"The Count of Monte Cristo" now on PBS

Last night I finished the 8-part series available on the PBS app, and I'm happy to recommend it with some minor reservations.  The storyline created by Dumas is of course enormously complex and detailed (the Modern Library version of the novel in our library runs to over 1,400 pages), and that complexity has always presented difficulties for screenwriters of the almost countless adaptations on film and television.  Even with the luxury of almost 8 hours of broadcast time, there are huge sections of the novel that have to be skipped over or severely compressed.  Edmond Dantès' social education by Jeremy Irons in the Château d'If is compressed to a matter of minutes.  The discovery of the treasure is depicted in a couple minutes, and then moments later he's a wealthy man riding a horse.

On the other hand, the resources available for the current production are extensive and lavish.  The estates and castles must have been a godsend for the cinematographers.  The quality of acting is excellent through out.  I'm so happy to see cinema with cast members unfamiliar to me; the world is full of superb actors - it's not necessary to ride the coattails of celebrities as Hollywood does.

I believe the series will drop on public PBS channels near the end of March.  For now it can be viewed on the PBS app.  I welcome comments from readers who have seen this.

This is the "Rebel Loon" symbol

The Minnesota Star Tribune explains:

Take Minnesota’s state bird, the loon, combine it with the “Star Wars” Rebel Alliance symbol, and the Rebel Loon is born.

During Operation Metro Surge [the ICE invasion], Moorhead-based software engineer Bernardo Anderson felt inspired when he saw friends come together across the political spectrum.

“I kept thinking about how this is a big coalition or alliance or some kind of group, that we’re all banding together to fight this,” said the 42-year-old Anderson. “Then, I remember ‘Star Wars’' Rebel Alliance, where they’re from different worlds and yet they come together to fight for a common cause.”

Anderson anonymously released his Rebel Loon logo on Reddit on Jan. 19, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Since then, it has spread across Minnesota in countless formats as a symbol of the resistance — and people in Hawaii, Michigan, Ohio and other states have adapted it, replacing the loon with their own state bird.

Even Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong sported a Rebel Loon sticker on his guitar during his Super Bowl LX performance. The symbol is meant to unite people under a common cause. Anderson released it with a Creative Commons Zero license, which allows anyone to use it and adapt it however they’d like.

For those unfamiliar with our magnificent state bird, the red eye is characteristic.  The newer versions of the Rebel Loon logo add a stylistic North Star between the wingtips.  For those who are not Star Wars enthusiasts, here is the Rebel Alliance logo.

And if you want to mock the loon as a fierce fighter, here's my report from 2020 of a loon killing a bald eagle while defending its nest: Loon-on-eagle haliacide. (For the TL;DR crowd, the killing was an underwater attack that punctured the eagle's chest/heart)

Economic news on a Sunday night

I just sent this email message to several friends and family members:

This is Sunday night, which is Monday morning in east Asia, so I tuned in to the Bloomberg channel to check how the markets are opening there.

The major asian equity indexes are down about 2-3%.  Same in India, where the market has just opened.  U.S. markets won't open for another 10 hours, but the futures on the DOW, NASDAQ etc are down about 2%.

WHY?  Apparently because the price of Brent crude oil on international markets just increased 25% from what it was Friday night.

On Friday, when the U.S. stock markets closed for the weekend, analysts and talking heads were gravely concerned about the fast rise of Brent crude to $90.  Now it's hovering around $115 - a 25% increase in one trading day.

That will trickle through to automotive gas slowly, but more importantly it will put a severe brake on the economies of the world.  The U.S. is a net exporter of crude, so it will affect us more slowly.  But the world economy is going to take a hit.  And how much higher the price of crude will go depends on how long the strait of Hormuz is blocked.  Some countries are probably already starting to draw down on their strategic reserves.

Iran's closure of the strait is going to put MAJOR major pressure on the U.S. to cease the war, because the longer it goes on, the more that oil price will rise.  And almost every country in the world suffers when the world economy slows down.

The alternative would be for the US to do some invasion to end the war with a "quick victory" - but by doing what???  boots on the ground in a huge country??  Impossible to anyone other than Trump and Hegseth.

My prediction:  the US backs off in less than a week, declares "victory" (cf Vietnam), and achieves..... nothing but hatred around the world.

I didn't advise my family or friends what to do with their money, nor will I make suggestios for readers (it's obvious what you/we should have done Friday).  I think it's reasonable to expect severe downward pressure on U.S. equities at the open tomorrow morning.  After that, equity and commodity prices will fluctuate with Trump and Netanyahu's war.

