Road and another stand of very old Canary Island Date Palms (Phoenix canariens), likely planted in the 1910s by early European settlers.

Highbridge Road dead ends into the SR A-1-A at the Atlantic Ocean. A short drive north will lead to an area that has been preserved called Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area and Preserve. This is a great place to check out the beaches in this little unspoiled piece of northeast Florida

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on twitter

@philzcatz

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on YouTube

@phillipsnaturalworld

The weather this winter is very variable. It can go from chilly to blazing hot in no time. At the end of the highway we checked out the orange sand beaches of the Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area and Preserve. It was like a blast furnace stepping onto the orange sand. . . later it was chilly and windy and the sand blasted me into putting on jeans and a hoodie

Crazy "winter" weather in Florida

THE BIRDS

I never tire of talking (and photographing) the flocks of seabirds that always swarm me. It could be that they know of my almost-fame for being an animal whisperer, or it could be the almonds I always carry in my pockets to keep me powered through my daily treks. All birds love almonds.

Seagull from Afar

by Dejan Stojanovic

Lie on the ground and listen to the grass,

Hear the silent signals from outer space,

Dream by making and make by dreaming,

Feel what the trees bathed in sunlight feel,

Gaze far to see the sea-gull emerging from the sea,

Imagine that today is the birth of the world and greet it,

Greet the old bird.

A seagull passes alone, wings spread, silent over roofs

from Hospital Window

by Allen Ginsberg

We've Read:

Keanu Reeve's Timeless Beauty

His Secret to Never Growing Old

John Wick: Chapter 2

Keanu at his best

Keanu Reeves Wants to Fight

Somehow after a lifetime of playing iconic badasses-heroic cops, a hacker named Neo, a certain FBI agent-Keanu Reeves,

remains one of the most enigmatic figures in Hollywood. But here the always-guarded actor opens up - about his life, his past hits, his latests project (John Wick: Chapter 2), and his eternally youthful physique-while making one thing very clear: He's still ready to kick lots of ass.

Reeves’ youthful enthusiasm is a little surprising, and not because the guy is officially 52 years old. (In his mod black jacket emblazoned with “Arch”—the motorcycle company he co-founded—he doesn’t look anywhere near that age.) And it isn’t because I expected Reeves to be a jerk, either. The truth is, I had no idea what to expect, because Keanu Reeves—a star for more than a quarter century, a guy whose films have amassed nearly $2 billion at the box office—has achieved something miraculous in today’s celebrity-obsessed world: He’s preserved some mystery about himself.

Whoa Is Me

The Viral Video of the Tragic life story of Keanu Reeves
Valentines 2017

@jasminecrislip

Our Favorite Valentines Brothers
Season 2 Premiering Soon
ANIMAL KINGDOM

The Cody men are out to steal your heart this #ValentinesDay. You’ve been warned. #AnimalKingdom pic.twitter.com/ZP2rcC5T8w
— Animal Kingdom (@AnimalKingdom) February 14, 2017

Located at Lat. 29° 04’ 52.68” N., Long. 81° 34’ 33.18” W. (Levy Grant 39, T. 16 S., R. 27 E.). Alexander Spring is approximately 37 miles (59.5 km) east of Ocala in the Ocala National Forest. The National Forest currently leases out spring operations to a concessionaire so your America the Beautiful passes will not work here. There is a charge of $5.50 per person to enter the springs. If you have America the Beautiful pass and if you ask, they'll give you 50% off admission. Aside from the shameful selling of the National Parks and Forests which I won't get in to, this area is mostly unspoiled because it is remote.

Alexander Spring issues from a conical depression and has a large spring pool that measures 300 ft (91.4 m) north to south and 258 ft (78.6 m) east to west. The depth is 25 ft (7.6 m).

The bottom is mostly sand with limestone exposed near the vent. A vertical ledge running north to south occurs near the vent. There are multiple vents in a tight cluster. The water is clear and blue. There is a large boil on the pool surface over the vent.

