Questions

It's hard to believe that it's been two months since my millipede entry.  I have a huge number of topics about which I want to blog, but not much time or energy to actually do the blogging.  I do feel that I should put up at least one post every month, though.  Since life is full of questions, I thought that I would make my sole June post about important current questions.  (Unfortunately, I couldn't post this on the last day of June due to technical difficulties, and now it is almost July, and I thought that I should finally make myself post this.)  

1. What are bitcoins? Should I know?

2. Am I expected to make a statement on the current Paula Deen controversy? 

3. What did we learn on the show tonight, Craig? (Okay, this is more of a question for Craig Ferguson from his cat.)

4. Do I look like the kind of person who would have a cigarette?  Last month I was in Virginia Beach, and I was walking down the street at night, and these three teenaged boys ride by on bicycles, and the the first one says, "You got a cigarette?", and I think, "Is this the prelude to a crime?", and say "No".  Then the second teenaged boy rides by, and then the third, and the the third says, "You got a cigarette?"  I look like the kind of person who would have a calculator.  But I don't think that I look like the kind of person who'd have a cigarette. 

5. Do I look like the kind of person who would have bitcoins?

Big Black and Red Millipede

I haven't been in the mood to blog recently, but I suppose that I should get something on the books for May.  

May be I'll throw this millipede out there. 

On Wednesday I was at Algonkian Regional Park in Loudoun County, Virginia.  These millipedes were all over the place in the wooded part of the park that I walked through.  I probably saw ten live ones, and another ten dead ones.  And they were gigantic.  Well, okay, maybe not big enough to eat a car, but they were three or four inches long.  

I'm thinking that they were Narceus americanus or something related.  

What's Going On With All These Barred Owls?

I've been watching birds since middle school.  I can't say that I'm very good at it, because being a good bird watcher requires a lot of patience, which is a trait that I don't have.  Also, it helps to get up early, which I'm not really big on. In fact, I'm not really big on getting up at all.  Anyway, in all my years of watching birds, I had never seen or heard an owl in the wild until about four years ago, when I saw the above Barred Owl (Strix varia) here in Alexandria, Virginia. 

Since then, I've seen more of them, and heard their calls all over in Alexandria and Fairfax County. (The Barred Owl says "Hoo-hoo hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo hoo-HOO", with added enthusiasm on the final hoot.)  I find it odd that I never noticed their calls before, but I suppose that it's possible.  

Then this year a Barred Owl showed up on the campus of my alma mater, Yale University, as reported by both the Yale Daily News and the Yale Herald.  (There weren't any owls when I was there.)

And finally I came across an article in the New York Times which begins with the writer describing "a frigid, star-salted night spent tromping through the Alexandria woods with David Johnson of the Global Owl Project, and listening to the stridently mournful cries of wild barred owls that remained hidden from view".

(On a geographical note, there is very little forested land in Alexandria, and in order to spend a night tromping through the woods here, one would have to tromp in a very tight circle.  A more likely location is the 1452-acre Huntley Meadows Park, which is in Fairfax County, but has an Alexandria postal address.)

And so, what is going on with all these Barred Owls, which seem omnipresent? Is it just a coincidence, or are Barred Owls undergoing a population surge?  It's not unknown for bird species to undergo a large increase in numbers . . . or a decrease.  When I was young, I used to see Hairy Woodpeckers (Picoides villosus) all the time, but I haven't seen one in fifteen years or more.

For the Sake of Clarity

For the most part, no one reads this blog.  The only people who normally read it are people whom I know, after I specifically ask them to read it.  Occasionally I will get a weird influx of views from somewhere like Russia or Germany, but that's probably some spam-related thing.  

But just in case someone should read this blog who doesn't know me, I would like to make clear that, although I am William Robertson, I am not this William Robertson. 

Late Night Warfare Continues

Last week it was decreed that Jimmy Fallon would be taking over hosting duties at The Tonight Show in early 2014.  This development surprises me, as I had expected Leno to stay on The Tonight Show until he literally died on stage.  (And when I say "literally" here, I literally mean "literally", and not "figuratively", in that I expected Leno's heart to stop beating while he was on stage at the NBC lot in Burbank.)  I am also surprised because I remember the infamous Conan Debacle of 2009 to 2010. 

