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Manchester to Rome 2022

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Radio Condor Skiing

July 22, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Three words to start today. Skiing came to mind when I was listening to a discussion about the Andean Condor on the car radio the other day. The enthusiastic recommendation was to go see a Condor on your travels. The reason the Condor was being discussed was the recent publication of studies based on GPS tracking plus a motion sensor that counted the bird’s wing strokes. There’s a science alert you can read on this subject if you want more. Meantime, for me, the most interesting part is not that a condor flew for more than five hours without beating its wings once. Sure, it flew over 170 kilometres using nothing but air currents. I’m pretty sure this has been happening for millions of years. What I want to know if it ‘sees’ the thermals or relies on something else entirely?

Albatrosses fly huge distance too. Same kind of problem. Dovetail this with how both species manage to stay aloft and you have an interesting chance to find something new. New ways of seeing our world perhaps?

Volcanoes of food sustained my writing today.
[Read more…] about Radio Condor Skiing

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: albatross, altiplano, argentina, benedict evans, birds, bolivia, climate change, condor, photos, popular, saroche, substack, travel

Influences

May 12, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

0600 Benedict’s Newsletter: No. 335 arrived yesterday and I scanned it on my phone. 15% of global internet traffic is Youtube and 11% is Netflix – more than a quarter of the traffic. Then I read his essay Covid and cascading collapses. You should too. Ever seen a soufflé collapse when the oven door opens? Technology collapses don’t happen the way you think or remember. And that makes them hard to predict. But what does seem useful is to know is Lenin’s astute observation that you can get a decade of inevitable in a week.

  • Fence Texture.
A scarf design candidate that might be produced one day by simonscarves at FabHappy
© Simon Robinson 2014
[Read more…] about Influences

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: benedict evans, birds, bob burrell, cartography, Covid-19, david g haskell, dirty money, douglas adams, fabhappy, irish times, johns hopkins, Lucica Ditiu, ordnance survey, paddy woodworth, photos, richard dawkins, sandra navidi, sean moncrieff, short selling, simonscarves, sourdough, ungrievable, walking

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