While I’ve yet to shed the few pounds I picked up during Hanukkah/Christmas/New Year celebrations, I have managed to get through the first month of 2022 without contracting Covid (at least, not that I’m aware of; guess I should have broken out one of my four free test kits courtesy of Uncle Joe to confirm that). But I remain committed to a healthy-ish lifestyle by eating up gossip and exercising my right to vote as frequently as possible.
In a surge (at least, by my standards) of creativity, I managed to concoct six RFTN posts this month. Something tells me I won’t be touched by the muse again in the few days remaining before February kicks in, since Sunday is dedicated to football-watching, and Monday is, well… Monday.
If there is a theme to this month’s verses (and you’d have to squint real hard to see it), it’s that life is a cabaret, old chum. Or, in the case of one post — possibly a cabernet.
(BTW — I presume you know the meaning of “Qi.” It’s the Chinese term for how to get rid of a high-scoring letter in Scrabble once you’ve given up fishing for a “u” to go with it.)
Hook, Line and Blinker (posted January 12, 2022)
Fish can navigate a motorized conveyance and even follow directions. That puts them at least one step ahead of me:
Picture this: A goldfish swimming in a square tank on wheels as it rolls deliberately from one side of a room to the other.
It's not a scene from a children's book or a futuristic movie. It's an animal behavior experiment at Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where researchers have successfully trained several goldfish to operate a robotic vehicle in an effort to explore whether their species is capable of navigating on land.
And it turns out they just might be, according to findings published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.
"The study hints that navigational ability is universal rather than specific to the environment," said Shachar Givon, a Ph.D. student and one of the paper's authors. "Second, it shows that goldfish have the cognitive ability to learn a complex task in an environment completely unlike the one they evolved in. As anyone who has tried to learn how to ride a bike or to drive a car knows, it is challenging at first."
[Read more here: https://n.pr/3geEk0s]
When I read that scientists had taught fish how to drive, I immediately thought of that episode of “The Office” where Michael blindly follows the GPS directions and ends up submerged in a lake. The goldfish don’t have that worry since they start out already in water. I think the next step related to this innovation is coming up with a slosh-free tank so you can buckle your goldfish in the passenger seat while it tells you which exit to take off the rotary.
All That Glitter (posted January 14, 2022)
While the relationship among the participants in this story wasn’t made clear, we can all imagine the motivation behind two women teaming up to go after one man:
Two Florida women were arrested after attacking a man with containers of (glitter) at his Clearwater home…
The complaint says (the two women) arrived at the (man’s) ground-level apartment at around 2:30 a.m. and began arguing with the man, who was standing on his fenced balcony.
The two women then began launching containers of glitter, “striking him in the upper torso and head,” read the report.
[Read more here: http://hrld.us/3IQ77VG]
Fortunately, no guns or baseball bats or crowbars appear to have been involved. This all seems quite innocuous unless these women had ordered industrial-sized containers of the glitter; a quick online search uncovered 25-pound boxes available for purchase. But there is an air of spontaneity to this ambush, so I think these ladies just quickly grabbed whatever varieties they had on hand as part of their nightclub-attendance routine.
5G-Willikers (posted January 20, 2022)
This story seemed to cause a short-lived kerfuffle, but subsequent reports suggest the concerns may now be with regional airlines vs. the international carriers:
Some flights to and from the U.S. were canceled on Wednesday (Jan. 19) even after AT&T and Verizon scaled back the rollout of high-speed wireless service that could interfere with aircraft technology that measures altitude.
International carriers that rely heavily on the wide-body Boeing 777, and other Boeing aircraft, canceled early flights or switched to different planes following warnings from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Chicago-based plane maker.
Airlines that fly only or mostly Airbus jets, including Air France and Ireland’s Aer Lingus, seemed less affected by the new 5G service.
