A celestial "Christmas tree" aurora

This APOD image was captured in Iceland last December.  It will serve as my Christmas gift to everyone while I take some time off from blogging to enjoy the holidays.

Tomb of the "real Santa Claus" located

As reported by Archaeology News:

"Recent excavations at the Church of St. Nicholas in Demre, Antalya, Turkey, have revealed a limestone sarcophagus that may be the burial site of Saint Nicholas, the Greek bishop whose life and deeds inspired the legend of Santa Claus...

The sarcophagus, found within the church’s two-story annex, is believed to be the original burial site of Saint Nicholas, who lived in the ancient city of Myra during the 4th century CE. Measuring approximately two meters in length and buried at a depth of 1.5 to 2 meters, the sarcophagus features a raised lid and a pitched roof consistent with burial styles of the region. Its proximity to the church—constructed in the 5th century CE by order of Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II—adds credibility to the theory that this was the saint’s original resting place...

Saint Nicholas, known for his acts of generosity and miraculous intercessions, served as the Bishop of Myra and died in 343 CE. Centuries after his death, his remains were moved to the Church of St. Nicholas, which was built over his original burial site. By the 11th century, his bones were reportedly taken to the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, Italy, and later, additional remains were transported to Venice during the First Crusade. In 1953, scientific studies confirmed that bones from both Bari and Venice belonged to the same individual, though whether they were Saint Nicholas himself remains inconclusive."

More on Saint Nicholas at Wikipedia.

"In one of the earliest attested and most famous incidents from his life, he is said to have rescued three girls from being forced into prostitution by dropping a sack of gold coins through the window of their house each night for three nights so their father could pay a dowry for each of them."

Interesting items found beside a trail in Seattle

Image cropped for size from the original posted at the mushroomID subreddit: "A bunch of them by a tree trunk, firm but with a wet plaster texture."  Answer posted in the first comment.  You learn something every day.

Difficult math puzzle

Discussion at a puzzles subreddit thread, with best explanation here.

Cactus. Fasciation. White-winged dove. And Stevie Nicks.

First I encountered this photo of an absolutely awesome cactus (at L'oeil ouvert, via).  The caption was in French, so I had to Google Translate it to find this info about the plant:

The French naturalist and historian Leon Diguet realized six scientific expeditions in Mexico between 1893 and 1913... With a few prints in the world, this picture offers a spectacular example of a species of cacti: the Giant Cardon, about 8 meters high and about 10 tons.

I still wondered if it could be a manipulated image, because these are famously-slow-growing plants - it's said to take up to 75 years to develop a single side arm.  Some take on unusual shapes; here is a cristate ("crested") crown -

- a phenomenon that occurs secondary to "fasciation":

... a condition of plant growth in which the apical meristem, normally concentrated around a single point, producing approximately cylindrical tissue, becomes elongated perpendicularly to the direction of growth, producing flattened, ribbon-like, crested, or elaborately contorted tissue. The phenomenon may occur in the stem, root, fruit, or flower head.

Wikipedia illustrated the phenomenon with a photo of a wildflower:

- and I suddenly realized that I had seen the same type of anomaly two summers ago while hiking, but had no idea what was going on -

(I had assumed it was some kind of mutation, and made plans to return to the site later in the fall to collect seeds, but didn't have a chance to go).

But back to the cactus.  I remembered from old nature films that the major pollinators are bats:

There are a number of floral characteristics geared toward bat pollination: nocturnal opening of the flowers, nocturnal maturation of pollen, very rich nectar, position high above the ground, durable blooms that can withstand a bat's weight, and fragrance emitted at night. One additional evidence is that the amino acids in the pollen appear to help sustain lactation in bats...

- but one link also listed daytime pollinators as bees and... white-winged doves.  And, of course, I couldn't hear that without thinking of Stevie Nicks' Edge of Seventeen.  Until this moment I had always assumed that the "white-winged dove" in her lyrics was an imaginary creature (her lyrics sometimes tend to be rather mystical and obscure):

The clouds... never expect it... when it rains.
But the sea changes colours...
But the sea... does not change.