Opinions of jacked-up trucks

Some cycads attract pollinators using heat

"Plants usually attract pollinators using bright colors and scents, but some of the earliest plants use heat instead. A collaboration between professor of molecular and cellular biology Nicholas Bellono and Hessel professor of biology Naomi Pierce has shown that cycads, a division of cone-bearing plants that are ancient in evolutionary terms, warm their reproductive structures in daily cycles, releasing invisible infrared radiation that attracts beetle pollinators. 

Experiments showed that beetles are drawn to this heat even when color, scent, and touch are removed, proving that infrared radiation itself acts as a signal. The team also discovered that the cycad-feeding beetles have specialized sensory cells in their antennae that detect infrared heat, tuned precisely to the temperatures produced by their host plants. 

This heat-based signaling predates colorful flowers and likely played a key role in the earliest plant-pollinator relationships, long before bees and butterflies became dominant."

I find this fascinating.  The fact that plants can generate heat is not novel, as anyone familiar with skunk cabbage melting snow in the spring understands, and I suppose some modern plants can be warmer than their environment based on dark colored leaves absorbing solar energy, but all of this cycad science is new to me.  How do plants generate infrared radiation?  Maybe they just selectively reflect infrared radition from sunlight?  

Text and image (cropped for size) from Harvard Magazine.   I have not found the primary source publication, which is probably in Nature or Science, but I don't have time to search today.

Addendum:  Found the journal article in Science, but it's behind a paywall.

"Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" - Bob Dylan

I recently realized I've never blogged my favorite Dylan song.

The problems with "eliminating the impossible"

Source:  xkcd

Northern flicker

Posted for the gorgeous photo, which was featured in a New York Times article about woodpeckers.  We have a small woods behind our home; I leave standing deadwood there for the woodpeckers, so we've seen six different species from our window over the years.

"The Spanish name for woodpeckers, pájaros carpinteros or carpenter birds, honors their contribution: These are ecosystem engineers who apply their excavating skills to carve roosts for themselves and their offspring, many of which are subsequently repurposed as nests by birds as diverse as wood ducks, owls, bluebirds, tree swallows and more — and by other animals, including squirrels, martens, bats and raccoons...

Male woodpeckers typically start work on several nests in anticipation of mating season, excavating each cavity pretty far along before showing the possibilities to the female, who takes her pick. Some of the extras represent those potential nests for other animals."

There are numerous tips for attracting and maintaining woodpeckers at the link.

When people used to turn into trees

Interesting how often that theme has arisen in world folklore.  Text excerpted from The Overstory.

Christian Nationalism in the armed forces command structure? Or not...?

The embed shows allegations I've seen in several posts on Facebook.  I don't trust Facebook material to be accurate.  Have any readers seen evidence to support/refute this claim in the mainstream fact-checked media?

Here is the link for the cited reference to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Addendum:  Before you get too excited, read this link from Friendly Atheist, submitted by one of the readers here.  It expresses severe skepticism regarding the validity of the claims made in the embed.

The most amazing musical instrument is the human voice

I don't really have time to blog today, but I wanted to share this video I found last night at Nag on the Lake (which I invite you to explore if you like TYWKIWDBI).  

It took a bit of searching to find the lyrics (excerpted from Psalm 84) at Light on Dark Water:

"How beloved is your dwelling place,

O lord of hosts,

My soul yearns, faints,

My heart and my flesh cry out.

The sparrow found a house,

And the swallow her nest,

Where she may raise her young.

They pass through the Valley of Bakka,

They make it a place of springs;

The autumn also covers it with pools."

You don't need the lyrics to appreciate the beauty of the harmonies.  Had I heard this music without the video, I probably would have assumed it came from a synthesizer, similar to the many programs I've recorded from Music from the Hearts of Space.  But these are human voices.  Awesome.

Foreplay by intellectuals?

It's very seldom that I give up on a book after I've read a couple hundred pages.  I used to be a "completionist" slogging on to the end, but as I've grown older I find myself bailing out more quickly on books and visual media.

I didn't know what to expect from Foucault's Pendulum, but since the book was written by the author of The Name of the Rose, my expectations were high.  What I encountered was a 600+ page display of extensive erudition, harvesting centuries of history, culture, religion, and the fine arts in an effort by the novel's protagonist to come up with a sort of "theory of everything" - a syncretism where all items can be "connected" by various mental gymnastics.  

I'll transcribe one passage which seems to exemplify my disappointment.  At the end of chapter 30, the protagonist is in bed with a young lady.  They have spent the night discussing Galileo, Richelieu, John Dee the English court astrologer, Torricelli inventing the barometer, fireworks in the Hortus Palatinus in Heidelberg, the burning of Comenius' house and library in Prague, the Rosy Cross and Rosicrucians, the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Thirty Years' War, Ashtoreth, Descartes, the immortality of the Count of Saint Germain, and the canonical Gospels.  Then they turn toward each other as follows...

