gwendolen
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- Feb 05, 12
De Koedoe, in het Engels kudu, is een grote antilope. De mannetjes vallen vooral op door hun prachtige schroefvormig gedraaide hoorns.
De keutels van de koedoe zijn olijfvormig en hard. Vraag me niet waarom, maar deze unieke combinatie heeft blijkbaar geleid tot de wereldbekende sport: Bokdrol Spoeg. Wij zijn al eens uitgedaagd door de gidsen op een ochtendwandeling in Krugerpark. Ooit werd ons een portie bosolijven (bush olives) aangeboden. Nee, dan liever kudu biltong.
- Jan 22, 12
Een mens kan nooit te veel vervet-foto’s hebben. De foto’s hierboven zijn gemaakt in Skukuza rest camp, waar deze troep vervetapen leeft. Zowel in 2011 als 2012 kwamen ze voor onze bungalow spelen en foerageren. Vervets eten fruit, bloemen, bladeren, eieren en insecten. Ik vind het prachtig als ze langskomen; ik kan er uren naar kijken.
Als je de apen aan ziet komen, is het belangrijk om alle etenswaren even achter slot en grendel te doen. Foeke is in Berg en Dal ooit een appel kwijtgeraakt, toen hij 10 seconden de andere kant op keek. Nu zijn we gastvrij genoeg om ons eten te delen, maar niet met wilde dieren. Ze moeten natuurlijk wel wild blijven.
Wat ik erg treurig vind, is de reactie van sommige bezoekers. Zo bekogelde onze buurman de troep in Biyamiti vijf minuten lang met stenen; in Pretoriuskop beschoten onze overbuurjongens de aapjes met een katapult. Vaak zien deze ‘wildlife liefhebbers’ vervetapen als ongedierte. Het is mij een raadsel wat deze mensen in een wildpark doen.
Maar goed, terug naar de aapjes:
- Jan 22, 12
We zagen een klein groepje van deze spreeuwen bij een grote kudde olifanten. Lelspreeuwen eten voornamelijk insecten. Soms rijden ze op de rug van een olifant of een buffel mee en eten dan de insecten op de huid van deze dieren. De grote lellen aan de zijkant van zijn hoofd zie je alleen tijdens het broedseizoen.
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- Mar 10, 12Southern Ground Hornbill, originally uploaded by gwendolen.Seen near the big baobab tree at one of the Letaba river loops near Shimuwini in Kruger National Park. She seems to have a clouded eye. We saw her in a group of four. Two males were in the baobab, singing. Loved that sighting (and hearing)
- Feb 20, 12
Martial Eagle, originally uploaded by gwendolen.
Thanks to Tobie Muller for the ID.
Hi Gwen, beautiful photograph of a juvenile Martial Eagle. Wahlberg’s has a smaller head and will show a yellow cere (also with pale morph). Features showing this as juvenile Martial is the slight crest, the dark cere and the white edges to the feathers that gives it a scalloped appearance.
- Feb 10, 12
More about my recent trip to Kruger Park soon. Got birds too
Hope to post one for Bird Photography Weekly this weekend. - Nov 12, 11
The next morning we visited Lake Panic to do some bird watching. It was quite busy at the hide, but we managed to squeeze in and get a spot.
Me fooling around trying to capture a dragonfly
After that we drove around for a bit and saw a Bateleur, elephants, piggies, more piggies and a Widow bird. Back at Skukuza we met some old friends for lunch and were treated on a lovely sighting just in front of us: A baby hippo.
It even came out of the water later that afternoon and ran up and down the river bank
That evening we had drinks on the deck overlooking the river and watched a herd of buffalo peacefully munching away on the other side. Can’t think of a better way to spend a last evening in the park.
Goodbye Kruger National Park. See you soon!
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Posts
It is Not About Race because It Is Never About Race. Race is the past. Black people can vote. One of them is president. Nothing Is About Race anymore. Just ask Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum — and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick that guy is? — and they’ll tell you that the president “injected” race into the tragedy. It wasn’t there before the president — who is (shhh!) black, you know — put it there. Ask Joe Oliver, this “friend” of the gunman who insists that Zimmerman might have said “fucking goons” and not “fucking coons,” because the latter is an obsolete racial slur and the former is a “term of endearment,” according to Oliver’s daughter. This is enormously believable because, if you’re an armed 28-year old gunslinger in pursuit of what you believe is a dangerous burglar, the first descriptive that would leap to anyone’s mind is a term of endearment used by high-school girls. Yeah, sure. Whatever. As if. And it is enormously believable because This Is Not About Race. It Is Never About Race. All those people arguing down through the years that the Civil War was about dueling conceptions of nationhood, or a clash of incompatible economic systems, or the ramifications of the 10th Amendment were all arguing, after all, that It Was Not About Race. Massive Resistance in the South in the 1960’s was about resistance to overweening federal power because It Was Not About Race. The Wallace campaigns, and the politically profitable adoption by modern conservatism of the leftover tropes and trappings of American apartheid was about the embattled white middle-class in the North and not About Race because It Is Never About Race. Ronald Reagan kicked off his campaign talking about states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, not far from where they dug three civil rights workers out of a dam, because he wanted to show that a new paradigm had been established in American constitutional history, and it was not About Race because It Is Never About Race. Amadou Diallo was Not About Race. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, which tracks such things, dozens of children are currently serving sentences of life without parole, of whom two-thirds of them are children of color, as a result of laws passed by legislators wanting to look tough on crime, and those statistics are not skewed because of race because It Is Never About Race. George Zimmerman saw a black kid with a hoodie and gave chase with his gun in his hand. But that was not about race, because Joe Oliver and the Sanford police and the oh-so-very fair-minded media are telling us, hell, don’t worry, It Is Never About Race.
