#Nicholas Engelmann

[the-nicholas-engelmann-blog]

Columbia livia

[Disclaimer: I am a dumb highschool kid who likes plants and nature. I am by no means a professional or an expert in any field. Don’t take anything I say in this or any other post as fact. This is to be taken as the autistic infodumping that it is. I am open to being corrected.]

[Image one: bird feather.]

I often see feathers like this one here on the ground at my local arena.

Throughout my life, I’ve often wondered what they were. I posted one of these to iNaturalist a while back.

Someone suggested it to be a feral rock pigeon, also known as a rock dove. I always take anything Seek or iNaturalist tells me with a grain of salt. The former is a computer, computers require training and it’s not realistic for a computer to be perfectly trained in all the detail that the natural world provides; the latter is a person, and all humans have the capacity to be wrong.

This one made sense, though. Especially after looking into the species. The birds that fly over my head while I ride look just like the ones in the book.

Also, I’ve decided to start citing my sources.

[Image two: columbia livia as pictured in ‘Birds of North America: Western Region’ by François Vuilleumier]

Unfortunately, my local library is incredibly lacking in the Natural Sciences department (or any nonfiction department in general) so I couldn’t find many paper sources.

I’m considering starting a fund to help fix that-.

Now the part you’ve all been waiting for, me brainrotting about a bird species.

The Columbia livia, the most common member of its family within the United States.

This species was introduced by colonists as a domestic species, though wild variants do exist in Africa and parts of Europe. In North America, however, they are an entirely feral species.

This species can be found over the entirety of the US and Mexico as well as southern parts of Canada, they are more common in cities and other populated areas.

Their diet consists of mostly seeds and fruit, and (of course) human food. Despite this, they weigh less than a pound, around 14 pounds on the heavier end of the average. They are not picky eaters and will occasionally go for insects (honestly surprised me that they were not a staple of a pigeon diet)

They mate year round and produce several batches of offspring a year, though they only produce two eggs per batch. They prefer to nest on flat surfaces like the top of buildings or in caves.

They are larger than most doves (as they are pigeons and should be called as such, I will die on this hill) and as a family trait they have their nostrils positioned on a fleshy mound at the top of their short beaks. They are most commonly found in various shades of grey though they do come in other colours.

Also they fly at least 60 mph, which is faster than a horse can run.

Good god, it’s getting late. I have to run back to the arena before I’m late, but here’s a list of sources I found in the library before I leave.

I’ll edit in cover images later, the wifi is being weird here.

[Image three: source book one; ‘Birds of North America: Western Region’ François Vuilleumier]

This one was probably my most handy resource in all of this, it was very information dense.

[Image four; ‘A Field to Guide Identification: Birds of North America’ by Chandler Robbins]

This one was mostly used to fluff out the information I already knew, as it had a section on this species but not nearly as large.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back soon with more species to talk about from the Nevada border area. Until then, be safe.

-Nicholas Engelmann

[fictionkinfessions]

@ Book recs [not my sources]: Michael Scott, Nicholas Flamel series | Karen Engelmann, The Stockholm Octavo

[aids-snapshots]

Snapshot: Nicholas Nixon's People With AIDS Series

Catherine and Tom Moran, East Braintree, Massachusetts, August 1987 [Photograph]. N. Nixon, 1987.

Nicholas Nixon’s exhibit, Pictures of People opened on September 15, 1988. Divided into five sections, the most recent work at the time was his series titled “People with AIDS.” A work in progress, it was positioned as as means of seeing the individual (Museum of Modern Art, 1988b), following them over a period of time. One such subject, featured in the photos above and below, was Tom Moran of Massachusetts. Nixon’s goal was to capture the experiences of an individual as a means of addressing “the deepest human value”

-Museum of Modern Art, (1988a).

[Photo of Nicholas Nixon's Series, People with AIDS on display at the MoMA]. Museum of Modern Art, 1988, (https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2144)

His means of representation often found his subjects near the end of their lives, laying in stages of waste. This appeared as the dominant in culture, and for organizations like ACT UP, the only way institutions were representing AIDS. In making the individual look helpless, it took away from the experiences of people with AIDS (PWA) (Schulman, 2021). The photographs, beyond representing the idea of PWAs, captured Tom Moran as his body was altered into a wasting state. Other photographs in the series focus on the visual manifestations of the disease, coming to more closely replicate the same medicalized approach of the time (Engelmann, 2018). Other works, like Catherine and Tom Moran, East Braintree, Massachusetts (Figure 1) found a strange sublimeness. The two figures stare into the camera, faces unreadable. The uncertainty in decoding their expressions is reassuring in a way, because at least the viewer does not have to think they are desperately unhappy. A similar status of unreadable can be found in Tom Moran, Boston, January 1988 below. Much of the context is removed, with Tom in a state of rest. Although one may be able to make out 'Lemuel Hospital Shattuck' on Tom's hospital gown, there is no sense of urgency. This fits with popular themes of the time where one was just left to wait, furthering ideas of the helpless HIV/AIDS patient.

