Author: David Gorsline

Loss of pressure

A recent paper by Erin F. Baerwald et al. as summarized in Science Daily, suggests the cause of many bat fatalities near wind turbines: rather than direct collisions with turbine blades, bats die from barotrauma, internal injuries caused by sudden changes in air pressure. Unfortunately, the researchers don’t have ready suggestions to mitigate the pressure changes and hence reduce the kills.

Once again, from Dalkey Archive Press

For Powell’s, Deb Olin Unferth interviews Stanley Crawford on the occasion of the reissue of his novel Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine.

Unferth: Where did the name Unguentine come from?

Crawford: A fairly typical experience for me upon hearing or seeing a somewhat striking name in print is to repeat it silently in a sort of involuntary way, to the point often of annoyance. Unguentine was probably one of those names. I didn’t realize or remember until much later that it was also a brand name.

I wrote up some notes on the book in 2003.

On the trail: 1

There’s a stretch of the W&OD near my office that I walk about once a week: it rises on an fenced embankment to meet a bridge that crosses Broad Run, so the fence posts are the high ground favored by Indigo Buntings in season. And it also crosses a power line cut and some ground that’s been cleared for development. I’ve seen Wild Turkey down there a couple of times. Anyway, on this evening’s walk, I saw a bird that we don’t seem to see (or notice?) much any more: flying in to perch on a pokeweed stalk replete with berries, a solitary Cedar Waxwing.

International Rock-Flipping Day 2008: 3

More linky goodness:

International Rock-Flipping Day 2008: 1

It’s IRFD today!

earthworm and cricketI warmed up with a quick look in my back yard. Under the cinder block that holds the back gate closed (long-deferred project) I found an earthworm (order Haplotaxida) and what I take to be a ground cricket (order Orthoptera). I didn’t even see the cricket until I downloaded the photo: I was watching something smaller in the field that doesn’t come out in the image.

The Glade after HannaI then moved down to the patch where I usually census for the Great Backyard Bird Count, a stretch of The Glade upstream from Twin Branches Road. The vegetation along the stream bank was still flattened by the runoff from storm Hanna, which passed through yesterday.

land slugI found fewer flippable rocks in this area than I expected, so I fudged a little and looked under some logs as well. Hence this nice example of a slug. Land slugs that breathe air get their own order, Pulmonata.

termitesOn the way back to the car, my last flip turned up some tiny pale worker termites, order Isoptera. If we count the pillbugs that I didn’t photograph, then my tally for the day is five orders.

14 questions

Top marks to the Obama campaign for responding thoughtfully to the 14-item battery of questions asked by Sciencedebate 2008.

12. Scientific Integrity. Many government scientists report political interference in their job. Is it acceptable for elected officials to hold back or alter scientific reports if they conflict with their own views, and how will you balance scientific information with politics and personal beliefs in your decision-making?

Scientific and technological information is of growing importance to a range of issues. I believe such information must be expert and uncolored by ideology.

I will restore the basic principle that government decisions should be based on the best- available, scientifically-valid evidence and not on the ideological predispositions of agency officials or political appointees….

In addition I will:

• Appoint individuals with strong science and technology backgrounds and unquestioned reputations for integrity and objectivity to the growing number of senior management positions where decisions must incorporate science and technology advice. These positions will be filled promptly with ethical, highly qualified individuals on a non-partisan basis;

• Establish the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will lead an interagency effort on best-in-class technologies, sharing of best practices, and safeguarding of our networks;

• Strengthen the role of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) by appointing experts who are charged to provide independent advice on critical issues of science and technology. The PCAST will once again be advisory to the president; and

• Restore the science integrity of government and restore transparency of decision- making by issuing an Executive Order establishing clear guidelines for the review and release of government publications, guaranteeing that results are released in a timely manner and not distorted by the ideological biases of political appointees. I will strengthen protection for “whistle blowers” who report abuses of these processes.

Here’s hoping the McCain organization decides to take science and technology issues equally seriously, but I’m skeptical: the Obama responses have been posted for more than a week.

Maria/Stuart

Jason Grote takes his characteristic approach to a “kitchen-sink drama” in the new Maria/Stuart. Three sisters in suburban New Jersey-Pennsylvania revisit some frightful family history and eventually confront a sordid, if petty, secret. A slight story, as it goes, but Grote drapes the story on the armature of Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 play of nearly the same name, Maria Stuart. The earlier play, part of the canon of so-called Weimar Classicism, is a retelling of the sixteenth-century politico-religious conflict between Elizabeth I of England and Mary I of Scotland—a retelling that is particularly sympathetic to the cause of Mary, who was eventually executed by Elizabeth.

Dry stuff? Not at all, for Grote’s aesthetic is a magical, goofy, yet cerebral theatricality that can encompass lowbrow and high: food fights and references to Chekhov, Pynchon, and Borges (well, at least I thought the Borges joke was funny). Not two scenes into the first act and we’ve seen soda pop, stuffed olives, and cornstarch spilled on the floor. It’s not for nothing that house management tries to leave the front rows of the theater unsold.

The two families (Marnie’s and Lizzie’s) are haunted by a shapeshifter, who appears as other members of the family and is (conveniently) played by in turns by the corresponding cast members. The shapeshifter arrives in a tinkling of sound and disappears in a nice let-the-wires-show “poof!” of actor-blown dust. The shapeshifter, spouting bits of Schiller (its first scene calls for the complete German-text libretto of the closing movement of Beethoven’s choral symphony) and digging around in family cupboards looking for the evidence of past misdeeds, turns from sprite to demon as the Marnie and Lizzie resist the story’s revelations.

The third sister, emotionally wounded Sylvia, played by company favorite Naomi Jacobson, has lost both her hands in a failed suicide, so the part gives Jacobson a star turn opportunity to show us Sylvia the compulsive eater, scarfing junk food and using prosthetics to pick cheese puffs out of a Costco-sized jar of them. Washington theater vet Sarah Marshall also produces some good shades in her work, in the first act as the grandmother Ruthie and in the second act as the menacing shapeshifter.

Not all the theatrical effects work well: smoke and fog effects seen through the window of the set that doubles as Lizzie’s and Marnie’s kitchens seemed to come and go at random. And, in the end, the awful truth that links Marnie, Lizzie, Marnie’s son Stuart, and Lizzie’s daughter Hannah comes across as inconsequential and the acts leading up to it unmotivated. Perhaps this story of the twenty-first century is but the tip of the shadows cast by the plots of Mary and Elizabeth, the ones that led to the rise of the Stuarts.

  • Maria/Stuart, by Jason Grote, directed by Pam MacKinnon, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington