Olde Posts Addenda (5)

  Since all of the news is "breaking" these days, here are some more stories which have broken and are related to older news items in MM.

War Is Also Bad For Animals
  Back in the spring of 2019 in MM I called to your attention the "Factlet" that in the fall of 1939 the pet-loving Brits chose to "put down" around 400,000 of them. The grim details are found in: Factlet (2) - The Brits and Their Pets.  Such an astonishing figure will need verification and it is found in a book mentioned in that post: The Great Cat and Dog Massacre: The Real Story of World War Two’s Unknown Tragedy by Hilda Kean.

   To the library of books about awful things that have happened to animals, another can be added: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age, John M. Kinder. It is published by the University of Chicago Press where this description is found:
   A new and heartbreaking history of World War II as told through the shocking experiences of zoos across the globe. As Europe lurched into war in 1939, zookeepers started killing their animals. On September 1, as German forces invaded Poland, Warsaw began with its reptiles. Two days later, workers at the London Zoo launched a similar spree, dispatching six alligators, seven iguanas, sixteen southern anacondas, six Indian fruit bats, a fishing cat, a binturong, a Siberian tiger, five magpies, an Alexandrine parakeet, two bullfrogs, three lion cubs, a cheetah, four wolves, and a manatee over the next few months. Zoos worldwide did the same. The reasons were many, but the pattern was clear: The war that was about to kill so many people started by killing so many animals. Why? And how did zoos, nevertheless, not just survive the war but play a key role in how people did, too?"
The author of the book was asked five questions which are also available and answered in the related U of C blog.
  For a review of the book see: "With World War II on the horizon, animal keepers in cities around the world had to face one question: What would happen to their charges?" By Sophy Roberts, Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2025.

War Is Certainly Bad For Humans

   Although the Vietnam war ended fifty years ago, even those of you born in this century will certainly have seen at least one of the two photos provided in: "Napalm Girl" and "Napalm Girl" (Again). "Napalm Girl" is still alive and is living in Ontario. The photos mentioned can be seen in the posts above and will not be shown again here. In the second post, it is noted that questions have been raised about the "authorship" of the "Napalm Girl" photo. Since it was written, the questions have been addressed and the 97 page report is linked in this article:
"The Associated Press Won’t Change ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo Credit: A documentary called “The Stringer” called into question whether Nick Ut actually took the famous photograph in Vietnam. The AP’s year-long probe couldn’t prove otherwise," Scott Nover & Jada Yuan, The Washington Post, May 6, 2025.

The End of the Crickets

Like Buddy Holly They Are No More

   De Bono, one of the last of the local reporters, has been dutiful in his reporting on the demise of Aspire, the London cricket factory. I also have been devoted to this subject and a future historian will find in this post all they need to know about the failed aspirations of this London enterprise. I will offer first, the latest and surely the last cricket story which is provided by Mr. De Bono. Then follow the MM posts which are largely based on his reporting. I did contribute a bit about Kricket Krap, a by-product the Aspire folks may have overlooked. And, if you are still not interested I should mention that the company was seen to be part of a conspiracy. 
   Mr. De Bono is a professional and his titles are clearer and first sentences better than mIne:
"Cricket Producer in Receivership: City Plant Still Going as Aspire, Reportedly $41.5M in Debt, Seeks Buyer or Financing," Norman De Bono, The London Free Press, May 14, 2025.
"By Jiminy, London's cricket dreams have run into a financial roadblock as menacing as, well, a massive can of Raid."
  Now, here is one of my titles and you will likely spot the difference:

"ENTOMOPHAGY"
  I will skip my first sentence and go to the second paragraph by the professional:
 "Norman De Bono (the reporter) revealed that, London will become home to the world’s largest indoor cricket farm with Aspire Food Group opening a 100,000-square-foot plant here that will act as a launch pad to bring bugs, as food, to the North American market....At the plant, crickets will be hatched and grown on-site and will become a tasteless, odourless protein powder that will be sold as a food additive, and will also be used to make protein bars.
That post is the one that mentions Kricket Krap which is sold by a company in Georgia so you shouldn't buy any right now.
  Here is the post which reveals that this cricket business is just part of a scheme by Davos-types who want to force us to eat insects in communist Canada.  Crickets and Conspiracies.

