Wildlife as Canon sees it debuted in the January 1982 issue of National Geographic. 40 years ago! I think I saw that Canon discontinued the series just recently- like maybe in December? A pretty good run. I haven't gotten this month's issue but it will be weird to read a NG without those iconic ads. 

Maybe I mentioned it but I have been engaged in a decades-long project to read every word of every NatGeo- maybe as far back as the month I was born, September 1974. It's coming along.  Got a ways to go though. This month in fact I read the January 1982 issue, which is maybe why these ads are at the top of my mind:

What I often do, especially when the featured species is unfamiliar to me, is google to see how they are doing now. Giant Pandas are hardly an obscure species, of course, and they have come a long way since 1982. I was surprised that they are still actually not in great shape, at least in the wild. We've all seen the photos and videos from the Wolong National Nature Reserve, and they seem to be doing good work (I think?) but in the wild Giant Pandas are still listed as vulnerable by the WWF. Exact numbers are hard to come by and fluctuate in any case, but somewhat less than 2000 seems to be a realistic count.

InfoGraphstravaganza!!

 

Alright time to show my true nerd colours. I made an infographic! Two, actually. Both by copying exactly what Nick says, of Logos By Nick. That guy has taught me so much. He's like Yoda. 

Yeah so I've been keeping track of a bunch of stuff over the years in a notebook. Actually I have many notebooks, each for different purposes. One notebook I originally started keeping track of which comics I'd read, kind of with an eye to making sure I was getting my money's worth out of my Marvel Unlimited subscription. From there it was easy to start keeping track of other stuff too, and nothing is funner to me than writing in my notebooks so. Sadly, my original notebook was lost so although I would have had data going back to 2011 I think, we are instead limited to 2017. Oh well! Makes making the infographic easier. And to be clear, I don't actually expect anyone else in the world to care about this. I just like geeking out and making these has been both fun and informative.

2020 is kind of an anomalous year, for all the reasons we are only too well aware of. Even so, my National Geographic-reading has gone way off the chart, as you can see with this infographic here (I am pretending I am giving a presentation to the board of directors of my life lol)

A major reason was actually not that I was unemployed, but rather, in the time before I was laid off I was able to read a ton of back issues I had laying around at my Grandma's house while at work. Going to work on the  bus but also sitting there in a shovel, waiting for the coal trucks to return. I think one night I had one or two trucks, got maybe 8 loads all night, and read two whole issues of NG in between. Since being laid off my numbers dropped back down to like 2018-levels. Even so, I recommend the board buy stock in NGC. Just kidding I don't know anything about stocks.

Books are a steadier statistic, as we turn our attention now to this:

I guess I'm a pretty slow reader. 2017 was a good year, though! I no longer recall why lol. I can say that last year my favourite book was unquestionably Gideon the Ninth, which I loved so much I reread it this year prior to diving into the sequel, Harrow the Ninth. It is possible I named my CX-3 after Harrowhark. It is also possible I will need a whole nother infographic to keep track of the number of times I read both books, as well as the third coming in 2021.

I know, there are still a few days left in 2020. But at the rate I read now, with Ahsoka taking up a lot of tie, I am confidant this number won't change. But that is why I left the other fields blank for now. Over the next few days I'll fill some of those in. Exciting! Tell your friends! This might be what finally makes me go viral!!!! 

 

I love learning about subspecies of bears. You'd think I would have heard of all of them by now but I still run into new ones. Quick shameless plug, but relevant - my story "The Winged Whale" in Volume 1 of The Ursus Verses is about one such subspecies, despite what the title might lead you to believe.

Pictured above, though, is a photo of an ad. I had to make it at least a little artsy to try to avoid copyright infringement and what not. I mean who takes pictures of ads right? But Canon's "Wildlife As Canon Sees It" is a legendary ad campaign that has run in every issue of National Geographic since 1982. This particular edition was in the April 1992 issue. (I'm still reading all the back issues I can, when I have time.) Back in 1992 they weren't even sure if the Gobi Bear was an actual subspecies or not. I see now on Wikipedia that it is recognized as such- Ursus arctos gobiensis.

