Bartender Geek

I actually know what the etymology of the word "cobalt" is!

Hey, rebmommy? Besides the fact that you would enjoy these trivia questions, you should also show them to Dad -- he'd like them too. Just point him at wcg's livejournal.

So, as most of you know, Theresa and Patrick Nielsen-Hayden have a blog, http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/

TNH linked to Cutting down The Great Tree of Avalon, where someone found an excerpt of an unbearably bad fantasy novel, and decided to comment on it, line-by-line.

Funny stuff, of course. But as we were reading, a couple bad guys were apparently attempting to kidnap an eagle-boy, and we got to the line:
But not before the boy awoke. With eagle-fast reflexes,
to which the commentator snarked, "Oh yes. Eagles are known around the world around for their reflexes."

I laughed at that, and told Lis that I knew all about eagle reflexes. My friend Charles had told me about them.

I haven't seen Charles Sheehan since high school, really -- I ran into him once on the street a couple years after that, but I don't think I've seen hide nor hair of him for probably nearly ten years. But I'll tell you this story of him, nonetheless:
( The Story of Charles and the Eagles )

Dropped Boopsie off at the vet so they can take X-rays of her bladder and look for bladder stones -- also gave them a list of other things that we've noticed for them to look at while they've got her.

Drove Lis to work. On the way, passed a sign in someone's yard saying "MOVING -- TAKE WHAT YOU WANT."

Stopped back at the yard giveaway after dropping Lis off. They're just moving down the street, but are using it as a chance to clean out some of their unused junk. I got a small bag of trinkets that will be good Student Bribes for Good Behavior -- we've been choosing one student each week who behaves the best, and giving them a reward. Things like a superball, a small packet of crayons, stuff like that. Some things are pretty cool: when my cousin kyshwn was moving, I took a couple pewter miniatures that he was throwing out. Now I've got a Chinese fan, a couple of those spinny-drum things like they had in that scene at the end of Karate Kid II, stuff like that. I thanked the guy who was moving, and told him that, as I teach Sunday school, I'm always on the lookout for these sorts of trinkets for my kids. He asked me what religion, and I said Jewish. (I must look obviously Jewish -- I mean, I usually assume that as I say I teach Sunday school, people will assume that I mean Christian, and not think to ask. I don't really mind one way or the other, but I find it amusing that people tend to not assume stuff like that. Amusing and heartening.) He said that he had some Old Testament trivial pursuit around somewhere, but couldn't find it. He teased me asking if I was sure I didn't want a creche that they had, which was, indeed, adorable. It was fun.

After that, I went to the house that had the "FREE RANGE EGGS $2/DOZ" sign outside. I drive past that house every day I take Lis to work, but had never stopped in. A friendly old woman came out to show me around, apologizing for still being in her housecoat. She's got a little studio where she does oil paintings -- seascapes and pet portraits mainly -- and a few self-published booklets on local history and the like. She showed me their poultry -- they've got a bunch of chickens, about four geese (as watchdogs, and because they're bigger than the chickens and can break the water on the water trough when it freezes over in the winter, so the chickens can also get water), a couple of ducks, just to have ducks, and a peacock. I asked, they're not selling the geese for eating -- they're just there to protect against predators and as pets. The geese did lay some eggs which hatched, but the goslings were deformed and didn't survive.

Pity: if they actually were selling poultry for eating, I'd learn shocheting, and do kosher slaughter of free-range, organically-raised, locally-raised birds.

Really nice woman, and I bought a dozen eggs, of which I've now eaten two, and they were wonderful.

We just got out of the car, after I drove Lis home from work. We started walking up the driveway, when suddenly, every pigeon that lives on the roof of the house next door suddenly took off and flew away, making a great and startling flapping noise.

"That's weird," I thought. "The only times I've seen pigeons do that was when there was a . . . "

And then I saw a REALLY BIG pigeon land on a branch right above us, maybe eight feet straight up. 'Cept it wasn't a really big pigeon.

"Is that a . . . " I asked Lis.

"Yup," she said.

The red-tailed hawk flew off.

"Which way did it go?" I asked Lis.

"Over there."

So we ran over there to see if we could still see the hawk, thinking, "Go raptor! Go raptor! Eat pigeons! Go carnivore!"

We like hawks.

At some point, I'm going to catch you all up on the various stuff I've been doing in my life over the past, oh, month or so, but I'll just tell you this for now:

After going to second-day Rosh Hashana services today, Lis and I went out to the Topsfield Fair, which is, very simply, a good old fashioned county fair -- I believe it's the oldest annually-running county fair in the country.

Rides, carny games, really bad-for-you food, maple sugar cotton candy (which was just as much fun as regular cotton candy, but actually had FLAVOR, too, making it even better), apple cider donuts, racing pigs, bull riding demonstrations, raptors, an agricultural-product-detecting beagle who works for Customs at Logan airport, llamas, sheep, cattle, flowers, a 1314.8 pound pumpkin (the largest in New England -- it was seriously a pumpkin the size of a Volkswagen -- Cinderella could easily have ridden inside), Clydesdales, a rabbit and guinea pig barn, a poultry barn.

I like the Topsfield fair.

Anyway, the poultry barn was awesome. Tons of prizewinning chickens (of several breeds), ducks (of several breeds), geese, turkeys, pigeons, a few brightly-colored pheasants.

On the way out, I was looking at the "best of show" goose. First off, I was rather disturbed to notice that the sucker had fricken' TEETH. I mean, its beak was serrated -- it had TEETH. Looked scary. I mean, it looks exactly like a feathered dinosaur, but meaner. Lis keeps yelling at me when I say, "You remember -- that goose had TEETH!" because she's trying to block out the traumatic memory.