And so... with the slow... graceful flow... of age
I went forth... with an age old... desire... to please
On the edge of... seventeen

Just like the white-winged dove... sings a song...
Sounds like she's singing...
Ooo baby... ooo... said ooo

Re the genesis of this song, she was in Australia when she heard the news that John Lennon died.  She returned to Phoenix, where she was familiar with the white-winged dove.  While there she was present when her uncle John died at night, which prompted this part of the lyrics -

In a flood of tears
That no one really ever heard fall,
Oh I went searchin' for an answer...
Up the stairs... and down the hall
I did not find an answer... but I did hear the call
Of a nightbird... singing...
Come away... come now...

"The white-winged dove in the song is a spirit that is leaving a body, and I felt a great loss at how both Johns were taken..." She explains it all in this VH1 Storytellers segment, which is the best way to close this blog for the night.  The resolution isn't good for fullscreen, but you can still crank up the audio...  Enjoy.

You learn something every day.

Addendum:  For a contemporary photo of an immense cactus, see the link posted by HeavenlyJane in the comments.

Reposted from 2011 because the BBC has just posted a longread about the history and legacy of this song.

"... more than any other Stevie Nicks solo moment, Edge of Seventeen has entranced subsequent generations and helped to define the singer's standing as a rock icon: not just as member of Fleetwood Mac, but as an artist in her own right. It's a song that operates on several levels – at once an instant hit of rock drama and a heady meditation on death – and seems to yield something new every time you play it. Its distinctive 16th-note guitar riff – played by Waddy Wachtel, a legendary session musician who also worked with Cher and The Rolling Stones – remains electrifying every time you hear it...

When Tom Petty's wife Jane told Nicks that she and her husband met "at the age of 17", Nicks misheard her Southern accent and thought she'd said "at the edge of 17". In that instant, she realised that she had a brilliant song title."

Related: Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac - Landslide.

Reposted from 2017 because this morning I remembered this has another "seventeen" song to celebrate the blogiversary.  But the YouTube link has undergone linkrot, so I'll need to find another to substitute in that spot (later today maybe). done

An update on the status of Monarchs

I'm impressed by the projects being undertaken in Mexico by scientists and indigenous people to extend the vertical range of Monarch overwintering habitat in an effort of counteract the deleterious effects of climate change.

Janis Ian sings "At Seventeen" for my blogiversary

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth.

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say “come dance with me”
And murmured vague obscenities
It isn’t all it seems at seventeen.

A brown-eyed girl in hand-me-downs

Whose name I never could pronounce

Said, "Pity, please, the ones who serve

They only get what they deserve"

And the rich-relationed hometown queen

Marries into what she needs

With a guarantee of company

And haven for the elderly.

Remember those who win the game

They lose the love they sought to gain

In debentures of quality

And dubious integrity

The small-town eyes will gape at you

In dull surprise when payment due

Exceeds accounts received

At seventeen.

[instrumental break]

To those of us who knew the pain

Of valentines that never came

And those whose names were never called

When choosing sides for basketball

It was long ago and far away

The world was younger than today

When dreams were all they gave for free

To ugly duckling girls like me.

We all play the game, and when we dare
To cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say: “Come dance with me”
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen.

Her most successful single was "At Seventeen," released in 1975, a bittersweet commentary on adolescent cruelty and teenage angst, as reflected upon from the maturity of adulthood. "At Seventeen" was a smash, receiving tremendous acclaim from critics and record buyers alike — it charted at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and hit #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It even won the 1975 Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance - Female beating out the likes of Linda Ronstadt who was nominated for the classic Heart Like A Wheel album, Olivia Newton-John and Helen Reddy. Ian performed "At Seventeen" as a musical guest on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975... Another measure of her success is anecdotal - on Valentine's Day 1977, Ian received 461 Valentine cards, having indicated in the lyrics to "At Seventeen" that she never received any as a teenager."

Reposted from 2008 because I received in the mail a flyer from the Stoughton Opera House advertising a performance by Janis Ian as part of her upcoming "End of the Line" tour.   Updated photo and bio at the link.

Reposted from 2021 to add the lyrics I elided on the original post, and because today TYWKIWDBI is seventeen years old (18,959 posts and 68,000+ curated comments).  Not done yet.

Carl Sagan's foreboding (28 years ago)

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” 

-- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Random House, 1996

re the Madison school shooter

This morning several people have contacted me on this subject, so I'll just briefly mention that my family and friends have not been directly affected (it occurred in a different suburb).

