To all of our followers, family, friends, and whoever else is reading these missives. I know it’s really strange to see me posting two days in a row…but I got some New Years related interesting stuff for ya…so here goes.

As I sit here typing this…our osprey is out back in the tree…I didn’t get Neil to take a picture of it because it’s just about the same picture as the ones I posted yesterday…so go back and look at those and imagine it was a mere 24 hours later.

We welcomed the new year…well, actually the New Year’s Eve…with the arrival of eaglet E-23 at our local eagles nest…the offspring of M15 and F23 the parents (they don’t have names like the former occupants of their nest Ozzie and Harriet. You an review the progress
here…anyways E23 hatched at about 0700 on New Year’s Eve…the estimated time of hatching of the other egg was (as of a few days ago) about a day and a half later…as of this morning there’s no discussion of the second egg on the website but I imagine that’s just an oversight by the site maintainers. As the first hatched…E23 has a serious leg up on surviving eaglet-hood as the larger first hatchling usually muscles the later hatching siblings out of food and they end up starving a lot of the time. About 80% of first hatching eaglets survive but less than half of the later hatching ones do…at least based on our experience with this particular nest over the past 11 years or so. 

It got down to about the mid 50s last night…pretty cool for down here in sunny FL…and it’s only going up to 70 today so we’ll stay in, dress warm, and that’ all on our schedule.

OK, on to Interesting things found on the net…mostly New Year’s related.

Japan welcomed in the New Year with over a dozen earthquakes offshore of the western side of Honshu (the main island) in Ishikawa prefecture (that’s like a state for the US or province for Canuckistan). You can go
here to see the signs swinging in the Kanazawa train station about 90 miles WNW of Tokyo…or
here to see some of the collapsed buildings. Maximum intensity was about 7.6 and amazingly enough no one seems to have been killed as of the time I’m writing this. Their building codes are pretty rigorous on earthquake safety measures and the population is well trained in what to do when one happens.

This is a tree known as the Ankerwycke Yew…it’s located in Berkshire UK and is somewhere between 1,400 and 2,500 years old…it’s famous because the Magna Carta was signed there. For those of you non history buffs is sort of like the Declaration of Independence and Constitution in the US…it’s the document that an unpopular King John was forced to sign to appease a bunch of rebel barons and granted rights to people, churches, and more…it was signed in 1215 CE and is pretty much the basis for English law and thus law for most of the colonized world later on. 

While they were living in the RV…Connie and Neil noticed that in a lot of places you go from essentially the wilderness to civilization in just half mile or less as you drive the highways and byways of small roads where is mostly where they roamed. However…they don’t recall ever seeing a transition as abrupt as this one which is located in Arvinheer, Mongolia…Wow.

As you know…there’s this line in the Pacific Ocean named the International Date Line…and it jogs to and fro so as to keep countries in the same time zone…at least most of the time…but unfortunately it was drawn sort of strangely in the Samoan Islands area. Samoa and Tonga which are both part of the country of Kiribati…are the first place that celebrates the new year when it happens as they’re just about 20 miles west of the line…and while not specifically the last ones to see the new year American Samoa, Baker Island, and Howland Island about 100 miles east of Tonga are among the last to see it. And interestingly enough…Howland Island is the place that Amelia Earhart and her navigator were aiming for when they got lost and ran out of fuel never to be sen again. 

And of interest only to the math nerds amongst ye…here’s a mathematical countdown to 2024.

Speaking of 2024…it’s what is known as an apocalyptic year because it is an apocalyptic number…and most of you are now wondering just what in de heck is an apocalyptic year? Well…if you take any number and calculate the value of 2 to that power…then examine the result and see if it contains the sequence 666…then you’ve got yourself your basic apocalyptic number…and 2 to the 2024th power contains this sequence. Now just what the significance of that is…or whether it is must math nerdery…well, I dunno.

That’s ‘bout all I got fer ya today…so get yerself to celebrating in whatever manner you prefer.

Cyas.