Here’s a couple of fascinating things I just learned. I wanted to provide links to these articles but, alas, you can only get to the article if you have a subscription to Chemical & Engineering News, and I doubt everyone does.

1) How can the squid, with its very soft body, not manage to hurt itself with that tough beak?
The article says “you can imagine the problems you’d encounter if you attached a knife blade to a block of Jell-O and tried to use that blade for cutting. The blade would cut through the Jell-O at least as much as the targeted object”.
Turns out, the beak’s stiffness gradually from the tip to the base. In fact, the base is some 100 times more flexible than the tip, which reduces impact on the cheek tissue near the beak’s base.

2) Organic Brew found on Enceladus.
Usually, when scientists speak of finding life elsewhere in the solar system, they are speaking of Mars, Titan or Europa. So, it’s quite a find to have discovered that parts of Saturn’s satellite Enceladus are about 63 degrees (F) warmer than previously thought. And, there are water vapors and organic chemicals near the southern polar region, a recent Cassini flyby found. These molecules are present some 20x more dense then was expected and include such compounds as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
Some smart guy at JPL said: “We have quite a recipe for life on our hands, but we have yet to find the final ingredient, liquid water”.
I just think it’s pretty cool that we’re exploring the universe and yet we still manage to find surprises in our own back yard.

At one site I was visiting this morning, someone asked for people to contribute a 29-word ‘story’ in honor of Leap Day.

Here’s what I submitted:

It was on this calendar day,
I proposed to my lovely fiance’.
And though eleven years have came and went,
It is only the third anniversary of our engagement.

No one said it had to be poetic, but I decided to nix grammar in favor of rhyming.

So…I’m putting this out there for you: anyone have a 29-word story/statement/poem/confession they’d like to post for this once-every-1,461-days day?

I’ve made new year’s resolutions for years, but I’ve never documented them anywhere. They’ve just been something I’ve kept in my mind and strove for as the twelve months unfolded. One year (1991?) I made it my goal to read everything by Dr. Seuss. Another year (2004), I made it my goal to learn to juggle and to read all the canonical Sherlock Holmes stories.

Of course, there are always the ‘big’ goals: eat better, exercise more, and – on a more personal note – move out of this house. Those are all good things to strive for, but I don’t consider them new year’s resolutions. I usually reserve the fun stuff for new year’s resolution. So here’s some fun stuff I want to accomplish this year:

1) Learn to yo-yo.
I can do the boring part, where you let gravity grab the yo-yo and then let momentum bring it back into your hand. But I want to learn the fun stuff. Owen loves his two yo-yos, and I am now the proud owner of one myself. I used part of my Xmas gift (a certificate to Amazon.com) to purchase a book on yo-yo techniques, so once it arrives I’ll begin in earnest.

2) Brush up on my German
I used to be pretty decent at travel German. Alas, I let it slide. It’s time to get some tapes and listen to them in the car once again.

3) Read “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn”
My wife tells me they’re good reads, and I do like 19th Century fiction. So I guess it’s time I tackle these.

4) Run in a race
Yeah, I’ve done this two years in a row now, but I want to do it again. In early November, the company I work for organizes a 6K race, so that’s my race of choice, if possible, again this year.

5) Edit the wedding video
Our wedding was video-taped by two people, for a total of 4 hours of footage. My goal is to finally dump all that into my computer and edit it down to a watchable 1 hour (or less) video. I hope to have it done by our anniversary. Maybe we could give a copy of the video to our friends and family members as kind of a reverse anniversary gift. If I can do this by August, then I hope to…

6) Preserve other old videos
Specifically, my graduation party, a for-the-heck-of-it party I attended in 1988 and something called “Explorations in Videotaping” are all languishing on VHS tape, degrading more and more with each passing year. I’d like to at least get these into digital format by year’s end.

And, finally…
7) Finish my book
If you know me, you know I’ve been writing a book. I started writing it well over a year ago, and I still have several chapters left. I’d like to wrap up the epic this year.

I’ll recap in 365 days.

Ever since I was a young lad working at the library, I’ve been aware of the American Dialect Society (http://www.americandialect.org/). The most interesting thing about the ADS is that each year, it’s members vote on what they call the “Word of the Year”. It might be a new word that was coined by a politician or singer, it might be a word that adopted a new meaning, or it might be an old word that suddenly resurged in popularity. Sometimes the ‘word’ of the year is actually two words that, when put together, have a new meaning.

I love this idea. The words they select for each year are quite a reflection of the times. For example, in 1992, they selected “Not”, the over-used put-down popularized by the Saturday Night Live sketch “Wayne’s World”. In 2000, they selected “Chad” – a word so defunct that Oxford was considering dropping it from the next edition of their dictionary, until the voting fiasco in Florida gave the word new life.

