Incheon Animals: Papilio species

Different sites offer the same genus but various species names.
Papillio maacki. And here.
Papillio elwesi
-----How embarrassing. I had originally posted this with the species names capitalized. Now fixed.

A Carefully Constructed Sentence

I am a Canadian, living in South Korea, but I watch the US presidential  race with, ah, amusement? Horror?.. When I get irate, I remind myself I cannot vote for either party, or anyone else, and try to return to amusement.

The following discussion centers on quack Mehmet Oz and specifically on a sentence describing him in the New York Times. The article is about Donald Trump, but, for this post (and generally for this blog), I am not interested in him.

What does it mean to criticized or 'sometimes speak[s] in ...hyperbole"?  It means:
Lying about weight loss claims.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance, led the panel that on Tuesday looked at false advertising for weight loss products. Subcommittee members took issue with assertions that Oz has made on his show about products that don't have a lot of scientific evidence to back them up, such as green coffee beans.

The article notes he did the same thing with Garcinia cambogia.

His Wikipedia page shows his lack of integrity in various ways.

Science Based Medicine notes he has found '16 miracles':

After all, everything is a “miracle” to Oz (He’s found 16 so far).

That New York Times writer has a gift for spin.

Via Boingboing.

TWIC: start, steampunk,Chandler on SF, comics, life of Surprises

Making it small in Hollywood. Mike Birbiglia is being a little modest.  His six tips look good.  Here are excerpts from  two (this is from the New York Times so I cannot copy and paste even small segments):

1) Don't wait. ...Don't talk about it anymore. Maybe don't even finish this essay.
2) Fail. ...The bedrock of all good pieces of writing is 10 bad drafts.

Via Kottke.
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Oamaru, New Zealand is the steampunk capital of the world!

For the uninitiated, the term steampunk was coined in the 1980s and is based on imagining inventions the Victorians might have created for the modern world. The movement was kickstarted by science fiction novels and has branched out to incorporate art and fashion while spawning a well-established aesthetic, typified by embellished hats and goggles.

Image found here (here shrunk, as always)

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Raymond Chandler on Science Fiction (and Google!)

Raymond Chandler owning all science fiction writers and casually inventing Google in a letter from 1953 pic.twitter.com/NHk5Oxy8nd

— Andy Cush (@cushac) September 1, 2016

I want to read the rest of that story.
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I saw a comic on a friend's Facebook page. The panel showed a spoiled student with his feet on his desk during the pledge of allegiance. I shrank the image and added another panel.

The artist, Steve Breen apparently drew that panel nearly six years ago.  I want to properly attribute his artwork and so I found his webpage.  Strangely enough yesterday's panel took the opposing viewpoint. It suggested that Kaepernick's choice to stand or not during the pledge or the anthem was what made the US great.  Good for Breen on becoming more progressive.
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In writing the above, I wasn't sure of my comics terminology.  Wikipedia and readwritethink had me covered. From the latter:

Readwritethink is geared toward students while Wikipedia is more in depth.
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I have more than one blog.  I keep this one fairly tightly focused on creativity but I have other interests. I seldom post on my SurprisesAplenty blog but just did and if you have any interest in this humble blogger as a human being, you can read about it.

Incheon Animals: Brilliant Blue Beetle

No idea what species this is.  I'm pretty sure it is a beetle but local hemiptera can look similar (and wonderful); below, taken at 600~odd meters altitude Gangwon Province, a hemiptera:

In a few months, I will have access to some insect guides and i will try to ID it then.  Man! Three animals into the Incheon Animals posts and I haven't IDed any. Shame!
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Mostly as a reminder to myself, this article on beetle diversity on a tall Gangwon mountain looks interesting for my Gangwon work.  This one might or might not be interesting.

Click Bait: This secret video will be banned!

Greg Thomson stepped off the ferry in Torshavn.
"Godan Dag" called out three men, touts from local inns but Greg passed them until he saw the man with the Torshavn Hotel sign. He introduced himself, he speaking German slowly until the man, Naddoddur Rasmussen, volunteered that he spoke English.

Naddoddur led Greg to the hotel van and the two went to the hotel.

It was a typical Faroese day, with half the sky filled with clouds and the other clear and sunny.  The sun beat down on multi-coloured homes and businesses with the backdrop of a green-faced hill.

Once he had settled in, he was out again.  On a borrowed bicycle, he struggled up the hill. Torshavn was one of the few places in the Faroes where the hills did not absolutely forbid cycling. He looked forward to the descent back, though.



On he went, until he found the home of Steinvør Mortensen, the woman who would break the whole story open.  He found her at work.

He introduced himself and when she repeated "Thomsen" with more of a eh sound in the final syllable, he didn't correct her. Her pronunciation meant he didn't have to actively lie yet.

But soon he did. "I've been away since childhood," he said to hide his unfamiliarity with the language she spoke.  His fluency in German and English was sufficient most of the time to understand but not always be understood.

She resumed knitting.  The wool was cream and brown and unbelievably thick.  On its own, his hand reached out and squeezed the ball of yarn. He caressed it, his training allowing him to note the lack of broken fibers that would cause itchiness. This wool could be worn on bare skin.

