soapbox

I was taking a little break from editing a paper and walked through a park right next to my office. There were some girls waving around a stick on the other side of the park so I walked over that way to find out that they were trying to defend a hurt bunny from a hawk. After a while, they realized it was kind of pointless and wandered off.

Anyway, I need to carry my real camera with me because the camera on the iPhone is shit by comparison.

A few notes: I saw this hawk a couple days ago on my way to lunch, so it apparently lives on the JHU campus. The campus is bordered by a pretty large wild park, so there are lots of birds here. Other than it being a juvenile something or other, I can’t identify it. I saw the bunny today on my way back from lunch too. It wasn’t doing a lot of moving around at noonish, so I’m guessing that the hawk chose the slow bunny to eat.

Inspired by:
this
Test:
raptor attack

Would you say this squirrel has been eating flesh? Check out the bloody teeth (click image to view larger).

focal length: 23.8 mm (142.8mm in 35 mm equivalence), aperture: f/3.5, shutter: 1/160, distance: ~0.5 m

I took this on Boston Common. Those squirrels have clearly learned that people won’t hurt them and might even give them them food: he was only about 2 feet away from the lens. I didn’t feed him.

Not “how to make a baby”, that’s already done. This weekend I went to class to find out how to actually produce the baby. Like how you get it out.

It turns out that it’s not really that big of a deal. Hard to believe, but women have been giving birth for over 100 years!

Here are some interesting facts:
Having the water break is the first sign of labor in only 10% of cases.
Typically, you don’t call your doctor or come into the hospital until the contractions are 5 minutes apart and have been nice and steady like that for an hour.
They suggest taking a nap when labor starts so you’re rested for the end.
For a first child, labor lasts 16 hours on average. But, the “labor” part of that is only about 1/3 of the time because of the duty cycle.
Epidurals are kind of scary and can make you really hurt yourself since you don’t know what’s going on.
The reason maternity wards used to be characterized by screaming was that they’d dope up the mothers with narcotics and morphine. The morphine in particular is an amnesiac and would tend to just turn people into animals. Then they’d take forceps and pull out the babies.

Oh yeah, they want you to bring your own robes and pillows just so you’re a little extra bit comfy. However, nothing nice because things get “messy” and it’ll all get thrown out in the end.

Oh, and on this week’s “Dirty Jobs”, Mike Rowe helped with a cesarian section on a cow. Not good.

Just a link to another blog, but this doesn’t seem like a good way to carry your dog.

Dog Rides Comfortably in Sack on Running Board

shutter speed: 1/30 sec, focal length: 72 mm (432 mm in 35 mm equivalence), aperture: f/3.5, distance: about 2 meters

I took this picture on my honeymoon in Havre de Grace, Maryland. The squirrels on this boardwalk were not at all afraid of humans, and it shows. I would not be surprised if this guy had been hand fed a few happy meals this year. (more…)