Baboons move into S. African beach homes
Unruly gangs are raiding the expensive homes that line the spectacular coast of South Africa’s Cape Peninsula, clearing out pantries, emptying fridges, and defecating over the designer furnishings.
It’s baboon versus human in a string of wealthy ocean-front communities 30 minutes from the trendy center of Cape Town, a top tourist destination.
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George is one of the biggest baboons in a troop of about 20, an adult male weighing some 110 pounds. He yawns languidly, displaying wickedly curved canine teeth.
“If you think how easily a baboon could rip a person apart, the fact that they don’t is quite remarkable,” Trethowan said.
Um… Gee. How lucky we are not to be torn assunder by the beasts we allow to live in our luxury neighborhoods.
Yeah, I get that.
Rode the Bonnie Black into work today. All went well. (Yippee!)
[BTW: The Wife thinks the bike's name is "Betty" -- as in "Black Betty", the badass Leadbelly song. I mostly know the version by a band called Ram Jam, which took over Boston Bruins broadcasts in the 90s thanks to Cam Neely naming it as his favorite song.]
We keep a team wiki at work. I updated my biography there today and thought it’d be worth republishing here (with some embelishment) on the (brand new!) About page.
Bonnie Black Right
Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.
For those of you who asked, here’s an update on the old Honda CL-350.
As for the Bonnie, you can keep tabs on my relationship with the new bike by watching my “bonnieblack” tag on Flickr.
Shouting monkeys show surprising eloquence
Putty-nosed monkeys (Cercopithecus nictitans) live in family groups, usually led by a dominant male who keeps a wary eye out for their two main enemies — leopards and eagles. A circling eagle will cause a male to warn his troop by making a series of calls called ‘hacks’, whereas a lurking leopard will prompt him to shout out a string of ‘pyow’ sounds.
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But now zoologists have realized that at least one combination of these sounds has its own distinct meaning: up to three pyows followed by up to four hacks seems to mean ‘let’s move on’. This call sequence is given both in response to the presence of predators or simply as a sign to head for new terrain.
And I wonder which sequence of hacks and pyows means, “Here come the humans, the time to overtake is NOW!!!”
(Props to new coworker, John.)
So, cork’d is pretty cool. Nice to see Dan & Dan doing cool stuff together.
I’m not a real wine aficionado - my wine tastes aren’t very refined. I like it that way, though. I tend to enjoy $10-15 bottles as much as something that costs $70+. I figure that’s a good thing.
Anyway, I’m on there as JakoBlah (or you can search for “Sutton”), even though I don’t expect to use it very much.
I do wish something like this existed for beer. I’d have some fun with that. Unfortunately, as far as i know, there aren’t any good online beer merchants you could partner with for some commerce kickback (cork’d is hooked up with wine.com). Booze would be fun, too, though, and I know there are plenty of decent online liquor retailers…
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