Stuff (Another List)

—Grasshoppers have ears on their bellies.

—You are more likely to yawn during winter months.

—Porcupines live in dens (I don’t have one in mine, but you may want to check yours).

—October 6^th is National Noodle Day.

—Mitchell Hegman

Skiing

While looking through some of my older photographs, I ran across a few from a skiing trip a group of us took up into Canada in 1978.  While there, we went heli-skiing in the backcountry.  A pair of choppers worked on plucking up and dropping off our group and a group of Swiss tourists onto remote mountaintops. 

A pretty obvious difference in expertise existed between the two groups.  I have posted a photograph I captured of a mountainside we carved.  That’s us on the left.  The Swiss carved the trails on the right.  The photograph really tells the story.

And here is me jumping off a cornice above Marysville, Montana in June of 1979. 

 

—Mitchell Hegman

The Great Migration

Yesterday morning, as I sat calmly soaking in my hot tub, I began to hear geese honking on approach to the far side of my house and out of view.  This is not uncommon.  My house lies directly under the migratory flyway for geese on their way north.

This time of year, geese overfly my house daily.

But the cacophony of the geese calling back and forth soon grew to an unusual level. I am talking block party gone awry noise.  New Year’s riot noise.

At just about the time I was ready to fling myself from the tub and trot around the house, naked, to see what was going on, geese appeared high overtop me. 

Skein after skein of geese slid overtop me.  Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of geese.  More geese than I have ever seen in the air.

They absolutely filled the sky above my house and far beyond.

Fortunately, I had my smarter-than-me-phone with me.  I managed a few decent shots.  I have posted two of my photographs here.

What you see in my photographs are but a fraction of a fraction of what I saw.

—Mitchell Hegman

Defying the Odds

The likelihood of one person being bitten by a bear, shark, and a venomous snake are 1 in 893.35 quadrillion.  In case you are wondering, this is what the odds look like:

1 / 893,350,000,000,000,000

In more technical terms, those are what you would call “minuscule” odds.

Strangely enough (I really, really, really fought the urge not write oddly enough), one man actually defied these odds. 

Dylan McWilliams started this grim trifecta in 2015 when a rattlesnake stuck him while he was on a hiking excursion in Utah.

The odds of getting bitten by a venous snake in the United States are 1 in 37,500.

Dylan registered his next attack while camping in the mountains of Colorado in 2017.  Not a shark attack, mind you.  Nope.  In this attack, Dylan woke from sleep only to find his head was clamped firmly in the mouth an enormous black bear.  He managed get the bear to release by repeatedly poking the bear in the eye.  Nine staples were required to close the lacerations.

Odds for getting injured by a bear are 1 in 2.1 million.

In 2018, while body surfing the blue waters off Kauai, Hawaii, a shark chomped on Dylan’s leg.   He managed to break free of the shark—believed to have been a tiger shark—by kicking it with his other leg.

Until that shark attack, his odds for such occurring in U.S. waters were only 1 in 11.5 million.

You might think Dylan McWilliams’ unlucky relationship with the odds of attack would dissuade him from all outdoor activity.  Hardly so.  Dylan, just now entering his twenties, participated in a survival challenge on Naked and Afraid, the Discovery Channel reality program.

I don’t mean to be a spoiler here, but he made only 6 out of the 21 days.  No, he was not taken down by a lion.

This time it appears to have been bacteria.

Odds are pretty good on that.

—Mitchell Hegman

Sources: National Geographic, Discovery, BBC

Strange Pollution

Strange Pollution

Ever since the mid-1980s, an ongoing mystery has been a hot topic along the beaches in northwestern France.  We are not talking about your garden variety mystery here.  A particular and weird type of pollution has plagued the beaches.

For the past thirty years, plastic Garfield phones have been washing ashore.  The phones are orange and black just like the cartoon cat they were modeled after.

Recently, members of an environmental group solved the mystery when they found a damaged shipping container in a cave along a stretch of rocky shoreline.  Though the container was empty upon discovery, the group feels certain this was the source of the phones.

Here is a minute-long video about the mystery:

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OzYXZGvIWI

Generations

I have been more than a little confused about generations.  You know—the X, Y, Z thing.  This morning, I used my Google machine to sort things out.  Here is what I found:

Baby Boomers (my generation) are those born between 1944 and 1964.

Gen X encompasses those born between 1965 and 1979.

Gen Y includes people born between 1980 and 1994.

Gen Z embraces anyone born between 1995 and 2015.

If you are doing the math here, you will notice a bit of imbalance in the length of time these various generations encompass.  This is because our designation for generations is more concerned with the world in which they were raised than the date of birth.  What wars influenced each generation?  What shaped the consumer markets?  What music?

Maybe more telling is the technology and media surrounding each generation.  Baby Boomers, for example, grew up with newspapers in hand.  Gen Y grew up on a diet of television.  Gen Z is online and going mobile.

To further add confusion (by this I mean mine), the term Millennials is used for those who reached adulthood in the first few years after the turn of the 21^st century.

Clearly, technology and war shape the generations more than any other factors.  I hazard to guess what the next generation will become.

—Mitchell Hegman

On the “Not Funny” Side

Ethan Hawke shares his story:

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD9O3vPUqBg