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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| Anyone who's followed me for some time knows I appreciate Ben Franklin. I hope my hometown (known as Thomas Jefferson's stomping grounds) won't call me a traitor for it. But everyone has skeletons in their closet and, as this older Smithsonian article points out, sometimes they're literal: Why Were There So Many Skeletons Hidden in Benjamin Franklinâs Basement?  During restorations in the 1990s, more than 1,200 pieces of bone surfaced beneath the founding fatherâs London home This being an article originally released way back in 2013, I had to check to see if I've covered it before. Not in this blog, certainly, but in the previous one. I didn't find it, so perhaps I didn't. Well, Smithsonian did an unspecified update last year, so even if I did feature it at some point, it was almost certainly before the update. The future founding father left his English home and returned to America in 1775. Two centuries later, bones from more than a dozen bodies were found in the basement, where they had been buried in a mysterious, windowless room beneath the garden. Well, I can understand how that might seem suspicious. If anyone found purely hypothetical bodies buried beneath my purely hypothetical garden, I couldn't blame them for backing away from me slowly. The skeletons had gone unnoticed until the 1990s, when historians decided to turn Franklinâs old haunt into a museum. Presumably British historians, which, when you think about it, is about as weird as American Southerners putting up statues of Union generals. Franklin was a storied revolutionary and high-ranking Freemason, so itâs easy to wonder what dark secrets he may have hidden in his basement chamber. Yeah, like, was he fighting the Revolutionary War one Brit at a time, before the war even started? But the truth, it turns out, isnât quite so dark. I am both relieved and disappointed. âThe most plausible explanation is not mass murder, but an anatomy school run by Benjamin Franklinâs young friend and protĂ©gĂ©, William Hewson,â as the Guardianâs Maev Kennedy wrote in 2003. Franklin was a lot of things, but I don't think "murderer" was one. One never really knows, though. Hewson was an anatomist who began his career as a student of William Hunter, a famous obstetrician who also studied anatomy. Following a dispute, Hewson parted ways with his teacher and started his own anatomy school at 36 Craven, where his mother-in-law, Margaret Stevenson, was the landlady. Imagine going up to your mother-in-law and going "Can I rent out your house to desecrate corpses?" In Franklinâs time, the study of anatomy was an ethically ambiguous business. I have a strong feeling that religious doctrines had a lot to do with that. â[Franklin] was a champion of scienceâhe was supportive of young researchers and others that could exemplify his passion for knowledge and innovation,â Balisciano told Discover magazine. âHe probably loved the idea that this scientific work would be going on.â Obviously speculation, but it tracks. In 1774, a 34-year-old Hewson died of sepsis, which he had contracted by accidentally cutting himself during a procedure. I could be wrong about this, but I don't think the idea of diseases spread through invisible microbes really caught on until the following century. While previous generations had some inkling, there was no science backing them up, just empiricism.So, I'm not sure if the mystery is truly solved, but at least there's a plausible explanation that doesn't involve Ben Franklin being an early Jack the Ripper. |
| Yes, sometimes I find an article about actual writing instead of just writing about an article. This one, especially helpful to fellow nonfiction writers, is from Mental Floss: What âSicâ MeansâAnd How To Use It Correctly The way writers use the word âsicâ is a little more nuanced than its literal meaning Of course, I knew what 'sic' translates to from a very early age, being a Virginian. "Sic Semper Tyrannis" is our state motto, and it's on the flag right under the boob. But it's a little different when used on its own, in the service of clarifying quoted material. Youâre perusing a news article when there, right in the middle of a quote, is the word sic encased in brackets. Since this is far from the first article youâve ever read, maybe you already know what sic signifies: that the word or phrase directly preceding it hasnât been altered from the original quoteâeven though it might be misspelled or simply a strange word choice. I've used it myself, though not without wondering at its utility when posting stuff on the internet. I'd assume that any quote I read online has been copy/pasted (it's what I do), so any errors or typos get copied exactly. Probably no need for the three-letter editorial insertion, and it often feels like I'm just being smug, as in "This is an error I wouldn't make, and I caught it, ain't I smart?" But why sic? The shortest possible answer to that question is this: Because Latin. It's often called a dead language, but I prefer to think of it as a zombie shuffling across the written word. An undead language. It literally means âthusâ or âso,â as in sic semper tyrannis, âthus ever to tyrants.