So, in 1999, I began selecting my own personal “Word of the Year”. Like the ADS, my choice can be a word I never heard before, or one that suddenly surged in popularity for me personally (for whatever reason). Since 2007 is all but over, I’ve once again added to my list. Here it is, with brief explanations…

1999 – Filmlet
I was tired of calling my short films “Zimmerscope Productions”, so I flipped through the dictionary looking for a new film-related word. I found “filmlet”, which is a term used to describe any motion picture under 60 minutes long. I loved how underused it is – I swear I’ve never heard anyone else use this word besides me.

2000 – Viscosity
I’m sure I’d heard this word before, and I’d definitely heard its root word, viscous. But until I took a class on laboratory technology, I never appreciated this word for all it was worth. I loved performing viscosity tests – both in college and at my previous job. I throw this word around whenever I can. [runner-up: Flyboat]

2001 – Denouement
Another word I learned in college. Despite reading dozens of books about motion pictures, I never knew what to call that last part of the film, you know – the part after the climax. I used to just call it “the ending”. But then I was taught this word, which practically screams ‘pretentious!’, and all was right with the world.

2002 – GMP
Okay, so it’s not a word. But by ADS guidelines, I can still use it. It’s an abbreviation for Good Manufacturing Procedures, which is a nice way of saying the FDA forces food and drug manufacturers to be anal to the point of neurosis. I hate the yearly GMP classes I have to attend, and I hate laboring under its rules. Nevertheless, it’s been a big player in my vocabulary from 2002 onwards.

2003 – Environmental Monitoring
Worried about a possible lay-off at my job, I offered my services in the microbiology lab, hoping to make myself twice as useful. It worked, and I never did get laid-off. For several days out of each month in 2003 (and into 2004), I ventured with the microbiologists as we went out environmental monitoring.

2004 – Big Lake
Despite the fact that I never lived more than 2 hours from Big Lake, I’d never heard of it until our realtor began showing us property there. By mid-summer, I was living there. [runner-up: Doula]

2005 – Cephalohematoma
Nothing says smarmy health care professional like knowing the technical name for a lump on a newborn’s head. When I told people my son was born with cephalohematoma, most of them immediately adopted an air of sympathy, as if I’d just given them the gravest news ever.

2006 – Cognitive Dissonance
Thanks to the Watchtower Society’s inability to answer questions, provide supporting documentation and misquote, I knew the old farts in Brooklyn were throwing up a smokescreen for years. But it was in this year that my wife helped me appreciate what a Watchtower apologist I’d become. She explained it using this term. [runner-up: Love Bombing]

2007 – Apraxia
Another medically related term, only this time, it sounds like a planet the Star Ship Voyager would land on. It sums up my son’s speech delay (and other quirks) so nicely, my wife and I began wondering if other people we knew also had un-diagnosed apraxia.

From the “You never know what’s gonna happen next” Department:

My wife and I walked into our spare bedroom last night and my wife asked: “Is it dead?” She was referring to one of our Love Birds. After examining the body from several angles, I responded in the affirmative.

Here’s a brief history of our lovebirds: In 1997, we purchased a Love Bird on a whim, from a private breeder who, on the same day, sold us a cockatiel. Within weeks, we felt sorry for pretty Tango. She was lonely. So we returned to the bird breeder and purchased a friend for Tango, whom we named Tequila. A funny thing about Love Birds is that they are, like Killer Whales, improperly named. They are extremely territorial, and they only bond to a human if they are given oodles of contact. They don’t even love each other. They are quite finicky regarding their mates, and even if they choose to bond with a mate, they will frequently bicker to the point of drawing blood.

Anyway, Tango died in 1998. Coincidentally, at this same time, my wife and I had been raising and feeding a baby female love bird by hand, whom we named Twoey. Twoey bonded to me quite nicely but, when Tequila was widowed, we placed Twoey in the cage next to hers to see if they would get along. They fell in love; it was not uncommon to walk in on some hot lesbian fornicating.

Sometimes, we’d notice blood on one of their faces, or on their feet, but it was nothing serious. Their love-hate relationship proceeded fairly stable for nearly a decade.

Yesterday, around 5 in the evening, I went into the spare room, noticed the two birds hiding under some chewed up paper (as they are wont to do) and made a mental note to clean the cage this coming weekend. That was the last time I saw them both alive.

Six hours later, we found a Love Bird corpse on the floor of the cage.

Did I mention that the #1 cause of death among Love Birds is…cannibalism? Maybe now would be a good time to mention that.

The dead bird was not lying in peaceful rest. She was mangled and bloodied, her feathers were wildly out of place, her beak was hyper-extended and her head was tucked under at a frightening angle. Her yellow feathers were pink from blood. Her mate had blood on her face and chest.

Funny thing is (not ‘ha-ha’ funny), we’re not sure who died and who lived. Although we’ve had all manner of colorful birds in the past, it just so happened that these two torrid lovers had exactly the same coloring and disposition.

So now, our house is home to one, single, Love Bird. She’s sitting on her perch right now – a cold-blooded fratricidal psycho. Seething…waiting…waiting…she’s coming for you next.