Microsoft is still fighting tooth and nail to destroy the laptop, or goad me to, or something.
Meme
Found on the Mirror. Lens traces it to Joni Walters on Instagram.
Music
Little River Band.
38 Special.
Gerry Rafferty.
Dan Fogelberg.
Wednesday, June 3, 2026
Book Review: Falling for My Brother's Best Friend
Title: Falling for My Brother's Best Friend
Author: Laney Crowe
Date: 2025
Quote: "Welcome home. Don't burn it down."
Ethan, the older brother, bonded with Silas when Brielle dumped Silas and went off to the city in search of a better salary. When Brielle wanted to take some time off and stay in a house Ethan owns, Ethan left the house in both of their care. After all, they'll be chaperoned--Silas has a child. Maybe they'll be reconciled.
Well? It's a sweet romance. Of course they will.
Meanwhile the reviewer, though able to suspend disbelief in the story, notes that at least the pulp romance publishers of years gone by did keep an eye on the titles. My reading apps are so littered with brothers' best friends, grumpy friends, billionnaires, cowboys, protectors, and second chances, that I mixed up this novel with another one I'd promised to review--I think it's called Falling for my Grumpy Best Friend--and think I deleted the link to download it. Those book racks in supermarkets used to reflect fads, I don't think for grumpiness but remember fads for Greek islands, but they made sure that while Mykonos Summer was on the rack the novel where the couple got acquainted on a summer break on Santorini would be called something different, like The Beach House, rather than Santorini Summer. Grumble, grumble, grumble...
Top Ten Unique Videos I've Seen Recently
This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks for "unique" videos reviewers have seen recently.
Unique? Err umm...I imagine that means no popular songs of bygone years, nothing in the "Stupid Pet Tricks" genre, no tales of the unexplained, no collections of moments in sports, no tours of small towns where the vlogger's in-laws happen to have real estate for sale, no people reading their own poetry, no political rants, no high school marching bands, no hidden cameras spying on wildlife, no demonstrations of cooking or knitting or battery-changing, no Stern Du Tube collections, no "relaxing" videos of raindrops sliding down windowpanes or animals scampering in gardens. Those can be fun but each one has become a genre. By now YouTube is so densely populated that by "unique" I suspect it's only possible to mean "bizarre."
I think the most unusual thing I shared recently might be a video of church academy students rehearsing for a church performance on the shore of their favorite lake, with the lead tenors actually paddling in canoes as they sang. Has that become a genre yet? It could easily have done! *lemmecheck*
Actually, it has sort of done. Google's plagiarism bot actually offers comparative ratings of different church school bands and choirs. Well, this one's new to me. What makes this video special is that, American though they sound, the college is in Fiji. Most, though not all, of the students are Fijians who have never visited the United States.
Now this church school group may still be unique. It's a tough act to follow. In the mid-twentieth century some people at Andrews University thought it would be fun to combine orchestra, pop band, choir, AND gymnastics performances in one show, thus reducing the amount of study time students would lose to travelling with more than one group. Andrews is a good-sized school and has other musical groups besides the Gymnics, but the Gymnics became famous because, most years, they've been unique. Their performances can be long. This video link is for a full concert: two and a half hours. Well, that's what the "pause" button is for.
I have mixed feelings about these church school groups. I belonged to some of them, shortly after the cooling of the earth's crust. Andrews University was where I got chronic mononucleosis from the unnecessary measles vaccination.
And this is the school that tried to double-bill Grandma Bonnie Peters. But they always did have a solid classical music program, and, I'm glad to learn, still have, even now that it's changed its name and become even more pretentious than it was in the Awesome Eighties.
Enough. Have I found anything really unusual that's not in the church school concert genre? Of course I have. One of the Substacks I've followed longest belongs to Wu Fei, an expert in classical Chinese music, specifically the zitherlike instrument called the guzheng. She's been sent on tours of other countries to build a repertoire of non-Chinese music and compose new, foreign-influenced music for the guzheng. In the summer of 2023 she published this video of improvising a Duet for Guzheng and Freight Train.
I posted that link to Glen Campbell's playing the "William Tell Overture" on a guitar, playing a few bars with the guitar on top of his head, just last week. That's too recently to post it again, isn't it? I'll mention it, but it's not on this list. Scroll down.
The thought of "unique videos" made me think of a TV show of bygone years called "You Asked for It," where a TV personality, formerly best known for imitations of other people's voices, travelled around filming things most US audiences hadn't seen and did not necessarily believe existed. One winter when we were in Florida occupying one of my aunt's properties, my brother and I watched at least a half-dozen half-hours of "You Asked for It." I think both of our favorite sequence was a brass band who "marched" on bicycles. At the time the presenter said that such a band was unique to Belgium. Now, Google says, Belgium doesn't have an active bicycle-mounted band any more but the Netherlands has a few highly rated ones.
"You Asked for It" tended to focus on odd local customs, the kind of thing travellers would describe when they came home and their families would say "I'd have to see that to believe it."
Did fishermen really train cormorants to catch fish for them? Yes. It's not so much a matter of training as it is of restraining. The birds naturally want to catch fish. They need no training, just a little practice, to catch fish for themselves. Each tame bird has a little leash around its neck so that it can easily swallow small fish, but has to bring bigger fish to its human. The birds aren't hurt; arguably their family lives are disrupted by living with humans, but, also arguably, as with many wild animals, the individuals in captivity enjoy more protection from predators and live longer. The tradition is preserved for tradition's sake, although it's no longer considered a viable way to earn a living--not competitive with more modern fishing techniques. It's more a matter of knowing how to do what one's ancestors did. It is hard to imagine anyone wanting a cormorant as a pet but the birds do seem to recognize and go to their men (cormorant fishing was traditionally done by fathers and sons). And if you want to see how it's done, click here:
Nobody actually wanted to watch how "head hunters" traditionally shrank severed human heads, which I think might have been on a different show. We did watch a minute or two of Los Penitentes, a Spanish-Portuguese-American brotherhood of men who try to atone for their sins by beating themselves bloody with whips and carrying wooden crosses about. Apparently this induces a sort of stress "high," like a Sun Dance, which is felt like spiritual joy. A group of "The Penitents" let the TV man videotape their procession, no doubt in exchange for a generous donation to their (Catholic) church. Google has enough videos of these processions that they're not unique. I'm glad. I can't say that they're not on a valid spiritual path but, if they are, I don't think it'd be respectful to watch their self-flagellation on video.