The exhibit inspired a small protest by ACT UP, with members handing out pamphlets and making counter art (Schulman, 2021). The experience showed there needing to more diverse representation of PWAs, so as to not forever define them as white gay men who were quietly wasting away.

Tom Moran, Boston, January 1988 [Photograph], by N. Nixon, 1988 (https://www.icaboston.org/art/nicholas-nixon/tom-moran-boston-january-1988-series-people-aids-0)

📸 Series 📚 Bibliography

[vorstadtpoetin]

Hast du Bücher zu empfehlen?

welches Genre? 

Briefe an den Vater - Kafka, Wir Kinder von Bahnhof Zoo - Christiane F., Das Lied der Träumerin - Tanya Stewner, Essential Bukowski: Poetry - Charles Bukowski, milk and honey - rupi kaur, All The Things I Never Said - Mae Krell, Das Leiden des jungen Werther - Goethe, Kabale und Liebe - Friedrich Schiller, 3096 - Natascha Kampusch, Nichts: Was im Leben wichtig ist - Janne Teller, Johnny, der Engel - Danielle Steel, Stolz und Voruteil - Jane Austen, Sturmhöhe - Emily Bronte, Maddie Freeman (Triologie) - Katie Kacvinsky, wie ein einziger Tag - Nicholas Sparks, Für Niemand - Tobias Elsäßer, Ich war Hitler Junge Salomon - Sally Perel (lest das!!!), Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank, alles von Julia Engelmann (Eines Tages, Baby , Wir können alles sein, Baby und jetzt, Baby). 

[hellofastestnewsfan]

Word on the street is that gossip is the worst. An Ann Landers advice column once characterized it as “the faceless demon that breaks hearts and ruins careers.” The Talmud describes it as a “three-pronged tongue” that kills three people: the teller, the listener, and the person being gossiped about. And Blaise Pascal observed, not unreasonably, that “if people really knew what others said about them, there would not be four friends left in the world.” Convincing as these indictments seem, however, a significant body of research suggests that gossip may in fact be healthy.

It’s a good thing, too, since gossip is pretty pervasive. Children tend to be seasoned gossips by the age of 5, [1] and gossip as most researchers under-stand it—talk between at least two people about absent others—accounts for about two-thirds of conversation. [2] In the 1980s, the journalist Blythe Holbrooke took a stab at bringing rigor to the subject, tongue firmly in cheek, by positing the Law of Inverse Accuracy: C = (TI)^v – t, in which the likelihood of gossip being circulated (C) equals its timeliness (T) times its interest (I) to the power of its unverifiability (v) minus the reluctance someone might feel about repeating it out of taste (t). [3]

Despite gossip’s dodgy reputation, a surprisingly small share of it—as little as 3 to 4 percent—is actually malicious. [4] And even that portion can bring people together. Research-ers at the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma found that if two people share negative feelings about a third person, they are likely to feel closer to each other than they would if they both felt positively about him or her. [5]

Gossip may even make us better people. A team of Dutch researchers reported that hearing gossip about others made research subjects more reflective; positive gossip inspired self-improvement efforts, and negative gossip made people prouder of themselves. [6] In another study, the worse participants felt upon hearing a piece of negative gossip, the more likely they were to say they had learned a lesson from it. [7] Negative gossip can also have a prosocial effect on those who are gossiped about. Researchers at Stanford and UC Berkeley found that once people were ostracized from a group due to reputed selfishness, they reformed their ways in an attempt to regain the approval of the people they had alienated. [8]

By far the most positive assessment of gossip, though, comes courtesy of the anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar. Once upon a time, in Dunbar’s account, our primate ancestors bonded through grooming, their mutual back--scratching ensuring mutual self-defense in the event of attack by predators. But as hominids grew more intelligent and more social, their groups became too large to unite by grooming alone. That’s where language—and gossip, broadly defined—stepped in. [9] Dunbar argues that idle chatter with and about others gave early humans a sense of shared identity and helped them grow more aware of their environment, thus incubating the complex higher functioning that would ultimately yield such glories of civilization as the Talmud, Pascal, and Ann Landers.

So the next time you’re tempted to dish the dirt, fear not—you may actually be promoting cooperation, boosting others’ self-esteem, and performing the essential task of the human family. That’s what I heard, anyway.

The Studies:

[1] Engelmann et al., “Pre-schoolers Affect Others’ Reputations Through Prosocial Gossip” (British Journal of Developmental Psychology, Sept. 2016)

[2] Nicholas Emler, “Gossip, Reputation, and Social Adaptation,” in Good Gossip (University Press of Kansas, 1994)

[3] Blythe Holbrooke, Gossip (St. Martin’s, 1983)

[4] Dunbar et al., “Human Conversational Behavior” (Human Nature, Sept. 1997)

[5] Bosson et al., “Interpersonal Chemistry Through Negativity” (Personal Relationships, June 2006)

[6] Martinescu et al., “Tell Me the Gossip” (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Dec. 2014)

[7] Baumeister et al., “Gossip as Cultural Learning” (Review of General Psychology, June 2004)

[8] Feinberg et al., “Gossip and Ostracism Promote Cooperation in Groups” (Psychological Science, March 2014)

[9] Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Harvard University Press, 1998)

This article appears in the July/August 2018 print edition with the headline “Gossip Is Good.”

