update: A large-​​scale 150dpi scan of this page can be seen here.

Blimpy Burger Fea­tured in Saveur | Ann Arbor Dis­trict Library.

Of course, there is an equally impor­tant resource to be found at The Owl Bar, in San Anto­nio, New Mex­ico, where the best green chile chees­burger in the world is made.

Con­tin­u­ing the theme of our sly silent non­hu­man com­pan­ions (many of whom are dying around here, too):

We moved our Book Scan­ning com­puter (“doe­sticks”) to our upstairs office from our base­ment today. As I men­tioned ear­lier, it was a bril­liant clear day. Sun­light reflected from the fall-​​foliaged maple tree in the treelawn filled the office with orange sun­set col­ors, all after­noon. This is not just “orange” in the sense of a bright crayon, you know; this is flu­o­res­cence on a vast and bril­liant scale. The sugar maple is re-​​emitting light in wave­lengths quite dif­fer­ent from what’s hit­ting it and reflect­ing off its leaves. All you need to do is look at it with funny-​​colored sun­glasses to see the extra colors.

Now, it’s Autumn. And we all know why trees change colors.

But I was once a mol­e­c­u­lar botanist, see, and so I have, like secret knowl­edge only avail­able to peo­ple who read obscure jour­nals and teach bio­chem­istry and stuff, all about phy­tochrome and other plant pho­tore­cep­tors. And, dude, I’m sit­ting there in that glow­ing orange office think­ing: they have to be able to see them­selves. Where “see” is some odd dis­trib­uted light-​​detection response.

Yes, sure, the col­oration arises due to the break­down of chloro­phyll and related carotenoid pho­to­syn­thetic pig­ments, and shifts in the col­ors of antho­cyanins. And sure, the leaves are des­tined for abscis­sion, and of course it would be stu­pid for the tree to hang onto them and risk dehy­dra­tion by pas­sive tran­spi­ra­tion in the dry cold months of win­ter. And I can see where you’re going evo­lu­tion­ar­ily, with your just-​​so adap­tive sto­ries: there’s no ani­mal reader for a tree to sig­nal in Fall, no pol­li­na­tors, not even many pests to speak of. And yet some species make what looks for all the world an extra effort to be bril­liant and fluorescent.

What are they up to? Who are they wav­ing these red flags at? Because of my secret mol­e­c­u­lar botanist train­ing, I just don’t trust ‘em to be as dumb as their pop­u­lar rep­u­ta­tion would imply. Because, when you get right down to it: there are many trees that don’t bother with a showy dis­play in autumn.

Who are these showoffs talk­ing to, and what are they saying?

A very well-​​bred sig­nal com­pres­sion method:

Pur­su­ing a sec­ond improve­ment objec­tive, the stu­dent group pro­posed to opti­mize both reverse and for­ward wavelet trans­form coef­fi­cients using the mod­i­fied GA method. Once again, the mod­i­fied GA per­formed bet­ter and faster than stan­dard wavelets, locat­ing a solu­tion (in just 10 gen­er­a­tions with a pop­u­la­tion of 50) supe­rior to that of the orig­i­nal GA (which required 500 gen­er­a­tions with a pop­u­la­tion of 200). These results con­clu­sively prove the use­ful­ness of evolv­ing both reverse and for­ward wavelet trans­form coefficients.

(Via Illi­GAL blog.)

For all the years we’ve lived here, cool autumn dusk has been the Time of the Crows. They fly in thou­sands, in con­verg­ing aer­ial streams, call­ing out their plans as they come back into town from their days in the hin­ter­lands. They’re seek­ing out one another’s com­pany and roost­ing in some unlucky city block or sub­ur­ban wood lot, some­times mov­ing to a new roost when it gets too noisy or offen­sive or unseemly (for crows) at the cur­rent one. There they stay the night in the dark warm ever­greens or over the steam tun­nels on cam­pus, and crap all over every­thing, and then care­fully wake every­body up in the morn­ing fly­ing off to their day jobs, back in the hin­ter­lands, where they can get back to the impor­tant busi­ness of bait­ing squir­rels and pick­ing at eyeballs.

I know they talk to one another. I’ve watched them for a long time, and I hear the dinosaur in their voices more than any of their kin. They, I’m sure, are the smirk­ing descen­dants of the ones that killed all the oth­ers off: the world-​​enders of the last time ’round.

But of course that’s just my imagination.

Tonight’s the sort of night they should be stream­ing across the sky. It’s chilly, but not freez­ing yet. Clear. Good night to find a roost in town.

I count three. I saw more than that this sum­mer, lying dead on the lawns.

Who knows? Maybe they’ve moved off some­where else, some­where safer. Surely they have their folk sto­ries of pre­vi­ous plagues. Maybe they’re just lurk­ing, wait­ing for this West Nile Thing, or the flu they’ve heard about, to make its move and build them their next bub­ble economy.

I hope so.