Charles P. Pierce (via azspot)Many Billions of Rocky Planets in the Habitable Zones Around Red Dwarfs in the Milky Way
by PhysOrg staff
A new result from ESO’s HARPS planet finder shows that rocky planets not much bigger than Earth are very common in the habitable zones around faint red stars. The international team estimates that there are tens of billions of such planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and probably about one hundred in the Sun’s immediate neighbourhood. This is the first direct measurement of the frequency of super-Earths around red dwarfs, which account for 80% of the stars in the Milky Way.
This first direct estimate of the number of light planets around red dwarf stars has just been announced by an international team using observations with the HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. A recent announcement, showing that planets are ubiquitous in our galaxy used a different method that was not sensitive to this important class of exoplanets.
The HARPS team has been searching for exoplanets orbiting the most common kind of star in the Milky Way — red dwarf stars (also known as M dwarfs). These stars are faint and cool compared to the Sun, but very common and long-lived, and therefore account for 80% of all the stars in the Milky Way…
(read more: PhysOrg)
(image: artist’s impression shows a sunset seen from the super-Earth Gliese 667 Cc. The brightest star in the sky is the red dwarf Gliese 667 C, which is part of a triple star system. The other two more distant stars, Gliese 667 A and B appear in the sky also to the right. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)
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This plucky little bird was given a good licking when it dared to venture near a massive bison. The brown-headed cowbird was feeding on insects when the towering beast gently touched it with her tongue. The bird let out a chirp before flying off. Photographer Tin Man Lee, 34, captured the moment at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, America.Picture: Tin Man Lee/Solent News (via Pictures of the day: 8 March 2012 - Telegraph)
Animal-Made ‘Art’ Challenges Human Monopoly on Creativity
Illustration: Flower drawn by an elephant.
Art is usually considered a uniquely human ability, but that may not be true. Given the opportunity, animals like chimpanzees and gorillas and elephants produce abstract designs that arguably rise to artistic level.
Arguably is, however, the key word. It’s hard enough to agree on an essential definition of human art, much less an animal one. But it’s a debate welcomed by Jack Ashby, manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London.
“That’s the question we’re asking people: What is art?” said Ashby, who thinks that human art may well reflect a creativity expressed in animals’ natural behavior, even if people don’t always appreciate it.
Ashby organized the Art by Animals exhibition, on display at the museum through March 9. On the following pages, Wired looks at possible animal art from the exhibition and elsewhere.
Mathematics in Ancient Africa
Rarely do historians discuss mathematics in Africa, and when they do, they only discuss it in Egypt and Northern Africa.
However, the oldest mathematical objects in the world have been found in sub-Saharan Africa.
The picture is of Ishango bones. They were found near Lake Edward on the borders of Uganda and Zaire and are estimated to be 25,000 years old.
At one end of the Ishango Bone is a piece of quartz for writing, and the bone has a series of notches carved in groups (shown above). It was first thought these notches were some kind of tally marks as found to record counts all over the world. However, the Ishango bone appears to be much more than a simple tally. The markings on rows (a) and (b) each add to 60. Row (b) contains the prime numbers between 10 and 20. Row (a) is quite consistent with a numeration system based on 10, since the notches are grouped as 20 + 1, 20 - 1, 10 + 1, and 10 - 1. Finally, row (c) seems to illustrate for the method of duplication (multiplication by 2) used more recently in Egyptian multiplication. Recent studies with microscopes illustrate more markings and it is now understood the bone is also a lunar phase counter. Who but a woman keeping track of her cycles would need a lunar calendar? Were women our first mathematicians?
Considering that I’ve heard an argument that women were the first agriculturists/farmers because men were out hunting, I think, because of the same reason, it is reasonable to assume that women created this tool.
(via university at buffalo)
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- SummaryExperienced in teaching, training, coaching and in web communication and online media.
I’m a teacher and an online media communications consultant. I help businesses, organisations and individuals to use the internet for reputation management, marketingcomms, customer care and customer relations.Specialties: Bi-lingual, customer-orientated, people's person, inquisitive, self-learnerExperience- Aug 2011 - PresentCorporate voorlichter / Alfa-collegeVoorlichting aan scholen
- Jan 2010 - PresentTeacher / Alfa-collegeMarketing & Communications
- Oct 2009 - PresentCommunications Advisor / iCommunicatieiCommunicatie is an online media consultancy: helping organisations to implement web 2.0 tools in their online strategy.
Education-
2006 - 2010Christelijke Hogeschool WindesheimBA in Communication
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1983 - 1989Noordelijke Hogeschool LeeuwardenBA in teaching in Social Science
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Interests:Photography, travelling and food. I love to travel and experience new perspectives, sounds, food, wildlife, people.