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2JGaBvQ

[the-nicholas-engelmann-blog]

[Disclaimer: I am a dumb highschool kid who likes plants and nature. I am by no means a professional or an expert in any field. Don’t take anything I say in this or any other post as fact. This is to be taken as the autistic infodumping that it is. I am open to being corrected.]

Growing up in Northern Utah, I thought I had a very firm grasp on what a “Common Juniper” was. It was probably one of the biggest surprises in my time studying the nature around me to learn that a “Common Juniper” is actually this thing right here

[image 1- Juniperus communis]

The most surprising part to me was the way this plant was growing across the ground. It didn’t make sense to me why a Juniper would behave like this.

I’ve grown more intrigued the more research I’ve done into this and other Juniper species. (More on this one later, maybe. I’m bad at organisation)

I, foolishly, didn’t realise how many types of Juniper there were. Nor how many of them aren’t even classified as trees.

[image 2- Juniperus scopulorum]

This is the type of Juniper I am most familiar with. Rocky Mountain Juniper, Juniperus scopulorum, as far as it’s been identified correctly.

They can live to be up to 300 years old and up to 30 feet tall, though they are often much shorter. Most members of this species I have seen appear to be around a modest 7-8 feet tall.

Despite being so large, the trees grow incredibly slow, with an 8 year old tree only being 1 foot tall.

Despite how few they seem on a map, especially compared to some species like Juniperus communis, they do get around a lot as they often hybridize with other types of Juniper it is often found with.

While I am inexperienced with distinguishing hybrids and similar species, I would like to note a few features this tree has:

Shredded Bark: In my opinion one of the most characteristic things about this tree.

Berries: I read somewhere once that these can be eaten in an emergency but I wouldn’t stake my life on it. Native Americans often used these for medicine.

Scaly leaves: Common for Junipers, especially ones in this region.

These bad boys do perfectly fine in the Rocky Mountain region, they are far less adapted for the Great Plains region, where they also grow. There, they are limited to steep and north-facing slopes.

Despite being rather hardy trees, they are prone to burning easily if they are shorter than 4 feet. Larger trees fare much better unless the crown catches fire.

This tree has been a large part of my childhood explorations as well as ones I have today, I may edit this post later with more information. My intention wasn’t to be making posts like this, but it’s been a while since my last actual outing and I don’t see one in the foreseeable future unfortunately. So, thanks for learning about trees with me. I’ll make a series on other Juniper species, see how long that can contain me.

-Nicholas Engelmann

[the-nicholas-engelmann-blog]

Adiantum capillus-veneris

[image one: Adiantum capillus-venerus]

This one’s gonna be a short one.

This was the plant I saw most of in this videos, and the one I was most excited to find and ID.

I wasn’t disappointed at all in it, in fact I think it’s a very cool plant. It’s just that the information I could find on it was.

Commonly known as the black maidenhair fern, this plant isn’t native to the area I found it in.

It grows in moist spaces and limestone, and reproduces via spores.

That and the fact that this is an evergreen surprised me most.

It’s from the Brake family and grows to be around 6-20 inches long.

Well, that’s all folks. I did have a pretty great trip and saw many more species. Don’t worry, I’ll post about them soon. Ive been a bit busy lately because I’m finally able to see my brother again and I just got a boyfriend. Figured I’d post while I’m in the library for what might be the last time this summer.

-Nicholas Engelmann

[the-nicholas-engelmann-blog]

Juniperus communis

[Disclaimer: I am a dumb highschool kid who likes plants and nature. I am by no means a professional or an expert in any field. Don’t take anything I say in this or any other post as fact. This is to be taken as the autistic infodumping that it is. I am open to being corrected.]

[image one: Juniperus communis]

I kind of let the Rocky Mountain Juniper steal its thunder last time so I figured before I leave for my next adventure I should give it a post. Just a short one before I go.

Juniperus communis has the largest natural range of any conifer, spanning the near entirety of North America. It is commonly found on cliffs and ledges though it is also commonly found in fields and meadows.

It takes the form of a shrub in most places but can also be found as a tree.

It has a whorled leaf arrangement and also has its seeds (berry cones) very close together.

While most animals don’t like to eat this one frequently, it is a staple to a winter deer diet. It was also used by natives to make blood tonic.

Well, that’s all for today folks. My blood father was showing me videos last week of where we’re gonna go. I saw so many plants in that and they all looked so cool I can’t wait to learn more. I have a post scheduled for Saturday (I should be back Sunday) that I wrote yesterday in the library. Until then!

-Nicholas Engelmann