When I stay home because I’m sick
The whole day I’m just like,
National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, Hayward, Wisconsin
photo by David Graham, 1984
In case you’re wondering, yes, this place still exists.
African Dung Beetles Navigate at Night Using the Milky Way
Science has shown us that a number of organisms use the stars for navigation: songbirds, harbor seals and, of course, humans. But a new study by a team of Swedish and South African researchers published today in the journal Cell Biology indicates that a rather unexpected creature can be added to this list—the lowly dung beetle.
The beetles are known for creating small balls made of animal feces (i.e. dung) and rolling them in straight lines over long distances. They do this because the dung is their main food source—and other beetles often try to steal the dung once it’s been rolled into a ball. The surest way of retaining the valuable dung once it’s been packed into a ball is to move it away from the original dung pile as quickly as possible.
Researchers, though, have long been mystified by the tiny beetles’ ability to roll the dung balls in straight lines at night. “Even on clear, moonless nights, many dung beetles still manage to orientate along straight paths,” said lead author Marie Dacke of Lund University in Sweden. “This led us to suspect that the beetles exploit the starry sky for orientation—a feat that had, to our knowledge, never before been demonstrated in an insect.” - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.
Photo courtesy of Current Biology, Dacke et. al.
TOO COOL
Sigma Kappa women in fur coats, Madison, Wisconsin ca. 1922.
via: UW-Madison Archives by way of University of Wisconsin Digital Collections
December 26, 1904 marks the birthdate of Swiss-born Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier. Born in Lausanne, Carpentier first moved to Havana with his family as an infant, and continued to identify as Cuban throughout his life. He is famed for popularizing magical realism, lo real maravilloso, in Latin American literature, a concept he explored in his 1949 novella A Kingdom of This World, which dealt with the Haitian Revolution. He was also a renowned scholar of Cuban music and Afro-Cuban culture. Carpentier lived the last years of his life in Paris, where he’d been appointed Ambassador by Fidel Castro, and died of cancer in 1980.
December 26, 1904 marks the birthdate of Swiss-born Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier. Born in Lausanne, Carpentier first moved to Havana with his family as an infant, and continued to identify as Cuban throughout his life. He is famed for popularizing magical realism, lo real maravilloso, in Latin American literature, a concept he explored in his 1949 novella A Kingdom of This World, which dealt with the Haitian Revolution. He was also a renowned scholar of Cuban music and Afro-Cuban culture. Carpentier lived the last years of his life in Paris, where he’d been appointed Ambassador by Fidel Castro, and died of cancer in 1980.
both sides of Keith Haring’s Broome Street apartment door
(photo: Tim Schreier)
Closing Dec 30:
“Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery, 1969-1989”
organized by Ethan Swan
New Museum, 235 Bowery, NYC
Free Admission on Thursday Evenings from 7 p.m.–9 p.m.
an exhibition that takes the Bowery as subject, site, and center for creative ingenuity in the 1970s and 1980s. “During these two decades, the Bowery was commonly identified with the furthest extremes of metropolitan decline—municipal neglect, homelessness, and substance abuse. As landlords and civil services abandoned the neighborhood, the subsequent cheap rents and permissive atmosphere drew artists downtown. The Bowery’s lofts provided a social network where painters, photographers, performance artists, musicians, and filmmakers exchanged ideas and drew inspiration from this concentration of creative activity.”
