Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Tally-ho?

In the absence of real friends and collegues to send me mails with not-so-important information to give flavour to everyday life, (with a few exceptions, of course, i.e. the reader's of this blog; I would like to thank Mom, Dad, L, A, Y, G, E and C), I've subscribed to a number of newsletters with more or less important information.

One of these newsletters informed me yesterday that today is the international Talk-like-a-pirate-day. Apparently these two guys were playing squash and then decided to talk like pirates (theory 1: One of them got a ball in one eye and had to cover it; theory 2: One of them (the one with the idea) had a racket smashed in the head. Really hard). Their website have a glossary to start with, consisting of no less than 5 words (all beginning with A). If you want to go to the advanced section there's another 7 words there. Amazingly complicated, this pirate stuff.


As a special there's soundclips where you can learn how to talk like a pirate in German, Mandarin chinese and Swedish. The swedish clip is a man with a growly, but otherwise perfectly normal and grammatically correct, voice saying (in swedish) " I, I am a pirate. I steal from the rich and give to myself. Hee-he-he-he-he-hee-heee".

So that's how you do it. I'll get right on it. Hee-he-he-he-he-hee-heee

/J.

Monday, September 18, 2006

DUI

Apparently bats die at windmills. But the USGS scientists are on it.

"One research tool that is particularly well-suited to studying the origins of bats killed at wind turbines is stable isotope analysis. USGS scientists recently pioneered the
application of stable hydrogen isotope analysis to the study of migration in terrestrial mammals and proved the efficacy of the technique for studying the continental movements of bats. Coincidentally, this groundbreaking research focused on the very same species of bat (the hoary bat, Lasiurus cinereus) that is killed most frequently at wind turbine sites across North America. Because of this, the USGS is in the unique position of having an existing framework of stable isotope data on which to build."

Coincidentally, later research revealed the hoary bats’ inability to detect windmills while stuffed with stable isotopes.


/J.