Long Time No Update

You may have noticed that I've pretty much stopped updating. You may wonder why. I mean, there's certainly a lot more interesting information out there. Surely I haven't run out of things to talk about already, have I?

Well, there's two reasons I've stopped updating. The first reason is pretty simple. This blog takes up a lot of time. Generally about an hour of writing per entry with two to three hours of researching to make sure I've got my facts right. And trust me, making sure the facts are right have saved my ass a couple of times. The truth is out there, but it takes quite a bit of digging to find sometimes. That said, if time were the only issue, I'd just update less often (look at January, where I worked, compared to December, which I mostly had off). No, there's another reason I've pretty much stopped updating.

This is the other reason why.
Clicky-poppy to go to its Amazon.ca page.

The Book Of General Ignorance is perhaps the best trivia book I've ever stumbled across. It not only dispels a lot of common misconceptions, it's well written and more than just facts. It also gives context, which is extremely important. It sometimes has relevant quotations, or amusing images to go along with it.

Does that sound familiar? Sound a little like what I try to do with my blog? Yeah, I thought so too. Which is, in a way, totally validating. At the other end of the spectrum though, it's totally discouraging. Seeing what you're trying to do done elsewhere, and done extremely well, leaves you with a feeling of, "Why should I bother?" Add in the fact that they've already covered a lot of the ground that I have (at least I'm reassured that my fact-checking is as good as theirs), or that I plan to, and it leaves me wondering why I bother writing at all, when I could just suggest you buy the book.

So that's what I'm doing. Go buy the book. If you like this blog, you'll love the book.

What will I do with my little corner of the web? I'm not sure. I may start using it as a place to write short fiction (the use of my original blog, back before the word blog existed). I may use it to vent my frustrations at the world. I may periodically update it under its current function as a repository of fun facts. What I do know is that it won't be updated with any frequency for a while.

To the rare few of you who have visited, I thankee sai. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Now go buy the book.

Garfield Beat Her To It

Here's your soundtrack for the post

September 18th, 1978 was an auspicious day in history. It was a hot (high of 31°C) September day in Muncie, Indiana, and the work-week was just starting. It was a sweaty Autumn day. It was the first time that Garfield the cat said, "I hate Mondays." He wasn't the first person to declare a hatred of Mondays, and he certainly wouldn't be the last. Perhaps the second most famous declaration against Mondays would take place less than a year later.

Bob Geldof, perhaps best known nowadays for his charitable works, once wrote a song for his band the Boomtown Rats called "I Don't Like Mondays" (which you're hopefully listening to right now via the YouTube clip above). The thing is though, the line "I don't like Mondays" wasn't his, not really. He got it from a piece of breaking news he saw coming over the telex while doing a radio interview in January 1979.

Telex: Think a old-timey stock ticker combined with a
typewriter, only it gives news instead of stock info.

What was the news coming in over the wire? That 16 year old Brenda Ann Spencer had decided that a good way to liven up her boring Monday was to start taking pot shots at the elementary school across the street from her house with a .22 rifle.

Geldof said, regarding the writing of the song:

I read it as it came out. Not liking Mondays as a reason for doing somebody in, is a bit strange. ... And the journalists interviewing her said, 'Tell me why?' It was such a senseless act. It was the perfect senseless act and this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it. So perhaps I wrote the perfect senseless song to illustrate it.

I have to agree with Bob, that's a pretty weird reason for deciding to take thirty shots at a crowd of children. According to Spencer, that's not entirely the whole story though, although I should note that the parole board hasn't been convinced by her justifications. She has, at various points, claimed that she was on drugs at the time (PCP & alcohol) and that she was physically and sexually abused as a child. If either were true, the killings wouldn't be forgivable, but at least they'd make a little more sense than "I don't like Mondays."

Unfortunately, I tend to agree with the parole board on this. There's no evidence that she was on drugs at the time (she claims that the prosecution and her attorney conspired to hide the evidence), and initial police reports say that even though there was plenty of alcohol in her house at the time of her arrest, she didn't appear to be intoxicated. Add in that she told them that she had fantasies about becoming a sniper. And she had bragged to classmates that "she was going to do something big to get on TV," the week before. As for the abuse thing? The first time she mentioned it was at a parole hearing in 2001, not at any of the court mandated counseling sessions she'd had in the twenty years she'd been incarcerated. I'm not saying that's proof that she wasn't abused (far from it), but still, it gives me doubts. If I was creeping up on 40 years old and had spent most of my life in prison, I'd start looking for reasons for the parole board to look on my case with some sympathy.