Trashy News
  That is a more attractive title than "News About Trash", about which I have provided many posts since there is plenty of trash. The new title about trash is all you need and I will spare you the details which are hardly needed: "On a Remote Australian Island, the Birds Are So Full of Plastic They Crunch: Seabirds Have Been Fishing Plastic From the Ocean and Feeding it to Their Chicks, Researchers Say. One Bird Was Found to Have Ingested 800 Pieces," Victoria Craw, The Washington Post, May 16, 2025.
For more proof that the plastic is piling up and that there is now something called "sea snot", see below:
Flotsam and Jetsam
More Flotsam
More Trash
Marine Mucilage in the Sea of Marmara 
Polluted RIvers

The Bonus:
  I couldn't help but notice that one of the authors in the articles cited above provides an example of an inaptronym (Kinder in the article about killing) and another an aptronym (Craw in the last article about birds ingesting plastic.) About that subject see: Aptronyms. 
Amen

   

On Golf Balls

   It is snowing here today and golf will not be played for a while. The subject can be broached, however, and I will begin broaching by considering the colour of golf balls. As well, for those readers who prefer the serious over the frivolous, I will make the subject more timely by also mentioning gender, which one is required to do these days.

   Men prefer white balls. I haven’t done any research on the subject, but it is likely that even Black men do as well and I am sure Harold Varner III does, but you would expect him to do so because of the III. Even with the III and a name like “Harold”, he probably would not have been allowed into most country clubs a while back and in those days it is also likely that even a white club member would have  been blackballed if he chose to use a ball that was not white. But, this is about gender, not race, so consider this quote: “Female golfers have long accepted balls in a variety of hues.” 

   That quotation comes from an authoritative source: The Wall Street Journal. It is even more authoritative in this instance, given that most readers of it, and likely the writer of the article, are golfers and, more importantly, members of country clubs. Just as they know more about hedge funds, they are more likely to have accumulated wisdom related to poa annua grass and know that it should not be allowed at their clubs.

   Statistical evidence is provided by the WSJ: "At Whispering Pines Golf Club north of Houston, the pro shop tells me that less than 10% of men purchase colored balls, while nearly 60% of women do." That proves, among other things, that women are smarter than men, since colour, unlike, say compression, has no effect on ball performance and the brightly coloured ones are easier to find in the deep grass, or for that matter in the deep snow outside today. 

   Even tennis players are smarter than male golfers and the International Tennis Federation, more liberal than the PGA, since they made yellow balls the official ones back in 1972. Wimbledon went yellow much later, in 1986, but it is greener over there. 

    I should mention that Bubba Watson is also smarter than most other male golfers since he used a pink golf ball at the Masters a few years ago. I am surprised that they allowed him to do so, but by then I think they had also agreed to allow Condoleezza Rice to become a member. 

Sources:

“Gender Gap on the Golf Course,” Peter Funt, WSJ, April 15, 2021.

If you are heading out to Golf Town, are male and feel sufficiently masculine, here is a guide that will be useful: “10 Best High Visibility Golf Balls in 2022,” by Carroll Ball. Kansas Golf.

Post Script:

Readers who are attentive and who read my post about Aptronyms, will appreciate the name of the author of the article above: Carroll Ball.

The Bonus: 
Srixon is introducing a two-toned one.

