Inedible Ink

Ok, so I doubt it’s called the pole position in rowing, I wish it was. If you have the fastest qualifying time in Indy car racing, you get what’s called the “pole position” after the best starting spot, next to the pole, and first place is basically yours to lose.

US Women’s Eight Wins Race for Lanes
The U.S. rowed even with Belarus through the first 500 meters before taking the lead, clocking a 6:32.04 to beat Germany by more than five seconds. “It was rough conditions, but I thought we handled it well, said Birk. “After the first 500 meters, we pushed through the pack. We moved ahead and stayed ahead; it was a fun race.”

The USA boat is in lane 3 tomorrow at 14:18 local time Strathclyde, Scotland for the finals of the Womens Under 23 rowing world championships.

This 9-legged frog found near Kansas landfill is not another Muppet in the wild. At MITW we’re accepting of freaks, oddities and things with asymmetrical leg arrangements, but we do like our frogs to be photogenic.

If I told you that this little guy was deformed as a result of living near a landfill and laid the finger of blame against something unspecific and undocumented like “Leached toxins” you’d buy it, wouldn’t you? Well, it’s not toxins, this is an all-natural, non-toxic frog. This is an organic frog.

9-Legged Frog Found Near Kansas Landfill
The offending parasite is a trematode, or flatworm. The particular buggers responsible for all those deformed frogs live complex lives that include spending their adulthoods in birds and their young lives in snails. In between, they stop over in frogs and tadpoles.

While there, the trematodes cause cysts in developing tadpoles, and the cysts “mechanically rearrange” the cells, causing the sprouting of legs in all the wrong places, according to Sessions’ Web site.

The work of establishing the cause of these deformities was done years ago but gets rehashed every time somebody finds a freaky frog.

Groucho Marx Quotes

Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.
- Groucho Marx

I admit that I know how he felt. Those things that seem to be most worth writing, and publishing, for that is what this blog is, are often beyond what I feel I have to offer as a writer. At least that’s what my inner-editor tells me.

Why bother with fiction?

Do fish suffer from exposure to Uriah Heep?

Reuters - A Finnish researcher is to study fish in an aquarium while a rock group performs nearby, to see if the sound causes any ill-effects or distress.

Bands including aging rockers Uriah Heep will perform on Friday night

Watch for the guys at In-Fisherman TV to switch theme songs after this study is over.

I was just doing a little harmless checking up on what folks are writing about Inedible Ink.

Seems that, mostly, they can’t spell “indelible.”

Ted Nugent gets a byline in the Wall Street Journal remembering the Summer of Love Drugs. Read what The Nuge has to say:

The Summer of Drugs - WSJ.com
The 1960s, a generation that wanted to hold hands, give peace a chance, smoke dope and change the world, changed it all right: for the worse. America is still suffering the horrible consequences of hippies who thought utopia could be found in joints and intentional disconnect.

I do read the Journal, but I’d have missed this glittering gem of a rant were it not for JunkYard Blog. Thanks.

I’ve neglected to celebrate the solstice… yet again. Shame on me, I’m a poor pagan indeed. Time to amend that.

Flickr user jbum posted this “Tag Graph” chart. It is made up of tiny image thumbnails from pictures posted to flickr where the image is tagged “Sunset”. He has charted the time the image was taken as the vertical position and the date the image was taken as the horizontal position. The result is a nice waveform. See that? The dip just left of image center is the summer, when the sun sets later in the day. *

Today, we are just after the bottom of that curve.

The wave rises up as sunset pictures are taken earlier and earlier in the day later and later in the year. The light of day decreases until December. The wave crests on the December solstice, and then the sun starts to set later in the day. The light of day increases until June.

Jbum noticed a faint echo of the sunset curve at a 12 hour offset. His guess, and I agree completely, is that some few camera users have their cameras’ internal clocks set incorrectly with AM for PM.

* The sun sets later in the summer, but the June solstice is in summer only in the northern hemisphere. South of the equator, June is a winter month. Flickr must not have enough southern hemisphere users to show up on this chart.

That fat wave of sunsets appears to be a swath 4 hours wide, while a “sunset” can only occur at a given moment each day. What gives? I have a few ideas and there might be more.

The time of sunset varies each day by latitude, that is, how far north or south you are from the equator. Think of “Land of the Midnight Sun” being used to describe far north locations like Alaska.

The time you observe sunset is also effected by the time zone. If you are standing at the western most edge of your time zone, talking to a buddy who’s standing just across the state line, you will see the sunset at the same moment, but your watches (and presumably your digital cameras), set to the local timezone will show 1 hour of difference.

Further, the thing we photographers call a sunset is vaguer and more tolerant of interpretation than the event astronomers call a sunset. So we end up with a wide variety of times being reported for sunsets observed.

Saint John the Baptist, also known as Saint John the Forerunner, was born on the June solstice. After the June solstice the sun must decrease.

John is the one foretold in Isa 40:3 “Prepare ye the way of the LORD”. His unique role is to precede Christ.
John the Baptist said this of Christ:Jhn 3:30

He must increase, but I [must] decrease.

Jesus, the light of the world, was born on the December solstice, at which time the sun must increase.