"Amparo, the sun's coming up."

"We must be crazy."

"Rosy-fingered dawn gently caresses the waves..."

"Yes, go on.  It's Yemanja.  Listen! She's coming."

"Show me your ludibria..."

"Oh, the Tintinnabulum!"

"You are my Atalanta Fugiens..."

"Oh, my Turris Babel..."

"I want the Arcana Arcanissima, the Golden Fleece, pâle et rose comme un coquillage marin..."

"Sssh... Silentium post clamores," she said.

That is literally the closing of the chapter.  The ellipses are in the text, not my modification.  I presume they represent the interrupted conversation of rising passion, and that the protagonists proceeded to have wild and crazy sex.

Maybe I'll try a re-read of The Name of the Rose instead.

You are here

The European Space Agency is compiling a 3D map of the Milky Way, showing the color and brightness of 1.8 billion stars.  In this image, we are located where the lines for 180 degrees vertically and 90 degrees horizontally cross.  

If we were able to travel at the speed of light for the rest of our lives, we would not get out of the pixel we are currently in.  

The Milky Way is one galaxy.  There are about 2,000,000,000,000 galaxies... in the observable universe (via Hubble).   Note for comparison the small circle around us in the image designating the limits of what the human eye can see when looking at the sky.  

These are data that need to be considered if/when we ponder why we exist and what our purpose is/should be.

Want more?  There are over 600 images accessible via this link.

"Spooning" - and "Prufrock" (updated)

The conventional definition involves sentimental love, but the photo source also offers this comment:

The word also had homosexual connotations, as in Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. Says old A. E. Housman to young A. E. Housman: “Centuries later in a play now lost, Aeschylus brought in Eros, which I suppose we may translate as extreme spooniness; showers of kisses, and unblemished thighs. Sophocles, too; he wrote The Loves of Achilles: more spooniness than you’d find in a cutlery drawer, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Found at Modern Foppery, via. 

Addendum: I originally posted this back in 2010.  This week I encountered the photo again while browsing the web, and decided to search for more information on the unusual imagery.  When I Googled several key words, the #1 hit was...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I have to admit that was a bit startling, especially since it was one of my favorite poems when I was an English major in college (never could quite memorize it all, but I can still call up key passages).  And the connection to the photo? - just the coincidental presence of the keywords I selected ("women," "spoons," "behind," and "back.")

So I'm going to use this serendipitous event as an excuse to post the poem.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress	65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.	125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Composed by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), and published in Prufrock and Other Observations (1920).

Addendum:  Here's a very interesting and perhaps relevant observation by reader frenchfarmer:

"Spoon" in french is "cuillère" and is pronounced "quee-er."

Addendum #2:
Reposted once again (August 2015) because this year marks the 100-year anniversary of "Prufrock."

When T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” made its first appearance in print 100 years ago, it did not in any way disturb the universe. Having languished in a drawer for four years, the poem was finally first published in the June 1915 issue of the Chicago journal Poetry, placed toward the back because the editor didn’t much like it... The reviews were a mix of indifference, confusion, and disdain. The Times Literary Supplement remarked that Eliot’s “observations” were “of the very smallest importance to anyone—even to himself.”...

Of course, it’s now clear that “Prufrock” is one of the great poems of the twentieth century. It is widely taught in schools, and its strange and subversive incantations are freely released into the unformed souls of adolescents without any regard for the consequences...

The nature of Eliot’s personal hell during his time in Paris was complicated and multifaceted, but the fact that he was still a virgin was undoubtedly part of it. Eliot suffered from a congenital double hernia, which meant he wore a truss from an early age. His cadaverous bookishness and universally remarked-on shyness didn’t help his cause with women at Harvard or anywhere else...

Continued at the link.

Reposted in 2026 because I ran across this old post while looking up stuff about Dante's Inferno, and wanted to make sure I had already blogged Prufrock.  Nothing to add now - just wanted to revisit the poem (and reader Elagie's salient comments).

An interesting art installation

Credit to Antti Laitinen for "Broken Landscape, 2021" which I found posted at the oddlyterrifying subreddit.  The discussion thread there is trivial, but I appreciate the demonstration of how trees adapt to their location.  I have a wall of tall cedar trees facing west along a driveway.  They fill every space capable of capturing sunlight with foliage, but behind that wall of green is a maze of poke-you-in-the-eye broken branches.

I'll close with this cross-section of a hedge that I posted back in 2020.