It feels to me that the Conan Debacle happened just yesterday.  Yet it began almost four years ago.  Someone who was in eighth grade when Conan assumed command of The Tonight Show would now be getting ready to graduate from high school.  Funny how time flies, as Tears for Fears said at the end of one of their songs in the Eghties.  (This is not the first mention of Tears for Fears on this blog, but it's been almost three years since the last time that I mentioned them, so, once again . . . funny how time flies.) 

History makes me think that this new Tonight Show experiment won't work.  In 2009, people didn't want funny Conan, they wanted unfunny Leno.  And I have to expect that in 2014 people won't want funny Fallon, they'll want unfunny Leno.  (This isn't to say that Fallon is as funny as Conan, but Fallon is definitely funnier then Leno.)

As for me, I'll probably keep watching Jimmy Kimmel, because although Kimmel isn't nearly as funny as Letterman was when Letterman was funny, Kimmel is funnier than Letterman is now. 

And then there is Craig Ferguson.  Ferguson is funny, and possibly the smartest of the late night hosts, but while Jimmy Fallon's show feels like a party, Ferguson's show feels like what one would expect to see on television at 1:00 am—a man alone in a dimly-lit room with a robotic skeleton.  

I am reminded of an odd thought that I have been having recently, which is that the Celts dominate late night.  Ferguson is from Scotland, Conan describes himself as "110% Irish", Leno is half Scottish, and Fallon is half Irish.  I don't know if it's coincidence, or if there is some cultural reason for it.  Back in 2009, it even caused me a little confusion between Conan and Fallon—two tall, thin Irish guys from Saturday Night Live, both hosting late-night talk shows on NBC.  Of course, talking about matters of ethnicity like this could lead to trouble from the perspective of political correctness, but as long as I stick with discussing freakishly pale northern European-derived people like me, I should be okay, and I won't need to record a country-rap crossover song about being an accidental racist.

There's Plenty of Room

On the same day that I learned about the existence of a certain Lovecraftian microbe, I also came across another apparent pop-culture-related name in a scientific  discipline–a Paleolithic archaeological site in the mountains of Spain called Hotel California.  This is presumably a reference to the famous Eagles song of the same name.  I haven't been able to find out why the site has that name, especially since most online discussions of it are in Spanish.  My only guess is that, assuming that you're one of the skeletons there, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.  But that would be true of any archaeological site.  And I don't even know whether Hotel California even has any human bones.   

I should perhaps point out here that I have never been a fan of the Eagles, nor am I much of a fan of the solo music of Don Henley, with the exception of the Building the Perfect Beast album, which was an unaccountable work of genius, and a major force in my middle school musical life.  

Cthulhu Is Real!

I have not blogged for a long time.  There are a lot of things that I want to do, including blogging, but spending most of my days at work makes me too tired to do much of anything else.  But now I have come across something that roused me from my torpor.      

I have blogged in the past about organisms being given scientific names that honor rock stars and other celebrities.  

I have also blogged about my enjoyment of the gothic horror stories of H. P. Lovecraft.  

And now the two elements have come together.  In a recent paper in the online journal PLoS ONE, a group of biologists have named a new species of parabasalid (a type of single-celled eukaryote) after Cthulhu, the otherworldly entity who is the defining character in Lovecraft's fantasy universe.  The new organism, Cthulhu macrofasciculumque, lives symbiotically in the digestive tracts of termites.  (Normally I restrict my blogging about biological nomenclature to extinct organisms, but I ventured out of the realm of paleontology for this one.)

The paper describes the derivation of the genus name as follows:

The name is based on the fictional many tentacled, cephalopod-headed demon found in the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, specifically The Call of Cthulhu. The tentacle-headed appearance given by the coordinated beat pattern of the anterior flagellar bundle of Cthulhu cells is reminiscent of this demon. The name is supposedly impossible to pronounce as it comes from an alien language, but currently it is most often pronounced “ke-thoo-loo”.

Lovecraft scholars might quibble at the description of Cthulhu as a "demon".

The scientists also named another genus of parabasalid, Cthylla, after a daughter of Cthulhu created by author Brian Lumley in a Lovecraft-inspired story.  (I was not aware that Cthulhu had any children.)  

What is most surprising to me about all this is not that it happened, but that it didn't happen a long time ago. Given the popularity of Lovecraft's fiction among smart, nerdy people, I would have thought that "Cthulhu" would have been made a genus name thirty or forty years ago.  And I also would have thought that the name would have been used for something more impressive than a protist that lives in the gut of a termite.  (What is is that they say about real estate–the three most important things are location, location, location?)