Anyway, as we were walking out past the "best of show" birds, I heard a small boy walk up behind me.

He said: "Wooah! That's a big chicken!"

So, late at night when the Midnight Creepiness was keeping me awake in my bed, as it sometimes does, I started thinking about "Intelligent Design".

Now, as most of you are aware, one of the really strong arguments against the idea that some "intelligence" of some sort set out to "design" people is that, well, people are really stupidly designed.

But then it struck me.

What if we're not the point? What if the reason that we can choke, have blind spots, have crappy knees and so forth, is that we're SUPPOSED to be disposable? What if the whole purpose of humanity is to break up the surface of the world, and then cause global warming to cause great, warm, shallow seas to cover large swaths of the world, so that the creature that the "Intelligent Designer" ACTUALLY designed can take over?

You know, the one with eyes WITHOUT blind spots, because they're outgrowths of the skin, instead of the optic nerve? The one that can't choke, because it has gills? Has no joint problems because it has no joints?

Now, the only reason why octopuses HAVEN'T developed actual sapience, I think, is because of their 1) darn short lifespans and 2) dying after breeding. But if an octopus developed that actually stayed ALIVE after breeding, and then actually RAISED its offspring, well, THAT would be a creature an intelligent Intelligent Designer could be proud of designing.

And what if that's actually what is going to happen? What if that Intelligent Designer, an octopod creature, is sleeping RIGHT NOW under the sea, influencing the dreams of mankind to help us destroy ourselves and create the world for Its children?

Ia, Ia, Cthulhu fthagan!

What is the highest military rank achieved by a penguin?

Regimental Sergeant Major Nils Olav II, a king penguin, was recently promoted to Colonel in Chief of the Royal Norwegian Guard, an elite unit of Norway's army..

No news about his new duties, but I personally suspect that, if anyone is going to need arctic amphibious assault troops, Norway is going to be the country to watch.

. . . I think I'd have to go with corn/maize and bananas.

Maize and bananas are both plants whose cultivatable, food-producing forms are very different from the closest wild relatives. In both cases, the ancestral cultivatable forms are also very different from the modern plant: the earliest cultivated forms or maize produced ears that were smaller than what we have today as "baby corn", and the earliest cultivated bananas were less than two inches long. But, even so, those forms are closer to the modern plants than to the closest wild plants.

Their genetic codes show evidence of massive tampering, of course. I mean, corn has a genetic sequence orders of magnitude more complex than that of human beings, for instance. And that's got to be a result of massive crossbreeding over thousands of years. Even so, the amount of crossbreeding that would have had to be done to get the earliest wild plants into forms that were worth crossbreeding boggles the mind. Who would have spend dozens, maybe hundreds, of years, crossbreeding plants into a form that would eventually become an amazingly useful crop? And a similar argument can be made for bananas and plantains. Clearly, it must have been the work of time-traveling genetic engineer botanists. Or aliens. Or possibly the Easter bunny.

But probably time travelers.

Plants. Plants filter and clean the air. And someone's published lists of houseplants that are particularly good at filtering out formaldehyde, benzine, and trichloroethylene, which are, apparently, the indoor pollutants most common, and most likely to cause the things which have been making me wobbly.

There are also lists of plants which are toxic to cats.

I cross-referenced them.

Here is the complete list of plants which filter out toxins and are not themselves toxic to cats:
-Spider plant
-Bamboo Palm
-Gerbera Daisy

I begin to wonder if the reason that many of the plants which are toxic to cats ARE toxic to cats is that they encapsulate and hold large amounts of formaldehyde, benzine, or trichloroethylene.

Fortunately, spider plants are really easy to care for, and bamboo palms are nice-looking, but gerbera daisies don't do much for me, are somewhat trickier to care for than I was hoping for, and are the more important ones since they deal with benzine and trichloroethylene, while spider plants and bamboo palms are mainly good for formaldehyde.

So, when we get back into the house, it's off to the greenhouse for us, I suppose. See if that helps things.

Well, by the definition, "'today' increments when I sleep", it was today.

Alex is an African Gray parrot. He can apparently generalize concepts, and understand how language relates to abstractions and generalizations. When he is given tests about how well he understands these concepts, he scores an 85% success rate.

The interesting part is the 15% that are marked wrong.

"Alex, give me the red metal key."
"Want nut."
(mark that response wrong.)
"Alex, give me the red metal key."
"Want nut. Want pasta."
(mark that response wrong.)
"Alex, give me the red metal key."
Alex turns his back on the researcher and shits.
(mark that response wrong.)
"Alex, give me the red metal key."
Alex walks over and picks up and carries over every single object on the tray EXCEPT the red metal key and places them in front of the researcher.
(mark that response wrong)

Yeah. He didn't give the response that would count as being marked "right", but it's hard to argue that he doesn't understand what's going on . . .

He's not the only parrot in the lab, although he's the oldest and has been there the longest. He and the second-longest-tenured parrot will correct the pronounciation of English words of all the other parrots.

Alex makes up new words. He likes bananas and cherries. He was given an apple once, and apparently decided he liked it, because he asked the researchers for another "banary."

Other African grays show similar levels of intelligence. One parrot, who was typically only given orange juice in the morning, asked at dinner time for "breakfast-water."

Another African gray parrot owner was watching a documentary about Alex, with her parrot, Macguyver. Macguyver turned to her and said, "Poopy on Alex. Macguyver is a good bird."

Cockatoos are not at all as skilled at mimicing human speech as parrots are, and are probably not as intelligent. Nonetheless, there are flocks of wild cockatoos that have taken to sitting around outside cafes in Australia, waiting for there to be a good number of customers sitting around, and then mimicing various cell phone rings, just to watch all the humans go diving for their bags and digging through them. These are WILD cockatoos, mind you.