Ramblings & ephemera
From Carl Zimmer’s “The Return of the Puppet Masters” (Corante: 17 January 2006):
I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a grazing mammal might eat it. It’s [...]
Posted on November 24th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: science, weird | No Comments »
From Charles C. Mann’s “America, Found & Lost” (National Geographic: May 2007):
It is just possible that John Rolfe was responsible for the worms—specifically the common night crawler and the red marsh worm, creatures that did not exist in the Americas before Columbus. Rolfe was a colonist in Jamestown, Virginia, the first successful English colony in [...]
Posted on November 21st, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | No Comments »
From Glenn Greenwald’s “A tragic legacy: How a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the Bush presidency” (Salon: 20 June 2007):
One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness — who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a [...]
Posted on October 11th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, law, politics | 1 Comment »
From Wade Davis’ “Wade Davis: an Inuit elder and his shit knife” (Boing Boing: 26 September 2008):
The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. [...]
Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | No Comments »
From Steve Marsh’s “Homage to Mister Berryman” (Mpls St Paul Magazine: September 2008):
Berryman’s last words to Kate came on that January morning—he told her he was going to campus to clean his office. He had never said that before, she says, but Kate, who was attending Al-Anon meetings at the time, was trying “not to [...]
Posted on September 28th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, language & literature | No Comments »
From Atul Gawande’s “Final Cut: Medical arrogance and the decline of the autopsy” (The New Yorker: 19 March 2001):
… in the nineteenth century … [some doctors] waited until burial and then robbed the graves, either personally or through accomplices, an activity that continued into the twentieth century. To deter such autopsies, some families would post [...]
Posted on April 12th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, history, science, security | No Comments »
From Atul Gawande’s “Final Cut: Medical arrogance and the decline of the autopsy” (The New Yorker: 19 March 2001):
The Roman physician Antistius performed one of the earliest forensic examinations on record, in 44 B.C., on Julius Caesar, documenting twenty-three stab wounds, including a final, fatal stab to the chest.
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Did [...]
Posted on April 12th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, history, science | No Comments »
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (IV: 7):
BURGUNDY:
Doubtless he would have made a noble knight;
See, where he lies inhearsed in the arms
Of the most bloody nurser of his harms!
inhearsed: laid as in a coffin
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1 Henry [...]
Posted on January 16th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: language & literature, word of the day | Comments Off
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (IV: 7):
TALBOT:
Where is my other life? mine own is gone;
O, where’s young Talbot? where is valiant John?
Triumphant death, smear’d with captivity,
Young Talbot’s valour makes me smile at thee:
When he perceived me shrink and on my knee,
His bloody sword he brandish’d over me,
And, like a hungry lion, did commence
Rough [...]
Posted on January 16th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: language & literature | Comments Off
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (IV: 5):
TALBOT:
Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son,
Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon.
Come, side by side together live and die.
And soul with soul from France to heaven fly.
(Talbot’s son refuses to flee & leave his father, even though it likely means his death in [...]
Posted on January 16th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: language & literature | Comments Off
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (III: 4):
Scene: Paris - The Palace
BASSET:
Villain, thou know’st the law of arms is such
That whoso draws a sword, ’tis present death,
Or else this blow should broach thy dearest blood.
Blackstone in his Commentaries (IV. 124): “By the ancient law … fighting in the king’s palace … was punished with [...]
Posted on January 15th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, language & literature, law | Comments Off
From the email archives:
On Sunday 30 May 2004 11:32 pm, Jerry Hubbard wrote:
> How is everyone? Hope the storms did not harm anyone.
My basement flooded twice, my tenant’s kitchen had water streaming in through the window frame, our backyard fence was blown down, the umbrella on our deck was blown off the deck into the [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, true stories | Comments Off
From Reuters’s “Body found in bed 5 years after death” (4 October 2006):
Austrian authorities have discovered the body of a man who apparently died at home in bed five years ago, a Vienna newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The corpse of Franz Riedl, thought to have been in his late 80s when he died, went undetected for [...]
Posted on October 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, true stories, weird | Comments Off
From Charlie LeDuff’s “Parked in a Desert, Waiting Out the Winter of Life” (The New York Times: 17 December 2004):
Directions to purgatory are as follows: from Los Angeles drive east past Palm Springs into the bowels of the Mojave Desert. Turn south at the stench of the Salton Sea. Proceed down Highway 111 to the [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, fiction | Comments Off
From Patrick Smith’s “Ask the pilot” (Salon: 4 August 2006):
The wing is shorn off. It lies upside down in the dirt amid a cluster of desert bushes. The flaps and slats are ripped away, and a nest of pipes sprouts from the engine attachment pylon like the flailing innards of some immense dead beast. Several [...]
Posted on August 20th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, business, fiction, technology | Comments Off
From PR Newswire’s “OnStar Achieves Another First as Winner of Good Housekeeping’s ‘Good Buy’ Award for Best Servic” (3 December 2004):
Each month on average, OnStar receives about 700 airbag notifications and 11,000 emergency assistance calls, which include 4,000 Good Samaritan calls for a variety of emergency situations. In addition, each month OnStar advisors respond to [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, business, security, technology | Comments Off
From Daniel Engber’s “How Much of Me Is Burned?” (Slate: 11 July 2006):
In the 1950s, doctors developed an easy way to estimate the ratio of the area of a patient’s burns to the total area of his skin. The system works by assigning standard percentages to major body parts. (Most of these happen to [...]
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, science | Comments Off
From Noah Shachtman’s “Chameleon Weapons Defy Detection” (Defense Tech: 27 March 2006):
Last week I talked to Anthony Taylor, managing partner of an outfit which makes weapons which can be hidden in plain sight. You can be looking right at one without realizing what it is.
One type is the exact size and shape of a credit [...]
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, cool stuff, security | Comments Off
From Wikipedia’s “French Revolution” (5 July 2006):
On July 14, 1789, after hours of combat, the insurgents seized the Bastille prison, killing the governor, Marquis Bernard de Launay, and several of his guards. Although the Parisians released only seven prisoners; four forgers, two lunatics, and a sexual offender, the Bastille served as a potent symbol of [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | Comments Off
From Wikipedia’s “Napoleon I of France” (5 July 2006):
The French suffered greatly in the course of a ruinous retreat; the Army had begun as over 650,000 frontline troops, but in the end fewer than 40,000 crossed the Berezina River (November 1812) to escape. In total French losses in the campaign were 570,000 against about 400,000 [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | Comments Off