Author Archives: Vladimir Dinets

We spent a few days in Calanques National Park just outside Marseilles. A few travel notes: 0. Orly Airport is much more efficient than De Gaulle. You only have to walk ~5 miles with your suitcase, backpacks, child car seat, and tired totally awesome (my daughter’s edit) kids, not 10+. But in both airports, mostContinue reading “Provence”

I am reading How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England by Ruth Goodman. Turns out, the pathetic scarcity of insulting words in modern English is a recent phenomenon. There used to be a huge variety! One I particularly regret being lost is “canting knave”, meaning a person who loudly and arrogantly forces on everyone hisContinue reading “Elizabethan English”

I’m raising two human children. Being a zoologist, I am constantly impressed by their total lack of anti-predator defenses. Or, to phrase it less scientifically, by them being a perfect predator bait. Human children are small, soft, slow, clueless, and extremely noisy. Not just noisy, but impossible to keep quiet (we seem to be theContinue reading “On human children”

I’m freaking tired of writing to Biden, but someone has to. Dear Mr. President,As your long-time supporter, I am gravely worried about your legacy. One issue is threatening to undermine all your hard work: your policy towards Russia. I grew up in Russia before moving to the US in 1997. Russia is a society builtContinue reading “Another letter to Biden”

We just spent 12 days in Costa Rica, divided between Guanacaste coast and Monteverde, with short side trips to Rincon de la Vieja, Palo Verde and Carara National Parks. It was my fourth trip to the country since 1995. During that time, Costa Rica’s forest cover increased from 35% to 52% (it was 75% aContinue reading “Costa Rica”

Sardinia, where I am on a criminally brief trip, has a lot of interesting wildlife. The most famous are endemic cave salamaders, but I am also enjoying observing local Curruca warblers. There are 5 of them here, and interactions between them are fascinating. They all have different, but overlapping, habitat preferences, and all can beContinue reading “Diving into Currucas”

June 7 We are going to Denmark tomorrow. I read up a bit about that horrible country, and now I am absolutely terrified. For example: just today their prime minister was shoved aside by some man while she was walking down a city street. It tells me that: 1. Denmark is a backwards country. InContinue reading “Surviving Denmark: a travel micro-diary”

Last night I spent something like half an hour watching two Canada lynxes in courtship/mating. They were all into it, started about 200 m away and ended up nearly bumping into me. I was so still that I almost got my fingers and face frostbitten; they only walked away after becoming suspicious of the clicksContinue reading “Outdoors”

One of my hobbies is inventing fringe science theories. Here’s one of them. There is a shrew called Eurasian least shrew (Sorex minutissimus). It weighs around 2 g (0.07 ounces). In Yakutia it lives in places where winter temperatures drop below -60C, there’s only a couple inches of snow on the ground, and immediately underneathContinue reading “Thermonuclear shrews”