 

Aptronyms

 

   There was an article in the New York Times yesterday about tree planting. It indicated that the tree planting now being done, may not be a good thing unless trees of different types are planted. Diversity in all things. 
   One of the people mentioned in the article has a name that is suited to his profession. Forrest Fleischman is a professor of environmental policy at the University of Minnesota. I knew that there was a name for such nomenclature, and it is 'aptronym.' I had to look it up, but I shouldn't have had to do so. 
   Apart from learning about tree planting and aptronyms, I learned that this blog is not working as it was supposed to - as a memory aid for me.  As I read up on aptronyms (again) I slowly began to remember that I was an authority on this subject back in 2018.  You should learn from this that, not only should you read this blog, you should also read the Post Scripts when provided. If you go back and look at my long disquisition about SPARROWS, you will find at the bottom a very interesting discussion about aptronyms and inaptronyms and a bit more relating to nominative determinism  and even nominative contradeterminism. In my defence the Post Script was not really a digression, since two of the people writing about our feathered friends were, Leonard Wing and George Bird Grinnell. If you are still not interested in going back to the sparrow story which contains good stuff about aptronyms, I will just say that in it I mentioned Anthony Weiner. 

Sources: 
  The article: "Tree Planting is Booming. Here's How That Could Help, or Harm, the Planet," Catrin Einhorn, New York Times, , May 14, 2022.
   The Wiki entries for both aptronyms and nominative determinism are very good and if you click on this link to learn about the latter, you will see that I am using a version called Wikiwand. 

The Bonus:
   There is an article in this month's Atlantic written by someone with a name that is perfectly suited, as you will see from the title: "Margaret Atwood on Envy and Friendship and Old Age," by Jennifer Senior.

SPARROWS

Preambling

     At the beginning of last year you were presented with a novel-length post that should have been titled “Jerry’s Jeremiad”, in that I ranted on about things I thought ludicrous and found irritating. Since those things - WORDS that should not be used, NAMES  that should not be called, and STATUES that should never have been erected - are still very much in the news, you will be spared my braying on about them. Don’t forget, however, that I did raise the Lenin-like question “What Is To Be Done?”  in relation to the problems those things cause and offered some answers. I stand by them and you can find them here (just scroll through the first few thousand words to the conclusion). 

     We are several days into this new year so I will not offer any blogging resolutions, particularly since I have not been so resolute about the others I made. I will also not present excuses for my failure to provide a post-a-day since many of them were covered in my “Chief Cunctator” post and will undoubtedly apply as we move forward. I will, however, try to keep the  promise I made in the jeremiad which was to avoid as much as possible the ludicrousness of the present. I hope we all have a good year. We will begin softly with the subject of sparrows.

Sparrows

   

     Sparrows are not at all spectacular, but we are not fortunate enough, here in southern Ontario, to have a loyal flock of Painted Buntings around our feeder. So we will work with what we have. I have observed that they are sociable and, like some of our neighbours, seem to have adapted very well to life on the pogey. 

     I thought I would try to learn more about them, but learned, about myself, that I would never be much of a birder. I had a look for the word ‘sparrow’ in the index of Peterson’s Eastern Birds and under it found around thirty kinds ranging from Bachman’s and Baird’s through Harris’ and Henslow’s all the way to White-crowned and White-throated. The list under ‘sparrows’ is also long in the National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region and one finds Botteri’s and Cassin’s which don’t appear in Peterson’s. The list is even longer in Wikipedia and one encounters many other related words like ‘passerines’ and ‘petronias’. Apart from learning about all these varieties, think about identifying them. One can just about double the number since the males and females often look different and the male of one type might look like the female of another. Depending, of course, on the time of the year.

Invasive Species 

    Abandoning pure ornithology in favour of a more historical approach I soon discovered again that the subject of sparrows is not so simple. As you are aware, however, I am behind in my blogging so I will have to keep this short and simply direct you to sources you can use if you want to learn more and start your own blog.    

     The sparrows I am supporting do not come from stock that originated in North America. Sparrows were imported into some cities in the eastern United States during the period from the 1850s to the 1890s and they were exported (and otherwise spread) to other cities and areas on the continent.  
  
     The sparrows were brought over from England and Europe for aesthetic as well as utilitarian reasons. Settlers apparently missed the birds they grew up with and, apart from nostalgia, offered the rationale that sparrows could be useful in ridding the cities of various insects. As an aside, there was another aesthetic purpose. One gentleman, Eugene Schieffelin, was responsible for importing starlings and other birds which appeared in the works of Shakespeare, but were missing in America.