Unless I was worried about ending up like Brooks Hatlen...

So, she put thirty bullets into a group of kids, what was the result? Two men killed (the principal and the janitor), eight kids and one police officer injured. The principal, one Burton Wragg, was actually shot and killed while saving the life of one Chris Stanley who went on to become a teacher himself. Mike Suchar, the janitor, was killed while he tried to drag Wragg's body to somewhere that he could get medical attention. Mary Clark, aged 8 at the time, was shot and didn't tell anyone for several hours. That kid was either in shock, or she had an unhealthy obsession with school. As for the police officer, one Rob Robb (not making that up, I swear), he was shot through the neck but was stabilized by the time the news had hit the papers.

After a long standoff with the police, Brenda eventually gave herself up to the police, and she's been in prison the entire time since, barring her time in court, which isn't surprising given the comments she made either during the standoff or during the time before her trial:

• "I just did it for the fun of it. I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day. I have to go now. I shot a pig. I think and I want to shoot more. I'm having too much fun [to surrender]."
• "I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun"
• "It was just like shooting ducks in a pond"
• "[The children] looked like a herd of cows standing around; it was really easy pickings"
•  That she was going to "come out shooting"

"I Don't Like Mondays": A problem better solved with lasagna than with a rifle.

---

Sources:
Telex image taken from Al-Ahlia Contracting Group
Image of Brooks hanging taken from JoBlo.com


Indiana State Climate Office
The Milwaukee Journal, Jan 29, 1979 edition
The Boomtown Rats website - it seems to be the official fan-website, not the offficial band website
San Diego Union-Tribune article on Chris Stanley
Wikpedia articles on I Don't Like Mondays and Brenda Ann Spencer
Snopes.com

One edit made out of respect for the deceased

Dealing Neither With Nethers Nor Drinks

Today's topic is Vaginicola.  Get your laughs and jokes out of the way now.  This is serious business.  DEADLY serious.

Alright, not deadly serious, but we can't sit back all day and make jokes about carbonated douching.  Particularly since colas don't make effective spermicides. Cracked has covered it, the Mythbusters have covered it (note: illegal streaming, watch at your own risk, 47min mark), and even if you don't trust them, Snopes has covered it too.  I've even tracked down the actual research which can be found here (PDF) (which in turn disagrees with earlier research which can be found here (PDF) ).  Basically, I'm not wasting a whole lot of time on this particular piece of incorrect information.

Alright, vaginicola.  What is it?  Well, it's derived from two Latin words, vagina and colere, which mean sheath and to inhabit respectively.  See, now you're thinking entirely different dirty thoughts, aren't you?  Come on!  Minds out of the gutter here people!  This is science!  Well, non-dirty science.  I'll leave the dirty science to the Kinsey Institute (for now...).

Alright, time for the big reveal.  Are you ready to see some vaginicola?  Some award winning vaginicola imagery?  A picture of a nice, wet vaginicola?  Alright, now I'm getting dirty, so here you go, taken from the 2006 Biomedical Image Awards... vaginicola!

The bluish bit is the sheath, the green
bit in the bottom image is the vaginicola itself.

If you're like me, you look at that an go, "Wow.  That's awesome."  Shortly thereafter you go, "Now, what the heck is it?"  First off, that's not the actual colour.  It's been digitally altered to better show the different bits.  With that disclaimer out of the way, it's a protist (which is a convenient word that biologists have frowned upon for almost 50years, but they don't really have a good alternative yet, so I'm using it).  That means it's really small.  How small?  They're measured in μm (micrometers), and the sheath that they secrete for themselves is about as long as a human hair is wide.  Yeah, they're super tiny.

They live in fresh water and they eat... ummm... algae?  Bacteria?  Not entirely sure, since there's almost no actual information about them online other than a vague definition and a few pictures.  The lack of information is actually kind of nice, since it means that I've pretty much said all there is to say, and the only things I can still say about it are just useless gobbledygook unless you're a biologist.  So here's another picture, with two vaginicolas living in one lorica (the proper name for the sheath).

Two vaginicolas are better than one!
Click to embiggen, clicky-poppy.

 Vaginicola: Sounds messy, isn't.

---

Sources:
Colour enhanced image of vaginicola taken from the 2006 Biomedical Image Awards
Image of two vaginicola taken from the Protist Image Database


Dictionary.com
Wikipedia article on Peritrichs, the closest thing they have to vaginicolas, which are a subset of a subset of peritrichs