This Reddit thread is the source of the embedded photo (cropped for size) and has more info than the local news stations (which don't release details until they are properly verified).  That post indicates "Aug 2024, age 14. This picture is the last Facebook post from her dad."

This other link also has (unverified) information about her "manifesto" and this photo.  TL:DR - a dysfunctional family + bullying at school.

I'll take this post down later after more reliable information is available online.

Addendum:  I probably don't need to repost The Onion's boilerplate:

MADISON, WI—In the hours following a violent rampage in Wisconsin in which a lone attacker killed at least two individuals and injured six others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Monday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Maryland resident Jonathan Pallard, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Addendum:  for additional detailed information and investigation, see the link in the December 18 comment by an anonymous reader.

Addendum:  she could be a poster child for a dysfunctional family:

"Rupnow’s parents married initially in 2011, about two years after her birth. They divorced for the first time in 2014, agreeing that they would have joint custody but that Rupnow would live mostly with her mother.

They married again in 2017 and divorced in 2020, agreeing this time for a more even split in custody. She would be at her father’s for two days, then with her mother for two days, then with her father for three days, before doing the opposite the next week.

It wasn’t long before her parents remarried yet again. In April 2021, they were going through a third divorce. They were “admonished concerning remarriage,” court records state.

In July 2022, they agreed on shared custody but that Rupnow would spend most of her time with her father. She was now in therapy, intended to help decide where she would spend her weekends..."

Dust-bathing and "anting"

I should think most everyone is at least tangentially familiar with "dust-bathing," a behavior niot uncommonly seen in farmyards, zoos, and nature documentaries about bison.  

Dust bathing (also called sand bathing) is an animal behavior characterized by rolling or moving around in dust, dry earth or sand, with the likely purpose of removing parasites from fur, feathers or skin. For some animals, dust baths are necessary to maintain healthy feathers, skin, or fur, similar to bathing in water or wallowing in mud.  In some mammals, dust bathing may be a way of transmitting chemical signals (or pheromones) to the ground which marks an individual's territory.

Last summer I observed a local bird (cardinal or dove IIRC) who settled down in a barren spot in the garden, wiggled into position, and then remained motionless for a prolonged period of time.  It was there for at least an hour, and was absolutely still, without the scratching and wing-flapping that normally characterizes dust baths.  The behavior seemed so atypical that I remember considering whether to go out to the garden to see if the bird was ill or injured, but he/she flew away without incident.

Last week I encountered this cartoon in the summer 2024 issue of Living Bird, the journal of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, that provides a logical explanation.

Beautiful clothes for school

I am in awe of the gorgeous clothing worn by these Palestinian girls attending the opening of a school in Khan Younis, Gaza.  I looked for additional information and images, including in a large gallery by Getty Images, but could find no other details.  The designs must be traditional, and perhaps are ceremonial to some extent.

Photo (cropped for size) credit to Bashar Taleb/AFP/Getty Images, via The Guardian's "Week around the world in 20 pictures."

Word for the day: fellmonger

This week I've been watching One Hundred Years of Solitude;  in a recent episode a character was described as a "fellmonger," so I had to look it up.

A fellmonger was a dealer in hides or skins, particularly sheepskins, who might also prepare skins for tanning. The name is derived from the Old English ‘fell’ meaning skins and ‘monger’ meaning dealer. Fellmongery is one of the oldest professions in the world and since ancient times, humans have used the skins of animals to clothe themselves, and for making domestic articles.

Those interested in exploring the subject matter more fully (including details of the technique and equipment) can tackle this (very)longread in the internet archive Wayback Machine.

"Frost flowers" updated

"Frost flowers" are "a strange phenomenon where frost grows from imperfections in the surface ice amid extreme sub-zero temperatures nearing -22C or -7.6F, forming spiky structures that have been found to house microorganisms. In fact, the bacteria found in the frost flowers is much more dense than in the frozen water below it, meaning each flower is essentially a temporary ecosystem, not unlike a coral reef."

The cold, moist air above the open cracks becomes saturated and frost begins to form wherever an imperfection can be found on the ice surface. From these nucleation points the flower-like frost structures grow vertically, quickly rising to centimeters in height. The hollow tendrils of these “frost flowers” begin to wick moisture from the ice surface, incorporating salt, marine bacteria, and other substances as they grow.

