Sorry/not sorry, Leta and Andy: An FAQ About Your New Birth Control: The Music of Rush.
… imagine taking the most annoying parts of science fiction and Libertarianism, isolating them, and then somehow blending them up into a cursed musical slurry.
Author: David Gorsline
Blewits, not bluets
Hannah Kingsley-Ma goes mushrooming in Green-Wood Cemetery with the New York Mycological Society.
[Potter] Palmer and [Sigrid] Jakob think that one of the reasons for this fungal diversity is that some trees in Green-Wood—of which there are thousands, and hundreds of species—date back to the cemetery’s earliest years. (Green-Wood was founded in 1838.)
At the park: 115
A report for last Sunday:
As the spring continues to warm, I am tardier with getting reports out.
We had our first hatch, box #7, as park visitors enjoyed the mini mergansers on the wetland. We have seen nesting activity in 11 of our 16 boxes so far. We should be seeing more hatches on the 25th.
We made a quick and dirty mod to new box #3 (the one with the upside down door), but the screening that we tacked in place could be made more secure. Not a moment too soon, because we have 25 eggs incubating in that box. Box #1, also in the new pool, also has an excessive number of eggs.
Robin is scheduled to be joining us next Sunday. The plan was for her to cover an absence, but there will now be five of us, so perhaps we can cover the boxes more quickly. 10-day weather forecast suggests rain, so I will watch the forecasts as Sunday approaches.
Thank you all!
Particles
Our textbook is titled Japanese for Busy People, vol. I, and the lessons are organized around situations that a businessperson would want to handle. (A very early unit concerns exchanging business cards.) Each unit has a theme, like “Express gratitude,” or “Make a telephone call,” or “Order food at a restaurant.”
With more than a little nod to James Thurber’s “There’s No Place Like Home,” I remixed some of the unit themes into
Japanese for Busy Terrorists
- Ask for telephone numbers
- Describe what is inside a building
- Talk about numbers of things or people that exist in a particular place
- Talk about schedules in detail
- Ask someone to do something for you
Japanese for Busy Counter-intelligence Officers
- Talk about nationalities and occupations
- Talk about where you live, where you work, and who your acquaintances are
- Talk about the times of meetings and parties
- Talk about what you are doing now
- Forbid someone from doing something
Sith
Cleaning out a file folder of clippings… I rediscovered this delightful pan of Episode III by Anthony Lane:
… I still fail to understand why I should have been expected to waste twenty-five years of my life following the progress of a beeping trash can and a gay, gold-plated Jeeves.
Keep trying
A new approach to phishing that I haven’t seen before from the benthic creepy-crawlies:
Failure Delivery Notice.
User: [REDACTED]3 pending sent message couldn’t be delivered
Action Required.
How to Fix It.Click here to view undelivered sent email.
Created Date: 4. 13. 2021
Lit in part by a dangerous light
Esmé Weijun Wang explains the value of pandemic theater to a particular community.
The first time I saw Hamilton, after I left the Richard Rodgers Theater I was too sick to remember most of what had happened.
A reserve in Killarney
Malacats on the forturay
Anita Gates has the obit for Arthur Kopit, playwright of Wings (1978), a piece that really deserves to the produced more often.
Atomic breath!
The only way to perform rankings: “Godzilla vs. Kong: A functional morphologist uses science to pick a winner,” by Kiersten Formoso.
Sensibility
Sean Wyer unpacks a word that has always puzzled me: naff.
Nonetheless, not all naff old things are made naff by the passing of time. Clippy, the Microsoft Office paperclip, appears anachronistic now, but was in fact always naff, because to my knowledge he never succeeded in carrying out his one job, which was to help you in any way to write a letter.
Although I’m not sure I agree about snow globes.
Something lost in translation
O my son! know thou that if the tail of the dog or the pig were ten cubits long it would not approach to the worth of the horse’s even if it were like silk.
The Story of Ahikar 7:12, Rutherford Platt, ed.
At the park: 114
Sunday’s report on the ducks and mergs:
Three more nests have started, clutches are building in two, and two nests are incubating.
We checked the new box #3, and as Dave predicted, the hinge placement of the door is problematic. Kat and Chris have some scrap screen material; we will try to modify the box so that the nest stays in place when the door is opened.
Visitation is definitely up: when we left at 10:15, cars were parked along the entrance road nearly back to Lockheed Blvd.
Until next week!
Gap analysis
Alicia Williams et al. report that there’s still a gap between intentions to buy bird-friendly coffee and actual purchases. Their paper, based on a survey of Living Bird readers, identifies a market segment and suggests some ways to close the gap.
Drone
If you live in the mid-Atlantic, you’ve probably heard that Brood X is about to join us after its 17-year nap. Some links to prepare you:
- My field report from 2004.
- Melissa Block points her mic at “a zillion cicadas,” back when ATC could spend 7 minutes on a story like this.
- Pics and recipe pointers from Alonso Abugattas.
- Ditto from Kevin Ambrose of the Capital Weather Gang.
- Views of the instars from John Cooley and Chris Simon.
- Interactives of the various broods by year and geography by Jonathan Corum.
- David Attenborough messes with an amorous male.