i am the ringtail

Endangered horse sperm are on the loose!

It turns out that the Przewalski’s Horse at the National Zoo has “valuable genetic diversity.” Which is important, since these horses are extinct in the wild, but unfortunate, since he had the ol’ snip-snip a couple years ago.

So, the good vets at the Zoo just un-did his vasectomy, and they’re shopping around for a mate for him. You sly dog, you.

And, from the BBC’s ARKive (which I’m beginning to really dig), some footage of P-horses doing interesting things:

Male Przewalski`s horse driving herdNHNZ Images

This is one of those things I wish I had a picture of.

So, I find myself this week at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (Go, Fightin’ Retrievers!), and specifically, in their student union building, which has a little nook with a big-screen TV and some couches. For some reason, this is labeled the “Ida B. Wells Social Justice Theater” (which I think means that they show inspirational films in between World Cup games), and it’s got a big mural on the wall, of Ms. Wells and other luminaries of human rights history, like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez (which was misspelled “Ceaser”) as well as some more contemporary picks, like Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi…

…and Bono.

Yes, that Bono.

That’s why this is one of those things I wish I had a picture of.

And now, a moment for some noisy prosimians.

Courtesy of 0>w/hole>1, a fun little article on tourism in Madagascar, which I’ve thought about from time to time, but never done. Much like learning to tapdance. Or shoplifting.

The article mentions Indri lemurs, which are the only tail-less lemurs. Indris also have the coolest territorial call, which is more like a yodel, or whalesong. Or a car alarm. Like so:

Indris calling to each otherBBC Natural History Unit

…And maybe somebody just told a poop joke.

The Scene: A plodding meeting to “brainstorm” titles for conference sessions.  Thudding, plodding titles like “Finding a Way: Making Less Do More,” and “Sulfa Drugs: Great Development, or the Greatest Development?” and one of the coworkers says, she says, “Boy, we’re all about the colon.”

This being hilarious, I laughed.  A lot.  Did anyone else (including coworker) realize a joke had been made?  Not so much.

Sigh.

Lookit! Lookit! Lookit!

Many thanks to Doctor Missus for helping to design the blarg’s new look. The banner mascot is one of the ringtails from Lemur Island at the National Zoo, who were uncharacteristically active during the Cockadoodle Zoo event recently.

…And maybe somebody will throw beads at me.

So, I’m having a little informal performance-review at work last week, and my boss says to me, she says that the executive director has concerns that I sometimes come off as too “flip” during meetings. And she says that she doesn’t share that opinion, but that, and I quote, “We’ve seen the funny parts of you now, and maybe it’s time to show off some of your other parts.”

Whoo! Spring Break 2008!

I’m sorry. That was flip. No, wait, this is Flip:

Mike Doughty

So I’ve figured out lately that I really like Mike Doughty’s music. Nice hooks, has the white-boy-funk vibe that I gravitate to. And even though he unfortunately makes over-use of the la-la’s, na-na’s, and doot-doo’s, he does a lot of sound repetition in his lyrics, like so:

I assess the essence of the mess
The perfect hourglass of my loneliness, yes
And I don’t care to count my chances
I just want the girl in the blue dress
To keep on dancing

Which is something I do in my own everyday nonsense-talk to myself.

However.

However, when I saw him on Craig Ferguson t’other night, I had to look away a little bit, ’cause…man. He’s got himself a weird mish-mash face, with the high Irish cheekbones, and a big fat English lower face. Just…man.

F’rinstance, in the video for the “wanna be a single” song off his new album, he looks like Gollum…

So I think I have to just listen with my eyes closed.And incidentally, if you’re not watching Craig Ferguson, start:

Holy cripes on toast.

Ubisoft is making a sequel to Beyond Good and Evil, a cool-but-underrated action/adventure hybrid game from the last generation of consoles. Nobody held out great hopes of a sequel coming to pass. Teaser trailer (which is kind of grody) below.

The Global Pool of Money, Part 2

From the “unplanned, but timely” file, NPR aired a follow-up piece today on how supervisors at investment banks scuttled the work of auditors who tried to point out the craptastic nature of the mortgages that were being handed out like candy.

Ah, willful ignorance. Is there anything you can’t do?

(Don’t tell me if there isn’t. I don’t want to know.)

The Global Pool of Money

If you’ve got an hour to kill, and curiosity about what the hell’s been going on with the foreclosure crisis, go listen to this episode of This American Life. It’s a really well-done, understandable breakdown of what happened, and is happening, in the housing and credit markets. Ira Glass has a bad cold, but don’t let that deter you.  He’s only on air for a couple minutes.

In related news, I gotta check out the This American Life TV show on Showtime one of these days. The in-laws of one of my grad school classmates were supposed to be the subject of the pilot.

Has anybody seen the series? If so, how is it?