I do not like bats. Once, as a college student living in a third-floor apartment with no air-conditioning, a bat landed on me during a hot summer night. I fled my room, shrieking. Even today, on summer nights at my rural home, when bats fly low over my deck, I instinctively duck.
Bats have a bad rep. Think bat and you likely think bat with rabies. Think bat and you likely think dirty bat or bat as vampiric bloodsucker. Think bat and you likely think evil harbinger of doom and destruction. (Okay, that last one’s a tad over the top … but you get the idea.) Bats have fewer defenders than fear-laden critics.
But bats, the only mammal structurally capable of sustained flight, are just creatures with significant ecological — and economic — roles. Hate mosquitoes and other insects? They’re on the nighttime menu for bats. Like bees, many bats pollinate plants and spread seeds. Bat shit (sorry; bat guano) is rich in nitrogen and is a profitable fertilizer. Bats’ ability to navigate in the dark (echolocation) is a subject of significant scientific study.
But in the past five years, up to 6.7 million bats are estimated to have died in 16 states and Canada, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. Three species face extinction — the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat and the tricolored bat. A malady called white-nose syndrome is killing them. Full story »
Just in case you want in on the awesome, and you want to celebrate Christmas in an unconventional way, check out Marvel Comics’ adaptation of A Christmas Carol—with zombies!
Zombies Christmas Carol, published in September, might at first blush seem like yet another adaptation of a classic tale with zombies thrown in, a trend kicked off a couple years ago by Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. Zombies Christmas Carol seems particularly well-suited to the zombie treatment, though, and not just because the story is already filled with supernatural creatures.
Jolly Old Saint Nicholas…Kris Kringle…Father Christmas…Santa Claus.
Few characters are as recognizable as the patron saint of Christmas.
Santa, as well as his Canadian and British counterpart, Father Christmas, both derive from the legends surrounding Saint Nicholas, a former bishop who lived in the third century in the city of Myra, in a region that’s now part of Turkey. His feast day is celebrated December 6.
The Dutch abbreviated Saint Nicholas’s name as Sinterklaas, which is where the name Santa Clause comes from. The Dutch depict Sinterklaas much like a Catholic bishop with a tall hat, full white beard, and a staff.
Our own depictions of Santa Claus predate date back to images of “Father Christmas” from 17th century in England. Full story »
I’m going to read 25 books over the next 30 days. At least that’s the plan.
And my goal is to share my reading with you.
It’s partially by design, partially by doctoral requirement. The PhD program I’m enrolled in requires three “field exams”—areas of specialty that I want to focus on as part of my doctoral work above and beyond the coursework I have to take.
My first, which I’m reading for over Christmas break, will focus on the way creative nonfiction writers write about place.
My list started out with twenty-eight books on it, but it’s grown a little over the past few days: Full story »
In an article in the September issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, poet Tony Hoagland traced the legacy of the New York School’s poetics. That legacy, he argues, has left contemporary poetry infused with “distractedness and haplessness,” which lowers the stakes and makes poetry “harmless in itself, quirky-cute, a sherbert-flavored course of hallucinogenic dessert art.”
There is, he suggested, “a kind of heroism and commitment missing from contemporary American poetry….”
Hoagland’s own poetry is filled with heroism of the everyday kind: slightly broken people trying to move through the world even as they’re besieged by consumerism, vapid media, and stuff. He’s wry and witty and keenly insightful, and everything always comes back to the struggle to understand what it means to be human.
Much contemporary poetry—at least of the post-New York School—forgets that struggle, though, and instead gets preoccupied by all that stuff. Full story »
Well, whoever it is who gave us this as our logo, and these guys as our mascots, is still around, because the new batch of official London 2012 Olympics posters was released a little while ago, and they’re pretty dreadful. Uninspired is probably a better word, since they’re among the most boring posters you will ever see. It clearly follows from the fact that whatever committee this was decided to go for name artists, rather than run some sort of competition. So we’ve got the gaggle of usual suspects. Here’s probably the best of the bunch, from Adrian Hamilton:
I’m late to the Mary Oliver party, I realize. Her first book of poems came out in 1963. By 1984, she was getting love from the Pulitzer committee. In 1992, the National Book Award committee gave her the nod. She’s won a slew of awards, and The New York Times has called her “far and away, this country’s best-selling poet.”
I found her, just this autumn, because of some owls.
In my attempt to feed my head full of poetry this semester, I picked up one of Mary Oliver’s many volumes from the bookstore shelf because the title caught my eye: Owls and Other Fantasies. Just the idea that a writer would look at an owl as a fantasy held promise.
