What I should have named this blog

Not exactly light reading, but I like it

The latest issue of my favorite medical journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, is now out on-line. EID in general is not exactly light reading, but it always contains some fascinating material, the cover is almost always gorgeous (this month's actually falls more into the category of 'interesting' for me; I've never been big on portraits) -- and the editor not only selects an intriguing painting to grace the cover, she also provides a detailed history of the piece and the artist and then ties it to current issues in infectious disease and public health. I always kind of wonder which comes first with the editor -- does the cover art influence the contents for any particular month, or does she look at the line-up of articles and then go looking for the art?

EID is packed cover to cover with the type of material I spend my days editing, so I do take a professional interest in seeing how journal articles look in their final format (although nothing I've edited since I started my current job has been published in EID -- everything my authors have done has gone into much, much less appealing publications, like Vaccine). Of course, part of EID's appeal for me is that unlike many of the professional journals out there, EID practices plain language (or close to it; some polysyllables and technical terms are unavoidable). No strange abbreviations or acronym soup, just nicely organized articles that present interesting information.

That said, my favorite part of this month's issue is "Bedtime at Nana and Pop's House." It actually is light reading.

And trees will die for this?

From today's Washington Post:

Miley Cyrus has reportedly inked a seven-figure deal to pen her memoirs. And none too soon. At 15, she's achieved the maturity and distance needed to reflect on her life's lessons. Although the book won't hit stores until 2009, Celebritology has obtained (wink wink) an incomplete outline of the book's proposed chapters, complete with handy descriptions.

The descriptions are, of course, totally tongue-in-cheek. Too bad the book deal itself isn't a joke.

Nifty roadside architecture

Ranger Bob at Retread Ranger has photos of nifty cabins from a former tourist court in Poplar, Wisconsin. Definitely roadside architecture at its finest.

The sex life of trees

I've been thinking lately about one of North America's least appreciated trees, acer negundo, better known as the box elder or ash leaf maple. This is a tree that is so common, that has been so much of the background for so many places that we've lived up north, that when we moved into our current apartment and discovered one growing on the edge of the patio I didn't recognize it. The last thing I expected to find next to our back door in Atlanta was the same type of tree we had shading our deck in Hancock, Michigan. I actually checked a tree i.d. book out of the agency library in order to pin down the species. I kept thinking, "It looks really familiar. Now what is it?" Definitely a "duh" moment when I learned what I was looking at. (The book did come in handy for identifying the stuff around Atlanta I really had never seen before, like mimosa and balloon nut, so carrying it home from work wasn't a total waste of time.)

Tree i.d. books use terms like "invasive" and "weedy" when describing acer negundo. Maybe "highly adaptable" would be a better term. Box elders like disturbed areas and edge spaces so in urban areas they tend to pop up in vacant lots and along alley fences. Or, in the case of the fellow pictured here (and it is a male tree; box elders are dioecious, which means every tree is either male or female, and those are boy parts dangling there), on the inside of a patio fence. Box elder grows fast so, at least according to the Corin Center for Biodiversity at UW-Green Bay, has occasionally been used in the past as a street tree. Not anymore. Box elders aren't particularly long-lived compared to other shade trees, nor are they particularly strong. They are, in fact, generally viewed with considerable contempt. No commercial value, no long term landscape value, ergo, of no use in general.

The song birds that hang out in the box elder growing on our patio would beg to differ, of course. The mockingbirds, cardinals, robins, and a wide variety of LBBs seem perfectly happy with the tree. And so are we. It may have popped up accidentally not that many years ago (I'm guessing sometime in the 1990s), but previous tenants ignored it. It's now tall enough to provide shade for our west facing wall, which is basically two stories of glass. That tree allows us to keep the blinds open all summer instead of turning our townhouse into a gloomy cave. It's leafy enough to provide shade, but the growth isn't so dense that it completely blocks light -- it just filters it. It may be a fragile tree compared to, for example, a white oak or a sugar maple, but the branches are still more than strong enough to hang a bird feeder or a potted plant from. It doesn't shed tons of crap like the balloon nut tree one patio over from us (although I will concede the balloon nut has showier flowers), and, maybe because it's male and has no seeds it doesn't seem to attract squirrels. I am, in short, rather fond of that tree.

Isle Royale wildlife

Happened across a long, interesting piece about the wolf/moose study on Isle Royale. Never been lucky enough to see (or even hear) any wolves when I've been to the park, but then I've never been down to the Windigo end. One of these years. . . the fantasy hike/camping trip is, of course, from Rock Harbor to Windigo and back again with side excursions along the way.

Hobbit house

I think I've found the blueprints for the retirement cottage. . . Of course, if we build something like this, if my friend Carol comes to visit she may never leave.

AJC desperate to fill page space

Despite yesterday's Democratic presidential candidates debate, a shoot-out at an apartment complex in Decatur that sounds like something out of the wild west, and various other happenings around the country and the world, the AJC feels the need to fill page space with:

Pig Runs Amok on I-75

Marietta police spokesman Mark Bishop said the pig apparently came off a small truck traveling southbound at the Canton Road Bridge at about 9:30 a.m.

"Traffic temporarily halted to rescue the pig," he said. "The pig has minor injuries. They got it tied up to keep it from getting hurt any more until Animal Control can get it."

Amok? Just how much damage did this crazed porker do before they got it cornered? Inquiring minds want to know.

Humor

H/T to Yellowdog Granny. Go check out the smorgasbord of humor she posted yesterday.

More politics

James Howard Kunstler, a man who definitely has a way with words, had this (and more) to say on the recent Obama = elitist flap:

Barack Obama caught hell last week for daring to tell the truth about the ragged thing that the American spirit has become. He said that small-town Pennsylvania voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” to work out their negative emotions. He might have added that the Pope wears a funny hat (see for yourself this week), and that bears shit in the woods (something rural Pennsylvanians probably know). Nevertheless, in the manner lately prescribed for those who slip up and speak truthfully in public (and in contradiction to the reigning delusions), Obama was pressured to apologize for his statements.

The evermore loathsome and odious Hillary Clinton, co-owner of a $100 million personal wealth portfolio, seized the moment to remind voters what a normal, everyday gal she is -- who would never look down on the small-town folk of Pennsylvania the way her "elitist" opponent had -- forgetting, apparently, that the Clinton family's consigliere, James Carville, famously described the Keystone State as a kind of redneck sandwich with Pittsburgh and Philadelphia as the bread, and Alabama as the lunch meat in between.

Head on over to Clusterfuck Nation to read the whole thing.