â In case you were still wondering what our state motto meant. It was also the most famous line quoted by actor John Wilkes Booth. But that hasnât stopped people from coming up with a slew of âbackronymsâ that describe it in slightly more detail: âspelling is correct,â âsaid in copy,â âsaid in context,â etc. Okay, first of all, I see what you did there with your sneakly little zombie Latin "etc." Second, backronyms annoy me. Sure, they serve a mnemonic purpose, but then you get people believing and insisting that "tips" came from "to insure prompt service" (it certainly did not) or that "fuck" came from "for unlawful carnal knowledge" or "fornicating under consent of the King" (it absolutely, positively, did not.) The only exceptions for my annoyance are humorous ones, like Ford (found on road, dead) or Chevrolet (cracked heads, every valve rattles, oil leaks every time). I doubt anyone actually believes those car brands started out as acronyms. As for when you might want to use it, there are a couple different scenarios. One is when a quote features a typo, a misspelling, or a grammatical error. One of my smuggest uses for it is when I catch someone doing something like mistaking "its" for "it's" or vice-versa (dammit, zombie!). Sic can also come in handy if youâre writing something that the reader might accidentally interpret as a mistake. That's a little less obvious, but the article provides an example. As the Columbia Journalism Reviewâs Merrill Perlman put it in 2014, sic âcan come off as snarky, giving a sense of âwe know better,â at the expense of the original author.â Which is exactly what I'd expect someone hit with a sic to say. In 2019, the Associated Press Stylebook announced that it would henceforth retire sic for good. Yeah, let me know when The New Yorker follows suit. âMost people donât speak, off the cuff, in grammatically perfect sentences,â the Stylebook tweeted. Okay, but what about written works? We tend to hold them to a higher standard, especially nonfiction works. If I had to slog through a technical paper written in the style of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, I'd give up. Hell, I gave up on Faulkner. For example, if a source says âUsing sic make the writer seem insufferably smug,â you could update âmakeâ to âmake[s]â without employing sic and proving your sourceâs point. Nah, I'd rather be insufferably smug. There are, as always, exceptions. Not every technical error in writing results in an ambiguous meaning. Like when someone uses "it's" incorrectly, where it's obviously meant to be a possessive and not a contraction. But that error is so egregious, I'm going to call it out anyway. Which, of course, guarantees that I'll mess it up sometimes, and the zombies will come for my brains. |
| This Bloomberg CityLab article is two years old, but climate change doesn't work that fast, so it's probably still relevant. While a fascinating exercise, the headline is a bit misleading. A Cross-Country Road Trip Where It's Always 70 Degrees An updated map from climate scientist Brian Brettschneider provides year-long interior and coastal routes that span more than 7,000 miles. The misleading bit is the "always 70 degrees" thing (I'm giving the use of Fahrenheit a pass because the article is very clearly US-oriented). But there's no need to be too pedantic about it. For travelers in search of the perfect weather, a climate scientist in Anchorage, Alaska, has mapped out the ultimate US road trip where the temperature is always 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The maps included in the article clarify: the routes follow "70°F Normal High Temperature." His original trips span more than 9,000 miles coast to coast for the contiguous US and more than 13,000 with an Alaska stop â the latter also draws on data from Environment Canada. Why Hawaii was excluded is left as an exercise for the reader. Both of the new routes manage to stay below 8,000 miles, unless travelers opt for a âconnector segmentâ that passes through Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia in April. I'd recommend that segment. Nice scenery. As an avid mapmaker who has made thousands and thousands of maps typically focused on climate, he says itâs hard to know what part of his work will resonate with people. But the overlap between climate and the road trip caught fire. As I said above, it probably doesn't change much in two years. But over longer time frames, sure. Like the first time, Brettschneider says while making the map was a fun exercise, he wonât be making the trip, but he would be interested in hearing from anyone who is planning to do so. It sounds like something I'd do, even though I consider 70°F to be entirely too cold, but I have cats to take care of. |
| Today, from PopSci, evidence that the US is actually #1 at something other than gun violence and imprisonment: US ranks first in swearing âSome may find it disappointing,â said the new studyâs Australian co-author. I especially love how the article anticipates the Krakatoa-scale explosion of doubt coming from Down Under, and states right up front in the sub-head that one of the authors was Australian. While the headline filled me with great joy, as usual, I can't just take a headline's word for this shit. Congratulations, United States. The nation may lag behind in healthcare, education, and life expectancy, but Americans still reign supreme in at least one wayâswearing like a bunch of drunken sailors. My father was very careful, as a sailor, to avoid getting too drunk or swearing excessively. While I respect that, I've traveled a different path. Linguists in Australia recently analyzed the Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE), a massive database containing over 1.9 billion words from 1.8 million web pages across 340,000 websites in 20 English-speaking countries. Oh, so they're only talking about written works. It's entirely possible that Australia still has the top spot with spoken cuss words, so calm down, kangaroos. âRather than being a simple, easily definable phenomenon, vulgarity proves to be a complex and multifaceted linguistic phenomenon,â Schweinberger and Monash University co-author Kate Burridge wrote in the journal Lingua. I know people like to say, "What's the big deal? It's just words." Yeah, well, if words are just words, there should be no problem