Follow Phillip

on instagram

@majikphil

on twitter

@philzcatz

on facebook

@phillipsnaturalworld

on YouTube

@phillipsnaturalworld

LYNGBYA CONTAMINATION

Like most springs in this part of Florida, the spring is now clogged with lyngbya. In the images above and below the lyngbya sways into the current from its perch on the bottom. It is not particularly robust this time of year but in a few months it will form dense mats in the Spring Creek that results from Alexander Springs.

Lyngbya is a genus of cyanobacteria, unicellular autotrophs that form the basis of the oceanic food chain.

Lyngbya species form long, unbranching filaments inside a rigid mucilagenous sheath. Sheaths may form tangles or mats, intermixed with other phytoplankton species. They reproduce asexually. Their filaments break apart and each cell forms a new filament.

Some Lyngbya species cause the human skin irritation called seaweed dermatitis.

Some Lyngbya species can also temporarily monopolize aquatic ecosystems when they form dense, floating mats in the water.

You can blame the lyngbya contamination on poop. Cow poop, human poop. . . too many people and cattle in the vicinity of these natural features.

While the waters of Alexander Spring show signs of deterioration due to the burgeoning population of Florida and the inattention by politicians to Florida's natural treasures (in favor of what Republicans collectively refer to as "economic growth," as if it was the 5th Gospel), the forest around the spring and Spring Creek is lovely and largely untouched aside from the ubiquitous trash, litter and other detritus of humans that is found in every nook and cranny of Florida today.

Native aquatic grasses are plentiful. Thin algae patches are present on limestone substrate. High ground to the south rises gently to 12 ft (3.7 m) above the water level. A rock wall forms the south shoreline.

There is a mixed hardwood and palm forest around the spring. Alexander Spring Run (aka Spring Creek) flows east approximately 8 river miles (12.9 km) until reaching the St. Johns River.

Alexander Spring is the only 1st magnitude spring in the federal parks and forests system, discharging approximately 60 million gallons of fresh water per day (or between 75 and 162 ft3 /s). Flow rates are influenced by a variety of factors including industrial withdrawals from the watershed and rainfall.

A 1st magnitude spring is defined as having an average flow rate >100 ft³/s (2800 L/s).

The Alexander Springs Wilderness was designated by Congress in 1984 and encompasses 7,941 acres (32 km²)

After Alexander Springs, there are only 26 other 1st magnitude springs in Florida to visit, and we're checking them all out this "winter."

Because it is so unique, we need to be vigilant in protecting the Ocala National Forest from development under the new administration in Washington.

We need to remind the administration that The Ocala National Forest protects the world's largest contiguous sand pine scrub forest, a desert-like environment atop ancient sand dunes that stood well above the waves of primordial seas, the Ocala National Forest is full of special places, from four major springs to hundreds of lakes and ponds, islands of longleaf pine, and sinuous waterways that breathe life into an otherwise arid environment. Botanical wonders as well as archaeological and historic sites are all protected in this vast wilderness area that is being rapidly encroached upon.

We're Following:

Busta Rhymes and A Tribe Called Quest called out “President Agent Orange” for his “Muslim Ban” at the #Grammys. pic.twitter.com/FnIIpl4Edp
— AJ+ (@ajplus) February 13, 2017

Trump is Suddenly Looking Like A Very Weak Autocrat

Right now, Trump looks weaker, less effective and even more ridiculous than anyone might have anticipated — and it happened surprisingly quickly, too.

Alt-Jesus (The one Trump likes)

Is This Trump's Watergate?

A president’s blood is in the water and another White House staff can only look out the windows as the sharks arrive from miles off.

