Shadows, Bats, and Mice

February 25 -
The "hot" season is waning and we are approaching "fall" thank goodness! It is most obvious at night when it actually cools down enough I don't need to use my fan. It's getting hot later in the morning and cooling off earlier in the evening but daytime temperatures are still insufferable and the sun is blistering hot so it is still difficult to get out and do much of anything. Fortunately I'm not working in agriculture or on a construction project. The length of the days is also changing slightly but there really isn't much difference between "summer" and "winter" daylight hours here - maybe an hour and half. Which brings me to the next topic.

Shadows! When you are between the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn they are all screwed up! The same would be true with the Tropic of Cancer I am sure. Anyway, being in the southern hemisphere I supposed (in my blissful ignorance) that shadows would fall towards the south and that moss would grow on the south side of trees. I was wrong in both cases. As the sun wanders back and forth between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn sometimes it is north of us and sometimes it is south of us depending on the time of the year, so the shadows may also fall to the north and that means moss grows wherever it pleases! I don't know exactly where it is wandering right now but if I have this figured out right it should be directly over the equator on March 21st, so it's headed your way. I'd be really happy if it got a whole lot closer to you real soon.

Now you may wonder what practical application this lesson has. Imagine yourself getting on a bus on a very hot day. You want to sit where the sun doesn't shine directly on you so you pick the side that is shaded, which of course in my naivety I assumed would be the south side of the bus (as it travels east to west). WRONG! Well, right part of the time but don't count on it. I gave up trying to figure it out and just started looking at shadows around me before I ever got on the bus. It works a lot better. I am sure there are many other instances when this little bit of knowledge could be useful, for example lost deer hunters shouldn't count on the moss getting them home. Oh that's right, there aren't any deer here so I guess that one doesn't apply.

There are "flying foxes" however (a.k.a. fruit bats) and they are huge. They used to hunt those but they are protected now because of their role in pollinating flowers and in seed dispersal . I finally got to see one when we were at the conference. At first I thought it was a large bird, bigger than a seagull, until it turned and I could see the webbing. Of course I didn't have my camera. Probably a good thing since I was standing waist deep in the ocean at the time.


February 28 -- How to keep a mouse healthy..
I just spent the most informative hour finding out what the insides of a mouse look like. Now before you gross out entirely, I’m talking about my computer mouse. It seems that in Samoa the standard method of cleaning your mouse – take the ball out, clean the rollers, clean the ball, put the ball back in – isn’t sufficient.

There is this black fuzzy cruddy stuff that floats around unseen in the air. One could call it Samoan dust I suppose and it coats everything. An electric fan will become filthy within a month of use. The leading edges of the fan blades turn black and the grate gets yucky and when you try to clean it you need soapy water to get it off. Since there isn’t any industry to speak of my guess is it is coming from the cooking fires that are used for almost every meal. They mostly burn coconut husks instead of wood but I don’t know if that makes any difference.

Anyway, back to my mouse. The black junk coats the rollers very quickly. After using the standard cleaning method once or twice a week since I got here it got so that wasn’t working. I surmised that if that gunk is getting on the rollers it is probably getting inside the works too so I got out my trusty screwdriver and took it apart. Not much there. A small printed circuit board and three rollers, two of which have cogwheels on one end. Sure enough everything was plugged up with black fuzzy stuff so I cleaned it all out, put it back together, and presto! it works again. The question is, how does this thing work at all? The circuit board isn’t attached to anything except the wire to the computer. It sits next to those cogwheels but doesn’t even touch them and there are no contacts with the body of the mouse. My opinion of the guy who invented this thing just went up several notches!