Airlines had canceled more than 320 flights by Wednesday evening, or a little over 2% of the U.S. total, according to FlightAware. That was far less disruptive than during the Christmas and New Year’s travel season, when a peak of 3,200, or 13%, of flights were canceled on Jan. 3 due to winter storms and workers out sick with COVID-19.
What exactly does “seemed less affected” mean here? Learning that your jet is *somewhat* less likely to fall from the sky due to bandwidth interference is not particularly reassuring.
Casting a Spell (posted January 22, 2022)
Everybody’s doing Wordle these days — at least, everybody with a social media account:
So far, Wordle’s influence has inspired several iterations, including Letterle, where you guess a single letter that is random for every user and is based on chance, and Absurdle, an “adversarial version” of Wordle that avoids giving users the correct answer. Then there’s Queerdle, like queer Wordle, which describes itself as the “yassification” of the popular word game. Copycats have popped up in the App Store with advertisements and paid options; however, the original creator of the game, Josh Wardle, prides himself on keeping the game accessible and free. As wholesome as the game is, that blank screen and keyboard can be intimidating, so we made a quick how-and-hacks guide for the Wordlecurious. Keep calm and Wordle on.
[Read more here: https://bit.ly/3IOJoFb]
I first read about Wordle in a New York Times article and began playing. The rules (such as they are) and the social media component aren’t all that clear on the site, so I was one of those doofuses who posted a screenshot of my completed puzzle and revealed the word of the day. My apologies. I now start each day’s game with my personal cheat word: “I-D-I-O-T.”
Blithe Spirits (January 26, 2022)
It seems like ever since I was old enough to spell “resveratrol” the health benefit of drinking a glass of red wine a day has been accepted as common knowledge. But — perhaps no longer:
You may have heard that moderate drinking, like a glass of red wine a night with dinner, is not only acceptable for your diet but could actually be beneficial to your heart health. But before you pour that next glass of pinot noir, new recommendations have led to some serious controversy over this idea. Recently, The World Heart Federation (WHF) released a policy brief that suggested: “No amount of alcohol is good for the heart.”
The brief says that drinking alcohol has been linked to a slew of diseases like an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary disease, stroke, heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation, and aneurysm. This led to more than 2.4 million people dying of alcohol in 2019, accounting for 4.3% of all deaths globally, according to the brief.
[Read more here: https://bit.ly/3oaxRZc]
This news generated debate within the medical community, largely because of the risk involved with trying to identify a “safe” amount of alcohol one can consume; people will then rationalize their own intake levels. Having said that — I come down squarely on the “no alcohol” side of this discussion. At least, not during breakfast. Unless it’s called “brunch”…
Creepy Sleepytime (posted January 30, 2022)
As if not enough bizarre behaviors seem endemic to Florida (see “All That Glitter” above), there’s also the concern one might be beaned by a lizard dropping from its overhead perch once temps dip into the low 40s:
While much of the East Coast will be slammed by heavy snowfall and hurricane-force winds this weekend, Floridians may have to dodge an unexpected item falling from the sky — frozen iguanas dropping from trees.
The National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center issued a warning that Florida residents may stumble upon the strange reptilian phenomenon this weekend, which can happen during cold conditions.
"Much of the state will remain mostly clear and frigid tonight with the chance for scattered to isolated falling iguanas from trees," the center said on Saturday.
[Read more here: https://bit.ly/35qV3LZ]
Just to be clear: the iguanas aren’t actually “frozen” — they’re in a dormant state and generally spring back to action once they warm up. Also: the low 40s is labeled a “cold snap” in Florida? Here in Maine, mid 40s are considered balmy.
—
How’s the weather where you are? Up until this final January weekend we’ve had a very un-Maine-like season, snow-wise. However, the past few weeks have brought plenty of single-digit and sub-zero temperatures, so if there are any iguanas experiencing vagrancy in Maine (like the Steller’s Sea Eagle who’s been paying an extended visit to the coast), they would have been *literally* frozen.
This makes me think I should have titled that post “Cold-Snap Dragon.”
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Take care,
JB