My friend Neil, who is a little weird in a good way, loves birds. (He loves trees, too.) He’ll be talking to you with an actual very large white bird, a cockatoo, perched on his shoulder, as if, “Hey, what’s so unusual about that?”

Here's Larry, a sulphur crested cockatoo at age 6. He's 10 now and expected to live to 75 or so. Neil and his wife, Debbie, have three cockatoos, Larry from a pet store, the others from Phoenix Landing.

Sort of like a pirate, Neil be, with his wooden leg and the bird perched on his shoulder, except instead of rum he drinks cheap whiskey, unlike his friend Doug Metz, the famous art collector, who only drinks the very finest scotch. After a while you don’t even notice the bird on Neil’s shoulder.

Some of Neil’s birds talk, too. You walk into the kitchen, and a bird will actually say in a nice clear female voice, “Hello.” Which is very cool and a little disconcerting.

Anyway, Neil likes birds. He rescues birds, and he’s suggesting you do the same, which of course, is not something you should do lightly, because some of these birds live forever.

So here’s what you should check out. As you can see, they’re called Phoenix Landing. They’ve got a newsletter called the “Phoenix Beakin’,” like a beacon, see?

And if you’re thinking about getting a bird for the family, they want you to think about adopting, rather than purchasing from a pet store. It’s a far better way to go. Here’s how they put it.

The Phoenix Landing Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit all-volunteer organization. It was established to promote and protect the welfare of parrots through adoption, education, and refuge. Almost every bird, from the smallest to the largest, from the most loved to the most neglected, will need a new home someday. Probably several new homes. People’s lives change, often unexpectedly. One day your bird may need a good new home too. Please consider adoption first!

These are outcast birds, heart-broken birds, birds from broken homes and dead owners, birds who’ve lost everything. According to Neil:

Some have been abused, some just ignored by previous owners, some because of a divorce or move to a smaller home by the owner and some because their owners died. Phoenix Landing goes to great lengths to educate owners before they adopt a bird because it is really a major commitment to a pet that deserves a loving home.

You know, of course, that birds are amazing

Did you know that something called a Budgerigar, which is really just a common parakeet, can learn over a thousand words? There’s one in the Guinness World Records for having a vocabulary of 1,728 words.

Did you know that pigeons can do math?

Did you know that crows can use vending machines? Did you know that crows have become “hyperadapted” to living with us? This is a must see movie.

Did you know that the average life span of a macaw is 50 to 100 plus years?
Did you know that the average life span of a cockatoo is 40 to 60 plus years?
Did you know the average lifespan of a bluebird in the wild is 6 to 10 years?
Did you know that house sparrows are the mortal enemies of the bluebird and do not belong in this country?

Did you know I didn’t see a single bluebird this year in my yard, but plenty of stinking sparrows? Did you know I was at war with the sparrows? You can read my bluebird murder mystery here.

Birds can fly. Isn’t that cool? Some people even say birds are dinosaurs, although this guy says that’s sort of baloney.

Save a bird. Make a friend for life.

Oh. You know the story of the Phoenix, right? Well, just to remind you, here’s what Wikipedia has to say.

A phoenix is a mythical bird with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends[weasel words]). It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self. In some stories, the new phoenix embalms the ashes of its old self in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis (literally “sun-city” in Greek). It is said that the bird’s cry is that of a beautiful song. The Phoenix’s ability to be reborn from its own ashes implies that it is immortal, though in some stories the new Phoenix is merely the offspring of the older one. In very few stories they are able to change into people.

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Some people drink. Some people play video games. Some people claw their way up the sides of a mountain with their teeth. Here’s some of those sorts.

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Okay, Superman could travel faster than a speeding bullet, but nothing’s supposed to get faster than the speed of light. It’s like the cosmic speed limit. But yet, it seems to be happening.

If Einstein were alive, his hair would be standing on end. As it is, he must be spinning uneasily in his grave. His famous theory of relativity, which only he and 12 other people have ever understood, is dependent on light traveling at 186,000 miles per second, not 186,000 per second and a micro-smidgen over.

But not just Einstein’s theory, all of modern physics is built on this notion that in a race, nothing beats light. An article in the Washington Post reports that the scientists who recently made the amazing discovery that neutrinos are outrunning light have now made it again. They write:

For more than a century, the speed of light has been locked in as the universe’s ultimate speed limit. No experiment had seen anything moving faster than light, which zips along at 186,000 miles per second.

Much of modern physics — including Albert Einstein’s famous theory of relativity — is built on that ultimate speed limit.

The scientific world stopped and gaped in September when the OPERA team announced it had seen neutrinos moving just a hint faster than light.

“If it’s correct, it’s phenomenal,” said Rob Plunkett, a scientist at Fermilab, the Department of Energy physics laboratory in Illinois, in September. “We’d be looking at a whole new set of rules” for how the universe works.

A whole new set of rules for how the universe works, sounds like a big deal, but not everyone’s all that upset about it. For instance, this guy in England writing in the Guardian says, “Faster than the speed of light? We’ll need to be patient. I’d love it if neutrinos really have exceeded the speed of light. But I’m not eating my shorts just yet.”

Well, that’s good, we wouldn’t want any premature shorts eating just because the universe has been turned inside out. But apparently, this guy actually did promise to eat his shorts under certain conditions. Boxer shorts, too.

Threats to eat one’s boxer shorts on live television if one is proved wrong should not be made lightly by scientists, however confident they might be in their pronouncements. Not because of the health risks, the potential for public humiliation, or because it somehow trivialises the scientific process, but because it leads the public to think that science is about vested interest or a closed-minded reluctance to embrace new discoveries.

Nevertheless, my recent light-hearted remark concerning a sartorial diet did hit the headlines, and I am more than happy to use the opportunity to discuss both the thrill and the process of scientific research.

This is a great article on the controversy, and in it you’ll also learn that “billions of neutrinos, mainly produced in the sun, are at this moment streaming through your body without you noticing.”

But don’t be alarmed. Although what you don’t notice can indeed hurt you, for instance if it’s a truck heading straight at you, a billion neutrinos apparently cannot. So keep your shorts on.

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Her name is Kina Grannis. And just about everything in this video, except Kina and her guitar, is made from jellybeans.

And now, you’re wondering, wow, how’d she do that? Well…with lots of jellybeans, of course. And well…this is actually creative collaborative genius at work, candy, computers, artists, dedication, and talent.

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