I got hammered this week, but not because Wednesday was Cinco de Mayo; rather, I smashed a thumb while reconstructing a rack for our kayaks.
Fortunately, my ability to touch-type wasn’t seriously compromised — my uninjured thumb assumed complete responsibility for striking the space bar, and with nine functioning fingers I managed to compose two new verses to share with you:
Grand Cru-ise (posted May 5, 2021)
A dozen bottles of an already prohibitively expensive merlot were housed in the International Space Station for 14 months before being returned to terra firma, with only one bottle from the lot being offered at auction, with an estimated sale price of a cool $1 million. (I shouldn’t say “cool” here because aren’t you supposed to serve red wine at room temperature?):
Space Cargo Unlimited sent 12 bottles of the wine to the International Space Station (ISS) in November 2019. After more than 400 days in space, travelling around 300 million km (186 million miles) in zero gravity, the wine returned to Earth in January 2021.
Scientists analysed it and a group of wine tasters got to try a batch at the University of Bordeaux's wine institute in March, to compare it with Earth-aged bottles. Jane Anson, journalist and author of Inside Bordeaux, was one of the lucky few.
"It's hard for me to say if it was better or worse. But it was definitely different," she told the BBC. "The aromatics were more floral and more smoky - the things that would happen anyway to Pétrus as it gets older."
[Read more here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56992086]
I’m not much of an oenophile — but I believe the “expert” taster quoted here said the space-aged wine tasted pretty much the same as the earth-bound vintage. I reckon if I had a million bucks to throw around, I could launch my own self up into space for a year or so and, once back on earth, get an “expert” opinion from my wife that I really wasn’t improved in any way by the experience.
House of Buggin’ (posted May 7, 2021)
The life cycles of various living creatures are a mystery: mayflies live for only a calendar day, a particular quahog clam can live for hundreds of years, and one species of jellyfish has the ability to endlessly regenerate and is, theoretically, immortal.
So, the 17-year age span for cicadas isn’t all that remarkable, other than the fact they spend but a few brief months of that time underground, emerging only to shed their exoskeletons, mate, and produce eggs that, once hatched, result in li’l baby bugs who drop back to the ground and burrow themselves away and won’t re-emerge until they’re old enough to be juniors in high school:
(C)icadas evolved different cycle lengths to improve their odds of survival. A brood can't survive a cold summer above ground, but surviving a cold summer below ground is no problem. The less often cicadas emerge from the earth, the lower their odds of being wiped out by an unusually cold summer.
The exact reason behind the number 17 is unknown, but scientists have a few theories. One idea suggests that the unusual, prime-numbered lifecycle prevents generations of cicadas from run-ins with the lifecycles of wasps that prey on them. Another theory says the prime-numbered cycle reduce the likelihood that 17-year cicadas will mate and hybridize with cicadas of different species or generations.
Such a hybridization would reduce the size of these generations — bad news for a species that needs large numbers to survive.
[Read more here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-brood-x-us-cicada-infestation-coming-in-2021/]
Where I now live (Maine), cicadas are not predicted to emerge. Instead, this year we are dealing with an onslaught of ticks. I’d much rather deal with cicadas.
Socially Inept
Rhyme for the News is on the Facebook, the Twitter, the Instagram, the DubyaDubyaDubya — all in addition to this captivating Substack newsletter. As previously threatened, soon enough I’ll be on the Tickety-Tok. Developing this broad social media platform gives the general public multiple opportunities to ignore my poetic endeavors.
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See you next week!
JB