Australia's Next Big Thing
James William

SIZE: 41R
HEIGHT: 193CM (6'4")
HAIR: BROWN
EYE: BROWN
SHOE: 12 /46
CHEST: 106CM (42")
WAIST: 84CM (33")

Looking Calm Doing the Aussie 'Pat Malone'
(e.g. if I get bit out here in the bush, in the middle of nowhere, I'm gonna die)
@jamesaswilliam

B.P.M Chadwick Models
men@chadwickmodels.com

Funky Trunks (outtake)
photo by
@karimkonrad
for
HVNC® Australia Premium Swimwear
@hvncaustralia

Photo by Karim Konrad

@karimkonrad

Best Hair in Australia

for

@codehomme

All the Man Buns you need

but if you want more

20 Man Buns That Will Ruin You For

Short-Haired Guys

Man buns are taking over the world. You love them, I love them, we all love them. C'mon. Admit it.

Redneck Returns

"Redneck," my Red-eared Slider turtle (Trachemys scripta elegans) who went missing around the October full moon has returned, months early. But then it has been exceptionally hot and dry this winter so he probably felt like it was spring again. I very much enjoy the company of this gentle creature in afternoons by the ponds. This is Redneck's 8th year summering in our ponds.

Just as mysteriously as he disappeared, Redneck reappeared on the February full moon, a couple of weeks ago.

Redneck has very poor eyesight so he is only slowly becoming very tame again, where he will eat food from my hand. When I wear a hat or bright clothes he is initially scared and dives to the bottom of the pond and burrows in leaves.

I notice that when I throw food into the pond he has to dive underwater to see where the food is floating before rising to the surface to eat.

Follow Phillip

on instagram
@majikphil

on twitter
@philzcatz

on facebook
@phillipsnaturalworld

on YouTube
@phillipsnaturalworld

Redneck's favorite pastime is basking in the sun. Late afternoons he loves to gorge on cat food. The floating blobs around him are cat food I've thrown into the pond for him. He is currently eating 2 cups of food per day.

Redneck seems to be staying mostly in the Big Pond which is about 6,000 gallons of still water, plenty of room for him to grow.

He appears a bit larger than when I last saw him. Perhaps the size of a large dinner plate now. I would guess he measures 12" across (30 cm).

Redneck got his name because he has a prominent red stripe along both sides of his head and smaller red stripes along the back of his head.

None of the dozens of Yellow-bellied Sliders that I put into the 3 ponds last summer have yet reappeared. See TURTLE RESCUE for those images.

The Yellow-bellied Sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) are native while Redneck is not. Redneck is of the variety of turtles that once were sold in pet shops across America. Often cited as the most widely illustrated turtle in the world the Red-eared Slider's indigenous range broadly covers the midwestern United States and extends as far east as West Virginia and Southern Ohio, as far west as eastern New Mexico, and as far south as the Rio Grand River.

These turtles, because they were sold as pets, have been introduced into most of the continental United States. In Florida, non-indigenous Red-eared Sliders have been found in scattered colonies throughout the peninsula. The peak of the Red-eared Slider's popularity was during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle television cartoon craze of the late 1980s.

In nearly all non-indigenous locations across America the Red-eared Sliders are reproducing and thriving.

Redneck is mostly aquatic, omnivorous, and rarely leaves the water except to bask. He seems to prefer quiet waters so I have turned off the water pumps in the Big Pond to accommodate him.

These turtles are known to thrive in the wild as far north as Portland, Cumberland County, Maine so I assume that they hibernate in cooler weather, and that is likely why I did not see Redneck for 5 months.

For more information about Red-eared Sliders check out the USGS's Nonindigeneous Aquatic Species page.

As our lake has gone almost completely dry I find it hard to imagine that Redneck traveled all the way from the current shoreline, nearly a mile to our north. However a couple of days ago a family of River Otters were in our Big Pond so I assume it is possible that turtles too could travel that distance.

Below: Our 700 acre virtually dry lake. A testament to the mismanagement of government officials starting with former Republican Governor Jeb Bush who ordered the lake drained in 2003 during the last high water event. Culminating with our current Governor Rick Scott who has pursued an agenda of rapid growth (for no apparent reason, growth for the sake of growth). The more straws in the aquifer the more lakes go dry, like ours.