As I recall, "You Asked for It" featured many nice, uncontroversial documentation of traditional arts and crafts techniques. People would feed the producers questions like "Do Shetland knitters really cut knitted fabric?" or "Do glass artists really blow air into hollow beads of molten glass through pipes like giant drinking straws?" The answer to both questions is yes, but if you want to try cutting knitted fabric I must emphasize the importance of knitting with Shetland wool, which sticks to itself enough that the fabric won't unravel when cut, as cotton or acrylic would do.
"Are there towns in England that still really pay a Town Crier to shout the news out loud?" As I recall, the "You Asked for It" show gave the impression that the producers had interviewed the last living Town Crier, but reportedly towns still employ these people and there are trainings and competitions for them:
And fans used to throw the host, Rich Little, softballs like "I want to see your imitation of..." some other TV person. So much for that show. Some other memorable spectacles that I don't think have become genres, yet...
Well...Berea College had a special traditional relationship with Tibet, and once hosted a group who performed the Lhamo Folk Opera. Obviously a different group, by now much older, than this group:
Whereas Andrews University once hosted the Wiener Sangerknaeben, Vienna Boys' Choir. That would have been different boys than the ones in this recording, too.
And I remember, on a road trip, being summoned to watch a Chinese performance on a grainy black-and-white motel TV screen. I don't remember whether it was Shen Yun but it was their sort of thing, and Shen Yun is/are another tough act to follow and has/have not become a genre.
If onlyYouTube and TikTok videos count, here's a YouTube alternate. Their goal is to add at least one video from each country on the continent.
And that makes ten!
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
Web Log for 6.1.26
the
Animals
This is actually not uncommon behavior for cats. What's unusual is the timing of the humans' catching on to what the cat was doing. Usually cat people either know when our pets miss one meal and go out looking for them, or expect tomcats to roam around and never find out just how many homes and names they have.
Young horses are colts, or at least the male ones are. Young birds are chicks, whether male or female, since it can be hard to tell. In Maryland, where all the cranes I've seen lived, people call cranes birds and call young cranes chicks, but some people prefer to call young cranes colts, because they sprint around on long thin legs like young horses. Here's video.
Carpetbaggers
The carpetbaggers are coming back! We didn't have a civil war, but they'll never let that stop them starting one!
Seriously, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to Alabama, hid behind bulletproof glass, and called for her New York cronies to move down South and rock our vote. Because the only way to stop New Yorkers fleeing from their idiot mayor and his disastrous policies is, obviously, to give every other city an idiot mayor and disastrous policies too!
She didn't actually say that eighty years is as long as anybody ought to want to live, but she said plenty of things that could be interpreted that way, and now...
I happen to like AOC. I happened to like the first man who ever proposed to me, although I was just barely mature enough to know I would have been a terrible excuse for a wife and mother, and AOC does happen to look like the little girl he and I would have had, if we'd had one. It is because I feel motherly and protective about her that almost every time I see or hear from her, I react, "Go back to school, dear child, you're not ready for Washington." Almost completely opposite to the way most Republicans react to her. Well, the overall intention may be the same, but the emotion is opposite.
No. We do not need carpetbaggers. We do not want carpetbaggers. And in order to avoid having a plague of carpetbaggers, we have to actualize our feelings. We have to make sacrifices.
We need to sacrifice property values.
We need to retain the right to lease or sell property, all by ourselves with advice from our trusted lawyers, to whom we choose. Yes, professional sales agents and property managers can sell properties for higher prices...to people who know they'll not be welcome and are prepared to throw money around stupidly. We need to sell and lease only to local people who live the right way and vote the right way.
It will not hurt to make the claim that this idea is a "racist dogwhistle" ridiculous. Seriously. Am I White? I am a mixed breed. Well, it's only June, I do still look White...ish...but my husband looked like the south of India, my first cousins and even more my first cousins once removed look Tex-Mex, and some of my beloved Nephews look Black. If I acquire a lot of real estate, as it might be in a private bargain to give a Bad Neighbor a chance to leave on his own feet with his own shirt on his back and his own pension in his pocket, what is sold or leased will be sold or leased mostly to mixed breeds, some White in the same way I am, some Black in the same way I'm White, and some real minorities, simply because that's the way my friends and relatives are. Yes, my town could use a little rhythm. But no worries--they're not the type who blast their preferred music at people who want quiet.
What can you do if your whole extended family are all the same color? You'll think of something. You know some of the right kind of people from school, from work, from church or temple. You might want to lease property to disaster survivors referred through your church. No worries--they can find the type who keep their property clean, keep their entertainment volume low, don't smoke anything or spray poison or vote for Loony Left candidates.
All we have to do, to keep our neighborhoods nice, is pick good neighbors and sell or lease at prices they can afford to pay. You can't do that if you go through banks or agents. You can't advertise anything to the public, for sale to the highest bidder, and then backtrack, "Oh no, I want to sell it to people I want as neighbors." You can do it if you own, manage, and sell your own property for yourself, and offer it to people you want as neighbors.
Climate Messaging, Collapse Of
On the one hand, we have the same government that's been preaching about climate change backing these plans for huge "data centers" that are absolutely guaranteed to produce major local climate change of the worst kind.
On the other hand, we have the people making all the noise about climate change...
Found on the Mirror. Lens traces it to a F******k post by the "Town of Westport, MA: WE THE PEOPLE".
Fiction
Short.
Health News
At first glance you'll cry foul. Polio was a serious disease before either Paris Green or DDT was invented, and still is one now that those "pesticides" are off the market. Simple exposure to Paris Green or DDT, even in massive quantities like the reckless use of DDT that probably gave Dr Tom Dooley fatal cancer, did not cause paralysis. But...most adults don't notice infection with polio at all, and most children who have it are only miserable for a week or two. Why were so many more polio patients killed or crippled in the early twentieth century? Why did so many more people go down with the disease? Is there, in fact, something about the interaction of infection and poisoning...? This article may be paranoid, but it at least suggests a valid hypothesis.
Men, Logical Thinking Of
He doesn't want the marriage to be over, so he makes it ever so much easier for her to resume dating now that he'll be in prison...It's funny because we still hear men repeating the pathetic old wheeze that they think more logically than women do.
Music
J. Crum.
Mississippi John Hurt.
2024 presidential campaign video...The disloyal opposition want that mood of unity and victory to unravel into bitter memories. Don't let it. The Biden administration and Harris campaign were bad enough to unite people who were opposed on other points. We still are opposed on other points. We need not to let that opposition turn into hate. We may disagree on other things but we want to remain one nation under God, one sovereign Union of many sovereign States, as opposed to becoming one region under global tyranny. The men parodied here were too different (and too egotistical) to work together for long, but they do have things in common. We need to keep those things alive.
It might even help to remember what we were united against.
War
Book Review: Nature's Echo
Title: Nature's Echo
Author: Thomas Crowther
Date: 2026 (today!)
Publisher: Harper
ISBN: 978-1-4002-5070-7
Quote: "I had been injected with a powerful shot of nocebo (the opposite of placebo), so the idea that I had been envenomated was enough to trigger a physiological response that matched the symptoms of a venomous bite."
In the opening chapter of this book, Thomas Crowther describes the experience of picking up a snake he was told was harmless. When the snake actually managed to bite him, someone told him it was venomous after all. His hand began to feel ominously numb as he was rushed to a hospital. At the hospital he was assured that the snake was the harmless one his friend had first identified it as being. Sensation returned to his hand--it was sore from having been bumped against things to measure its numbness.
Harmless snakes can do significant temporary damage--some bites are hard enough to crack a small bone in a hand or wrist--so this is not a story about foolish naivete. As Crowther ranges on through all the favorite theories and speculations of the New Age sciency crowd, evolution, quarks, spirals, etc., it takes some time to identify the theme in this book, but that theme is, primarily, the idea that many things in nature follow feedback loops. Undesirable things aggravate each other. "Pesticide" sprays aggravate the imbalance monocropped fields create, destroy predators, and allow harmless nuisances like corn earworms to explode into major pest status. Desirable things enhance each other. Seeing good results from a diet and exercise plan motivates dieters to work their programs for even better results. And so on.
Several details and side points in this book will activate the mental rubbish detectors of many readers of this web site. Some details even made me laugh. I wondered if Crowther appreciated the irony of writing about socioeconomic "inequalities" as a problem while being funded by the World Economic Forum, a group who aren't doing much about the feedback loops that bounce wealth back to them. I chortled, reading sections about global warming, after Al Gore has just told us that it may have been that old ice age of our youth that we need to worry about, after all. This book is Green, but not True Green.
Partly that's because of the writer's self-admitted limitations. This book deals with science topics but it doesn't read like a science book--neither the mass of numbers in a professional science article, nor the summaries with just a few well-chosen numbers in a really well written popular science book by someone like Oliver Sacks. Crowther admits that that's because his learning disabilities made it hard for him to do rigorous science experiments on his own, so a sympathetic teacher let him get credit for observing the results of experiments while others crunched the numbers. No woman would get a science degree that way, I'm sure. Crowther seems to read science and study nature in the informal, observational, anecdotal way I do as a non-scientist, but it's never occurred to me to call myself a scientist. (It has occurred to me to go back to university and do the work to become one.) It's not "feminization" so what's the word for that kind of effect on the sciences?
On the individual scientist, the effect is plain. Crowther accepts other people's conclusions, including Michael Mann's "hockey stick" climate change graph, which Steve Milloy has been so gleefully debunking for so long. He's not an idiot, his learning disabilities do not include autism, but he can be used as a "useful idiot" by WEF.
Nevertheless, the book is hopeful and plausible. His sponsors have warned him, Crowther admits, that only big (preferably global) government can be considered as a solution to the problem of global warming. Still, feedback loops mean that choosing a vegan meal might start a loop that could do something toward saving the planet. Crowther has been steered away from studying the problem of "pesticide" residues that make vegan meals so toxic for so many people these days. He has also seen some examples of individuals' efforts expanding outward into feedback loops that he thinks are helping the Earth.
When he's reporting what he's seen, as he does toward the end of this book, rather than regurgitating theories, as he does toward the beginning, Crowther is a competent writer. Overall this book is a pleasant read. Not essential, not True Green, but fun.
Petfinder Post: Bloodhounds and Orange Cats
The Busybodies of Britain also want to eradicate the breed officially called Bloodhounds.
"Bloodhounds" is often written with a lower-case b, used as a general category for dogs that are also called "scent hounds" because they hunt by scent more than by sight. Several different kinds of dogs hunt by scent. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "great bloodhounds" were probably more like several other breeds than like the relatively small, peace-loving dogs that are officially called Bloodhounds. Despite their name reflecting the fact that they find people by following the distinctive (to a Bloodhound) scent of an individual's blood, they're bred to be friendly and non-threatening, more interested in baying to attract searchers to a lost child and collecting a dog treat than they are in biting anybody.
Bloodhounds, as a breed, are bigger than Bassets (the breed represented by the TV comedy dog called Flash). While standing only about two feet high at the shoulder, they are sturdily built and can weigh over 100 pounds. Bloodhounds' pedigrees can be extensive; the ancestors of the breed were bred at St Hubert's monastery in medieval Belgium, and in French they are still "St Hubert's dogs." They were meant to hunt game people could eat and, as an extra benefit, find lost people--unlike St Bernard's dogs, who were bred to find and rescue people in the Alps, Bloodhounds' ancestors weren't meant to carry people for long distances. But they are sturdy and strong.
Purebred Bloodhounds' coats are always some shade of brown. They can be two-tone brown, described by breed fanciers as "liver and tan," or black and tan, or reddish brown. The coats are short, but benefit from daily grooming and fairly frequent bathing.
Their super-long and floppy ears, and wrinkled skin, can harbor infections and need regular grooming. That was the alleged reason for eradicating the breed. They can suffer from bloat, will eat anything and are most likely to be taken to the vet with food poisoning, and sometimes have joint problems, but most Bloodhounds are well kept and healthy. On average they live ten or twelve years.
Bloodhounds were not bred for racing but they are cross-country runners, bred to cover miles of rough country at a brisk pace. They are sometimes imagined to be lazy hounds who spend their days dozing on the porch. Geriatric dogs do doze their last days away, but healthy Bloodhounds are active and need a good deal of exercise. They need to walk and run with their humans, always on a leash as they never really want to pass up an interesting scent, and they need a yard with a deep fence, as they also dig their way out under fences in pursuit of interesting scents. They don't look as frisky as Border Collies or Australian Shepherds, but they need to move about as far as those breeds...and almost as fast.
Bloodhounds tend to be stubborn and independent but they can be trained, at least in basics like walking on a leash, using a designated toilet space, and sitting-and-staying.
Do you really want to live with a Bloodhound? For some people the deal breaker may be that, although they look about as long and as tall as Beagles, they're about three times as heavy. One way to find out would be to foster one of the crossbreeds that are often found in animal shelters. (Purebred Bloodhounds are not common in animal shelters.) A crossbreed may have lighter bones and be easier to handle.
There's no real cat analogue to Bloodhounds but shelters usually have a reddish-brownish-orange cat looking for a good home.
Zipcode 10101: Savannah from New Jersey t
Rescued from a breeder who apparently wasn't doing a good job any more, Savannah has not been well socialized but is likable when she gets to know people. She is a "full blood," full weight Bloodhound an should make a good hiking buddy for a strong, athletic human. They'll consider letting you have her only if you have an adequate fence and no young children in the home. (Bloodhounds are usually nice to children but Savannah's not used to humans, so who knows what she might do.)
Leo from Miami by way of NYC
His web site: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/leo-49a5dee8-2bda-42f0-9930-eb26eb64182f/ny/new-york/sunshine-animal-rescue-fl1912/details/
Leo has had quite a life, so far, and he's still a bouncy-pouncy yearling who might still be growing. Possibly that's what's allowed him to survive. As a little kitten, he was badly chewed up by a dog. His humans took him to the vet and, realizing how expensive his care was going to be, they bolted and left him there. Luckily for Leo, someone from the rescue organization currently holding him was there and paid for the extensive surgery he needed. He still likes to race around the house and burn off his adolescent energy. He's not even afraid of dogs! He holds no grudges! He can play a bit rough when he gets into a game, so they recommend him to homes with no small children.
Zipcode 20202: Hope from Middleburg
Hope is a crossbreed, so she's a bit taller and lighter than, say, Savannah. She is not good with smaller animals, like cats, or with very small humans. At one year old she weighed 53 pounds; in another year she might be bigger. She's described as an introvert who takes time to decide she likes other dogs or people.
Rosemary from DC
The DC Petfinder page is currently dominated by another extra-cute orange female cat. It would be a pity if Rosemary were overlooked, so let's feature her today. Rosemary does not have a dramatic story. She's just another little tabby--in a minority, because orange tabby cats are about four times as likely to be male as to be female, but still pretty ordinary. Her most distinctive feature may be her small size.
Zipcode 30303: Funny Bone from Ranger
This rescue dog's ancestry may never be known but he has the Bloodhound look--and density. He weighs only 85 pounds, but he's still skinny and underfed; he ought to weigh 95. He should not be in a place where he might encounter chickens. He gets along well with dogs of his size, ignores much smaller dogs, and might be able to live with some cats.
Eugene from Chamblee
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/eugene-fcf45f25-826d-4fa0-8918-49f4dd011e25/ga/chamblee/three-paws-rescue-ga945/details/
Obviously Eugene has had some hard times. He needs time to bond with people and accept a new home. He's been adopted and then returned twice, apparently because he's cautious about new places and people. Or there may be more to it than that. As I read how his foster human describes his affectionate behavior in his foster home, I have to wonder whether he really wants to stay in that foster home furever. You can always tell that animals want to be rescued from a conventional shelter with racks of cages. You can't always tell whether they want to be rescued from a foster home. Sometimes they don't.
There is not, currently, another adoptable pet at the same location as Eugene--of any color or description, although his foster human says Eugene has lived with other cats and dogs. That speaks well for his foster home. There are hundreds of adoptable orange cats in the Greater Atlanta Metropolitan Area, though.
Monday, June 1, 2026
Web Log for 5.31.26
Hardly worth posting. Microsoft is still fighting itself, tooth and nail, leaving very little room for the computer to do anything the least bit useful. I don't know. I may have to suspend the blog until I've gone to Linux.
Cybersecurity
I don't want it to be time to pull out of the Internet already. But think:
Found on the Mirror. Signature: "Ramirez, Las Vegas Review." It's not even a new cartoon. We should have been talking more about getting privacy enumerated as a constitutional right, blocking the "data centers," demanding physical data storage, collectively zeroing out any possible "social credit" any of us might have so that "social credit" schemes become meaningless, requiring either a warrant to prosecute a crime or a signed statement of release from anyone taking or storing a recognizable photograph of a living person...maybe instead of All COVID All The Time? We didn't do that, and now it'll be much harder to save the Internet--if it's even possible.
Music
Rolling Stones.
Black Keys.
Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Tamerlana
First, to get it out of the way, let's mention that some older lists mention a species Graphium taliensis. This is no longer considered a distinct species. Conveniently, it's now considered a subspecies of Graphium tamerlana (sometimes tamerlanus), which comes next to it alphabetically.
Photo by Zhangqianyi, taken in May at a place whose name Zhangqianyi typed into Inaturalist.org in Chinese. It seems to share that taste so many Graphiums have for the color blue.
Graphium tamerlana is one of those Chinese zebra-striped Swallowtails that are being reclassified. Few web sites are showing much information about it at the time of writing. We can safely say that it was named by Charles Oberthur in 1876. In the tradition of naming Swallowtail species after characters from literature, he named it after a legendary war chief whose name probably sounded something like Demur or Timur. Timur walked with a limp and was called Timur Leng, which both sounds and means something like Timur the Lame. People said the name differently in different places. In the eighteenth century most English-speaking people had read or seen a performance of Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and in the nineteenth century they had read Poe's poem "Tamerlane." Today, since other people use those names, many prefer to call the Mongolian war chief Timur. There is also a butterfly called Graphium timur. We'll meet it in June.
We can safely say that, when Oberthur named the butterfly, some people pointed out that it looked an awful lot like Graphium alebion. Walter Rothschild defended the claim that it was a distinct species:
"
The specimen figured by Elmer {I.e.) is tamerlanus Obeith. and not alebion Gray, and I do not believe that the patria '• Nordchina " which Eimer gives to his alebion (not Gray's) is correct. This mistake in the identification accounts for his considering tamerlanus to be " ein einfacher alebion.''
P. alebion and tamerlanus have the discoidal cell to the hindwings much broader, especially so in its apical half, than any other species of the present group.
The chief characters by which P. alebion and tamerlanus can be distinguished from each other are as follows : —
The hindwings of P. alebion are much more produced in the caudal region, and are, therefore, much narrower than those of P. tamerlanus; the anal yellow mark to the hindwings of P. tamerlanus is at least three times as broad (transversally) as long, and divided (or almost so) into two spots by the black lower median nervule, while in P. alebion that mark is about as long as broad (and therefore much larger than in P. tamerlanus), and not divided into two spots; the postcellular portions of the subbasal and median black lines, which form a very conspicuous angle on both sides of the hindwings, are in P. alebion proportionally shorter than in P. tamerlanus.
Though I have seen a large number of specimens of P. tamerlanus, and have compared about twenty specimens of alebion, I have never met with intermediate examples. The shape of the hindwings and the yellow anal mark are so conspicuously different in alebion and tamerlanus that there is at present no reason to unite these Papilios into one species.
Hah. Western China.
"
Another expert opined that to him Graphium (then Papilio) tamerlanus looked much more like G. glycerion than like Graphium alebion.
So it seems to have been accepted as a species. It seems not to be very common, but so little is known about it that, even about its population size, it's hard to be sure.
Its genus name has been through some changes. At first all Swallowtails were classified as one genus, Papilio. Then that genus list was decluttered by classifying some groups of Swallowtails as separate genera, such as Graphium. The genus names Cosmodesmas and Iphiclides were proposed for this species along the way. Considering how many Graphiums there are and how they seem to fit into a few distinct sub-groups, some want to promote the sub-genus name Pazala into the genus name.
This butterfly has been celebrated on a postage stamp:
It is comfortable at high altitudes, found between about 800 and 1500 m, 2600 and 5000 feet, above sea level.
There are three subspecies: Graphium tamerlana tamerlana is found mostly in Moupin, China; G.t. taliensis is found in Tali and Junnan, China; and G.t. kansuensis is found around Kansu, Tsinglingschan, and Peilingschan, China. This beautiful photo essay does not have space to discuss the differences among subspecies.
Photo by Arex, also in May, also in a place with a Chinese name. It seems to like shallow white flowers. Long though their coiled probosces are, many Swallowtails stick to shallow flowers because their probosces are shorter than other butterflies'.
As in so many cases, little is known about Chinese butterflies. China's focus on economic growth has come at some cost to plant and animal species not found in any other part of the world. It would probably be profitable, in the long run, for Chinese people to study and document their wildlife before they risk destroying its habitat. Graphium tamerlanus and the other black-and-white Graphiums that seem uniquely Chinese are a great big opportunity for Chinese people to become famous.
Photo by Arex, also in May, also in a place with a Chinese name. This one seems to like damp sand, so it's probably a male, sipping bitter or salty water to get the minerals he needs to be able to mate. In the mating process he will transfer a supply of mineral salts to the female, who can thus afford to have more delicate tastes and, in most Swallowtail species, only ever drinks flower nectar and fresh clear water.
And...? Are these butterflies averse to being around others of their kind, as butterflies are when their host plant is scarce, or likely to seek safety in numbers, as butterflies do when their host plant is abundant? Do the eggs, larvae, and pupae look just like Graphium alebion's or Graphium sichuanensis's, or do they surprisingly look more like those of Graphium weiskei? Do the butterflies generally fly for a week, a month, all summer? How many generations do they have in a year? What do they eat? Nobody seems to know.
Who knows how useful it might be for the world to know these things.
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Web Log for 2.29-30.26
Friday, from about 11 a.m. to sundown, was totally wasted by Microsoft. Apparently Microsoft was fighting very very hard to try to sell me a subscription plan using something that Windows 10 recognized as malware. There will of course be no subscriptions. Basic Internet is provided, to everyone in the neighborhood except for the Bad Neighbor, by our sponsors, for the purpose of bringing money in to the neighborhood. The minute the Internet draws a penny out of the neighborhood, it will go away. But the defective extrovert brain...
I think our language needs a word to express a concept that ought to be familiar to anyone trying to sell anything. We don't really have a word specifically to describe things that merely didn't interest you before someone tried so hard to sell them to you that you now positively loathe them. We need that word. I propose "wix," from a company of that name that provided an example.
As in "That's enough advertising! We don't want to make our sponsors' products sound wix."
Or "Eww, cringe, that ad's like instant wix."
Or "His association with Bill Clinton, the King of Tacky, made Donald Trump the Grand Panjandrum of Wix even before 2016."
Gentle Readers who find it entertaining may want to practice using "wix" in sentences while they are in town, as in "That restaurant? I would have thought the wix factor alone would make anyone sick."
By making the word "wix" familiar we may eventually get even people with degrees in marketing to understand the importance of not letting the same person hear the same ad more than twice.
Music
Memorable moment in the career of Glen Campbell.
Phenomena, Natural
To some of us it may not seem terribly long ago that Wendell Berry was considered a young, reckless, maybe even dangerous hippie. Now he's venerable. It's newsworthy that he's still walking and writing...
Spelling
English spelling is notoriously tricky and illogical. There are benefits to this, if you think of them as benefits. One benefit is that knowing how to spell words in English is actually a competitive sport. Schools traditionally had "spelling bees" or "spelling matches" where everyone stood up and took turns spelling words until they gave an incorrect answer, when they had to sit down. The last person standing was the spelling champion. School stories of a certain vintage always described the climactic spelling match of the year, often held at the end-of-term party so that parents could participate too.
Spelling competitions are still held in the United States. Spellers' equivalent of the World Series is the Scripps spelling contest held every year in spring in Washington.
Spellers who go to the contest have to be very good at their game. They also have to be sponsored, which may explain a peculiar feature of the contest. One or two percent of all school children are spellers. Ninety percent of those spellers are girls. However, a majority of the spellers at the national contest are boys. Also, in the United States most spellers are White; however, in the final rounds at the national contest, a majority are Indian.
I was a speller, though not up to the standard of the kids who participate in the Scripps competition. From time to time I've been invited to watch the final rounds of the national contest, during which I'm usually found sitting there like everybody else, going "That's a word?" and "That's not English!"
Seriously, this year somebody went down on cara sposa, which is two Italian words and had no business in an English spelling contest. However, Italian spelling is logical enough that a real spelling champion should have been able to spell cara sposa.
The kids spelling words like "dodecatheon" and "hypaspists" buy special dictionaries with entries for scientific names in Latin and names of characters in all the literatures of the world. They learn how to spell all the names of holidays celebrated in religions they don't practice, all the trade and generic names for medications, all the technical words used in trades they'll never learn. They are ten to fifteen years old, their parents are in the audience crying real tears when they spell or misspell each word, and they are obsessed.
You can see all the words they spelled, and even follow a link to watch the show, at
Friday, May 29, 2026
Web Log for 5.28.26
Not a lot of music links today...I had to go into town anyway so I accepted the offer to join an evening car pool and spend the day online in McDonalds'. They have their own music. My e-friends pick better songs!
Black History
James Talarico does not know his Black American History. Why else would he talk as if an armed thief were an innocent victim of racism--the young man was shot while fleeing from police onto private property, brandishing a firearm, under which circumstances the homeowner who shot him "in self-defense" might not even have noticed his skin color--while ignoring real victims of attacks on Black business and property owners in the early twentieth century?
Well...for one thing, Google is low on names. Black Americans who had worked and saved and brought up families were targeted, by the Ku Klux Klan and by random troublemakers, North and South, East and West, just for having succeeded by following the rules for success teachers, preachers, and politicians had been preaching to everybody. Google pulls up the stories of civil rights activists who were attacked in the 1960s, like Vernon Dahmer of Hattiesburg (Mississippi), but in the 1920s and 1930s most of these people were private citizens who didn't want to be famous while they were alive--they feared that attention to their cause might provoke even more violence, and at the time this was probably true. Their stories remain to be researched from primary sources...police reports, city maps and census records, any surviving children or grandchildren who remember the victims' own words.
The historian who tries to write that book will have a challenging task. In the 1920s and 1930s being a victim was not in fashion. People who deserved sympathy didn't ask for any. Victims of violent crimes often blamed themselves, sometimes actually believing things like "if I hadn't counted the change in the store, giving him a chance to see that I had some cash, he wouldn't have robbed me." People whose houses were burned down as a punishment for being successful while Black couldn't count on support for their being victims of racism; those who felt "old" cursed their luck and died believing that Black people weren't allowed to succeed, those who felt "young" moved to different places where they hoped to encounter less prejudice.
While the Tulsa incident discussed here has received attention lately...
...similar attacks, most on a smaller scale, occurred in many cities. Wikipedia notes Chicago, New York, and Duluth as the sites of the largest-scale riots in the 1920s and 1930s. This would be because they were the largest cities. If you've lived in a city in the Eastern States you know how the story tends to go. Relatively fewer acres were burned and people were killed, and people like to downplay the violence and suggest that their townsfolk generally got along well with one another...but everyone knows where the riot took place. Those who don't remember can still see.
Music
"Flower duet."
Rumors
Andy, Maurice, and Robin Gibb died so young that it's not surprising that people believed an unconfirmed Internet rumor that Barry Gibb died last week. He is apparently alive and well and living in Miami, age 79.
Thursday, May 28, 2026
Web Log for 5.27.26
More rain. The Cat Sanctuary is reaching a normal May level of sogginess at last. The Bad Neighbor seems to be driving himself and his goon crazier than usual, trying to spray poison everywhere before rain washes it down again. Sorry, Tennessee. I do enjoy the thought of their wasting all that time and money, though it does mean my longsuffering skin is being stretched to the point of pain, then itching as it contracts back toward normal, a few times a day, to no purpose; it looks half-puffed. I can see shadows of a waistline but it's still a 30" or 32" waistline.
I am feeling more discontented than usual, because I need to go to the post office and, on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, rain lasted just until it was too late to try walking to the post office before closing time.
There are two non-music links at the end of this post. I know we've had a large part of this playlist last week. Not all, though.
Music
Schneeman.
Blue Oyster Cult on the Muppet Show.
The Beatles.
Scalzi covering a song by Alisa Xayalith.
Jakob Longfield.
The Hillsdale College choir. Music starts about 4 minutes in.
John Anderson.
London Clarke's soundtrack for Island of Lost Things. Full-length album with commercial jingles.
Avishai Cohen.
Songs in the Georgian language, recorded individually so you can choose how many to listen to.
Johnny Mathis.
"Eat the Cat."
King Crimson.
October Country.
The Incredible String Band. Inclusion of this song is not an endorsement of the beliefs it reflects.
Louis Armstrong, the King of Vocal Fry.
John Coltrane.
George Harrison.
Herbie Hancock.
Tchip-Tchip.
Arlo Guthrie.
Camel.
Name, Another One to Think Twice About Giving a Child
I've often wondered what people who name their children "Christian" are going to think if their children then grow up and become infamous for doing something that's not Christian. Bad enough if the kids become Buddhists, but then there's.....
Travel
Dolly Parton sponsors a "travel stop." Competing with Buc-ee's, is she?
Bad Poetry: Let Them
This reaction to a prompt at DVerse had been growing in my mind for four or five years.
Some people spend their time and money
Watching TV every day;
Buy whatever they see--how funny!
Then they throw the stuff away.
Let them buy things they don't want.
Let them buy things they don't need.
Let them watch until they can't
Even remember how to read;
That's all right; that's okay;
You don't have to listen to what they say.
You don't have to play the games they play.
You are you, and they are they.
Junior's got a brand new toy.
You might think that Junior's lucky.
Ah, but does he shout for joy
Or shout "It's babyish and yucky"?
Let him make his Grandma cry
'Cos what he thought he wanted last week
Was a whim that's passed on by;
Dump it in the lake or creek.
That's all right; that's okay;
You don't have to listen to what they say.
You don't have to play the games they play.
You are you, and they are they.
Additional verses are available to anyone who wants to sing this song.
What Grandma Bonnie Peters Learned About Nail Fungus
This came from way back in the archives. I think it's still worth posting for Grandma Bonnie Peters' fans.
Nail fungus is a brownish-colored species of mold closely related to the green mold that forms on anything left in the shade in our part of the world. Symptoms it causes begin with itching and burning under the nail. As the fungus grows, it may deform the growing nail, causing what should be a thin, smooth sheet of translucent protein to warp into an ugly, thick, brittle, many-layered mass of yellowish-white protein.
Rarely, usually on the toenails of people who wear shoes all the time, the fungus is able to infest enough of the skin badly enough to interfere with use of the hand or foot. This has become a serious problem for a few soldiers who spent a lot of time in hot, damp trenches, and for a few disabled patients who aren’t able to clean their own feet or get someone else to do it.
It was reported to me as a fact that another lady in Kingsport, Tennessee, of about the same age as Grandma Bonnie, allowed this to happen to her. She didn’t seek treatment for nail fungus until she felt unable to walk on her feet. By this time even health care professionals were scared of the fungus...and health insurance is a great way for doctors and patients to spend the money of people they don’t know and have reasons not to like. A doctor anesthetized both feet and pulled out all ten toenails. The patient couldn't walk for weeks.
Do not let this happen to you, or to a disabled person you care for.
Here are three traditional remedies that Grandma Bonnie did not particularly recommend, although they will kill Cladosporium mold:
1. Wood ashes. Burying the affected skin in wood ashes is safe, cheap, and effective as a quick fix for allergic reactions to mold spores. Ashes do not, however, penetrate the underside of the nail, so they don’t cure nail fungus.
2. Bleach. Soaking the affected fingers or toes in chlorine bleach will kill living fungi, but it can also damage the skin. Chlorine exposure can produce a rash that looks like very bad acne but isn’t. The rash is technically called “chloracne.” As chlorine breaks down into the air, it forms carcinogenic dioxin...and prolonged or high-level exposure to dioxin can encourage “chloracne” blemishes to grow into skin cancer.
3. Lamisil. This soothing ointment, containing a chlorine compound that is effective on skin fungus infections, is often prescribed by doctors for nail fungus. It seems to be safe when used as directed, and it works. The active ingredient seems to soak through the nail. It is, however, expensive if you’re going to use it as long as it takes to cure nail fungus. It can have side effects that don't do the heart any good.
Here are three things that Grandma Bonnie did recommend and use:
1. Alcohol. Pour into a measure big enough to hold the infected fingers or toes, and soak the nails for 15 minutes morning and evening. Safe and cheap.
2. Tea tree oil. This is not a great deal cheaper than Lamisil, but it’s sold by nicer people. Paint it on the affected nail and surrounding skin before bed, and let it soak in. This will help to counteract the drying effects of alcohol, while killing more fungi.
