Word: faunas
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...climb into the back seat. Wiset guns the engine and the vehicle peels out from the curb with an ear-splitting squeal. We part the crowds of ravers, rastas, scammers, weirdos and the rest of the Khao San fauna before we're spat out into the dozen or so lanes of sheer automotive apoplexy that is Ratchadamnoen Avenue...
...Murcutt, whose family moved from Papua New Guinea to Australia when he was 5, sticks so close to home is that his houses are very site-specific. The architect doesn't know the site just by sight; he studies the prevailing breezes, the water drainage and the flora and fauna of each proposed building spot. Then he uses what nature offers to create a comfortable home, albeit one the homeowner has to adjust periodically. For example, Murcutt's houses usually have a long, multilayered side facing north. Adjustable louvers, insect screens, moving glass panels and even thermal blinds...
That it took four years to identify Nannarrup hoffmani is a testament to how far out of favor the science of taxonomy has fallen since its heyday in the 19th century. The urge to classify the world's flora and fauna, which filled the great natural-history museums like New York City's American Museum of Natural History and Washington's Smithsonian Institution, has been eclipsed according to Hoffman by a preoccupation with molecular biology. "It's a sad situation," he says. "We're coasting on the glamour of biodiversity but losing the ability to identify the creatures on this...
...These are also the best times to see Australia's most famous fauna up close and personal. Giant gray kangaroos feed in the clearings, and emus?those large, ungainly, flightless birds endemic Down Under?stride comically along the corrugated dirt road that loops the Pinnacles Desert. Though now protected in the area, the birds were in the past a source of food for Aboriginal tribes. Artifacts at least 6,000 years old have been uncovered here, leading geologists to assume that the area was once inhabited. Entry into the park is just $4 a person; accommodation and tours...
...distant past, memes were largely confined to their localized niches determined by the geographical location of their hosts, and the local memetic flora and fauna (read: culture). But in the last 200 years, we have fully opened the global communication routes linking the developed world, and many previously balkanized memetic environments have merged into one global marketplace of ideas. A full-on war for the space in the human brain is commencing, with capitalism, democracy and liberalism out in front...