Rubenerd Blog

I don’t know how I came across the Ford America website, but on the front page of their Auto Show section they proudly display the above car. What I want to know is, doesn’t it look like a Range Rover knockoff? I know Range Rover is owned by Ford (or at least it used to be) but don’t you think they could have been more creative rather than just slapping on a Ford badge to the grille?

Anyway it’s pretty much a moot point, the fact is none of the Big Three car makers in the US are doing too well, and according to Dvorak Uncensored (and if it’s on Dvorak Uncensored it MUST be true!) the Japanese have taken over in percentage of sales for the first time. Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that the Japanese are investing so much time and effort into creating more fuel efficient cars instead of pumping out ugly SUVs and “light” trucks?

I guess that’s why I was disappointed by the Mitsubishi 380 which was designed and is being built in South Australia. Just what we need, petrol guzzling palaces right?

I love it when I talk about Open Source software on my blog.

Photo by Leong Yueh Kwong-MNS

The Malaysian Nature Society website is pretty eye opening, especially for a self-confessed treehugger like me.

Some things I didn’t know, along (sadly) with some things I did know:

Malaysia has a landmass of 32.86 million ha, of which about 54% (19.22 mill ha) is covered with forests. In the last 15 years alone, we have seen natural areas being cleared, making way for development, logging, plantations, oil pipelines, mining, dams and an array of housing plans. Malaysian has lost about 60,000 species of life forms a year since 2000.

Duck is the common name for a number of species in the Anatidae family of birds. The ducks are divided between several subfamilies listed in full in the Anatidae article. Ducks are mostly aquatic birds, mostly smaller than their relatives the swans and geese, and may be found in both fresh water and sea water.

Most ducks have a wide flat beak adapted for dredging. They exploit a variety of food sources such as grasses, grains and aquatic plants, fish, and insects. Some (the diving ducks) forage deep underwater; the others (the dabbling ducks) feed from the surface of water or on land. To be able to submerge easier, the diving ducks are heavier for size than dabbling ducks, and therefore have more difficulty taking off to fly. A few specialized species (the goosander and the mergansers) are adapted to catch large fish.

The males (drakes) of northern species often have showy plumage, but this is moulted in summer to give a more female-like appearance, the “eclipse” plumage. Many species of ducks are temporarily flightless while moulting; they seek out protected habitat with good food supplies during this period. This moult typically precedes migration.
Some duck species, mainly those breeding in the temperate and arctic Northern Hemisphere, are migratory, but others are not. Some, particularly in Australia where rainfall is patchy and erratic, are nomadic, seeking out the temporary lakes and pools that form after localised heavy rain.

Ducks are sometimes confused with several types of unrelated water birds with similar forms, such as loons or divers, grebes, gallinules, and coots.