While Ed Ritter was on the land line with the manager of Mobility Lift and Elevator, he had to keep a finger in his other ear so he could hear above the noise of the giant vacuum cleaner upstairs.
“I’m sorry, sir, could you repeat that?”
“I asked, if I’m not being invasive or anything, what’s your father got?”
“He’s got lymphoma,” Ed said, then immediately regretted splashing the emphasis back in the manager’s face. In the months he’d been coming to New Jersey to see his father Joel through doctors’ appointments and visits with friends—visits that had recently acquired a valedictory tone—he was learning to forgive the awkward questions and comments of people who meant well. “He believes he’s going to die in the next few days. I was hoping to get you guys out here before that.” The first time Ed had called Mobility, he had followed the manager’s instructions and measured the width of the staircase in the mock Tudor house, and the manager had pronounced it too narrow for the brackets they had in stock to hold the chair’s track in place; the manager would call as soon as the special bracket came in from the supplier. But no one from Mobility had called again, and Joel was becoming impatient. “I want to die upstairs,” his father had been repeating at least twice a day. Full story »
The original X-Prize was for a private spaceship, and the goal was to prove that a privately developed manned spaceship was viable. The Ansari X-Prize (named for it’s financial sponsor) was $10 million, and it was won by Scaled Composites in in 2004. Since then, the X-Prize Foundation has turned its attention to more practical matters such as a 100 MPG car (Progressive Automotive X-Prize) and, the latest to be awarded, the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X-Challenge.
The challenge was to beat 2500 gallons per minute of oil with an oil recovering efficiency (percentage of oil vs. water in the recovered gallons) of 70% or greater. The previous record was less than 1100 gallons per minute. Two companies beat the challenge, with the winner more than doubling the goal. Full story »
[Dr. Nepomuk Otte and his colleagues] spotted gamma rays with energies of far more than 100 GeV, and there were further hints that there may be teraelectronvolt rays; that puts them nearly on a par with particle energies at the Large Hadron Collider.
If you recall, back when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was about to be powered up in 2008 there was a great deal of fear expressed by non-scientists that the LHC could result in the creation of black holes that might eat the Earth, or that the LHC might create theoretical “strangelets” that might eat the Earth. Regardless of the theory, everyone agreed that they were afraid that it meant the end of the world. Full story »
Sen. John Kerry’s decision to not meet with “a whole bunch of lobbyists right now” and not fundraise while serving on Congress’ deficit-reduction “supercommittee” fails to impress. And the story by his hometown cheerleader, The Boston Globe,” equally fails to impress.
The Massachusetts Democrat may have scored a few points with voters. But his decision is really only inexpensive grandstanding. He said in August he’ll seek a sixth term in 2014. And he’s a shoo-in to win. He won his fifth term in 2008 with 66 percent of the vote and faced a primary opponent for only the first time in decades.
And who would want to face a sitting senator who has, thanks to his leadership PAC and campaign committee, $3 million in the bank and zero debt? And whose personal wealth, tops in the U.S. Senate, hit nearly $190 million entering 2010? Full story »
I am in the room where I teach. You stop at the door and knock.
“Come in,” I say. You stride in and sit in the chair next to me. The phone in your hand chirps. You glance at it, then at me. I frown. You sigh and put your phone in your pack.
“What can I do for you?” I ask.
“I want to write well,” you say. “How do I do that?”
I nod. “How much do you read?” I ask.
“Not a lot,” you say.
“Why do you not read more?” I say.
“I do not like to read,” you say. “It takes too much time.”
When the national anthem is sung, I place my hand over my heart. I didn’t always. But I’m old enough now to appreciate, to be grateful for, what being an American citizen has afforded me.
If I wish, I can own a firearm. I can assemble peaceably with others. I can criticize the government. I can practice a religion — or not — without governmental dictation. The Constitution protects me from unreasonable search and seizure (Patriot Act not withstanding). When I was a journalist, the government could not abridge the freedom of my press. I can own property. I can depend on contracts being enforced. I have more constitutionally guaranteed rights as an American than any citizen of any other country.
Yes, I have duties as well. I must pay taxes for the general welfare and the common defense. I must be willing (and able) to stand in judgment of a citizen charged with a crime by the government. I ought to be sufficiently knowledgeable and intelligent to vote wisely.