More details (and additional photos) at Colossal, via allhomosapienswelcome. Unlike the land-based "frost flowers" I used to see when I lived in rural Kentucky, these Arctic ones are truly made from frost, not from extruded ice.

Reposted from 2012 (!) to add this image of frost flowers seen on Lake Harriet (Minneapolis) this week:

"These delicate clusters of ice crystals can form on top of newly frozen ice only when it's very cold and the air is very still. Frost flowers are more commonly found on fresh sea ice, but can form on newly frozen freshwater lakes. They do not last long and are damaged by wind.

It's been has been years since we’ve had anything close to the right conditions for frost flowers like the ones that formed yesterday. The ice must be very fresh so it is still close to the water temperature and the air must be at least 20 degrees below freezing and the calm for crystals to form."

CT-scanning packs of baseball cards

"A 2000 Bowman Chrome Tom Brady rookie card as seen through the CT scanner. (Image provided by Industrial Inspection and Consulting)"

Excerpts from an article in The New York Times:

For most of its history, buying and selling packs and boxes of trading cards was a game of chance with neither the buyer nor the seller knowing the results.

“The product is designed to be a mystery,” said Keith Irwin, the general manager of Industrial Inspection and Consulting.

And if it wants to stay that way?

“They’ll need to find new packaging solutions,” he said.

IIC went from a company focusing primarily on industrial X-rays and CT scans within the medical and aerospace fields to potentially taking the cover off the trading card industry without taking the cover off any product at all. And in the process, they say, their company — with no prior connections to the trading card industry — has earned thousands of satisfied customers in the collectibles space. All electing for a sneak peek at their cards before tearing the packs or boxes open, circumventing the mystery that has long been a central element of these products.

The service caters to high-end products manufactured by Topps, Panini and Upper Deck, with the technology best suited to reveal cards in densely packed configurations. Take a 2023 Panini Flawless Football First Off The Line case for instance. Each case comes with two boxes. Each box comes with one pack of 10 cards. At $15,000 a case, it certainly makes economic sense that collectors are willing to pay IIC the going rate of $650 per case of that product to get a CT scan and see whether there’s something inside that they want, or to keep the package sealed and sell it on to someone else.

Salient discussion at the link re the ethics and economics of this practice.  Just the existence of this technology and the possibility that packs have been non-invasively scanned can really crater the asking price for "unopened" packs of cards.

Roadkill - it's what's for dinner

Sofia Johnson holds up part of a roadkill doe at her home in Minnetonka in 2022. (Shari L. Gross/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Excerpts from an article in the Minnesota Star Tribune:

"... roadkill in Minnesota typically ends up in one of three places — it could land in a shallow roadside grave, in a special compost heap or on someone’s dinner table...

Once the crews arrive at the scene, they check to see if they can take care of it on-site. They often simply put the remains in the ditch. They might cover it up with organic material like wood chips, mulch or dirt... This isn’t possible in some metro locations. So MnDOT has a special deer composting area in Anoka where crews dump the roadkill...

Minnesota is one of about two dozen states that allow the public to pick up roadkill. Here, it’s free. But prospective meat-gleaners need a wildlife possession permit first.  The DNR gets permit requests from people who hit the animal with their own vehicle as well from those who just spotted it on the side of the road, said DNR spokesperson Joe Albert.

“So long as the animal isn’t federally protected, such as a waterfowl or a wolf, and there’s no reason to believe something occurred other than the animal getting hit by a vehicle, people will be issued a permit,” he said.

Conservation officers have issued 1,149 permits so far in 2024, he said. Other state, county and municipal law enforcement groups can also issue permits — and some have lists of regular roadkill enthusiasts they call when a dead animal is spotted...

Others bring roadkill to places such as the Bell Museum. As part of the St. Paul natural history museum’s project called “Salvage Wildlife,” people are asked to drop off freshly dead and intact birds and small-to-medium-sized mammals (that means no deer and no pets)."

Bowling alleys in church basements

Excerpts from an interesting story in Messy Nessy:

There are thought to be fewer than 200 churches with bowling lanes left in America today, but as early as the 1860s, they were quite common across the Midwest and parts of the Northeast...  