I always find it useful to google the species Canon highlights in their ads, especially as I read back issues from a couple of decades ago. Where are they now, kind of. How many are left, to be blunt. It's not as depressing as you might guess, though it's rarely encouraging, either. So in 1992, the best estimate was about 40-60 surviving individuals. The wikipedia article cited a number of 30 from a study in 2007. And this site- which is awesome by the way, just discovered it now- guesses a population of about 40 right now. Which isn't awesome. Inbreeding alone is probably going to doom this subspecies.

 I discovered that helicarriers were real! More or less. First a quick history in pictures as to what a helicarrier really looks like- the MCU version was super cool but the comic version was more heli less carrier. Here it is in its first appearance as depicted by the King, Jack Kirby:

And how it looked when I was more familiar with it in the late 70s/early 80s:

Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were both WWII vets and would have been familiar with the pre-war rigid airships. I was reading a National Geographic today that had an article about the USS Macon, an American Navy airship. A lead zeppelin, sort of. The damnedest thing was, it carried a complement of five biplanes, little Spitfighters that were stored inside but were deployed by a hook. They had to latch onto the hook to "land" as well! Somehow I was unaware of this fact my whole life. Pretty neat. It only lasted two years and then it crashed into the ocean where it lays still. They've located the remains as well as a few of the Spitfires. Too deep and damaged to salvage, as far as I know. The article was from 1992 so maybe since then they've brought it up but I really doubt it. Click here to go to the wikipedia article, it's pretty cool. I always thought the helicarrier was one of the more outlandish flights of fancy Stan Lee and Jack Kirby took but maybe they really took a flight on an airship, or saw one.

 I've read more than 70 complete issues of National Geographic this year, mostly since the pandemic hit. A long time ago I realized that if you read an issue cover to cover, you would pick up the most amazing and useful info you otherwise never would have known that you would want to know. This is just a trick I do, not something I recommend to anyone else. You do you. But for me it's been invaluable. It would be faster and more efficient to just read the articles that sound interesting but then you miss out on all these interesting tidbits about potatoes, for example. Because if I didn't have that rule there's no way I'm reading 2000 words about potatoes. But they're really fascinating. Who knew!

Since 2004 or so- in fact when I went to New Zealand as chronicled in the early years of this blog- this has been my practice. Most years I was lucky to even read 12 issues this way, and thus it was a losing battle. And hey, I'm not saying my goal or desire is to read every issue of NatGeo ever. No. But maybe since I was born? September 1974 issue? But completing this task is beside the point. The point is only and always to learn all the things. I've also read a shit ton of comics on Marvel Unlimited this year but that's for whole other reasons. Really, though, all reading just makes me, and you if you care to, a better writer.

As if I already wasn't Nerd to the power of a hundred, here is a chart I made tracking the issues I have read cover to cover:

And here are a couple of cool links to some of the things I've discovered, which I had no idea existed beforehand:

A stone mosaic map of the Middle-East in Jordan.

The largest known geode, known as the Pulpi Geode, is big enough to stand in!

The kodkod, or guigna, is the smallest cat in the Americas, and are about half the size of a house cat. Leopordus guigna guigna is its latin designation but looks like maybe güiña is the more correct way to write it.

