randomwisdom.com

Here are a couple photos from the mountain I hike up several times a week to get to lab. These are from the trip back down the mountain.

Shot from the rail, low shutter speed

Any idea what this flower is called?

Biking home from a party downtown I stopped to watch a frog cross the road in front of a temple. The world is so full of life. I wish humanity wasn't destroying it.

In news of the strange, I guess Hyundai has decided to name a car after my hometown. It's not out in the states, but apparently the father of the scariest Korean I know already owns one.

http://www.hyundai-motor.com/cybermall/showroom/rv/tucson/index.html

Um, Haesung, you do realize that all the people who name cars are crazy Asians, right?

It's commonly said that Japanese people have four fears: jishin, kaminari, kaji, oyaji. Earthquake, thunderstorm, fire, father. Interesting, eh?

This one's courtesy of Lane, ripped blatantly off his LJ.

School to put electronic tags on students to monitor safety

http://asia.search.news.yahoo.com/search/news_asia_pf?p=ukey%3A2638463

I think my title says it all.

It occurred to me that I haven't posted a large, "real camera" photo on this site in more than a month. In an attempt to remedy that situation, I'm going to try to take some more photos over the next few days. I need some requests though. HINT HINT. So click on the comments thing and make your request known.

To my credit, perhaps I do have a slight excuse. The past 2 weeks have been spent doing all of the following, simultaneously:

• going through the throes of a deeply involved relationship in the course of a week and a half
• programming the rest of my project, finishing up the data files, running analyses, and now throwing a Powerpoint presentation together for both my lab and the people in charge of my study program
• writing an essay for my culture class
• sweating profusely in high humidity

Yay for multitasking!

In today's Japanese reading class, I read a really interesting article. Here's a brief translation/summary:

How Crows Use Cars

Crows have discovered a technique to get to the edible innards of walnuts; drop the walnuts on a road, and have cars run over them. The clever birds use a variety of methods: set them in front of the tires of cars stopped at red lights, drop them on well-travelled streets, or even fly in front of moving cars to drop them off just in front of the wheels. The author's interest was piqued when he witnessed an unusually brave crow perform this feat in Sendai, close to one of the Tohoku University campuses. It made him wonder when, where, and under what circumstances these birds learned to open walnuts that way.

Through a bit of observation, the author learned a few things about these crows. First, the particular species of crow that uses this method, called the Hashiboso crow, is the only type of crow in Japan that opens walnuts this way. Since it lacks the strength to open the walnuts on its own, it uses cars to open the walnuts for it. Also, the behavior seemed to be centered around a specific area.

In order to find out when and where this interesting technique originated, the author sent out questionnaires to 700 people, with the help of a Professor Higuchi from Tokyo University. The questionnaire asked whether people had seen this behavior or not, and if so, when, where, and what method the birds used.

Of the 500 sheets returned, 100 people indicated that they had indeed seen it before. 20 of these gave locations and dates in and around Sendai, which were used to create a map. The oldest of these was a sighting in 1975, centered at the "K driving school" inside the city.

Apparently, because of the large number of walnut trees near the driving school, and because the fledgling drivers were driving slowly and stopping a lot, there were a lot of crushed walnuts in this area. By sheer chance and much trial and error, the crows figured out that the moving vehicles were the cause of the crushed walnuts. At this point they started dropping the nuts in front of cars deliberately.

Over the years, the behavior spread, first to the outskirts of the city and later to surrounding prefectures. But to my knowledge, this fascinating utilization of modern technology is unique to this area.