     When these new immigrants flourished and multiplied some citizens began to see this introduced species as an invasive one. A familiar story. It was suggested that the aggressive sparrow was taking over and replacing native songbirds and that they were eating more fruits and crops than insects. It was argued that “Without question the most deplorable event in the history of American ornithology was the introduction of the English sparrow.”

   Not all citizens agreed, nor did the ornithologists who formed warring camps. Some suggested that sparrows should be eliminated even though there was a growing concern that too many other birds were being destroyed.  One positive result of the war was that each side began collecting a lot of data to try to learn if the introduction of the sparrow had been harmful biologically or economically. 

    I was surprised to learn that the rather bland sparrow had attracted so much attention and was the cause of such controversy. The ones here seem to be doing well. On the other hand, ironically enough, I have learned that the ones in the other London are disappearing at a rapid rate.

Sources:

 
     As mentioned, the sparrow war produced a lot of information. For some older sources (which are available to you) see:
Barrow’s The English Sparrow in North America… [This U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin is over 400 pages long.] 
Thomas G. Gentry, The House Sparrow at Home and Abroad, With Some Concluding Remarks Upon Its Usefulness, and Copious References to the Literature of the Subject. 
Edwin Richard Kalmbach, Economic Status of the English Sparrow

     If you want to learn in detail how the sparrows and starlings moved across the continent see: “Spread of the Starling and English Sparrow”, Leonard Wing, The Auk, Vol. 60, No.1, 1943, p.74.
     For a good account: “Elliott Coues and the Sparrow War,” Michael J. Brodhead
The New England Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Sep., 1971), pp. 420-432
    For a longer study of the battles between ornithologists: “Sparrows for America: A Case of Mistaken, Identity,” Robin W. Doughty, Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 14, No.2, Fall, 1980.
   About the starlings see: ‘What if We Had All the Birds From Shakespeare in Central Park,” Juliet Lamb, JSTOR Daily, June 9, 2016.
   For a larger perspective see: American Perceptions of Immigrant and Invasive Species: Strangers on the Land, by Peter Coates - especially Chapter 2: “The Avian Conquest of a Continent”. It is from this source that the quotation about “the deplorable event” is taken.

    The decline in the number of sparrows in London, England is discussed in the book about the decline of moths in England - The Moth Snowstorm, Michael McCarthy,  pp.110-112.

Post Script:

     Once again I have saved some of the interesting bits which, once again, are totally unrelated to the subject at hand. You will note above that one of the authors mentioned  is Leonard Wing. Another frequently encountered in the sources cited is George Bird Grinnell. Not generally that close a reader, I did still notice that each man’s name had some relationship to their chosen career or area of interest. 

      Aware of the old tradition that people often had surnames related to their occupations (Masons and Carpenters), I wondered about those who ended up taking a job related to the name they were given. Would Mr. Wing or “Bird” Grinnell have been, say undertakers or circus performers, if not for their names? Is that why Margaret Court was a tennis player or why Francine Prose is a novelist? Did Jude Law flunk out of law school? What about Anthony Weiner? How does one answer such questions?

     Well, to save you the time that I wasted go directly to the subject of “Nominative Determinism” - the entry about it in Wikipedia is a good place to begin and that is where I found this brief definition: “Nominative determinism, literally "name-driven outcome", is the hypothesis that people tend to gravitate towards areas of work which reflect their names.” There appears to be some debate over whether someone with a name like Sue Yoo was destined to become a lawyer or if the choice was simply a matter of coincidence rather than causality. 
     
     You can dig even deeper by looking for more under the subject of Aptronyms. And if you want to avoid whatever it is your attempting to write about you could always delve into Inaptronyms or Nominative Contradeterminism, which apply when there is a contradiction between the name and the occupation: Dr. Kill or Cardinal Sin or Don Black, the white supremacist, are some examples. I could go on.