In working-class neighbourhoods, it wasn’t unusual at all for churches to have bowling alleys. Recreational facilities served as social gathering spots. If husbands were going to drink, better it be at his local church bowling alley than in a gambling establishment. It kept the youngsters out of trouble too, especially when bowling became so fashionable the 40s and 50s...  

All types of churches built bowling alleys– Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Unitarian; and membership wasn’t necessarily a prerequisite to bowl. It was the German immigrants of the 1860s who first started building them as moral refuges for their community. In Milwaukee alone, the city once had at least 13 church bowling alleys. 

More photos at the link, plus a list of some churches that currently have bowling alleys.

I'm adding Messy Nessy to my list of recommended blogs, because the range of content is quite TYWKIWDBI-like.

Evidence of a Grinch - solved and updated

There is a woods behind my house.  Just for fun I decided to decorate one of the balsam firs with strings of solar-powered Christmas lights.  "For the critters."

It was quite pleasant in the dark nights of midwinter to look out the window and see a solitary tree deep in the woods all aglow with lights.

Then one of the strings went dark.  Later a second one as well.  I decided the snowpack had covered the solar collectors, but there was no way I was going to slog through the snow to correct a problem that would just recur.  So I waited for the snowmelt.

Imagine my surprise when I got out there in March to see a strand of lights severed (top photo).  Quite a clean cut, really, so that for a moment I wondered if some Grinchy human had taken a dislike to the display.  But then I found another strand, where the wires were twisted, and the cut was not as clean as a wire-cutter or scissors would accomplish:

So my suspicions pivoted to the local rodents.  We have lots of chipmunks and grey squirrels, the latter the more active species in wintertime. 

But it wasn't until I got started with my proper garden cleanup in April that I found beneath the leaf litter under the tree a bunch of bulbs that had been individually severed from the strings:

I'm a little puzzled.  I understand that urban rats are infamous for chewing through electrical cords and ducts in apartment and office buildings, and that this activity is attributed to their need to gnaw something with their ever-growing teeth.  I'm not sure if the same principle would apply here, or is it possible that the chewing is being done to extract some mineral/salt etc from the plastic-coated wiring??  The bulb bases don't appear to be gnawed, so that would suggest that the metal wire was the goal rather than the plastic.

I wonder whether any reader has had similar experience with Christmas lights or security lights.  All comments welcome.

Addendum:  I posted this in the summer of 2020, and received several helpful comments from readers, one of which was confirmed today when I spotted a report in the StarTribune about squirrels devastating Christmas light displays:

The downtown park's resident rodents have developed a taste for the holiday lights that once twinkled in Mears' canopy of trees. Or, more accurately, the corn sugar-based plastic that insulates the wires.

Reposted from 2021 in part for the seasonality, but also because there is a discussion of this phenomenon in a recent mildlyinfuriating subreddit thread, including comments re major damage to vehicle electrical systems.

A 2020 quarter worth $15-20

Because of the "W" (West Point) mint mark.   Some relevant discussion in the coins subreddit.

Housing in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

An incredible image (and situation).   Have any readers been there?  Is there any space for vehicular traffic other than bicycles/mopeds/pushcarts?  It's hard to grasp the implications for sanitation, public health, fires, hurricanes...   

Photo credit Ramon Espinosa / AP, via The Atlantic.

The first book I ever read

This book came to my attention this week because a modern reprint is now being sold at our local Farm and Fleet store, so I checked out this copy from our library.  It's curious to me that I have such a vivid memory of a book first encountered over 70 years ago.  I was born in 1946, Golden Books published this in 1949, and it must have come to our household shortly thereafter.  

My mother's teaching didn't involve any special techniques.  She opened the book for both of us to see and read the words while I looked at the pages (and the words) with her.  Over and over again. 

This is not a word-learning book ("B is for ball").  It's actually a "counting book" (two colts, three calves, four turkeys, five geese...), and the words on the pages are not always simple (cattails, frisky, suppertime, waddled).  But mom's repetitive technique was certainly effective, because by the time I started first grade, I was able to read the local newspaper.

I'll add this post to my recommended books category.  And I invite every reader to mention in the comments the first book they ever remember reading.

