Category: learning curve

How many men…

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…does it take to change a lightbulb?

Just one, although getting to the light bulb in question might take a while.

That’s Kevin Schmidt climbing up the KDLT TV analog broadcast antenna near Salem, South Dakota. It’s 1,500ft (457.2m) high.

Nope.

But Kevin’s simian antics fade in comparison to Nick Wagner. Because Kevin was on the KDLT TV analog(ue) broadcast antenna. That’s now outdated technology. And outdated height. The new KDLT TV digital transmitter is 2,000ft (609.6m) in height.

You can watch a 19 minute video of Nick checking the top of the new mast here.

The new mast is the tallest structure in South Dakota. But the tallest structure in North Dakota is the 2,063ft (628.8m) KVLY mast. That’s also the tallest mast in the world and the 4th highest structure in the world. Built in 1963 the first man-made structure to exceed 2,000 feet (610 m) in height.
It held the record for the tallest structure in the world from August 1991 until being overtaken in September 2007 by the Burj Khalifa.

But you’ll remember all that from my 2010 post on the subject (includes photo).

Caracal Capture

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Remember the Caracal (Caracal caracal) that was eating penguins?

Good news from the Urban Caracal Project this morning – they think that they have caught it:

 

This is Disa – a “healthy adult female” – who will now be radio-collared and relocated some distance away from Boulders Beach.

Yes, it’s a bit dark, but isn’t she beautiful? Look at that shiny coat – that’s the Omega 3 oils from all those penguins she’s been eating. There’s a lesson here for all of us, and it’s only a matter of time until someone (Tim Noakes) launches the LCHP (Low Carbohydrate, High Penguin) Diet cookbook.

After all, extensive studies in caracal populations (n=1) have shown the obvious benefits of this eating plan.

Scientific names

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Reading this post, which followed up on this post (which in turn was about this post). I was reminded of the binomial scientific name for the caracal being Caracal caracal.

For those uninitiated types, this scientific name is made up of the Genus name and the Species name. These are (generally) the final two stages of a long process of taxonomic ranking , starting with Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species.
Phew. Thank goodness you don’t to remember all that, unless you’re a biology student.

Damn.

So actually, we just use the last bit of this long list of identifiers:

Fullscreen capture 2016-07-11 103834 AM.bmp

And if you’re a microbiologist, you only ever use the scientific name to refer to your little friends: You’ll likely know about E.coli – that’s just short for Escherichia coli, but they’re all named like that: Staphylococcus aureus, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, Thermodesulfobacterium hydrogeniphilum being just some examples thereof.

I love my job.

But all that nonsense was merely the preamble. Because now I wanted to know if there were any other binomial scientific names which were just the common name repeated.

Caracal = Caracal caracal, for example.

I actually knew of the lynx (Lynx lynx) as well, which, weirdly, is a pretty close relative of the caracal.

And there are others. Nearly, anyway:

The (American) Bison is Bison bison.
The (Green) Iguana is Iguana iguana.
The (short-tailed) Chinchilla – Chinchilla chinchilla.
The (Western) Gorilla aka Gorilla gorilla.
And who could forget the (Southern) Pudu – Pudu pudu?

LOOK AT IT!!! JUST LOOK AT IT!!!!!!!!!!

And then there are some near misses like:
Rattus rattus, the Black Rat,
The Striped Hyena: Hyaena hyaena and
The Tokay Gecko – Gekko gecko.

But right now, I only have the caracal and the lynx as exact examples of binomial tautonyms being carried across to the common name for an animal.

Incidentally, the caracal also holds the record for being my daughter’s favourite animal, and my favourite wine.

Boxes ticked

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Wait – could this be a timelapse [tick] video of an Emirates [tick] A380 [tick] being repainted?

Yep, and obviously, as with every A380-related thing, it comes with some ridiculous stats:

Seven coats of paint weighing 1,100 kilograms were applied on ‘Echo Delta Delta’, covering an area of 3,076 square meters. The entire exterior of the A380 including the fuselage, wings, engines as well as vertical and horizontal stabilizers received a makeover. The paint coats on the fuselage comprised of one layer each of a primer and sealer, followed by three coats of Brilliant White, which is the custom Emirates color, and then two layers of clear coat and decorative paints for the Emirates insignia and logo.

There’s a full description of the process here.

On The Road

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Not me. VW. A couple of families travelling right across South Africa (Johannesbeagle to Buffelsbaai to be exact) in Volkswagen vehicles have a fairly implausible number of coincidental encounters whilst ‘On The Road’ before arriving at their respective holiday destinations, only to discover that they will be spending their respective holidays staying just across the road from one another.
What are the chances, hey?

Here’s all 95 seconds of the commercial in question:

Regular readers already know where this is going, and they’re right, because, while the ad is nice and all that, the music is what won it for me.

Thus, step forward Aisha Badru with Waiting Around:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/171788658″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Limited googlage tells us about this New York singer songwriter with one independently released 4-track EP. Where do Ogilvy SA find these tracks? Amazing.
Apparently, according to her Facebook, she has a new record coming out soon. And, also according to her Facebook, she has a lot of new SA fans.

I’m not surprised.