Mokka mit Schlag

The Golden Compass was sold out at our local movie theater last night, which proved fortuitous since it meant we saw Juno instead. Wonderful movie! By all means, go see it. The dialog was extremely clever, even verging on Whedonesque. The basic story is about 16-year old Juno getting pregnant (after what seemed like her first time, though I don’t think that was definitively established) and then giving the baby up for adoption. I do wonder a little about a girl as intelligent and strong-willed as Juno not figuring out how to use reliable birth control, but I guess that was necessary to get the plot moving.

Of course, the movie had the obligatory, girl-goes-to-abortion-clinic-but-decides-not-to-go-through-with-it-at-the-last-minute scene. Otherwise it mostly avoided clichés. At least it didn’t go with the usual television cop-out of Juno magically discovering she wasn’t pregnant after all.

Still, just once I’d like to see a movie about a teenage girl who gets knocked up, has an abortion, and lives happily ever after, just like thousands of real teenagers do every year. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a spare afternoon to kill in Silicon Valley today so I headed over to one of my favorite birding destinations in the country, Shoreline Park and Lake in Mountain View. As usual I was not disappointed. On a lazy afternoon in December, without even a scope, I managed 49 species including a life bird!

Read the rest of this entry »

American Kestrel, Falco sparverius
Brooklyn, NY
2007-12-15

We found this cute little fellow at the Pennsylvania Ave. Landfill on the Kings County Christmas Bird Count today. I hope to post a fuller report soon. Other raptors included Red-tailed Hawk and Short-eared Owl.

After a few years of relative peace, the phone spammers seem to have discovered my home number again. I’ve gotten two calls in the last fifteen minutes, one from Mark Marshall at Ambit Energy (though I’m certain he lied about his name) and one from Daniel of the Police Conference of New York (one of those scummy organizations that tries to sell you stickers to put in your car with the implicit promise that this will keep you from getting tickets). There have been quite a few others in the last few weeks too.

I suspect some of these are jumping the gun on the expiry of the federal Do-Not-Call list. The FTC claims:

Your registration will not expire. The Federal Trade Commission will not drop any telephone numbers from the National Do Not Call Registry based on a five-year expiration period pending final Congressional or agency action on whether to make registration permanent. Read more about it at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/10/dnctestimony.shtm.

I think it’s time to start filing some complaints. In fact, I think the next time this happens I’m going to hold the caller on the phone while I fill out the complaint form.

Today on Buy Nothing Day we remind ourselves that:

• It’s far more comfortable to sleep in your own bed than camped out in a big box parking lot.
• Cashiers deserve a holiday too.
• Mall food causes heart disease.
• You may save $100 on a big TV if you buy it today, but you will save $1000 if you don’t buy it at all.
• Wal-mart is not our family.
• Ronald McDonald is not a real person.
• Going to the mall is not a patriotic duty.
• Credit card debt is not a sign of God’s favor.
• The Grinch can’t steal Christmas if you don’t buy it in the first place.

I don’t usually carry my cell phone with me, but for some reason I took it with me to lunch today, and it was a good thing I did. Halfway through my pork souvlaki Peter Dorosh texted me with news of a Pine Siskin at the Breeze Hill feeders in Prospect Park. Siskins are regular in the park in the fall but they’re usually only a few each year, and I’d managed to miss them all before now.

When I arrived at the feeders I ran into Rob Jett, who had arrived fifteen minutes earlier and promptly pointed out the bird to me. It immediately became apparent why I had missed it for the last several years: a Pine Siskin looks almost exactly like a winter plumage American Goldfinch, and it was hanging out with maybe ten goldfinches so you had to look close to realize what it was. Rob’s scope helped. The upper back was somewhat striped on the Siskin and more plain on the goldfinches. The bill on the siskin was also thinner than the thick finch bills. However that wasn’t always easy to see.

Nonetheless I’m confident I did have the bird. In the future I’m going to have to pay more attention to the goldfinches in winter. Who knows how many siskins I’ve overlooked in the last four years?