Monday, September 28, 2009

Vultures and Lighthouses

Suwannee River field trip: http://s375.photobucket.com/albums/oo194/cylithera137/St%20Augustine/Suwannee%20Canoe%20Trip%202009-Sep-26-27/

I don't know why photobucket put the Suwannee trip under St. Augustine but what the heck...

St. Augustine: http://s375.photobucket.com/albums/oo194/cylithera137/St%20Augustine/

Vultures are awesome despite the debate going on with taxonomists whether New World vultures are more closely related to Ciconiiformes (storks and herons) than Acciptriformes (kites, hawks and eagles). Taxonomy is really fickle in my opinion especially with all the DNA stuff going on. Now it seems like taxonomists have decided that falcons (still in Falconiformes) are more closely related to parrots and passerines (not so fond of them except for corvines like crows, ravens and jays... mostly wimpy little songbirds). Now I'm very, very tempted to incorporate a bit of taxonomy humor into some future piece of writing. Maybe Killer Parakeet arguing with someone over who his closest relatives really are... ach, the possibilities are endless!

In other news, I'm still plugging away at Morgenstern, which seems to have taken a whole new life of its own that I've never expected it to take. As it stands, this may be my weirdest work yet and may even make stories involving Killer Parakeet & friends look extremely tame in comparison. If the mood strikes and/or I make enough progress on some academic work, I might post a chapter or two, although Morgenstern is so fluid that anything can happen and no chapter is guaranteed to remain in the "public" draft. I also have reason to suspect this story will be even longer than Swan-Song given the inter-twining story-lines and that I'm really going in-depth with some of the characters.

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