Useless Fact for the Day

Old news, I know, but I can't resist. Available on about a million useless fact web pages.

Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a week day at 5 pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize this was the day of the changeover.

As a part-Swede I can see myself thinking that this was a good plan.

The Fish Are Losing Their Affect

I know it is bad blogging ettiquette to quote a whole article from a news source, but I cannot for the life of me find this on the Washington Post website at the moment, so here you go. Fish on Antideps.

Drugs Found in Fish Samples
Science Notes
Washington Post
August 30, 2004

Antidepressants, birth control drugs and other medications are surfacing in fish tissue and are in some cases causing neurological, biochemical and physiological changes, according to Baylor University researchers.

Bryan Brooks, assistant professor of environmental studies at Baylor University's Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research, said his findings mark the first time researchers have documented drugs building up in organisms that reside in streams that receive large amounts of wastewater from municipal sources.

Brooks focused on effluent-dominated streams and rivers in Texas, where he and his researchers performed forensic tests on fish and invertebrates. In Waco alone, he said in a statement, about 12 million gallons of treated water a day are pumped into the Brazos River, which pours into the Gulf of Mexico.

"When male fish are exposed to critical levels of estrogen, they can be feminized and their secondary sexual characteristics become suppressed," he said. "We're also seeing antidepressants building up in fish tissue at high enough levels that may trigger behavioral changes" in the fish.

But he cautioned that more study is needed to determine whether the fish are suffering adverse consequences.

A buildup of antidepressants can modulate neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine in fish, Brooks said.

No Environmental Protection Agency regulations govern the level of pharmaceuticals in discharged water.

Meet Blame India Watch

Every once in a while I go check on what my blog-mother Laura is up to. She got me blogging, so I should read her site more, you know, call home sometimes, send flowers. I could at LEAST link to her. But I am too lazy.

Meanwhile. Her old primary site Interesting Monstah has been chilling out for a while, I find, because she's got a hot new site Blame India Watch about the move to blame outsourcing for labor abuses and shortages at home, rather than bad economic policy or foreign policy. Clickez vous and enjoy.

My Favorite Champion of Ringlish Speaks

He emerges from the tundra woods swinging a scaly worm above his head and ululating... an elaborate Mongolian warrior cry echoing among San Francisco's three or four skyscrapers...

This is my coworker Georgii-- or "George" to me. Sort of to spite him when I'm writing in Russian I transliterate it "Djordj." I'm more comfortable (and quite frankly more clear about what we're talking about) if we're both speaking Russian, but he insists on cramping along in English when we speak.

Here below, for your entertainment, is the final bullet point from his most recent weekly report. This is not a snippet of one of his classic-- nay, epic-- missteps, or even his most muscular floridity-- I just think you can hear some of the poetry of Russian still clinging to his words like cheap cigar smoke on a threadbare polyester pantsuit:

Has killed the Sasser Worm in my home computer. Though, it does not
relate directly to the work, it was joyful fun. The worm practically blackmails; it commands to download an update from Internet (pretending to be your computer's system), otherwise it shuts down your computer in 60 seconds (and does so). Any reasonable person should show a finger to the worm's commands and Microsoft's webpage provides arms to kill the worm successfully.

This is a special-ity of George's, the flamboyant destruction of a technological foe. Now that we're doing these weekly reports I hope I can offer you spectacular feats of Ringlish as a regular feature. Here's hoping.

Woo Hoo - I now know someone who's been reviewed on Lesbi.ru!

Here's to my friend Sonja Franeta's book "Pink* Flamingos" getting reviewed on Lesbi.ru! "Pink" is a slang term for lesbian (a little old-school, but still understood). The first Russian-speaking dyke group I was ever in was called "the Pinks," in Seattle.

I raise a virtual shot glass of vodka and say-- here's to non-Russian Russian-speaking lesbians and their Russophilic creative produce!

Sonja interviewed a range of Siberian queers over a period of time, capturing the interviews on film and tape. They are finally put together in this book, taking you to a world that has been little known, even to Russian LGBT activists, even those living in Siberia.

I think it interesting that it took a 2nd-generation Croat-American to complete this project. Having hung out a certain amount with Croatians in Croatia, they barely consider Russia or Russians relevant to any discussion of their own history or language. It's like they are some distant cousin, something like how the Mongolians might discuss the Navajo-- as though they were disconnected in pre-history.

As much as I love researching my own US/Swedish/Welsh/British culture, and Sonja loves Croatia, Sonja and I both find Russia- for whatever crazy reason- a country more compelling than the ones our families came from. I hope we are better at documenting without idealizing or proselytizing.

In another funny permutation of people working for not their own, this last time I was in Russia there was a funny moment with a straight US Irish-Catholic guy, myself (as aformentioned a US-mutt, and a queer Pagan), and a Ukrainian Christian lesbian were sitting around in the hip cafe "The Idiot" in St. Petersburg trying to figure out the funding for a new Jewish queer group that we thought should exist. We were very stoked about our new idea, picking up steam through a bottle of Georgian white wine. It remains to be seen if our Jewish queer friends are interested in putting themselves that much in the public bullseye for ridicule and abuse.

That said, I think the Siberian queers will be very grateful to have Sonja's book, available here for only $4.91, or the reasonable price of 142 roubles.

I love him because...

Last Night Jon Stewart Used the Word "Sylph"

...to describe the Statue of Liberty. I.E. "America's Favorite Sylph."

So. I dragged out the dictionary from under the light coating of tabby cat hair and dust.

According to this on-line medical dictionary it is an ornithological term as well as entomological.

But what interests me the most is that according to my own dictionary its original meaning was from Paracelsus, meaning a specifically mortal, soulless spirit of the air, a blend of nymph and sylva (forest).

Wikipedia adds a Pope and Milton gloss for the term.

So the Statue of Libery stands high in the air, as though she commands the element. Very graceful, Jon, my favorite midnight bard-of-truth.