Month: September 2019

Yellow-headed quakvas (and not only, it’s just on the video) amusingly protest when they have to fly away due to a person passing by. Almost always, like the great white herons, they simply fly a bit further down the road, where I will inevitably come, and it all starts again, happening about five times with each bird. Maybe they just find it fun. They can even fly in, scream, and fly off. I spent half an hour watching one as it patiently waited for prey, carefully tracking something floating by under the water. It caught nothing, and I ran out of patience quicker.

Overall, it turned out to be interesting watching the birds. Probably it’s an age thing 🙂

Yesterday in the park, I saw something very unusual – stakes sticking out of the ground around a tree. Why would roots need to come out? This morning, I conducted a small study and found the answer, which I am happy to share.

These are pneumatophores – upward-growing respiratory roots of the American bald cypress (in this case). At the top, they have small openings through which air enters the air-carrying system of such roots. Air-carrying – because these roots internally have hollow air ducts. The roots of swamp plants, like this cypress, are in unfavorable conditions in terms of breathing. In the water-saturated soil, various fermentation and decay processes occur, and oxygen in the top soil layers is completely absorbed, so evolution has concocted a way to equip these roots with additional air intakes. That’s why not any tree can grow in swamps, but such adapted ones with vertical roots that extract air can.

Hyatt is quite a surprise. Pleasant, probably. Although it’s hard to tell. I walk up to the reception. I say a god has unexpectedly sent me a sandwich, which isn’t very nice cold. Where can I warm it up here? Not a problem, responds the reception. We’ll sort it out right now.

They brought

P.S. Actually, my next question was about laundry, I’ve been living here for a week already. I’m not even sure whether to ask?

Lunch caught up with me in the backwoods of Texas. In contemplation, to enter or not? Don’t you remember, is it the letter j or g that’s written this way?

Well, as usual on a business trip I found a piano, or rather so many without keys I couldn’t possibly 😉 moreover, I found a whole music academy with rooms with fields for every taste. This Steinway & Sons is simply magical (although you can’t tell from the recording)

Boston Dynamics demonstrates the incredible, but to fully understand how we can create roboclones of humans and animals, it is worth recalling that in the 21st century, no one really knows a simple thing: how a snake moves. This morning, I was curious to find out the details – I scoured through scientific publications on the topic. The closest and most plausible explanation is different friction coefficients of the scales, wave-like weight transfer. But this doesn’t help in making a robosnake. It’s interesting how soon we will reach the prototype stage.

https://youtu.be/_sBBaNYex3E

Entered an African restaurant to try some fresh lion meat, and they have Baltika #7 on the menu!

Didn’t find “Monastery Hut”, “Bouquet of Moldavia”, “Sunny Beach” or “Don Amaretto” in the menu

The Houston Museum of Art really delighted with an excellent exhibition-installation by Ragnar Kjartansson, “The Visitors”. Nine screens simultaneously show nine musicians in the rooms of one large house (historical Rokeby Farm House in Hudson Valley, New York), who together play enchanting music. Each room was recorded separately, and then all of it was mixed together, creating the coolest 3D effect, when a musician from one of the screens – and for me – from the corner of the room – starts to solo slightly, and all this is live improvisation.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qOxG711lb0E

I was just given a ride by a taxi driver, the son of the former Iraqi ambassador to Moscow. He had a lot to say about Moscow;)

At Houston airport, all cafes and all waiting tables that I pass are equipped with tablets. Now that’s what I call service! So far, I haven’t found a single table without a tablet, I’ve been walking for half an hour along various cafes and waiting areas