Cat Pictures

 It's Amity in a box:

Cocaine Hippos

I'm teaching three sections of Comp I, for a total of 65 students, and wisely I made everyone's paper due on the same day. So I am having to read 65 Summary/Evaluations of scholarly articles (which in practice means reading 65 scholarly articles myself). 

I am also working on reviews for Asimov's and for Interzone.

I would also like to write a little fiction, please. Also exercising four times a week. Dishes and laundry are piling up.

So blogging may be slow for the next couple weeks.

For you edification, however, Cocaine Hippos! 

In the 1980s, the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar imported 4 hippos onto his estate in Colombia. Today, the hippos have escaped the estate and they number around 60 individual animals and continue to reproduce. To mitigate risk of harm to humans and curb hippo population growth, the government has begun an effort to castrate the males in order to control their numbers. How effective are these efforts? 

(One of my students is doing their paper on hippos as an invasive species, and used this article for their Paper #1.)

Weather

 After three days of lovely cool days and 55 degree nights, we have a forecast of highs of 98 degrees and a 100 degrees coming next week.

Only seven more days of summer. Enough, please.

In Ancient Times....

 I'm reading an article that refers to "earlier centuries," and then cites an event in the 1990s.

Y'ALL.

Brief Fall

 Y'all, it's 67 degrees here! High of 85.

Tomorrow a little hotter, and next week back in the 90s, but last night when I was taking the dog out I was briefly cold.

Links: The QANON Edition

Did you know that the Clintons were in the White House on 9/11? And they hate America, so that's why the terrorists could succeed, but also it was an inside job. (The comment section for this one is quite a ride.)

But I can top that: this guy thinks Obama should be held responsible.

We're erasing women!

Did you know those horrible trans people are now FORCING schools to provide LITTERBOXES for kids who identify as cats? (I've seen this claim made or referred to on supposedly rational sites.)

Leftists supporting gender re-assignment surgery for toddlers  (These people argue otherwise, but they're just leftist-controlled "scientists")

COVID Vaccines kill children and babies (despite being pedophiles, leftists really want to kill babies, it's their religion)

This is kind of funny

Cat Pictures

 Jasper asleep on my ankles:

Amity in a chic sweater:

What I'm Reading Now

A lot of what I'm reading now is books that I'm reviewing for various publications, so I don't want to review them here. I'm also doing a lot of rereading -- I just reread all of Chaim Potok, for instance, and most of Joe Haldeman. I won't bore you with those, either. Here's some of the rest of what I've been reading lately.

Claudia Gray, The Murder of Mr. Wickham

More Jane Austen fanfic. I can't get enough of it. This one pulls together all the characters from all the Austen novels (well, not Sanditon) and puts them in an English Country House murder mystery. Mr. Wickham gets murdered, as the title suggests; and Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth's son joins forces with the daughter of Catherine and Mr. Tilney to solve the murder. 

Both Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney are about seventeen, and young Mr. Darcy is neurodivergent, which works pretty well in the book. Further, Gray does a good job of capturing the characters of all the other Austen favs.

I don't know that I would read this one twice, but it was fun to read once.

R.F. Kuang, Babel: Or, the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

In part this is an academic novel, about academic life in the 19th century. But that is just its cover. In fact, it is about colonialism, and the effect colonialism has on the colonized. At the start of the novel, a young Chinese boy is "rescued" from the cholera plague which has killed his mother, his grandparents, his tutor, and his entire neighborhood. As we read further in the novel, we come to realize that this "rescue" is not what it seems. 

Robin Swift (the English name he takes at the request of his "rescuer") is raised on a Lord's estate, given excellent tutors, educated to take a place at Oxford, which -- in time -- he does. Only slowly do we realize that he has, in effect, been bred -- like a prize Corgi -- by the man who rescued him. This is a magic-infused Oxford. England runs on the ensorcelled silver bars produced by Babel, the tower of translators, who need to be fluent in several languages if they are to work the magic that creates the power that English trains, lights, water purification, and other necessities run on, including the English Navy. The magic is powered by the gap between an English word (say) and the Chinese word used to translate it, or v.v.

Set just before the Opium Wars begin, this is an engaging look at the evils of colonialism, and the way the colonized frequently lose their ability to see their own oppression. An important and wonderfully written book.

John Crowley, Flint & Mirror

Another historical fantasy. This one is about the British colonization of Ireland, and part of the reason I didn't like it more may be that I know very little about the colonization of Ireland. It's also mostly history with very little fantasy -- the main character, the leader of an Irish clan, is connected to and controlled by Elizabeth I through an ensorcelled bit of obsidian, cleft to produce a mirror-like surface. It wasn't very clear how Elizabeth controlled the chief of the clan. Maybe the connection was enough.

There's also a flint blade, given to him as a child by the Fey. That seems to connect him to his land? I'm not sure.

Most of the book was about historical events, though there's also a slight digression about a selkie (male) who comes ashore and impregnates a lord's daughter. 

This probably wasn't the book for me. It was readable, but I had the feeling I was missing the point most of the time. If you like historical novels, this might be your cup of tea.

Death of Elizabeth II

Honestly, I have no feelings one way or another toward Elizabeth II, though I did enjoy the first few seasons of The Crown. (I lost interest somewhere halfway through the third season.) It's true Britain was a colonizing superpower that hurt a lot of people, and it's true that she did nothing about it, but on the other hand, at least according to what I saw on the Crown, there wasn't a lot she actually could do. The anger should be aimed at those members of Parliament who actually implemented the bad actions, I would think. But bear in mind I know almost nothing about how British government actually works.

What I'm really enjoying is watching people on Twitter clutching their pearls because other people on Twitter are saying mean things about the queen. The old "How dare you speak ill of the dead?" routine. As if Elizabeth, or her family, could give a toss about what people were saying on Twitter.

I do like the person who linked this video in response:

ETA: Pharyngula has a take

Weather

What's this? Sunday a high of 83 and a low of 58?

Practically WINTER.

Cat Pictures

Amity plays with toys:

Good News, Though

The new season of Call The Midwife is out on Netflix. I recently noticed that I had skipped the entire third season, somehow, so I had started a rewatch anyway.

If you want a mildly soap-opera-y historical series with eleven seasons so far, and lots of babies, this is the show for you.

It's rife with religion, since the midwifes are (some of them) nuns, but not screechy, hateful American conservative religion, so it doesn't really interfere with my enjoyment of the series.

Why Anxiety?

I am having a lot of anxiety lately. This is odd, because everything is going pretty well. Usually when I'm anxious I can locate the reason for it, but there's no reason now. What's up?

I'm used to having depression for no reason. (The kid jokes that he got his depression from me and his anxiety from his father.) But free-floating anxiety is something new.

WebMD tells me I either have congestive heart failure or generalized anxiety disorder. GAD fits my symptoms better. 

It could also be because of high blood pressure, interestingly, a condition I'm already being treated for.

Or a tumor on my adrenal glands. Something else to have anxiety about.

Could This Be Fall?

Now that the sun is down it's actually almost cool outside -- probably because the humidity is so low. But it definitely feels like we're turning toward winter.

Only 18 more days of summer.

Exhaustion

I used to be able to survive on five or six hours of sleep a night, while teaching 12 or thirteen hour days -- I went to work at seven and came home at 8:00.

Now I go to work at six a.m. and come home at noon, and need a three hour nap. Getting old is not for the weak.