Regarding my lack of posts, perhaps we can attribute them to not wanting to tire out you, dear readers, as reported in this recent article reporting that more frequent postings to instagram yield audience fatigue?
The term 'faceplant', which is the action of falling and landing on one's face, is a highly evocative phrase. i didn't realize it evolved from the skating term 'handplant'.
Turns out, the function of the human sinuses is not well understood. It's speculated that we use them to warm/humidify the air we inhale, but survey's still out. However, the system by which breaks to the sinuses are classified was developed by a French surgeon named Rene Le Fort in 1901, "To perform these experiments, Le Fort used intact cadaver heads, and delivered blunt forces of varying degrees of magnitude, as well as from different directions. From these tests, he determined that predictable patterns of fractures are the result of certain types of injuries, and concluded that there are three predominant types of mid-face fractures. ", from wikipedia. Medical and science history are pretty fascinating.
Oh, i've got a flatmate these days (and Welcome Back To Madison, KellyAT!). She made the prediction that the Wisconsin Badgers will play the Florida Gators in the final game of the NCAA tournament, due to interesting synchronicity (convergence?) of her Florida and Wisconsin ties, because she's 'the center of the universe', obviously. I'd be okay with that, but we discussed it a little more, and she jokingly hypothesized that fireflies are actually the center of the universe; i disagree, were they truly center of the universe, i doubt little kids would trap them to die by their beds in jars. Which lead to the question, exactly what is the lifespan of a fire fly? This question is not as straight-forward as initial glance; fireflies undergo several lifestages. Sum total, their lifespans are reported to be about a yearor 2 in some cases, depending on species, but this is mostly overwintering in the larval stage. They then pupate in the spring, emerging as adults after 1-2.5 weeks. Most adults only live long enough to mate and lay eggs. Interesting, while the larvae are carnivorous and subsist on snails, slugs, and other larvae, it's not known what the adults eat - possibly pollen, nectar, or nothing at all, and the adults of some species apparently lack mouths.
Somewhat related, do you call them fireflies or lightening bugs (or, perhaps, peenie wallies if you're from American Appalachia and other scattered small pockets, or glow worms if you're from Australia/the UK?)? This is an interesting regional dialect, and has been the subject of several surveys. A survey concluded by Harvard in 2003 gave mixed results; firefly is more predominant on the west coast and New England but it appears as though most folks in the US use those terms interchangeably (and depicted in pretty map form here). Dialect maps are pretty fascinating in general, have a look at the careful phrasing of these questions.
*updated; Kate B reminded me that the NYTimes posted an interactive dialect quiz online, and so i took it (i took it a few months ago but there was a glitch and i never saw the results). The quiz pegged San Antonio, Plano, and Irving (all Texas towns) as places where i might be from, which is impressive as San Antonio is the town closest to the rural area where i grew up. This was apparently mostly based on the question:
Q: What do you call the small road parallel to the highway?
A: access road
Also, my dialect is least like that of folks in New York and Boston. BATS! BATS BATS BATS!
And finally, i came across an article today on NPR wherein they deemed the best food-related April Fools Day joke this year as a class teaching How to Make Toast (go ahead and click on that last one; it's pun-derful). Somewhere within the body of that article is a link to the history of artisanal toast (which is apparently the next upcoming food trend? toast bars?). It's a sad but well-told story there. Also, i lived on toast and tea for a rather stressful portion of undergrad, so i suppose this strikes a bit of a chord.
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