Month: February 2022

1. Ever heard of El Nido? Me neither. It is a municipality in the province of Palawan, Philippines. This is a well-known place and it is one of those picturesque places that you’ve probably seen a million times. So there’s a distinct possibility that you’ve seen this photo or photos from El Nido, but not known what it was called. Now you can plan your vacation.

Photo by Cris Tagupa on Unsplash

2. Ever heard of Mansa Musa? It is thought that he was the richest person in history, having an estate of $400 billion and lived from 1280 to 1337 but is actually difficult to calculate and that he had more gold than thought possible and he reigned over the Mali Empire. Another aside was that Musa is Arabic for Moses and Mansa means third born.

3. You will be able to view Stephen Hawking’s blackboard, which is wild for me as I’ve only remembered him as being bound by his wheelchair, but he definitely doodled and it’s neat to look at for sure.

4. I don’t know what my top 5 animals would be. I would need to give that some thought, but they would definitely include the buffalo, horses, and the rhinoceros. This is a story of bringing back the White Rhinoceros in Zambia:

But a series of key decisions around the management of the park have made it an exception, the first of which happened long before reintroduction even began. In 1986, the Zambia Wildlife Authority (now, the Zambian Department of National Parks and Wildlife) joined forces with the international conservation organization the Frankfurt Zoological Society to form one of the first partnerships of its kind in Africa. This collaborative management partnership (CMP), which gave birth to the North Luangwa Conservation Program (NLCP) that exists to this day, did a few key things.

First, it provided financial and technical support to get large-scale poaching under control to an extent that had been impossible under meager national government funding in a park without much tourism. Deploying special intelligence-based protection units, skilled rangers, ecological data monitoring, canine units and even monitoring by aircraft, North Luangwa became the safest national park in Zambia. Elephant populations rebounded and breeding herds settled. Lions and wild dogs made a comeback. Evidence of poaching slowly evaporated.

5. I’ve mentioned that I don’t watch a lot of TV other than sports, but this is another thing that I enjoy watching, which is time lapse videos of the stars. It is nothing short of amazing for me to watch, which may make me a child that I’m still enthralled by this, but I’m okay with that.

1. Ever heard of Tsé Bitʼaʼí? That’s actually Shiprock and the Tsé Bitʼaʼí is the Navajo name, which translates to “rocks with wings” or “winged rock”. I am almost positive I’ve seen a picture of this before, never knew the name. Tsé Bitʼaʼí is a monadnock (which is an isolated rock and I did not know this word before right now) and has a significant religious importance with the Navajo people. I am sure I am not the only person that loved reading first nation explanations of things as a kid growing up and still do.

Photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash

2. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t watch TV, but I do watch things and one of the things that I watch is this guy, Scotty’s Gone Walkabouts, he basically hikes and eats in the Australian Outback. In this particular episode, Scotty hikes out, just can’t get over how amazing the stars look while having a gin and tonic, chides fellow Aussies for leaving trash at campsites, and generally very much cares about the way he leaves things.

3. This is super-interesting to me, but a guy was hacked by North Korean spies and he decides to get them back, all from the comfort of his home. If you don’t think that a bunch of nerds (and I use that term as a person who considers himself a nerd) run the internet and fix and break things on purpose then you would be incorrect.

4. For the first time from the Hubble telescope, two galaxies interacting with each other? It’s an amazing photo even if you don’t know what’s happening.

5. Did you know that the US stores 1.4 million pounds of surplus cheese in caves in Missouri?