To be fair climate change has also played a role in Florida's disappearing lakes and springs. Persistent drought has become common across the central peninsula of Florida. But Florida politicians are just as responsible for climate change as any other. Refusing to endorse solar energy, trying to deny woman access to family planning, while pursuing growth for the sake of more growth.

Australia Bakes
Summer (February) 2017

Is Australia's Outback

The Hottest Place on Earth?

Heat waves are not unusual in Australia. A subtropical belt of high pressure that flows over the continent regularly delivers pulses of hot, dry air to the surface in the summer. Yet even by Australian standards, the intense heat wave of February 2017 has been remarkable.

When a high-pressure system stalled over central Australia, extreme temperatures emerged first in South Australia and Victoria and then spread to New South Wales, Queensland, and Northern Territory. With overheated bats dropping from trees and bushfires burning out of control, temperatures smashed records in many areas.

This map shows peak land surface temperatures between February 7 and 14, 2017, a period when some of the most extreme heating occurred. The map is based on data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Note that it depicts land surface temperatures, not air temperatures. Land surface temperatures reflect how hot the surface of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location. They can sometimes be significantly hotter or cooler than air temperatures. (To learn more about LSTs and air temperatures, read: Where is the Hottest Place on Earth?)

On February 12, 2017, air temperatures rose to 46.6°C (115.9°F) in the coastal city of Port Macquarie, New South Wales, breaking the city’s all-time record by 3.3 degrees Celsius (5.9 degrees Fahrenheit). Two days earlier, the average maximum temperature across all of New South Wales hit a record-setting 42.4°C (108.3°F)—a record that was broken the next day when it rose to 44.0°C (111.2°F).

In some places, the duration of the heatwave has been noteworthy. Mungindi, a town on the border of Queensland and New South Wales, endured 52 days in a row when maximum temperatures exceeded 35°C (95°F)—a record for New South Wales.

Many scientists see exceptional heat waves like this as part of a broader trend. For instance, one study published by the Climate Council of Australia concluded that heatwaves—defined as at least three days of unusually high temperatures—grew significantly longer, more intense, and frequent between 1971 and 2008.

References

9News (2017, February 13) NSW weather records break over scorching weekend.

Climate Council (2014) Heatwaves: Hotter, Longer, More Often. Accessed February 17, 2017.

Macquarie Port News ( 2017, February 13) Port Macquarie registers its hottest day on record. Accessed February 17, 2017.

New Scientist (2017, February 13) Australia’s extreme heatwave is a preview of things to come. Accessed February 17, 2107.

The Conversation (2017, February 11) Climate change doubled the likelihood of the New South Wales heatwave.Accessed February 17, 2107.

On Instagram

The Battle Between the Two Sexiest Aussies on the Planet Continues

There's something about the name "James," huh?

James Yates

@yatesy17

vs.

James William

@jamesaswilliam

Magic Mistletoe

Frankincense and Myrrh

A SENSE OF FRANKINCENSE

Warmest Year on Record 'By Far'

Evolutionary Traps: Owls and Cuban Treefrogs

North Pole 50° Above Normal

California Takes Up Climate Change Fight, Defying Trump

Fires in the Sky: Aurora Over Canada

Rare Continental-Wide Cold Wave to Engulf USA

Snowmageddon Redux

Александр Девятченко
Art-director/Stylist

Florida Chill

Snake Tongue

Florida Moves to Outlaw some Snake Species

Water, Older Than The Sun

Florida Lions and Gulls

Central Florida's Best

Daytona 500 Weather

Winter Abandons Florida

How Birds Fly

Timeless Beauty

Ocala National Forest, Alexander Springs

Australia Bakes, Redneck Returns

A SENSE OF FRANKINCENSE

More on This Story

Related Stories

Александр ДевятченкоArt-director/Stylist

Florida Moves to Outlaw some Snake Species

Александр Девятченко
Art-director/Stylist