I couldn’t get to the computer fast enough to remember correctly. What did the NPR commentator say – there are 3 billion e-mails sent every day? 300 billion? I do remember this: the average number of e-mails received every day is 110.
I’m please to know I’m below average, even with all the Observer mail. That’s a really bad day when I reach that high of a number. These figures must really make Postal Service officials cringe. Can you imagine opening 110 paper letters every day?
The NPR figures were a lead-in to a report on Google Mail’s new software that will help assign priorities to your incoming mail.
Posted in It's life.
By Green
– August 31, 2010
I’ll save you the Googling time and tell you the language Guugu Yimithirr comes from an aboriginal people in Australia. It’s one remote region where “egocentric” words such as left and right are not used. Janet discovered this is a NYT magazine article about language:
Guugu Yimithirr doesn’t make any use of egocentric coordinates at all. The anthropologist John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson have shown that Guugu Yimithirr does not use words like “left” or “right,” “in front of” or “behind,” to describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.”
It goes on to describe a situation that a researcher found in Bali back in the 1930s: For us, it might seem the height of absurdity for a dance teacher to say, “Now raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.”
This section starts on page 2 of this piece.
Posted in It's life.
By Green
– August 30, 2010
This sort of stuff really astounds me. The leafcutter ant creates fungal gardens that are used to feed larvae. They protect the health of their gardens by using various bacteria as antibiotics:
The antibiotics act both as herbicides and regulators of fungus growth. The antibiotics are produced by actinomycete bacteria, which live in a state of symbiosis with the ants, and are found on the bodies of the ants themselves. The symbiotic relationships benefit both the ants and the bacteria.
And there are some implications for human medicine.
Posted in Animal World.
By Green
– August 30, 2010
Posted in Video.
By Green
– August 29, 2010
The Bed Bug Registry offers people the opportunity to report on bed bug sitings in hotels and apartments. The problem here is that reports can be made anonymously, so it’s really more of an entertainment site. It could be reeking with fake reports. I could make one for the Hoffman’s house across the street.
I reported recently about the growing bedbug problem in Ohio. According to the map, Columbus is a hotbed, which is probably no surprise, along with Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Toledo’s comments (which might be true):
1. up all night killing them. 2 beds in the room, only found them in one, but dozens. room 110. a fairly clean motel. (Aug. 2010)
2. following day awoke with bites over my back and upper arms. Visited my physician tuesday 7/14 who confirmed. Haven’t found anything in my home…yet…however currently being cautious. stayed in room 213. (2009)
3. I just found one bedbug crawling on me and I smashed it. I don’t see more, but I suspect that there are more. (2008)
Posted in Animal World.
By Green
– August 29, 2010
It’s ice-free in the north again, according to the Jeff Masters weather blog. He has details and links here:
The Northwest Passage–the legendary shipping route through ice-choked Canadian waters at the top of the world–melted free of ice last week, and is now open for navigation, according to satellite mosaics available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and The University of Illinois Cryosphere Today. This summer marks the fourth consecutive year–and fourth time in recorded history–that the fabled passage has opened for navigation.
Over the past four days, warm temperatures and southerly winds over Siberia have also led to intermittent opening of the Northeast Passage, the shipping route along the north coast of Russia through the Arctic Ocean. It is now possible to completely circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean in ice-free waters, and this will probably be the case for at least a month. This year marks the third consecutive year–and the third time in recorded history–that both the Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage have melted free, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The Northeast Passage opened for the first time in recorded history in 2005, and the Northwest Passage in 2007. It now appears that the opening of one or both of these northern passages is the new norm, and business interests are taking note–commercial shipping in the Arctic is on the increase, and there is increasing interest in oil drilling. The great polar explorers of past centuries would be astounded at how the Arctic has changed in the 21st century.
Posted in Enviro.
By Green
– August 28, 2010
A fire tornado? After three months of drought in the Sao Paulo state of Brazil, a fire tornado ripped through:
Fire tornados, also known as fire whirls or fire devils, are rare and depend on certain air temperatures and currents to create a vertical, rotating column of air.
In 1923, a fire tornado ignited by the Great Kanto earthquake in Tokyo grew to the size of a large city and killed 38,000 people in 15 minutes.
Posted in It's life.
By Green
– August 28, 2010
Not only is a new Canadian car electric, but it also has a plant-based body:
The four-seat car, called the Kestrel, has an outer shell of a hemp-based composite, which developers say is lighter than glass fibre and more resilient than steel.
Top speed of 56 mph and a 100-miles range on a single charge. Excellent for many situations. I enjoy watching kestrels on utility wires alongside the road. In a few years I’ll see them on the road.
Posted in Enviro.
By Green
– August 28, 2010
What I learned today: Noah took dinosaurs onto the ark. I was reading about the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky where founder Ken Ham once stated proudly, “We are taking the dinosaurs back from the evolutionists!”
The book I was reading, written by Charles Pierce, lists three premises of what’s befallen America:
1. Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings or otherwise moves units.
2. Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.
3. Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.
Forget science and knowledge; the gut wins out.
Posted in Gone crazy.
By Green
– August 28, 2010
Brett Bovee makes a gain in the third quarter against Jonesville.
With 27 seconds remaining in the game, Jonesville scored to beat Morenci in the season opener, 37-30.
Posted in It's life.
By Green
– August 27, 2010
The Year In Review Dec 30 PDF edition (
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