In the movie we saw last night about Bela Fleck taking the banjo back to its African context (which was very moving and deserves more than the off-hand mention it gets here), it struck us that the country we thought of as “Gambia” is actually “The Gambia”. Which led to a brief bit of research into what other countries have a “The”. Officially, just The Bahamas. Unofficially, Ehren decided, it should be all countries that start with “United”, plus all plural island chains.
Category: From Macromediocrity
Ecoguilt parameters, continued
Eating local good; eating veggies better.
This article from Science News discusses the various sources of greenhouse emissions in the farm-to-table chain.
Sadly, the online version does not include the fab pie chart from the print version, but you’ll get the idea: eating less beef and dairy does more to reduce your ecoguilt total than only buying local.
I guess it’s time to start phasing out the lattes…
Outraged, and mollified
Outraged: What happens to unsold books.
Mollified: Inspired, even. These people were outraged too, and look what they did. (I think their domain name is a little bit of a stretch, though.)
The Mysteries of Google, continued
Google has changed its favicon in Firefox, but not in Internet Explorer. [1]
Puzzling.
In IE it’s still the boxy capital G we’re all used to.
In Firefox, it’s suddenly the lower-case g (“good girl’s glasses”).
Weird how such a small thing can be such a big distraction.
(Not unlike corn in Italian wedding soup.)
[1] Is this a geek badge?
Bad Timing.
From the schadenfreude file:
FranklinCovey just sent me an email about a huge sale.
My LLBean Traveler convertible backpack finally bit the dust last week after a hard ten years of use. [Digression: to my deep annoyance, particularly following on Aveda’s recent decision to discontinue the best shampoo of all time, I discover LLBean has redesigned the bag, and there’s no convertible-backpack option, so I find myself considering a $300 handmade Italian bag instead, but that’s another rant].
FranklinCovey has nice totes.
Big FranklinCovey email.
Huge Sale.
Tell everyone, said the email.
Shop now, said the email.
I tried.
I clicked through.
Their site is down for “scheduled maintenance.”
I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone schedules maintenance for the same time as the “everyone come to the big giant sale” email is going out.
James Burke has been busy.
James Burke, who wired my brain when I was 7 with his show Connections, is busy working on this piece of crazy beauty.
There are lots of ways to help, from buying his books on Amazon to researching and writing grants. I can write grants. I hate it, but for James Burke and what he’s trying to do, I think I’d be willing.
(Because I don’t have enough hobbies. Guess I’m just trying to fill those four pesky free weekends between now and December…)
Slacker.
Many people claim to be the winners of a Slack Blogger Award, but I’m not sure they deserve it.
Ehren has now officially passed the one-year mark since his last post in this blog. I’m just sayin’.
Inanity to the nth
Guess how many teams are in The Big Ten?
You can tell by looking at their logo.
*blink?*
I’m not sure where to start. Probably best that I don’t.
(Ehren would have posted this but he decided to email it to me instead, which earns some kind of demerit from the posting committee…)
Owl-faced night parrots: Not dead yet!
I’m watching David Attenborough’s Life of Birds, and was moved to do some checking on the status of the incredibly endearing and extremely endangered kakapo.
There are still under 100 of them, but seven chicks were hatched this year. Most touching detail: They all have names. All of them.
The denizens of YouTube
When I found that recording of Braes o’ Balquhidder on YouTube I was happy.
I’m irrationally happier now to know that there are multiple YouTubers who are devoting themselves to uploading video of gramophone recordings. At least five. Possibly dozens, or scores.
(Discovered this thanks to Will’s tip about Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors.)