Reviews and News:
The University of Maryland at College Park is hiring a “hate-bias response coordinator.” What is a hate-bias response coordinator, you ask? Good question. It’s not someone who coordinates responses of hatred and bias, apparently, but someone who coordinates responses to hatred and bias. The position reflects the “new normal” that has “taken hold” of the campus, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, just in case you were wondering if such a position is actually necessary.
Scarlet fever is on the rise and no one knows why.
The food (and tea) of the British Empire: “In her original and supremely captivating book, [Lizzie Collingham] has cleverly recreated the fine details of some 20 meals, consumed over four and a half centuries in a variety of homes and ships and tented encampments far from the motherland. Her technique — already displayed in earlier books on the history of curry, the importance of diet and physique in the running of Imperial India and the role of food in wars involving both Germany and Japan — is to examine the minutiae of daily kitchen life and to extrapolate from them a greater image of historical sweep.”
Before there was Pushkin, there was Konstantin Batyushkov.
Turns out the yeti is mostly a bear and sometimes a dog: “In the fall of 2013, Charlotte Lindqvist got a call from a film company making an Animal Planet documentary about the yeti, the mythical apelike creature that roams the Himalayas. So, not the kind of thing scientists usually like to mess with…Lindqvist said yes because she is a geneticist who studies bears, and the rare Himalayan brown bear is one possible origin of the yeti legend. The team from Icon Films wanted to use science to investigate whether the yeti is real; Lindqvist wanted to investigate the enigmatic bears of the Himalayas…The results of that unusual collaboration were published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Lindqvist and her colleagues used DNA to identify nine ‘yeti’ samples. These include: a thigh bone found by a spiritual healer in a cave that turned out to be from a Tibetan brown bear; hair from a mummified animal in a monastery that turned out to be from a Himalayan brown bear; a tooth from a stuffed animal collected by Nazis in the 1930s that turned out to be from a dog. The rest of the samples turned up five more Tibetan brown bears and an Asian black bear.”
“His are the most famous curves in Florence and adorn everything from aprons to fridge magnets, but images of Michelangelo’s David can now only be used with official authorization, a court in Italy has ruled.”
Essay of the Day:
The Ortiz brothers are two of the most successful jockeys in horse racing. Why?
“Most jockeys become known as specialists in one or another part of the race. Speed riders break quickly from the gate and try to stay ahead; position riders are adept at saving ground and finding holes in the pack; closers ride best from behind. Some jockeys are better on dirt than on turf, some are better on faster horses, some are masters of a particular distance. The Ortiz brothers, Clancy said, excel in all areas, though each has his own style. Irad is the more aggressive rider of the two; tactically, he resembles John Velazquez, a forty-five-year-old Puerto Rican who is the leader of the N.Y.R.A. colony and is the top-earning jockey of all time, with three hundred and seventy-six million dollars in lifetime winnings. ‘When Johnny V. makes a move, you know it,’ Clancy said. Jose, on the other hand, sidles into the pack, more like Wayne Gretzky, the hockey great. ‘Gretzky looked slow, because he was so fast,’ Clancy went on. ‘He’d already made the move. Jose is the same way. He’s in the perfect spot, absolutely where he should be, and you have no idea how he got there.’”
Photos: Iceland’s Largest Volcanic Eruption in 200 Years
Poem: Meg Tyler. “Turn in the Year”
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