If you find the common link you will win a prize! Just kidding, the common link is I read about them in National Geographic. There will be no prizes ;)

This story would be so much better with pictures. Then I could just say, "So, this happened:" and show you a photo and leave it at that. But I was unable to get photos of the incident in question because my camera was in my backpack, which was in a pickup truck, which was in a sump. Also in the backpack:
 -Cellphone. Normally I don't carry my phone with me at work since there's no coverage out there anyways. Not sure why I had it that night.
-iPhone. This is my Mom's old iPhone which she gave me to replace the iPod which died on me a few months ago. I just use it as an iPod, for music and podcasts, though only in my Kress truck, and the night in question I was fuelling pumps in a pickup truck and had no need for it.
-National Geographic, June issue. Fun fact, I've read every page of every issue of National Geographic since at least 2006, when my mother-in-law started buying me a membership each year for xmas. Streak ended!
-The Mastermind of Mars, half-read. Apparently it's still floating away down there.
-A Fighting Man of Mars, unread. In case I finished Mastermind.
-aforementioned Olympus digital camera. Waterproof and unharmed!
-foodstuffs of varying composition but uniform deliciousness, ruined. Though I ate the $3 protein bar after it was recovered, dagnabbit, them things are expensive!
-sundry other items of lesser value
 Anyways, the iPhone may not come back to life, though it was previously thought killed when Pallas dunked it a mug of coffee, so you never know. My cellphone is probably ruined, but good news- the SIM card was alright so I transferred it to Michelle's old phone of the same model which she no longer needs ever since I got her an iPhone 4S.
All that happened is I backed the truck down parallel to a pump to throw some fuel in it, and I stepped out to open the fuelcap on the pump when it kind of went thunk and slipped from park into reverse, whereupon it accelerated surprisingly quickly into the sump. There was no berm around the sump so it flew right in. Earlier I had noticed the transmission not going into park so I took it down to the washbay to wash out the linkage, after which it was working fine. Or seemed to be, anyways.
 So now I'm looking at my pickup truck which is sort of propped up on an angle, lights shining, over half-submerged and not accessible at all. My first thought was for my backpack. Then I realized the radio was in there and no one else knew I was down there, in the bottom of this very deep pit, with walls that are so bad they actually brought in a radar dish to monitor it, and so I would have to walk out. At midnight with no light because, though I had just asked for batteries for my headlamp not a half hour previous, I was told there are no batteries for peons such as myself. Did I mention all the grizzly bears that have been hanging around? Not that I was too worried about them, grizzlies are waaay too smart to be down in that pit by themselves at night.
What really pissed me off about the whole thing is they piss-tested me for that! On my incident report I'd written a fairly straightforward narrative of the events, highlighting facts I felt were relevant, such as that fuelling pumps is not my job. Then when I found out they wanted to drug test me, I wrote an addendum as follows, word for word inasmuch as my memory serves:
On the advice of my shop steward I am assenting to a drug test but I would like to register my extreme displeasure at the unjustness of this decision. NOT my job. NOT my fault. NOT my problem.

I wish I'd thought to write, "Furthermore, you owe me a new iPhone!" Anyways, I didn't get to be there for the funnest part, which is recovering the truck, since I was busy peeing into a cup. But I was told it was a lot of fun, and as an interesting aside, apparently my backpack floats.
There are some photos so it's possible someone will smuggle me a file or two, it's kind of funny.

Here's an intriguing and slightly chilling quote from a National Geographic article on the Hubble Space Telescope (November 2007):

Are these [multiple] dimensions real, or . . . just a handy way of calculating? Increasingly, physicists suspect that they are real. If so, the perceived universe is but a glimmer on the surface of something much larger and more complex, and the known laws of nature are not bedrock but a kind of weather, like the clouds that form over mountain peaks.

-Timothy Ferris (italics mine)

This month's National Geographic has an article on Tongariro National Park in New Zealand. If your Mother-in-law doesn't supply you with a subscription (membership in NG parlance) like mine does you can check it out here. Just a short text and then the photos are pretty great. Almost as great as mine!

This month's National Geographic's cover story is about Neanderthals! Sweet! It was a good article, all about the latest DNA findings and stuff- with a reconstruction of a female Neanderthal done as accurately as currently possible.
The frustration with anything Neanderthal-related is that we'll never know anything for sure. We have best guesses and intriguing hypotheses, a few fossils, and that's about it. Tantalizing, fascinating, but not quite satisfying. I want to know what they looked like, how they lived. I want there to still be Neanderthals!