http://www.maktaaq.com 100% Whale Blabber Sat, 05 Jun 2010 07:36:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I still can't say it. Laugh away, Icelanders. http://www.maktaaq.com/2010/06/04/lets-study-icelandic/ Last month I found out that there was going to be a concert of Balkan brass music with four gypsy bands. I was pretty excited as this is a rare opportunity here to listen to this kind of music. It was not to be. Not for me at least. A ... http://www.maktaaq.com/2010/05/07/maracas-must-be-destroyed/ This blog post should have been written right after I read the book, but I needed to wait for a time when I had lots of work and needed the procrastinating. As luck would have it, I forgot what I was going to say. I jotted down the ... http://www.maktaaq.com/2010/04/17/i-capture-the-castle/ Someone posted Shirley Eleanor Nash's obituary on Facebook. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1916, she died on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 93. I don't want to forget who she is nor how well she lived her life, so here's the link to this great lady. ... http://www.maktaaq.com/2010/04/05/shirley-eleanor-nash/ My dad sent me this video with no explanation. I thought everyone was crying with joy at the unbridled creative expression. What art lovers those Russians are, I said to myself. The artist used a light box and sand to create a performance where her drawing was almost, ... http://www.maktaaq.com/2010/04/05/kseniya-simonovas-sand-art/ Omlet, the company that makes those Ikea-styled chicken coops also makes sleek guinea pig homes. Their website has pages and pages on guinea pig biology and the guinea pig lifestyle. I've summarized some of my favourite facts below for reference:Guinea pigs have twenty teeth. There are two types of ... http://www.maktaaq.com/2010/04/05/guinea-pig-fact-round-up/ When I was sixteen, a teacher in social studies handed out to each of us a world map with country boundaries but no names. "Just to test out where you are in geography," he said. "Take fifteen minutes and write the names of all the countries you know ... http://www.maktaaq.com/2010/03/18/esprit-descalier/ Courtney Humphries writes it better than I can retell it:Thom Verhave, a psychologist working at a pharmaceutical company in the 1950s, tried to apply pigeons to an onerous aspect of commercial production: quality-control inspection. Touring the area where capsules were manufactured, he watched as about seventy women examined each ... http://www.maktaaq.com/2010/02/07/pigeon-quality-control/ As I continue reading Superdove, there are more great pigeon trivia tidbits I will be using to impress family members at Christmas dinner:Squab meat is low in fat and rich in iron. (Turns out I have a squab recipe I clipped out from a cooking magazine article called "The ... http://www.maktaaq.com/2009/12/23/more-pigeon-trivia/ "When something is everywhere, it paradoxically becomes invisible and its value diminishes in our minds," says Courtney Humphries in Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan...and the World http://www.maktaaq.com/2009/12/14/superdove-trivia/