Two takes on silver bluestem

 

From June 24th in St. Edward’s Park come these two takes on the grass called silver bluestem, Bothriochloa laguroides. The second view of one of these seed heads looks quite different from the first due to backlighting. Whereas the black backgrounds in many of my recent pictures resulted from the close use of a ring flash, in this case flash would have destroyed the effect of the backlighting. Instead, I had to look for a dark patch in the landscape that I could line up my subject with. In a shaded copse of trees not far away I found a dark area just large enough to surround the backlit seed head.

 

   

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From 2017 through 2019 the folks at Gapminder posed various questions to people. Here are four you can try your hand (or brain) at. I’ll give the answers in a couple of days.

1)  In 1980, roughly 40% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, with less than $2 per day.
What is the share today?       A) 10%       B) 30%       C) 50%

2)  During the past 40 years the amount of oil and natural gas remaining in known reserves has:
A) been reduced to less than half       B) remained more or less the same       C) more than doubled

3)  How much of the world’s total land surface has some physical infrastructure built on it, like houses or roads (excluding farm land)?        A) less than 5%       B) around 15%       C) more than 25%

4)  How many of the world’s one-year-old children were vaccinated against some disease in 2019?        
A) less than 20%       B) around 50%       C) more than 80%

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman