If this post is short, late, etc., blame the Edge of Hurricane Erin, supposed to be pounding the Atlantic coast as I type. Outside a storm is brewing. Electricity may go out again...
Animals
Something else to worry about? (Maybe.)
Photo by John Scalzi, who said (it's been about a year) that he found it on a window screen two storeys above the ground.
I call'm flopworms. They are a species of earthworm, but they are to the earthworm family what the Mexican Bean Beetle is to the ladybeetle family. That is: other earthworms are good to have in the garden (as are other ladybeetles, even the dull-colored Asian kind that can be such a nuisance), but this species, like the Bean Beetle, you don't want. Instead of burrowing down to aerate the soil and help it nourish plants, flopworms stay on the surface, eating the good stuff--the humus--and often leaving the rest of the topsoil less fertile, more clayey or sandy, and thus able to support fewer plants.
They're much more often seen than other earthworms, for obvious reasons. Their segments are much less clearly marked. Where I live they're skinnier than other earthworms. Instead of trying to get back into the ground, if turned up on a sunny day, flopworms flop and thrash madly about. Presumably in Australia this mimics the behavior of something the flopworm's predators don't want to eat. They usually bounce only a few inches up into the air but, depending on how rough the surface of a building is and whether it has accumulations of humus in its crevices, they could in theory flop their way up to the second storey--without having any idea that that was what they were doing. They are very primitive organisms, no eyes, no teeth, hardly enough nerves to form anything that can be called a brain, and not enough sense to burrow deeper than their predators can. In a world of worm-eating animals, that surprising flop is their only defense.
One of Scalzi's readers said the animal he photographed lacked the collarlike band called the clitellum that identifies the front half of an earthworm. If you magnify the photo you can see the clitellum. It's less clearly marked on flopworms than it is on our native earthworm species. The clitellum is part of a segmented worm's reproductive system and may not be noticeable on very young individuals.
Helpless and pitiful as a flopworm is, it's a kill-on-sight species in North America. No, don't try to poison it. Just chop or crush it into very small pieces. Don't leave an intact half that could regrow its other end. Grease-eating ants will eat the pieces, once they've stopped flopping and the ants can carry them.
Microsoft
Is this hubris, or is it extreme, unprecedented, steroidal hubris?
Let's all demand that Congress order a revision specifying, among other things,
*That Microsoft is not allowed to interfere with the operation of privately owned computers by allowing input from people other than the owner and the people or sites with whom the owner is interacting to be processed while the computer is in use.
* That if you're doing something with your computer and Microsoft decides to shut down what you're doing in order to "update" some program you never even use, Microsoft owes you $100 for the first second and $100 for every second thereafter.
* That nothing and nobody may legally "use your camera" or "use your microphone" without a specific keyboard command from you, and if companies do, you can sue the shirts off their backs.
* That if Microsoft uses your content without your express written consent, even if you posted the content free for everyone to use and specifically encouraged everyone to share it far and wide (like Petfinder photos), Microsoft owes you not less than $1000 if it prints on one or two pages, more if it's a long document or if any living person's face or voice can be identified on it.
* That if Microsoft sells any information about you or your content, 75% of whatever the buyer paid is your money.
* That it's none of Microsoft's business how many people use a device or program, except that, in the interests of conserving resources and making it harder to identify real people from cyberspace, the more the better.
* That Microsoft is not allowed to store strings of nine or ten digits (in the US), for the express purpose of preventing Microsoft from asking people for Social Security numbers or, if phones survive, phone numbers; and Microsoft is not allowed to ask for your real name, home address, or date of birth, either.
* That Microsoft is responsible for allowing, if not encouraging, people to publish content that is illegal--offering illegal products or services for sale, posting specific realistic threats, publishing libellous stories--in order to make it easier for the relevant laws to be enforced.
* That if Bing is a search engine, it must show ALL search results even if there are a million or more (it's up to researchers to narrow their searches), and if it sorts search results in a way that allows people to pay to be at the top of the search page, it must refer to itself as an advertising search engine and must not attempt to compete with serious search engines.
* That Microsoft is licensed to provide services to computer owners for so long as Microsoft is able to provide such services ethically, which includes not promoting waste by attempting to force sales of new products; so, Microsoft's license to sell its snazzy new toys depends on its ability to work with Wang, Lanier, Tandy, and other brands most people in cyberspace today can't even remember, and may be forfeited if an unacceptable number of computers--say, more than the number of floods and fires in a given State in a given year--are declared unusable.
* That people who pay for computer programs own them in the same sense they own books or records: They can't claim to be the authors, publishers, performers, etc., and they can't republish them for profit without those people's consent, but they can use them for their own benefit for the lifetime of the software manufacturer's license to sell software. Nobody would ever dare to say that, if you still have Old Dan's Victrola and a needle, you can't dig out Old Dan's records and dance all night to the 78s; no company should ever have dared to say that, if you have a computer for which you have built or bought a program that does X, Y, and Z today, you can't use that program to do X, Y, and Z next year, either.
Music
Content warning: Lightfoot. I actually liked Lightfoot. I know some readers didn't. Sorry. You don't have to click.
Meanwhile, let's all get to know Linux. Microsoft is too big for its britches and probably needs to be broken up, like Bell or Standard Oil.
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