A rare example of bad electoral transparency

Observed at the Museum of the City of New York: a Tammany Hall era ballot receptacle of clear glass. Makes ballot stuffing visible, but also makes it easy to see the differently-colored ballot stubs and distinguish them when inserted!

I'm glad I don't believe in omens

I'm glad I don't believe in omens, and hope today that this disbelief will be justified. (Hey, Enlightenment, I like you.) This morning, I took a New Year's Day walk down some icy refuge trails, and went to see if I could find the Eastern Screech Owl that I'd seen several times in late 2016, always in the same hole at a bend in a tree:

As I approached the site, I ran into a couple also out for walking, exchanged observations about trail conditions, and guided them to the tree nearby in hopes that we'd all spot the owl. It looked promising to naked eyes in the distance, with a patch of similar color visible in the hole, so I mounted a telephoto lens on my camera to confirm and hopefully share the sighting. Well, er, not exactly:

Same hole, same perspective, but a distinctly non-owlish squirrel instead. Has a bird of wisdom been displaced by a rodent for 2017? More news if it happens...