The Orrery

Intercontinental Ant Mega-colony

Cue “insect overlord” jokes: huge colonies of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) on four continents may actually be one titanic colony.

It seems that members of each colony will attack other ants from elsewhere on the same continent. But when you put ants from different continents together, they don’t.

Instead ,they seem to recognize each other by the chemical profiles of their antennae and act all friendly, like they’re members of the same…[dun dun dun!]...mega-colony!

In the somewhat purple words of the BBC:

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

Sorry, population extent doesn’t equal domination. But still, if it’s true, that’s one huge extended family.

By some estimates there are more ants than any other terrestrial organism on Earth.

Good thing they could never unite into one big hive mind and decide to take over the planet and enslave us all to toil in their underground sugar mines.

Right?

Art from Explosions

My good friend Rosemarie Fiore uses everything from lawnmowers to waffle irons to pinball machines to make art.

For her latest works, called "Fireworks Drawings," she sets off smoke bombs and fireworks on big pieces of thick paper, then collages the results layer by layer into huge, colorful pieces that look a little like stylized fireworks themselves. They're awesome.

For her "Scrambler drawings," she turned an old fairground ride (rechristened the Good-Time Mix Machine) into a gigantic Spirograph. (These are my personal favorite, since she got the germ of the idea when we were at Busch Gardens together.)

Lost Art of the Luggage Label

Continuing the Golden-Age-of-Travel-Art theme, here's a Flickr collection of over 1,000 luggage labels from the 1900s through the 1960s.

Many were made by the same artists who designed the travel posters from last week.

 They were collected and posted by the creative director of a Florida ad agency.

What do we get now - baggage handler bootprints?

You kids get off my lawn.

Posters From the Golden Age of Travel

From the Boston Public Library, a wonderful set of travel posters from the 1930s on Flickr.

Man, don't they make you just want to pack up the steamer trunk and head for or the train station, or the docks?

With their bold colors and art deco aesthetics, some of them remind me of these WPA posters of the U.S. National Parks.

Pixar's Up is a Documentary, Sort Of

Pixar's new movie Up is getting all kinds of great reviews.

Even better--the whole lifting-a-house-with-balloons thing? Could happen.

Vintage airline logos

The Coulourlovers blog has a collection of vintage airline logos.

How much cooler are these than today's yawners?

(Except, of course, for Alaska Air. And Pulani, Hawaiian Air's flower girl.)

Castleton Tower with a car on top, 1964

This commercial for a 1964 Chevy Impala features a car on top of Castleton Tower, one of the classic tower climbs in Castle Valley near Moab, UT.

The film crew used a helicopter to hoist a hollowed-out car--just the body and chassis--to the top of the tower, along with a nervous model in a white dress.

Apparently a bit of a blow came up after they were done filming, and she had to wait a few hours on top before they could safely come get her.

Castleton is one of my favorite climbs. I've done it twice: first up the Kor-Ingalls route, the route of the first ascent in 1961; then up the (much better) North Chimney. It's astounding, spending most of the day climbing and then topping out on that summit platform, about the size of a small house. A whole line of towers curves north and west. To the west is the Colorado River; to the east are the snow-capped La Sal Mountains.

After climbing the North Chimney, starting the rappel down the north face is hairy. Going over the edge always sets off the evolutionary alarms (This is not increasing the odds of passing on our genes, your brain says).

But for some reason going over that one, to multiple hanging belays far below, is extra sphincter-tightening.

Especially when you see one of your climbing partners, who shall remain nameless, get his hands caught under the anchor chains and lay their squirming, legs hanging over the edge, until he can unweight the rope and pop them out. Good times.

Here are some more shots.

Wooden shoe tulip festival

Some shots from the tulip festival at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm.

The flowers were blooming so well this year they extended it a week. We came on the last day.

Everett Reuss mystery solved

The remains of Everett Reuss, the poetic vagabond who disappeared in Southeast Utah in 1934 at age 20, have been found on Comb Ridge west of Bluff.

Reuss spent years wandering the Sierra and the desert Southwest, accompanied most of the way only by a horse or burro. He wrote evocative descriptions of his adventures and made woodblock prints of the landscapes he disappeared into for months at a time. He was photographed by Dorothea Lange, corresponded with Ansel Adams, and inspired Chris McCandless of Into The Wild fame.

He was last seen in Escalante, UT in November 1934. After that he rode down the Hole-in-the-Rock road toward the Escalante River, camping in Davis Gulch. That was the last anyone saw of him until now.

I always envied Ruess's freedom and self-sufficiency when I lived in the Southwest. He made it sound so easy: just pack up your burro and go. His story is worth a read, even though the mystery that made him a legend has been solved.

Is it me or just the economic meltdown?

Exhibit one: Soon after I had my first article in Outside's Go last year, the bimonthly scaled back to two issues per year.

Exhibit two: My first piece in Wildlife Conservation Magazine appears in the final issue of that 112-year-old publication. It started in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and the Klondike Gold Rush.

Maybe I should try and convince editors to pay me not to write anything for them.