If It Walks like A Duck And Quacks Like a Duck…

…it may be a Muscovy duck. This picture was taken on the Big Island of Hawaii. Actually,  I can’t guarantee the breed but I think two hours is enough time googling ducks and, just in case, geese.

It amazes me how much time we, or maybe just me, will spend time on something in order to get closure. Yes this is an unusual looking waterfowl,  but do I really care what kind it is. I may not really care but the call of the hunt was too great.

Part of the problem I had was that I started searching for ducks of Hawaii. Unbelievable how many websites you can find with pictures of Hawaiian ducks. It had not occurred to me that this particular quacker may not be native to the island. It matches no pictures of Hawaiian ducks. Of the pictures I found on the web and the written description it is likely a Muscovy. They tend to live in Mexico and Central and South America. This link to Wikipedia is informative but their picture is not as close to my duck as this one (you need to go to the middle of the page).

Mystery solved. I can move on. Cool duck though, don’t you think!

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Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

There are far too many scary things in this world. These are two I uncovered recently that are near the top of my “Its Keeping Me Up At Nights” list.

First Russia. Yes the still have tons of nuclear bombs. True, they can turn off crucial natural gas supplies to former Soviet Union countries and western Europe. Old news.

We all know that hackers can cause hi-tech havoc. I did not realize that even small countries can be brought to their knees. This was the case in Estonia last month. They blamed Russia for bombarding state websites with enough bogus requests that they crashed. Their crime? They moved a Soviet war monument. If it can be done to Estonia, I bet it can be done here. The wonderful technology that makes us more efficient, effective and in may ways more connected is fragile. Shutting down of key websites could cause havoc. Why bother with dirty bombs?

If Russia doesn’t get us Mother Nature will. The Earth’s magnetic fields not only makes a compass point in the right direction but it reaches far out into the space surrounding our planet. It directs the flow of solar winds protecting us from much of the sun’s harmful radiation. The Economist reported that the magnetic field may be about to flip which it does every 500,000 years or so. When it does, our protective shield will be down and everyone will get permanent 10th degree sunburn. OK, we may have another few centuries but it will happen sooner than you probably thought. (Cool picture though of how this  phenomenon works.)

I may not get much sleep tonight.