Interesting rock, found in a river near Verona, Italy

I would have guessed that it was some sort of artifact, but according to the discussion thread at the whatsthisrock subreddit, it is fossiliferous limestone (tumbled smooth by the river).

Geologist here - Looks like you have a fantastic piece of Packstone / Biomicrite. Without being able to run the tests on it, the matrix (blue) is probably a calcareous mudstone, with the blue colour being formed from trace minerals in its composition. Like others have said, the white parts are cross sections of shells, and in this case they look like bivalves.

Very, very cool.  If I were at that river I would fill my pockets with these.

More on fossiliferous limestone (which does not typically have a blue matrix).

Preventive? or preventative?

I have tended to use "preventive" because there is no verb "to preventate", but I had to ask Merriam-Webster which is correct:

The shorter word, preventive, has meanings such as "something that prevents," when used as a noun, and "devoted to or concerned with prevention," when used as an adjective. Preventative means the same thing.

Of the two, preventive is slightly older, appearing in English at the beginning of the 17th century.

"So Philip of Macedon, and Atis the sonne of Croesus, found a chariot in a swords hilt, and an Iron poynted weapon at the hunting of a Bore, to delude their preuentiue wearinesse."

— Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, 1602

However, preventative is no Johnny-come-lately, showing definite use for over 350 years now.

"Here follows the preventative: take a poor man, and settle him in a comfortable situation, making him pay (or secure) a reasonable valuation...."

— Christopher Love, The Strange and Wonderful Predictions of Mr. Christopher Love, 1651

It is not uncommon to find both of them used interchangeably by a single author within the same work... But the English language is not only rich with variation; it is rich as well with strife, and people who like to tell you that the thing you're doing is a bad thing to do... This was followed by another hundred years of language guides claiming that one of these words was proper and one was not.

I like their conclusion: "The question of which one you should choose depends much on your appetite for nit-pickery."

"Bad Sisters" season 1 trailer

I almost gave up on this series because the principal character (the one destined to be murdered) is so extremely and unremittingly repulsive because of his misogyny.  He combines the sinister characteristics of Fagin with the worst sliminess of Uriah Heep.  OTOH, all the characters (including the doomed man) are superbly portrayed by a cast that was unfamiliar to me, but who I will look forward to seeing again in season 2.  In the end, the series was enjoyable and thoroughly worth watching.

10 episodes, streaming on Apple TV; not yet on DVD AFAIK.

King Williams College Christmas quiz, 2024-5

Posted today in The Guardian - several weeks ahead of schedule and catching me completely off guard.  So I will be taking some time off from blogging to work on the quiz with friends.  I'm back.  I was only able to figure out three in the whole quiz without Googling (too tough (and too British)).

Here are questions from Section 13 (of 18 total)

1. What dish is a reticulum?

2. What Irish name describes an absence?

3. Which Australian sports a silver-grey coat?

4. What did the Dutch Lakenvelder create in south-west Scotland?

5. What has a lineback and markedly overdeveloped keratin-based protuberances?

6. Identify four stiff standers, four dilly danders, two hookers, two lookers and a wig-wag.

7. What hybrid was developed from red and dun in adjacent counties?

8. What came from Heck and Hagenbeck, one from each?

9. Who righted the females from Valencia?

10. What was sourced from Teeswater? 

"Goodbye to All That" (Robert Graves, 1929)

An interesting read, but not one that I will add to my blog list of recommended books.  I first learned about the book while doing my weekly listen to a BBC podcase of In Our Time.  Here's the blurb:

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of 'I, Claudius' who was also one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. Robert Graves (1895 -1985) placed his poetry far above his prose. He once declared that from the age of 15 poetry had been his ruling passion and that he lived his life according to poetic principles, writing in prose only to pay the bills and that he bred the pedigree dogs of his prose to feed the cats of his poetry. Yet it’s for his prose that he’s most famous today, including 'I Claudius', his brilliant account of the debauchery of Imperial Rome, and 'Goodbye to All That', the unforgettable memoir of his early life including the time during the First World War when he was so badly wounded at the Somme that The Times listed him as dead."

As a former English major I was chagrined to realize that except for I Claudius, I have read nothing by Graves, so I decided to give the book a try.  Herewith some excerpts, especially the things I didn't know...

