WorldRugby Haka time at the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2017 semi-final
i like how they must have said to the white menbers at some point “yeah becky yall gon do this too get up we all have to learn”
Actually most New Zealanders (white and non white) learn this as children at school and with their friends. Like Kiwi culture’s really a mix of indigenous and non-indigenous elements so there’s not that much cultural segregation as you would have in the states
I’m white as a chicken and mayo sandwich and I learned two or three haka at school. If I’d joined the kapa haka group it would have been more and certainly wouldn’t have been the only white person doing so.
Rugby player here. I’m sure the USA ladies were feeling it, because how couldn’t you, that shit is intense, but the haka is well known in rugby circles. In the States at least we pretty much all think it’s the most badass thing ever. So I’d imagine everyone standing opposite this was probably part “holy shit I’m intimidated, but also a lot of OHMYGOD this is the COOLEST thing ever.” (New Zealand is THE BEST at rugby and I think in the US as rugby players we all kinda want to be them and I get goosebumps every time I see a youtube video of a haka, much less the few I’ve seen in person).
It’s raining in Carp tonight, and our local Butterbutts (mostly Audubon’s, but a few Myrtle’s like this one, too) are probably looking like this. We’ve evacuated (again; fourth time now). The heaviest rains aren’t due until Thursday. Fingers crossed that our house comes through okay. Pretty sure many people’s houses won’t.
I’m more worried about all the people who I know are rolling the dice by ignoring the evacuation order. My neighbor across the street is staying; I talked to him as we were leaving, and he waved off my comment that this storm was going to be bigger than last time. “That’s what they said last time,” he said.
#217. I heard one of these yesterday just outside Santa Barbara County, and then again this morning while birding southeast of Carp. Finally, on my way home I decided to drive slowly down Lillingston Canyon Road with the windows down to see if I could hear an unambiguous SB-county bird. And I did! 🙂👍
Saw my first of the season after work today at the Bates Road bridge, right on the Santa Barbara / Ventura county line. The bird was helpfully foraging in a willow tree on the Santa Barbara side of the bridge.
I also heard a FOS Pacific-slope Flycatcher a couple of times, but the only time I could unambiguously locate where the call was coming from it was on the Ventura side, so I didn’t count that one in my SBA list. But it would have been #216.
And _then_ late in the afternoon I briefly thought I heard a FOS Hooded Oriole in the palm trees a few doors down from our house. The oriole chatter didn’t continue, and I wasn’t able to find the bird after I grabbed my binoculars, so I didn’t list it. But in conclusion it’s a very exciting time to be obsessing about one’s county year list in SoCal.
The striking X in this lunarscape is easily visible in binoculars or a small telescope, but not too many have seen it. The catch is, this lunar X is fleeting and only apparent in the hours before the Moon’s first quarter phase. Along the shadow line between lunar day and night, the X illusion is produced by a configuration of craters seen here toward the left, Blanchinus, La Caille and Purbach. Near the Moon’s first quarter phase, an astronaut standing close to the craters’ position would see the slowly rising Sun very near the horizon. Temporarily, crater walls would be in sunlight while crater floors would still be in darkness. Seen from planet Earth, contrasting sections of bright walls against the dark floors by chance look remarkably like an X. This sharp image of the Lunar X was captured on February 22nd. For extra credit, sweep your gaze along the lunar terminator and you can also spot the Lunar V.
The dazzling stars in Messier 15 look fresh and new in this image from the NASA/Hubble Space Telescope, but they are actually all roughly 13 billion years old, making them some of the most ancient objects in the Universe. Unlike another recent Hubble Picture of the Week, which featured the unusually sparse cluster Palomar 1, Messier 15 is rich and bright despite its age.
Messier 15 is a globular cluster — a spherical conglomeration of old stars that formed together from the same cloud of gas, found in the outer reaches of the Milky Way in a region known as the halo and orbiting the Galactic Centre. This globular lies about 35 000 light-years from the Earth, in the constellation of Pegasus (The Flying Horse).
Messier 15 is one of the densest globulars known, with the vast majority of the cluster’s mass concentrated in the core. Astronomers think that particularly dense globulars, like this one, underwent a process called core collapse, in which gravitational interactions between stars led to many members of the cluster migrating towards the centre.
Messier 15 is also the first globular cluster known to harbour a planetary nebula, and it is still one of only four globulars known to do so. The planetary nebula, called Pease 1, can be seen in this image as a small blue blob to the lower left of the globular’s core.
This picture was put together from images taken with the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images through yellow/orange (F606W, coloured blue) and near-infrared (F814W, coloured red) filters were combined. The total exposure times were 535 s and 615 s respectively and the field of view is 3.4 arcminutes across.
August 26, 2017 – Bonaparte’s Gull (Chroicocephalus philadelphia)
These small gulls breed in Canada and Alaska, migrating through much of the United States to winter in parts of the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. They eat small fish and large invertebrates, often catching insects in flight during the breeding season. Unlike most gulls, they frequently nest in trees, building open cup-shaped nests from branches, twigs, bark, moss, grasses, and lichens. Both parents probably incubate the eggs and feed the chicks.
#213
We saw 5 of them on the return from the pelagic trip on March 10. At first we thought they were in Ventura County, but subsequent analysis by Peter Gaede showed they were west of the line. SBA FTW! 😀
Before the start of the 2014/15 edition of the race. Stacey and Sophie are both competing again in this edition.
Stacey is aboard Vestas 11th Hour Racing, now returned to the race after retiring from Leg 4 and missing Legs 5 and 6 due to the collision and fatality they were involved in during the approach to Hong Kong. They are currently ranked 5th overall, and are in 6th on the live Leg 7 tracker as the boats head south along the coast of New Zealand.
Sophie is aboard MAPRE, currently ranked 1st overall and leading the fleet on Leg 7.
