pigeonbeaks.com

I enjoy finding new blogs that have carved a real niche interest, the kind that make me think “Wow, I never realised such and such could be quite so interesting!”

One such blog that I came across the other day was the Strange Maps blog (whose mission statement isn’t actual stated, but it’s pretty obvious).

This post includes a NASA map, highlighting the solar eclipses for the period 2001 - 2025. It provides some usual commentary and got me thinking about perspectives again. Why do the bands look the way they do? (curved, more so nearer the poles). Would you be able to see the bands from the moon?

And it reminded me of just how clever we are, being able to work this stuff out. What equations are used in such calculations and would a person of average intelligence ever be able to understand them, ever be able to derive them for themselves?

Thanks to Strange Maps for getting me to think about these things. And thank you to NASA for being creating the map in the first place.

So…I thought that my first post should be about the mighty pigeon, given the name of my site. So I looked up “pigeon” in wikipedia and it redirected to “Columbidae”:

“Pigeons and doves comprise the family Columbidae within the order Columbiformes, which include some 300 species of near passerine birds. In general parlance the terms “dove” and “pigeon” are used somewhat interchangeably.”

Columbidae Beaks!