3. Manuka honey. The price is comparable to Lamisil, but again, it comes from nicer people. The herbal honey is thought to contain nutrients that promote healing. Smear it on the affected finger or toe and wrap it in something moisture-proof for a few hours, or overnight.
Any combination of any of these things is likely to help, and the patient also needs to consider other ways to kill fungus growth.
1. Fungi thrive in a warm, moist environment. Keep the home as cold and dry as possible.
2. Mold spores can lurk and grow almost anywhere. Cladosporium tolerates much more light than other common fungi. It’s a surface mold that requires little nourishment; several species thrive on cement. Clean and vacuum often to keep mold from forming under rugs, under mattresses, behind curtains, etc.
3. The human body is meant to exist in a symbiotic relationship with some fungi, especially the yeast fungus Candida albicans. Although fungi constantly invade the body, healthy bodies actually digest them and get most of our Vitamin B-12 from them. In less healthy bodies, especially diabetic bodies and bodies that have been treated with antibiotics or steroids, the fungi may get the upper hand; when this happens, the patient is prone to yeast and other infections, suffers more from allergies and hypersensitivity, and feels sluggish and depressed, often craving sweet and starchy foods. The patient needs to starve the yeast by eating green vegetables, lean meat, and a bare minimum of things containing sugar, flour, milk, or grapes. At the same time, if possible, build up the body with lots of exercise and exposure to dry, sunny air. If the patient is able to walk five miles a day, that will help.
4. Whenever possible, expose the affected fingers and toes to dry, sunny air. When it’s necessary to take the affected fingers and toes back into a dark or damp environment, use lots of soap and water, clean towels, and clean cotton socks to keep the nail area as clean and dry as possible. Put on clean socks at least every morning and evening.
5. Just say no to synthetic footwear. Nylon stockings and plastic shoes keep the feet soaking in puddles of sweat all day, and promote fungus growth.
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
Web Log for 5.26.26
California
Sacramento has a member of its city council who refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance or salute our flag. Her name is Mai Vang. Her supporters know that her objection to our flag comes from her "Communist" politics. Since her family immigrated as refugees from so-called Communist abuses in Vietnam, most of her Hmong community find her politics disturbing.
Worth clicking to enlarge. Anyway, apparently someone told Mai Vang to get out of Sacramento, and she interpreted that to mean she should go to Washington--as a member of Congress!
I think she should adopt some children and be a full-time mother. Run the family economy like a socialist dictatorship. The more children, in her case, the better. They will all grow up either Republicans or Libertarians.
Ethics
Catherine Salgado is confusing fetuses with babies again, while James Talarico is misrepresenting what the Bible actually says about fetuses. They have no "rights." They are parts of their mothers, who themselves are too often seen as parts of tribes. (The Old Testament writers didn't spend much time trying to unpick or correct tribalistic ethics. "All the men" in an entire tribe--clearly meaning all the fighting men, but still--were slaughtered in cases of rape; when rape was recognized as having occurred, it was clearly seen as a sin against God, against Life, more than merely a sin against the victim or her tribe. Dependent wives' and children's "vows," usually meaning sacrificial offerings, could be nullified by the head of the clan. Children had to marry or leave home, or not, at their parents' command. And so on.) Fetuses have value if they have two parents who affirm that the fetus has value for them: they are property. Even some Jewish groups now feel free to update the law as given by Moses...so there is no need to deny what it actually says. A fetus is not a living person; if you can see it, it's a dead or dying blob of glup. But it has some value to people who may have wanted a baby very much, who may spend hours grieving and trying to bring the disgusting little object to life. The feelings of those people have some objective value to society. Much as dogs and cats get their value from people who claim them as pets, much as bits of paper get their value from people who recognize them as money, fetuses get their value from people who hope (or hoped) to claim them as children.
Is God non-binary? Yes, in the sense that God is not bound to a body that has any physical sex. Was Jesus a radical feminist? Yes, in the sense that "in Christ there is neither...male nor female"; the spiritual life is not shaped by sex in the way the physical life is, and Jesus came to guide people into the spiritual life. Did Talarico realize that both of those claims would be heard in the wrong sense and taken to say things quite different from what they meant? Probably; he doesn't look all that stupid. He knows God is not a mixed-up depressive fourteen-year-old dweeb imagining that his life would be less miserable if he could be a girl. He knows Jesus never told full-time mothers they were doing something worse than welfare-cheating, or even than waiting tables. He was yanking the chains of people like Salgado, who unfortunately fell for his game, in public.
Music
Wu Fei.
R.E.M.
Trace Adkins. Warning: grief trigger.
Toby Keith.
Elijah Bossenbroek.
Travel
Nostalgia time...How many have stayed in a motel like this one? How many would rather stay in a motel like this one than in a Yuppie Suites Chain hotel that costs ten times as much? How many w ould still take road trips if we could still count on finding a shabby but clean, locally owned, cheap motel?
Cheap because low overhead. Cheap because people still thought air conditioning and an unheated, unshaded, open-air swimming pool were luxuries, and did not expect 1500 Internet-streaming digital coor TV channels, fancy electronic door keys that work about half the time, room service, and a full spa. Cheap because they were for people who just wanted to stretch out on a bed or couch for six hours, take a shower, and hit the road again. Cheap because, if their guests planned to watch television at all, they wanted to know about road conditions, so the local channel in black-and-white was plenty. Cheap because they really cleaned up when some desperate family, as it might be the family of a teacher who would be paid at the end of September and it was still July, rented a suite with a double bed for the three children by the week. "Housing" for people who intended to rent, and probably would rent, a decent home if they stayed a few weeks. Because the world was less crowded; because nobody seriously thought that anybody would need to be, or choose to be, or tolerate being, stacked-and-packed in a "tower" building for life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
