This is the third year that I’ve tracked all the tv shows and movies I watched over the year. It was my best year for movies so far, but that was because I watched a movie every night in the month of October to celebrate the Halloween season. It was a fun experience, I even wrote up reviews for all of them but I don’t know if I would do it again this year. I worry there aren’t another 31 horror movies out there that I want to see.
I was looking for a theme or some overarching impulse that tied together my viewing for the year but I’m at a loss to find one. Top Gear took over the last part of the year while my re-watch (and re-read) of Harry Potter dominated the beginning.
Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about.Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.
The Bornean Rhinoceros, also known as the Eastern Sumatran rhinoceros or Eastern hairy rhinoceros, was a subspecies of the Sumatran rhinoceros. The Bornean rhino was endemic to the island of Borneo but their range was reduced severely until the entire known population was restricted to the Tabin Wildlife Reserve. Their habitat was the hot, humid closed canopy rainforests of the island.
The Bornean rhino was the smallest extant rhino. The weight of an adult individual ranged from 1300 to 2000 pounds, with a height of three to five feet and a body length of six to nine feet. The Bornean rhinoceros had the darkest skin of the Sumatran rhinos, and the fur of calves was much denser, but it became scarcer and darker as the animal matured. The head size was also relatively smaller. The rhinoceros had fringed ears and wrinkles around its eyes.
Tam, a captive Bornean Rhino, may be the last male of the species.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Bornean rhinoceros was common throughout its native range. The animal was driven to extinction in the wild through a combination of hunting, poaching for their horn, habitat loss, and by having a small, scattered population.
In the 1930s, overhunting by natives wiped out much of the rhino’s population. The native hunted the rhinos their horns and traded them to China. Beginning in the 1960s, large-scale logging for international consumption heavily degraded or completely cleared much of Borneo’s rainforest. In the 1990s, palm oil became a huge industry in Borneo, having an even larger effect on the Bornean rhinos.
The widespread habitat destruction and hunting of the Bornean rhinoceros led to the population being too fragmented to repopulate. Bornean rhinos are extremely elusive and solitary animals and the destruction of their habitat and the separation of breeding populations made it nearly impossible for the animals to find mates and reproduce. The International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the rhino declared extinct in 2015. Three of the rhinos live in captivity.
In 2016 I managed to beat 2015’s all-time-low but it came in at more than ten books less than the next closest year. 2016 was not as rough a year as 2015 but it remained a difficult one personally and professionally. Despite not getting much reading in I’ve continued to purchase books and my to-read list is becoming unwieldy. I’m hoping to knock off a significant number of titles in 2017. I don’t usually set goals but I’m going to try and read ten more than I did last year with my total somewhere in the 40s by end of year. I hope you’ll reach your reading goals this year as well.
The Bluebuck or blue antelope was a small antelope indigenous to South Africa. The tallest mounted specimen (there are only four) is nearly four feet at the shoulder with horns that are almost two feet long and curved back toward the animal’s body. The Bluebuck’s coat was a uniform grey-blue color with a white belly. The forehead was brown and darker than the face, its ears were shorter and blunter, not tipped with black; and, it had a darker tail tuft and smaller teeth. It also lacked the contrasting black and white patterns seen on the heads of its relatives. Its mane was not as developed and it lacked the black and white patterns seen in its nearest relatives the roan and sable antelopes.
“Discovered” by Europeans in the 17th century, but already uncommon, the Bluebuck’s range was confined to the southwestern cape of South Africa. Its original entire historic range has been estimated to be only 1,700 square miles. The first published mention of the bluebuck is from 1681, and few descriptions of the animal were written while it existed. The few 18th-century illustrations appear to have been based on stuffed specimens. Hunted by European settlers.
Bluebuck, Allamand, 1778
Due to the small range of the bluebuck at the time of European settlement of the Cape region of South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries compared to the much wider area evidenced by fossil remains, it is thought the species was already in decline before this time. The blue antelope was hunted to extinction by European settlers, Hinrich Lichtenstein claimed that the last bluebuck was shot in 1799 or 1800. The antelope was the first large African mammal to become extinct in historical times.
