Author: readingbyeugene

On Etymology, Occurrence, and Function of Antlers

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Via reddit, today I learned a lot about antlers. Did you know that reindeer is the only species of deer for which both males and females grow antlers? And that in many species of moose, the longer the antler, the better the corresponding hearing? This and more from this fascinating Wikipedia article:

First, the origin of the word “antler”:

Antler comes from the Old French antoillier (from ant-, meaning before, oeil, meaning eye and -ier, a suffix indicating an action or state of being)[1][2] possibly from some form of an unattested Latin word *anteocularis, “before the eye”[3] (and applied to the word for “branch”[4] or “horn“[2]).

And then on the occurrence and function of antlers:

Antlers are unique to cervids and found mostly on males: only reindeer have antlers on the females, and these are normally smaller than those of the males. Nevertheless, fertile does from other species of deer have the capacity to produce antlers on occasion, usually due to increased testosterone levels.The pronghorn’s “horns” fit some of the criteria of antlers, although are not considered true antlers because they contain keratin.

Each antler grows from an attachment point on the skull called a pedicle. While an antler is growing, it is covered with highly vascular skin called velvet, which supplies oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone. Antlers are considered one of the most exaggerated cases of male secondary sexual traits in the animal kingdom,and grow faster than any other mammal bone. Growth occurs at the tip, and is initially cartilage, which is later replaced by bone tissue. Once the antler has achieved its full size, the velvet is lost and the antler’s bone dies. This dead bone structure is the mature antler. In most cases, the bone at the base is destroyed by osteoclasts and the antlers fall off at some point. As a result of their fast growth rate, antlers are considered a handicap since there is an incredible nutritional demand on deer to re-grow antlers annually, and thus can be honest signals of metabolic efficiency and food gathering capability.

In most arctic and temperate-zone species, antler growth and shedding is annual, and is controlled by the length of daylight. Although the antlers are regrown each year, their size varies with the age of the animal in many species, increasing annually over several years before reaching maximum size. In tropical species, antlers may be shed at any time of year, and in some species such as the sambar, antlers last several years. Some equatorial deer never shed their antlers. Antlers function as weapons in combats between males, which sometimes cause serious wounds, and as dominance and sexual displays.

The ancestors of deer had tusks (long upper canine teeth). Antlers appear to replace tusks; two modern species, the musk deer and the water deer, have tusks and no antlers, the muntjac has small tusks and small antlers, and other deer have full-sized antlers and no tusks.The diversification of antlers, body size and tusks has been strongly influenced by changes in habitat and behavior (fighting and mating).

Reindeer use their antlers to clear away snow so they can eat the vegetation underneath. This is one possible reason that females of this species evolved antlers. Another possible reason is for female competition during winter foraging.

In moose, antlers appear to act as large hearing aids. Moose with antlers have far more sensitive hearing than moose without, and a study of trophy antlers with an artificial ear confirmed that the antler behaves like a parabolic reflector.

 

On Our Feelings After Facebook Use

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I’ve been reading a number of different studies that are in opposite camps about Facebook: on the one hand, Facebook helps us feel more social; on the other hand, Facebook depresses us. So which is it?

Maria Konnikova, writing in The New Yorker, summarizes that the answer isn’t black and white:

The key to understanding why reputable studies are so starkly divided on the question of what Facebook does to our emotional state may be in simply looking at what people actually do when they’re on Facebook. “What makes it complicated is that Facebook is for lots of different things—and different people use it for different subsets of those things. Not only that, but they are alsochanging things, because of people themselves changing,” said Gosling. A 2010 study from Carnegie Mellon found that, when people engaged in direct interaction with others—that is, posting on walls, messaging, or “liking” something—their feelings of bonding and general social capital increased, while their sense of loneliness decreased. But when participants simply consumed a lot of content passively, Facebook had the opposite effect, lowering their feelings of connection and increasing their sense of loneliness.

I would argue that “liking” things on Facebook has become the generic, zombie-like action that isn’t particularly social. Commenting on photos and posts, however, are examples of actively engaging with content.

Hyder, Alaska: The Only U.S. City That’s Secretly Canadian

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This is a bizarre story in Bloomberg on the small town of Hyder, Alaska which is, in secret, effectively Canadian. The town takes Canadian dollars in stores, gets electricity sourced from Canada, and even uses a Canadian area code:

• Hyder, population 87, is Alaska’s easternmost town, a tiny town surrounded by lofty, glacier-covered peaks at the corner of the Alaska Panhandle. The town boomed in the early 20th century when gold and silver were discovered nearby, but is now so small that residents bill it as “Alaska’s friendliest ghost town.” The ferry to Ketchikan, the nearest Alaskan city, stopped running more than a decade ago.