I love my country. Most of us do. But I no longer have faith that my elected leaders love it as much as they love power and the ability to demean those they oppose. I don’t like, respect, or trust my elected leaders any more, and their public personae and political actions show they don’t give a damn about me in any way beyond my ability to cast a vote. Full story »
Here at S&R we try and generate as much original content as possible and, unlike a lot of blogs, we don’t dedicate much energy to linking other stories around the ‘sphere. Aside from Mike’s Nota Bene series, anyway. But earlier today three other outlets linked to my “Will you vote for Obama (again)?” piece, and since these places are trying to broaden what I think is a critical discussion for our nation, I thought I’d take a moment to say thanks and encourage S&R’s reader to backtrack with us.
First, thanks to the supreme Susie Madrak, who gets the empathy with which we deliberate the question far better than most people. I can’t recommend her site highly enough. Full story »
As a child turning teen in the late 1950s, the black-and-white RCA in the living room received only three channels … well, four, but we didn’t watch PBS. So I read. Newspapers, of course (after Dad finished sports and Mom finished news). And books. The library was only two blocks away, so I spent afternoons there sampling the stack. I was a small-town boy at the end of the idyllic “Father Knows Best” decade of Eisenhower placidity, a geeky kid feeling the first pangs of puberty.
I longed for adventure beyond being a Boy Scout or tossing a football with neighborhood pals. In the library I found adventure stories set in space, spun with well-chosen words and exquisitely crafted plots.
I discovered Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End.” Then Robert A. Heinlein’s “Methuselah’s Children,” Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” and Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation and Empire.” Science fiction (or, in Clarke’s case, science prediction) captivated me. I became a sci-fi cognoscente.
Then, in 1957, came the shocker: Sputnik. Full story »
In 1976, I was a general-assignment reporter of limited experience and minimal accomplishment. So my editor kindly fired me, then said: “Now get your ass up on the copy desk where you belong.”
I knew little about copy editing. So I asked my newsroom godfather: “Neil, what do copy editors do?”
He looked over the rims of those 1950s spectacles he favored and said, “Defend your reader.”
“Against what?” I asked.
“Error,” he said. “Any error possible.”
The memory of, or, perhaps, even the desire to exercise that dictum may remain in today’s newsrooms. But the ability of copy editors today to defend readers against error has inexorably been eroded. That decimation of editing capacity has been fueled by computerization beginning in the late ’70s and continued in this past decade by the sacking of newsroom staffs and the insatiable demand of management to get stories online or winging to mobile devices right now. Full story »
Would you pay between $4.95 and $9.95 a month to watch conservative talker Glenn Beck for two hours a day on the Internet?
Beck will launch, with partner Mercury Radio Arts, GBTV, an online video network, on Sept. 12. Here’s Beck himself in a five-minute pitch describing his “global plans” and how he will be “champion of man’s freedom” for the mere cost of a “cup of coffee in today’s world”:
Whether Beck is certifiably insane is not the issue here: Rather, he and his partner need to insure that revenues exceed costs. Now that he’s leaving the ready mega-megaphone of Fox News on June 30, that’s not a certainty. Full story »
When a news story claims certainty in expressing public opinion — or uses sources that claim such — readers should be wary.
Such is the case with a Friday NPR story that commingled analysis, reporting, and commentary (without a commentary label) about the impact of “tough economic news” on President Obama’s re-election prospects.
Some phrasing in the 1,081-word story represents guessing or labeling instead of reporting: seems, perhaps, hardly has a pulse, appears, near certainty, dismal harbinger, liberal wing, political environment, seems a distant memory, progressive community, recent experiences, some in his own party (tell us who, please), and a pervasive view.
But it is proclamations of knowledge of public opinion that irritate most. Full story »
I do not like bats. Once, as a college student living in a third-floor apartment with no air-conditioning, a bat landed on me during a hot summer night. I fled my room, shrieking. Even today, on summer nights at my rural home, when bats fly low over my deck, I instinctively duck.
According to the BBC, astronomers observing the pulsar at the core of the Crab Nebula have 
When the national anthem is sung, I place my hand over my heart. I didn’t always. But I’m old enough now to appreciate, to be grateful for, what being an American citizen has afforded me.
As a child turning teen in the late 1950s, the black-and-white RCA in the living room received only three channels … well, four, but we didn’t watch PBS. So I read. Newspapers, of course (after Dad finished sports and Mom finished news). And books. The library was only two blocks away, so I spent afternoons there sampling the stack. I was a small-town boy at the end of the idyllic “Father Knows Best” decade of Eisenhower placidity, a geeky kid feeling the first pangs of puberty.
In 1976, I was a general-assignment reporter of limited experience and minimal accomplishment. So my editor kindly fired me, then said: “Now get your ass up on the copy desk where you belong.”