Convinced he was a local, she felt comfortable leaving the room with him in it.  A few cut ends of yarn were on the floor and he picked up a handful of them, tucking them into one of the dozen inner pockets of his Gore Tex jacket.

He soon made his goodbyes and coasted back down to the capital town. Before dinner, he shopped for wool sweaters.  At the stores, he played the German tourist and chatted with the friendly shopkeepers.  He easily divulged the name of his hotel.  The sweaters all looked and felt great. As expected with handmade products, they had no tags or markers.  He bought one and wore it under his wind breaker to dinner.  He also bought a small scarf.

Back at his hotel, he removed the sweater and scarf, set them on the bed and arranged some pens -one especially thick - on the desk.  Then he went out to see if the island's proximity to Scotland meant they had good whiskey.

They did.  When he returned, he didn't need to feign casualness.  He simply pointed himself toward the bed, clambered in and woke up with the sun shining in.  He packed up, happy that his head didn't hurt, and was driven back to the ferry.

At home, he studied the video.  Yes, his beautiful sweater had been switched while he was out.  The few sheep of the Faroes could not keep up with the demands of consumers and they had to re-sell their few great sweaters again and again. Te scarf must have been small enough to not unduly tax the production. The sweater he now had was okay, maybe Scottish, but not of Faroese quality.  He made further recordings of the laboratory research comparing the yarn ends he'd saved and the sweater in his possession.

He cleaned up the videos and made a documentary, then posted it online from his home in Saskatchewan.

And now the Danes were after him!  First, they wanted Canada's Hans Island. Now they wanted his video.  A Dane-led legal push against Youtube was in full-swing to remove and ban this video.
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NOTES

1 For once, the image isn't giving much away. A slim man or cross-dressing woman with a too-short jacket in a luxury car.  Ah-hah! I'm sure the scarf is involved.

1.5 scarves are made of wool. A blogger I follow discussed wool products.

2 Tyler Cowen, at Marginal Revolution, visited the Faroe Islands and said (among many other things) (my bolding):

I give the place high marks for food and scenery, but the total population of about 48,700 limits  other benefits.  It is like visiting a smaller, more unspoilt Iceland.  There is a shop in the main city selling Faroese music and many shops selling sweaters.  They will not tell you where the sweaters were knitted.

3 The image of a sweater being knitted has been shrunk and was found here.

4 So much research for a short story.  I'm learning!

I have an unneeded Google Drive tab open and a Facebook tab (naughty! I should be more focused).  The others all related to the Faroe Islands.  As with Iceland, the Faroes work to keep their culture 'pure' and I was amused to find a list of 'approved' male and female names.  I recall that in Iceland, if you get Icelandic citizenship, you need to change your name to one of the approved ones.

5 I tell myself these meanderings, written before the story above is finished (I just wrote the bit describing the landscape and weather around Torshavn) are not procrastination.  The story is finding itself in my head. I need a wide range of inputs to put together a novel product. Well, again, that's what I tell myself.

6 I don't know much about Hans Island except that it is my homeland's version of Dokdo here in Korea.  The land is not that valuable but the surrounding ocean and ocean floor are or will be when the ice melts. As a Canadian, I feel somewhat compelled to defend the island as Canadian, but I don't know.

7 I am writing this in a library and will leave soon. I think I finished the story too quickly.

TWIC: Grants, Writers and writing, Spoon, Pelee Island Retreat, pay

On Quora, the question How do you write a good grant proposal was asked and answered.

The answer (so far there is only one) is to find examples in books or in a Google search.  Most such proposals are generally vague and dry so adding some detail and working to make them interesting is important to be noticed.
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Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook is one of the most beautiful I have seen.  Now I need to read it.  He has given lectures on the same content using images found in the book.  Find it here.  The image below, from the link and the book, has been shrunk. Click on it to a somewhat larger size or follow the second link to see it full-size.

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'Verbing' is annoying for some people.

If you’ve ever been in a conversation with someone who makes liberal use of the verb form of summer – which is, coincidentally, also its nominal form – you’ve probably rolled your eyes at such egregious snobbery. Unless, of course, you were simply waiting your turn to share about your own summering, in which case it is probably correct to assume you also enjoy yachting, golfing, and cardiganing.

and

Indeed, in 2007, when Mike Huckabee was a candidate for the Republican nomination for US president, he used it on the campaign trail to differentiate himself from his Ivy League rivals: “For my family, summer was never a verb. We never summered anywhere.”
Well, plenty of other people have summered – for more than 500 years. According to Trish Steward, assistant editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, the verbal use of summer “goes back quite a long way,” its first recorded use being 1440.

I believe this is described as fossilization of a language.  The words and forms you heard as a child will always the the 'right' ones.   Verbing doesn't bother me that I can recall. As a competitive swimmer, the verb 'medalling' was common enough that it never upset me.

Other examples that affect me are Gonna, Wanna, and Hafta, but the one that really grates on my ears and seems common in the UK is "Haven't got". It's "Don't have", for crying out loud!
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Twenty-eight thousand words in a single flight.
The article is difficult to summarize but here are his main points.