• What’s interesting about the residents of Hyder is that their only neighbors for miles and miles in any direction are the good people of Stewart, just ten minutes away—but across the border into British Columbia. Stewart, as if you didn’t know, is internationally famous as “Canada’s most northerly ice-free port!” (Remember, the vast majority of Canada is a frigid, uninhabitable wasteland of no interest to anyone, even Canadians.)

• As a result of its geographic isolation, Hyder functions as America’s only de facto outpost of Canada. All businesses (except the post office) price stuff in Canadian dollars, and take “Victoria Day” and “Boxing Day” off every year. Clocks are set to British Columbia time, the electricity comes from a B.C. utility, and the nearest police are Mounties. It’s the only place in Alaska not to use the state’s 907 area code—even Hyder’s phone numbers have joined in the open treason, and begin with a Canadian code, 250. Kids can be taught at home or bundled off to boarding school in Ketchikan, but many parents choose the dubious indoctrination of the Canadian public school system instead, especially up to the sixth grade.

There’s no way to prove that this is the only store in America that takes Canadian dollars, but is this the only city in America with a Canadian area code? If you know, sound off in the comments!

David Foster Wallace on the Mortality Paradox

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David Foster Wallace took his own life five years ago today.

This quote on the mortality paradox, found in Conversations with David Foster Wallace, resonated with me:

You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me. I’m not sure I could give you a steeple-fingered theoretical justification, but I strongly suspect a big part of real art-fiction’s job is to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible human redemption requires us first to face what’s dreadful, what we want to deny.

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(via Brainpickings)

On Chopped Salad and Dating

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Silvia Killingsworth writes about her (chopped) salad days in The New Yorker:

Recently, I decided to see if I could sustain a week of virtuous lunches, inspired by a Timesarticle about the rise of the chopped salad as the latest lunch fad. Regional chains like Chop’t and Just Salad offer seemingly endless options for customization, and they inspire fierce loyalty on a par with the great Sheetz-Wawa debate. Hillary Reinsberg, an editor at BuzzFeed, prefers Just Salad to Chop’t. “I like the bread better. Their soundtrack is also wonderful, as is their Twitter,” she said. The chain just released a dating app, called SaladMatch, which aims to connect like-minded salad enthusiasts. Reinsberg’s coworker Jessica Misener is a diehard Chop’t fan. She faults Just Salad for insufficiently tangy dressings, and she finds their bread too chewy. Whereas Chop’t uses a new cutting board for each salad, Misener has seen Just Salad reuse them, “which means I’ve often found stray broccoli remnants from the previous person’s salad in my order.”

Sounds a bit preposterous, if you ask me:

Between noon and one on any given weekday afternoon, there is a line out the door of several midtown chopped-salad joints. Inside, the line snakes around and doubles back on itself, not unlike the security line in the international terminal at J.F.K. The interiors of both chains resembleIKEA-sourced cafeterias: poured-concrete floors, bright green walls, and fluorescent lighting. The effect is of an industrial salad factory, where bowls move along an assembly line; instead of whirring machines, one hears the pounding mezzalunas (Just Salad’s have three blades!). The wait is not insignificant, and there are three ways to pass the time: check your smartphone, peruse the extensive menu (Chop’t has twenty-eight kinds of dressing), or check your smartphone.

I checked the locations of Just Salad: limited to NYC and Hong Kong for now. I’ll stick to salads from Kroger and Publix for now.

Russian Transporter Planes and FedEx: How Apple Ships its iPhones

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Apple unveiled two new iPhones this week: iPhone 5C and the iPhone 5S. While the specs of the phones are somewhat interesting, I think this piece in Bloomberg on how Apple is set to deliver the devices on launch date is even more so:

The process starts in China, where pallets of iPhones are moved from factories in unmarked containers accompanied by a security detail. The containers are then loaded onto trucks and shipped via pre-bought airfreight space, including on old Russian military transports. The journey ends in stores where the world’s biggest technology company makes constant adjustments based on demand, said people who have worked on Apple’s logistics and asked not to be identified because the process is secret.

The multi-pronged operation has been built up under Cook, who oversaw Apple’s supply chain before being tapped as Steve Jobs’s successor in 2011. Getting iPhones seamlessly moved from factories to customers is critical for the Cupertino, California-based company, which derives more than half of its annual revenue from the flagship product. Apple also relies on a sales spike after a product’s release. It sold more than 5 million units in the debut weekend for the iPhone 5 last year.

There are seven countries that will launch the new iPhones on September 20:

Before Apple’s formal unveiling on stage, iPhones are shipped to distribution centers around the world, including Australia, China, the Czech Republic, Japan, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S., said one of the people with knowledge of the matter. Security personnel are with the devices every step of the way, from truck depots, airports, customs and storage warehouses until the product is finally unveiled, two people said.

FedEx ships Apple handsets to the U.S. mainly using Boeing 777s, according to Satish Jindel, a logistics-industry consultant and president of SJ Consulting Group. Those planes can make the 15-hour flight from China to the main U.S. hub for freight shipments in Memphis, Tennessee, without refueling, Jindel said. The 777s can carry about 450,000 iPhones and cost about $242,000 to charter, with fuel accounting for more than half the expense.