with ethnic or religious slurs, right? No. Words have power. Yes, we give them that power. But the power is there. âSome may find it disappointing, but the research found the United States and Great Britain ranked ahead of Australia in terms of using vulgar language online,â Schweinberger said in an accompanying statement. Now, I can think of one possible reason why the results skewed the way they did: while, as I noted, words have power, they have different power in different cultures. It's entirely possible that, in the US and UK, we have a greater awareness of the base nature of certain words, so using them signals a breaking of a taboo. The taboo (which is a word introduced into English from Tongan by Captain James Cook, the same guy who was the first European to visit Australia) has different strength depending on location. One of the study authors offers a different hypothesis: âOne possible explanation is that Australians are more conservative when they write online but not so much when they are face-to-face,â he said. âAustralians really see vulgarity, swearing and slang as part of our cultureâweâre very invested in it.â Well, then, I guess someone needs to do a goddamned follow-up study. Despite its limitation (focusing on writing rather than speaking), I find the study amusing. As with most studies of this nature, I wouldn't take it to be the Absolute Truth, but at least it's evidence that the US is actually best at something besides fucking everyone in the metaphorical arse. |
| From PopSci, modern alchemy: Refrigerator-sized machine makes gasoline out of thin air The Aircela acts like a mini direct air capture facility, sucking up carbon dioxide and then synthesizing it into real, usable gasoline for cars. When you run a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine, in ideal principle, the exhaust consists of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor (in reality, of course, nothing is ideal, so you get other chemicals from incomplete combustion). So the idea that one could, with the proper setup and energy input, reverse this, doesn't seem completely farfetched. And yet, reading this article, every fiber of my being cried out "fraud." In 2022, transportation was responsible for an estimated 28 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The majority of those emissions came from everyday gas-powered cars. Put another way, nearly 3/4 of greenhouse gas emissions came from something other than transportation. Most Americans also still just arenât interested in ditching their gas guzzlers to save the planet. But what if they didnât have to? It wouldn't save the planet. At best, it would slow down the destruction. (Yes, yes, I know, "the planet will be fine." "Save the planet" really means "protect the biosphere.") Thatâs the alluringâif wildly ambitiousâvision being presented by New Yorkâbased fuels startup Aircela. Earlier this month, the company announced it had created the worldâs first functional machine capable of generating real, usable car gasoline âdirectly from the air.â The article is fairly recent, so the announcement would have been in May. Aircelaâs new device, roughly the size of a commercial refrigerator, combines direct air capture (DAC) with on-site fuel synthesis to create gasoline using just air, water, and renewable energy. No fossil fuels, they say, are required. You know, it occurs to me that this technology (if it's real, which, to reiterate, I seriously doubt) could be used for more important things. The manufacture of ethanol, specifically. Aircela demonstrated the process, making gasoline directly from air, in front of a live audience in New York. David Copperfield once made the Statue of Liberty disappear in front of a live audience in New York. Also, alchemists used sleight-of-hand to "prove" to their patrons that they've turned lead into gold. Though most would describe this proof of concept as a âprototype,â company co-founder and CEO Eric Dahlgren takes some umbrage with that label. Sure, go against basic English word usage because it offends you. Is it in mass-production yet? No? Then it's a prototype. âWe didnât build a prototype. We built a working machine,â Dahlgren said in a statement. âWe want people to walk away knowing this isnât too good to be trueâit actually works.â It's the first one. It's a prototype. Aircelaâs device essentially functions as a compact, portable direct carbon capture facility (DAC) unit. Carbon capture generally refers to the practice of removing carbon dioxide from sources like smokestacks or fossil fuel power plants. Don't get me wrong; I'd love to be wrong. About this. But it really does sound like fakery. A spokesperson from Aircela told Popular Science that their machine is designed to capture 10 kgs of COâ each day. From that, it can produce 1 gallon of gasoline. The machine can store up to 17 gallons of fuel in its tank. Yes, we Americans can switch easily from one system of measurement to another even in the same paragraph. That's a superpower. In other words, at least in its current form, the device wouldnât be capable of filling up a carâs tank with gas overnight. That doesn't seem insurmountable. If it's real. But okay, let's assume for a moment, for the sake of discussion, that it works as advertised, and it's possible to create and distribute a reasonably-sized and -priced machine that turns air into gasoline/petrol. Now, think about how large oil corporations would feel about that, and what lengths they might go through to stop it from cutting into their profits. At the very least, they hand over a few million dollars for the patent and then... sit on it. Cynical? Damn right I'm cynical. It's hardly the first time someone has claimed to pull a rabbit out of thin air. |
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