invasivore this

news you can’t use: 7-jul

Welcome back! It was Independence Day here in the States so I took a long weekend and celebrated in the tradition of my people.

Okay, I didn’t really celebrate in the tradition of my people. But I did enjoy this story about our national anthem and its history. I think it’s a pretty good anthem, as far as these things go, but be sure to check out the other anthems at the World Cup.

I also had a pretty good view of some fireworks outside my living room window and I guess Americans have been setting off fireworks the whole time, but the part of fireworks that I’m most interested in is the chemistry.

While we’re talking about chemistry, this article about suicide in the chem department of Harvard is depressing, and so is The Fourth State of Matter, Jo Ann Beard’s essay from 1996 about the University of Iowa shooting in ‘91. It’s such an incredible, and incredibly awful, piece of writing; a friend linked it on facebook a while back and I didn’t know what I was in for. It’s about her dying dog and her dying marriage and the rest becomes slowly and appallingly clear. No excerpt can possibly do it justice.

But hey, the Onion reports a new STEM initiative hopes to inspire women to earn less than men! Already it’s working.

Ahem. Anyway. Before that super depressing digression, we were talking about anniversaries; before the 4th of July was the 28th of June, and 100 years ago this happened:

…in Sarajevo, disgruntled nationalist Gavrilo Princip fired a shot. An Archduke and his wife died, the world mourned and fulminated, and in a rash of misunderstanding and patriotic throes the nations of Europe went to war with each other, a war that in its calculated butchery exceeded all that came before it and changed the course of history.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about Princip, and Sarajevo itself is ambivalent about the event. For more on World War I, Dan Carlin’s hardcore history podcast is excellent and the Atlantic just finished posting a 10-part series about WWI in photos, which includes photos of animals at war.

Animals in general have been in the news lately for assorted reasons, like here’s Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos eating a cockroach.

Yum! I don’t think cockroaches are an “invasive species” but I guess there’s the beginnings of a movement now where people just try to eat invasive species and restore ecological balance that way. “Invasivores,” these people are called.

Norman’s Cay is currently the only American restaurant north of South Carolina serving lionfish, but that’s likely to change soon, thanks to a fast-spreading trend seeking to use our appetites as a way to control the vast numbers of plants and animals colonizing new habitats and destroying native species. Yet as the second lionfish taco quickly disappeared from my plate, I couldn’t help but wonder: Can we really take down invasives with knives and forks?

One invasive species not mentioned in the article is the starling, which was introduced to the States by a Shakespeare fanatic intent on bringing over all birds mentioned by the bard.

I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak.

Some people, amirite? In other animal news, a bunch of red panda cubs were born at SCBI and they’re adorable; tigers have been attacking more people than usual lately; some scientists worked with chimps to learn that musical talent is largely innate; and the Hairpin has a super important update about Frosty, a baby goat in a wheelchair. I have to admit that before I started this newsletter, I did not fully appreciate the cuteness of baby goats. The running of the baby goats remains the best.

And that actually ticks off all my mindmap boxes for today.

Otherwise I’m…

• watching Transformers, which is set to become the mostest bestestselling movie in China ever, even though by all accounts it is a terrible movie.
• shocking myself, which is maybe preferable to being alone with my thoughts? Seriously. There’s a study where people were left alone to think but given the option to administer electric shocks to themselves. 67 percent of men took the hit. Amazing!
• eating hot dogs. To no one’s surprise, Joey Chestnut won his 8th consecutive hot dog eating contest. Chestnut is the most dominant athlete in like a century. I try not to be judgy but man, it grosses me out.
• checking out handwriting. BIC is engaged in a Universal Typeface Experiment and is soliciting handwriting samples from all over the world to come up with an “average.” It’s a cool idea but the website drives me CRAZY. It is terrible to navigate and not at all intuitive, and also it does not include numbers. Hrmph.
• folding my arms. This illustrated story about the World Cup of arm-folding is fantastic good times. Cameroon’s Benoît Assou-Ekotto is the winner:

And that’s it for today! Welcome back to the fray. Be careful out there.

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