Read the rest here.

“Apple has quietly become a leading camera company.”

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That’s the quote of the day, courtesy of John Gruber, who runs Daring Fireball:

Megan Garber summarizes in The Atlantic:

The camera features a new lens (one designed by Apple) with an f/2.2 aperture and a sensor that’s 15 percent larger than previous models. It’ll have a relatively meager 8-megapixel sensor, but each pixel will be bigger than previous models’ — which will, Apple’s Phil Schiller explained today, let in more light. The camera software — which will be optimized for iOS 7 — will do an automatic series of adjustments to things like an image’s white balance, exposure, tone map, and autofocus. The camera will also feature what Apple is calling a “true tone” dual LED flash, featuring one cool (blue) LED and one warm (amber) LED, allowing the flash to better match the color balance of the light in the room. That makes for, Wired notes, “over 1,000 unique flash variations for your photos.” Which is, as Schiller put it, “a world’s first for any camera.”

That new f/2.2 lens looks particularly impressive. Just look at this sample photograph Apple has posted.

Just a ton of new features for the iPhone’s new camera. I’m pretty sure I’ll be upgrading come September 20.

David Schickler on How His Writing Career Began

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David Schickler, in reference to J.D. Salinger’s “For Esmé,” describes how his writing career launched in The New Yorker:

When I was in college, I read J. D. Salinger’s “For Esmé—with Love And Squalor” and adored it. I loved the relationship between the lovely, affecting young Esmé and the (eventually) jaded, shell-shocked male narrator. The story made me want to write short stories, but back then I also thought that I was going to become a Jesuit Catholic priest, and that took precedence. Priesthood was my goal in life.

My new memoir, “The Dark Path,” is about how hard I tried—and how hard I failed—to become a priest. Pursuing that path cost me a serious love affair and then, to a large extent, my sanity. I drank way too much and practiced karate until I permanently messed up my hip and leg. I ended up with my faith shot—living in a severe, depressive, insomniac daze, and teaching English at a Vermont boarding school.

One night while there I had a talk with a female student (she was nineteen, a few years younger than I was) that deeply moved me. I never saw it coming, but that girl was my Esmé, and years later, inspired by her and that night, I wrote my short story “The Smoker,” which (to my joy) came out in The New Yorker’s Summer Fiction Issue, in 2000, and launched my writing career. This is the story of that night…

Read the story of that night here.

 

How Gang Members Helped Create Grand Theft Auto V

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I’m not much of a gamer, but this news of real gang members being used in the upcoming (on what’s bound to be a hit) Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V is fascinating:

Contributing writer, talk show host, and in-game DJ “Lazlow” Jones revealed the information on Chicago’s WGN radio station, explaining: “We get these guys in to record the gang characters because we don’t want a goofy LA actor who went to a fancy school trying to be a hard gang member. There’s nothing worse than that, so just go find the real terrifying people and say ‘can you come in here please?'”

Rockstar recruited a person to find the criminals, including “El Salvadorian gang dudes with amazing tattoos, one of which literally had gotten out of prison the day before.” Jones says this lets the game get closer to reality than otherwise possible, with the actors often given free reign to improvise. “They look at the lines and say, ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ so we say, ‘OK, say what you would say.’ Authenticity, you know?”

Read more here.

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Disclosure: I’ve pre-ordered the game from Amazon for my PS3.

Ajit Pai’s Quest to Save AM Radio

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An interesting piece in The New York Times on the declining status of the AM radio station and one man named Ajit Pai (a Republican in the FCC) who’s fighting to keep it alive.

Although five of the top 10 radio stations in the country, as measured by advertising dollars, are AM — among them WCBS in New York and KFI in Los Angeles — the wealth drops rapidly after that. In 1970 AM accounted for 63 percent of broadcast radio stations, but now it accounts for 21 percent, or 4,900 outlets, according to Arbitron. FM accounts for 44 percent, or 10,200 stations. About 35 percent of stations stream content online.

“With the audience goes the advertising revenues,” said Milford Smith, vice president for radio engineering at Greater Media, which owns 21 stations, three of them AM. “That makes for a double whammy.”

Nearly all English-language AM stations have given up playing music, and even a third of the 30 Major League Baseball teams now broadcast on FM. AM, however, remains the realm of conservative talk radio, including roughly 80 percent of the 600 radio stations that carry Rush Limbaugh. Talk radio has helped keep AM alive.

I don’t have any skin in the game, but I side with natural selection:

But why try to salvage AM? Critics say its decline is simply natural selection at work, and many now support converting the frequency for use by other wireless technologies. A big sign of AM’s weakness is that one hope for many of its stations may be channeling their broadcasts onto FM.

Read the entire piece here.