chuloon

Someone: For what?

A Fatherly Caturday

In anticipation of Father’s Day tomorrow, we present this wood-engraved portrait of father and child from Pictures for Our Darlings published in Boston by D. Lothrop & Co. in 1876. This book is from our Historical Curriculum Collection. Usually, the images in this book are tied to a poem or a brief story, but these noble felids appear to be just a random image to ponder and adore, although they do face a page containing a poem about dandelions.

Beautiful illustration by Maciej Rebisz for a Quanta Magazine article about Penrose’s cosmic censorship hypotheses:

Mathematicians Disprove Conjecture Made to Save Black Holes

Ok, understood, no problem, it happens…

Bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus)

The bearded vulture is a bird of prey, and the only member of the genus Gypaetus. It eats mainly carrion and lives and breeds on crags in high mountains in southern Europe, the Caucasus, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Tibet, laying one or two eggs in mid-winter that hatch at the beginning of spring. Populations are resident. This bird is 94–125 cm long with a wingspan of 2.31–2.83 m. The bearded vulture has learned to crack bones too large to be swallowed by carrying them in flight to a height of 50–150 m above the ground and then dropping them onto rocks below, which smashes them into smaller pieces and exposes the nutritious marrow. In July 2014, the IUCN Red List has reassesed this species to be Near threatened.