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All contents herein (except the illustrations, which are in the public domain) are Copyright © 1995-2020 Evan Morris & Kathy Wollard. Reproduction without written permission is prohibited, with the exception that teachers in public schools may duplicate and distribute the material here for classroom use.

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If you mean “literal” literally, we should start lining up investors.

from Wired:

Georgia Aquarium zoologist Alistair Dove snapped the photograph from the window of a Cessna plane during a recent research trip to the Gulf of Mexico, where he studies whale sharks. He’s been less successful in capturing whale shark defecation in the water, though not for lack of trying. It’s hard to keep up with the fast-cruising giants, and their deposits fall quickly. And for a zoologist like Dove, the feces are research treasure.

“Nobody has done this analysis yet,” said Dove, who referenced a scene from Jurassic Park, when Laura Dern’s character is ecstatic at the chance to poke through a pile of dinosaur droppings. “It could be a literal gold mine.”

via When the World’s Biggest Fish Poops | Wired Science | Wired.com.

xkcd: Period Speech

via xkcd: Period Speech.

Gene Weingarten column mentions Lady Gaga.

Gene Weingarten on the new newspaper:

Not very long ago, the typical American newsroom had three types of jobs: reporter, editor and photographer. But lately, as newspapers have been frantically converting themselves into high-tech, 24-hour online operations, things are more complicated. Every few days at The Washington Post, staffers get a notice like this: “Please welcome Dylan Feldman-Suarez, who will be joining the fact-integration team as a multiplatform idea triage specialist, reporting to the deputy director of word-flow management and video branding strategy. Dylan comes to us from the social media utilization division of Sikorsky Helicopters.”

Call me a grumpy old codger, but I liked the old way better. For one thing, I used to have at least a rudimentary idea of how a newspaper got produced: On deadline, drunks with cigars wrote stories that were edited by constipated but knowledgeable people, then printed on paper by enormous machines operated by people with stupid hats and dirty faces.

[more] via Gene Weingarten – Gene Weingarten column mentions Lady Gaga..