43 thoughts on “March 18, 2015: The Reminder”

  1. Sometimes, I miss being an academic. Because Entertainment.

    “Yes, that was me, and I was actually smoking a cigarette briefly,” Halnon told Miami’s CBS affiliate. “I took a few puffs out of it. … Every other revolutionary smokes.”

    ...

    The release noted that Halnon said she lit a cigarette on the plane “to show solidarity with her idol, Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro.” Halnon’s e-mail to The Post on Wednesday included this, in its signature:

    “I am just beginning…my voice will not be stifled – it will arise from my breast even when I feel most alone, and my heart will give it all the fire that callous cowards deny it.” (Fidel Castro, History Will Absolve Me)

        1. Rhubarb, can I trust that you've already heard the Chappie score? Zimmer is coming close to ripping himself off a la John Williams, but I thought he did a pretty good job with the electronically-inspired tracks.

          Hmm. Maybe I should just post Movie Day. I don't know.

          1. Horner was just as likely to rip himself off. Still, Zimmer's a good one; the OST is definitely more "mechanical", but definitely Zimmer.

            btw, you knew Zimmer was a "Buggle" for a while, right?

      1. I direct you to FB for photographic evidence. Cell towers here are overloaded, so upload speeds are atrocious.

    1. I remember him pitching better as soon as he was on a different team (the Padres IIRC; Park effect?).

      1. yeah, he pitched better in San Diego after the Twins stint in 2012. He had a solid 2013 campaign, but then had Tommy John.

      2. It was also his only season pitching for an AL team. Marquis has had some really bad seasons throughout his career. That certainly was one of them.

  2. Sitting in a sexual harassment prevention training seminar. This is a really important topic. Too bad the training is so awful. State law requires me to sit through 2 hours of such training. Not self-paced, because one could get done in less than 2 hours (Because So Little Content). So I am listening to the trainer read everything on her slides. w00t.

  3. AMR, do you know if waxwings are coming through? I saw a flock of birds on the tree that looked like them, but flew away before I could snap a pic. They were eating berries left over from last year.

    1. Yes they are. But they're also often coming through at any time of year. They're "erratic" and will breed in the winter if they have a good food source.
      I had bunches of them stay for the Polar Vortex winter of 2013-14, but none for the mild winter of 2014-15 until last Friday. I assume that the hard freeze in early November followed by warmer weather made all the berries on trees mushy and fall to the ground.

      Waxwings in flight look a lot like starlings. Same wing shape, same short, round body.
      Waxwings will have a yellow band on the tip of the tail and sometimes do some crazy swallow-like turning to catch bugs on the wing.
      They're almost always in flocks. Often with some robins. Last spring it seemed some robins were herding them, each flock of 30 or so waxwings had a Robin that would cluck-call and the flock would leave together, with their feathered guide.

      1. oh, some came back and I snapped a poor quality picture (through a glass door. I didnt want to open the door and scare them off again)

          1. I fixed it. Definite Waxwings.
            The one straight up from the door is pretty clear.
            Looks like crabapples?
            They don't really sing. Their sound is a high-pitched trill, with changes in emphasis showing meaning.
            (If they sung like nightingales, the other birds would probably kill them all out of jealousy.)

    1. “He wanted to see what I thought about pitching the ninth inning of a tie game on the road,” Perkins said, a move that would likely cost him a handful of saves per season. “I told him, I think it’s a good idea. I don’t care about the saves. I want to help us win.”

      Perk is the best.

  4. Coming through today: A solitary Long-tailed Duck, 25th ever recorded in Hennepin County, a mile from my house.
    I had to go see it. And did.
    This seems to be the best photo anyone's taken of it.
    Typically, it's found on oceans and the Great Lakes. (It would not have been a big deal on Lake Superior.)

    If you're familiar with older duck names, this used to be called the "Oldsquaw" or "Old Squaw Duck" or other versions with hyphens.
    This was never the accepted name in Britain, and given it's sexist, racist, and ageist, the AOU went with trans-Atlantic name consolidation.

    (Let's hope the AOU never looks at our state bird's name for being unkind to the insane. I don't want to represented by a Great Northern Diver!)

    1. While I won't bemoan the loss of a word like "Oldsquaw", "Long-tailed Duck" sure lacks that connection to wide and creative variation in naming birds.
      Ducks still get the best of it with "Shoveler", "Redhead", "Canvasback", "Bufflehead", "Goldeneye", "Bluebill", "Scoter", "Scaup", "Eider", "Wigeon", "Teal", "Pochard", "Mallard", "Pintail", "Gadwall", "Shelduck", "Smew", "Merganser", and "Goosander". In just about any other class, the Mallard would be the "Common Dabbling-duck", the Gadwall the "Slaty-breasted Dabbling-duck", etc.

      While on the topic, the Ring-necked Duck is horribly named. From a long distance, the characteristic that separates it from other similar ducks is the bright white ring on its... bill.

    1. It's a first-winter male. (That is, it hatched last year.)
      His tail won't be long until he gets his big-boy feathers.
      It'll be a bit longer than a Pintail's tail, but on a much smaller bird.
      The Goldeneyes with it were much bigger, and they're small ducks. I wonder how often Common Mergansers eat Long-tailed Ducks, thinking they're fish.

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