I unfortunately didn't copy the citation or page reference, but Graves several times uses the phrase "half left" to indicate a direction of travel.  I found it discussed in Wikipedia as a drill command, meaning to turn 45 degrees to one's left.  I think it's an excellent term, now apparently archaic, useful when compass headings are unavailable or unknown.

"You'd be surprised at the amount of waste that goes on in the trenches.  Ration biscuits are in general use as fuel for boiling up dixies, because kindling is scarce.  Our machine-gun crew boil their hot water by firing off belt after of ammunition at no particular target, just generally spraying the German line.  After several pounds' worth of ammunition has been used, the water in the guns - which are water-cooled - begins to boil..." (109-110)

"Another story: 'Bloke in the Camerons wanted a cushy, bad. Fed up and far from home, he was. He puts his hand over the top and gets his trigger finger taken off, and two more beside. That done the trick. He comes laughing through our lines by the old boutillery. "See, lads,” he says, "I’m off to bonny Scotland. Is it na a beauty?” But on the way down the trench to the dressing- station, he forgets to stoop low where the old sniper’s working. He gets it through the head, too. Finee. We laugh, fit to die ! ’" (110)

"We officers spend a lot of time revolver-shooting. Jenkins brought out a beautiful target from the only undestroyed living-room in our billet-area: a glass case full of artificial fruit and flowers. We put it up on a post at fifty yards’ range. He said: "1’ve always wanted to smash one of these damn objects. My aunt has one. It’s the sort of thing that would survive an intense bombardment.’ I smothered a tender impulse to rescue it. So we had five shots each, in turn. Everyone missed. Then we went up to within twenty yards and fired a volley. Someone hit the post and knocked the case off into the grass. Jenkins said: "Damn the thing, it must be bewitched. Let’s take it back.’ The glass was unbroken, but some of the fruit had come loose. Walker said: "No, it’s in pain. We must put it out of its suffering.’ He gave it the coup de grace from close quarters." (116)

"The Red Lamp, the army brothel, was around the corner in the main street. I had seen a queue of a hundred and fifty men waiting outside the door, each to have his short turn with one of the three women in the house. My servant, who had stood in the queue, told me that the charge was ten francs a man — about eight shillings at that time. Each woman served nearly a battalion of men every week for as long as she lasted. According to the assistant provost-marshal, three weeks was the usual limit: ‘after which she retired on her earnings, pale but proud.’" (122)

"We’ve even got a polo-ground here. There was a polo-match between the First and Second Battalions the other day. The First had all their decent ponies pinched last October when they were massacred at Ypres and the cooks and transport men had to come up into the line to prevent a break-through. So the Second won easily." (125)

"Still, patrolling had its peculiar risks. If a German patrol found a wounded man, they were as likely as not to cut his throat. The bowie-knife was a favourite German patrol weapon because of its silence. (We inclined more to the 'cosh’, a loaded stick.) The most important information that a patrol could bring back was to what regiment and division the troops opposite belonged. So if it were impossible to get a wounded enemy back without danger to one-self, he had to be stripped of his badges. To do that quickly and silently, it might be necessary first to cut his throat or beat in his skull." (131)

"The Germans opposite wanted to be sociable. They sent messages over to us in undetonated rifle-grenades. One of these was evidently addressed to the Irish batt- alion we had relieved: "We all German korporals wish you English korporals a good day and invite you to a good German dinner tonight with beer (ale) and cakes. Your little dog ran over to us and we keep it safe; it became no food with you so it run to us. Answer in the same way, if you please." Another grenade contained a copy of the Neueste Nachrichten, a German Army newspaper..." (137)

"An Australian: ‘Well, the biggest lark I had was at Morlancourt, when we took it the first time. There were a lot of Jerries in a cellar, and I said to ’em: “Come out, you Camarades ! ” So out they came, a dozen of ’em, with their hands up. “Turn out your pockets,” I told ’em. They turned ’em out. Watches and gold and stuff, all dinkum. Then I said: “Now back to your cellar, you sons of bitches ! ” For I couldn’t be bothered with ’em. When they were all safely down I threw half a dozen Mills bombs in after ’em. I’d got the stuff all right, and we weren’t taking prisoners that day.’ (184)

"Executions were frequent in France. I had my first direct experience of official lying when I arrived at Le Havre in May 1915, and read the back-files of army orders at the rest camp. They contained something like twenty reports of men shot for cowardice or desertion; yet a few days later the responsible minister in the House of Commons, answering a question from a pacifist, denied that sentence of death for a military offence had been carried out in France on any member of His Majesty’s Forces." (240) [Graves indicates that families were never told of executions - only that the man had "died a soldier's death."]

