January 16, 2016
It was a very big year
Noah Stryker just set the record for birding's Big Year, spotting 6,042 of the estimated 10,400 species of birds in 2015. He blogged about it for Audubon. He saw a lot of birds. [more inside]
A cloud becomes the sky
Every recording of Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedie 1” played at the same time, stretched to the length of the longest recording. About 60 versions of the piece incorporated - "less than I thought I would find, but enough," says the arranger. A lovely piece of musical architecture to roam around in. [via the always-excellent Disquiet.]
Bryn Kelly
Bryn Kelly, writer, performance artist, voice behind The Hussy, activist in the transgender and PLW HIV/AIDS communities, hairstylist and Lambda Literary fellow, died on Wednesday.
“But not everyone prefers to hyphenate...”
Why Does Moby-Dick (Sometimes) Have a Hyphen? [The Smithsonian]
When the book was published in England, it bore that straightforward title. In a historical note to a scholarly edition of the book, Melville scholar G. Thomas Tanselle writes that Melville’s brother, Allan, made a last-minute change to the title of the American edition. “[Melville] has determined upon a new title,” his brother wrote. “It is thought here that the new title will be a better selling title…Moby-Dick is a legitimate title for the book.” The American edition went to press, hyphen intact, despite the fact that the whale within was only referred to with a hyphen one time. Hyphenated titles would have been familiar to Victorian-era readers, who were used to “fairy-tales” and “year-books.” Even Melville enjoyed a good hyphen now and then, as the title of his book White-Jacket proves. But it’s still unclear whether Melville, who didn’t use a hyphen inside the book, chose a hyphen for the book’s title or whether his brother punctuated the title incorrectly.
Mounted
"delicates" cycle
This is a video of a washing machine on a trampoline. The washing machine has a brick in it. The video is 37 seconds long.
just passing through
Bigg's Killer Whales, formerly 'transients', eat marine mammals like dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions, and other whales. But sometimes they eat the occasional land mammal as well...
From The Marine Detective
peek-a-boo spider
New Spider Species Found, Plays Peekaboo to Attract Mates "Spiders generally don’t carry hankies. So when a gentleman spider of a newly discovered Australian species (pdf) wants to get a lady’s attention, he waves the next best thing: his paddles. "
Agafia Lykova, 70 year old hermit, hospitalized
According to the Guardian,
"Agafia Lykova is the last remaining member of a deeply religious family that fled civilisation in 1936 and did not know about the second world war until geologists stumbled upon them in 1978. After she contacted the “mainland” with an emergency satellite telephone to ask for medical help, the governor, Aman Tuleyev, ordered her evacuation from her homestead near the Abakan river to a hospital in Tashtagol, according to the Kemerovo region website."[more inside]
The numbers tell a remarkable story of recovery
Mozambique park sees wildlife numbers grow in wake of war The estimated elephant population went from 2,500 in the early 1970s, to fewer than 200 in 2000, and more than 500 in 2014. Similarly, researchers have counted nearly 60 lions, double the number a few years ago, but below the estimated 200 in 1972. [more inside]
What have we lost now that we can no longer read the sky?
For most of human history . . . [i]t was unthinkable to ignore the stars. They were critical signposts, as prominent and useful as local hills, paths or wells. The gathering-up of stars into constellations imbued with mythological meaning allowed people to remember the sky; knowledge that might save their lives one night and guide them home. Lore of the sky bound communities together. On otherwise trackless seas and deserts, the familiar stars would also serve as a valued friend. That friendship is now broken.
The Stories The Museum Tells
The whale is so big, the frogs are so bright, the Hall of Biodiversity an astonishing swarm of life. The planetarium space show tells a story, but it holds your attention by engulfing your senses with an experience. And then maybe this excitement inspires a little girl to go home and learn the names of the constellations and all the planets and their moons, and the night sky is no longer spooky darkness, but a beautiful realm full of things she can name. The museum today teaches you about science, but it makes you care by getting you to fall in love.
Rest of the orchestra didn't show, so fine, I'll play it myself.
Classical Mashup
Happening recently on porches in Houston: Good Folk Music
Houston is this strange mix of obscene wealth and obscene poverty and obscene humidity and big medicine and bayous and Louisiana food and TexMex food and Asian food and I don't know what all, it's this staggeringly humongous economic powerhouse that also has a great art scene somehow, and a really rich singer-songwriter community, too. Two of these Houston singer-songwriters -- Charles Bryant and Sara Van Buskirk -- it seems they sing on porches sometimes, with mourning doves cooing and traffic sounds and train sounds and just any other thing you'd hear on a porch. [more inside]
A matter of tone
The Tone Analyzer uses linguistic analysis to detect emotional tones, social propensities, and writing styles in written communication. Then it offers suggestions to help the writer improve their intended language tones.
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