• Sleep during take off.
• Laptop on lap rather than chair table.
• Headphones, Ommwriter, Flux and background music
• drink a lot (of water) and don't eat.
• Get up every three thousand words
• Do exercises (ten pushups or squats) in the galley areas a few times
• Save frequently.

The author travels business class and can plug in his computer so he has power for the whole flight. I love Ommwriter (the Mac version is better) and Flux apparently resets the lighting so your eyes don't ache in low light situations.
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The latest Hugo Awards shenanigans.

Question: If you could pick a single writer to make an effective, compassionate statement about identity politics to a divided literary community, who would you pick? Would it be a schizophrenic, autistic person who’d authored an e-book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion?
For years, writers and fans of science fiction and fantasy have been confronting that first question. And inadvertently, at the behest of right-wing trolls, the answer to the second question has recently become yes.

Via.

Beautiful (and moving) piece on @ChuckTingle, the Hugo Awards, Elves and Shoemakers: https://t.co/q7GVYmTlHy

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) August 27, 2016

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I know things that I didn't even know I knew.

Things native English speakers know, but don't know we know: pic.twitter.com/Ex0Ui9oBSL

— Matthew Anderson (@MattAndersonBBC) September 3, 2016

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Will I make money as an artist?

A toast to every artist who has a piece of art out there with 10,000+ shares/likes and less than 5 sales pic.twitter.com/OvAv0D1V30

— Kate Leth (@kateleth) August 28, 2016

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Lessons for Story Tellers at the World Domination Summit

(2) You can always edit more than you think
What it is the point we’re trying to get across with this story?
And then,
What can I cut out, but still get this point across?
It’s brutal. But in the end, I managed to edit some stories down to 30 seconds – which gave us wiggle room to add some details back in

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Spoon! Jimmy Diresta makes one.


Boingboing has a quote from him with a link that didn't work for me.

As a dabbler who hasn't done enough continuously enough to learn by doing, videos like these are wonderful.  At the beginning, Diresta makes his block on two sides with the rough shape of his spoon.  Of course, once he cuts on axis, the marks have been removed. What does Diresta?  He applies glue to the part that will be next cut off and rebuilds his block. Then he cuts again and the rough is cut free top and bottom, left and right.  That was worth the price of the video right there.

And a graphic reminder:

This image was many places. I found this one on Reddit.
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Pelee Island Writer's retreat funding on Indiegogo.

The funds raised in this one-time effort will be used for the start-up costs for the Pelee Island Book House and Writers' Retreat. Known for its beaches and birding, the island's quiet beauty makes it an ideal location. Perks are offered at every level,

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Work free, for exposure.
I, uh, am attempting to write a (very) short story for this blog every week - see 'click bait' for stories - to produce content for this blog to attract eyeballs and good feeling from readers so that when I publish a book,there'll be some people to read it.  Maybe even pay for the dubious pleasure of reading it.  These stories are free - and that is probably a realistic measure of their value - and i do it for exposure.
Of course, I am doing this by choice, on my own platform.
At For Exposure, there is a long list of screen caps showing people asking for artists to work for free and getting angry when the artist asks for money. The above link is to a Twitter account and I think the examples are collected here on Imgur. As always, I have shrunk the images. To see them fullsize, and many, many more, follow the link.

Ha. Vulva owners!
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And more on the same subject. Vice allegedly treats its freelancers badly.

IN AN ERA OF JOURNALISM in which freelancers have grown accustomed to being treated like disposable cogs of news production, Vice appears to be in a league of its own.
Interviews with more than a dozen freelance journalists suggest the young, edgy news organization heralded as the future of journalism also has ushered in a new low for its treatment of freelance journalists.

Via Boingboing.

Incheon Animals: another unidentified snake.

Man. I'm in the biz so it is especially embarrassing to say, "They uh, all look alike."
Once again, my claim to offer 'exhibition quality' images is shown to be optimistic. Click to embiggen.

So we have a snake, maybe a meter long, light brown with dark brown markings. Or dark brown with light brown markings.
It scared me because I didn't see it until it was under mine and my dog's feet. It slithered away quickly and my camera focused mostly on the grass around and above the snake.

Here is what it could be:
A non-venomous rat snake that comes in many colour morphs. Wikipedia. Here is a stock image that has similar coloration. I found it here and shrank it considerably.

Or a very venomous viper. Found here, number 3 on the list. Again, highly shrunk, follow the link for full size. I think their image is of (details found here)

Gloydius saxatilis [9]

Emelianov

Rock Mamushi

까치살모사

In the higher reaches of the Taebaek and Sobaek Mountains.

Of the two, the head better matches a non-venomous snake.  Vipers all have diamond heads and the snake in my images and the rat snake image have a head no wider than the neck of the snake.

To do better, I need to count the scales encircling the snake and examine more closely the neck.  Even if the snake were not venomous, I am loath to bother it further than I already do, chasing it with my camera out, trying to get some satisfactory image.