I haven't categorized this book as "recommended" because it has way too much information regarding Grave's personal life and wartime activities.  I understand that it is classified as an autobiography, and thus is probably excellent reading for scholars or students studying the author's works and interested in understanding the background from which he writes, but both the contents of his meals and the minute details of his battlefield deployment eventually start to cloy, and I wound up speed-scanning much of the text.  But still, lots of interesting material, as summarized above.  [prob lots of typos above -  I haven't proof-read it yet]

An industrial trigger for snow

I should think every web-surfing reader of TYWKIWDBI is fully aware of the lake-effect snow blanketing areas downwind from the not-frozen Great Lakes.   A similar phenomenon occurred last week here in central Wisconsin.

An isolated but mighty band of snow whipped up Thanksgiving mischief for travelers in Wisconsin on Thursday. Over a several-hour period, a localized zone of occasionally heavy snow dropped a couple inches on places not far from Eau Claire — and the primary culprit was exhaust from a nearby glass factory.

While the band didn’t hit a large area, it had a relatively high impact because of its location, parallel to Interstate 94 across western Wisconsin. At one point, very low visibility as well as rapidly changing road conditions fueled accidents that closed the thoroughfare.

Meteorologists in the region got to talking about it as it unfolded. It turns out that a Menomonie glass factory was mostly to blame... Snowfall totals of about 2 to 3 inches have been logged from the event, according to the Weather Service. 

The glass factory chimney was expelling steam.  Similar anomalies have occurred from airplanes:

Details re the latter at The Washington Post (2021).

"Dead salmon hats" worn by orcas

It's something that orcas do, and of course orcas can do whatever they want, because who/what is going to tell them otherwise?  I saw the story at the CBC:

In what may seem like a call-back to 1980s whale culture, a resident orca off the coast of Washington state was recently spotted sporting a dead salmon on its head.  The phenomenon was first documented in 1987 when whales from three separate pods were seen wearing salmon on their heads, like a human wears a hat.

But scientists never understood why, and experts are still scratching their heads as they contemplate the most recent incident, documented in October.  The director of the University of British Columbia's Marine Mammal Research Unit, Andrew Trites, said there's no obvious reason for the behaviour.

Photo credit in the watermark, via.

Phytophotodermatitis - updated

It's exactly what the word says - skin (derma) inflammation (itis) caused by exposure to plants (phyto) and sunlight (photo).  My wife has experienced it after brushing against rue in our garden (which we raise for the Black Swallowtails).  Other plants capable of photosensitizing human skin are listed in the Wikipedia entry, and include wild parsnip (which we encounter frequently while hiking in our part of the Midwest), parsley, celery, lemon, and lime.

The photos above are from a report on a group of children burned after playing with lime juice.

What at first seemed to be overexposure to the sun blossomed into softball-sized blisters and second-degree burns. Her girls, Jewels, 12, and Jazmyn, 9, wound up spending several days in an intensive care unit, hooked up to morphine to manage the pain...

A neighbor had a large lime tree that grew over the fence into the backyard where the girls went swimming. They had picked some of the fruits and squeezed them out into imaginary tea cups in their play lemonade stand... She remembered the girls crushing the fruits, juice sliding down their arms, splashing their legs, hitting their faces. 

The tricky part is that even after initial clinical resolution, the victim has to minimize exposure to sunlight because the light can cause recrudescence of the lesions even without reexposure to the sensitizer.

Via Nothing to do with Arbroath.

Reposted from 2013 to add another case report:

In this case the man had manually juice a dozen limes, then attended an outdoor soccer game without wearing sunscreen.  The erythema and blistering persisted for several days during rx with triamcinolone, eventually progressing to  hyperpigmentation and scaling, then normality (not shown).

Details at The New England Journal of Medicine.