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UR V. UVA 4/1/17

“Find your voice. If this is your voice, find another one.” – Anon/advice to a novice writer

My old friend and high school team mate Smitty came up from Myrtle with his girlfriend Michal for the UR/UVA Lacrosse game yesterday. I’m a Terps fan, but UR is my Alma; they formed the Spiders’ first club Lacrosse team when I was an undergrad in the mid-’80s, so I am bound by loyalty to support the program however I can, even if all that means is placing a one-dollar bet on them against Smitty’s Cavs. In all honesty, though, having watched UR play Duke earlier in the season, I was looking forward to seeing them play again, and I even anticipated a Spider win. They were new and improved, fortified with 20% more focus and chutzpah, and, most importantly, they seemed to have stretched beyond that fear of the cage that had become such an Albatross for them in ‘16. In the end, I lost my dollar to the Spiders’ exper-tease, which is not to be confused with expertise. Exper-tease happens when you execute a series of moves so elegant, so graceful that they seem to defy the very laws of physics, only to then choke it all away on a bad pass or a missed ground ball. Exper-tease is finesse without follow through; exper-tease is a sudden abandonment of fundamentals caused by a unique mix of physical and mental retardation that occurs without fail whenever a high level of skill collides with either hubris or fear . . or shitty music.

My wife Melinda joined us for the match, too. It was her first live Lacrosse game, and maybe her third game ever. We arrived two hours early and posted up in the front row on the UVA side to watch the teams run through their pre-game warm-up drills. At some point, Melinda turned to us and said, “I might be out of line here, but I would feel kind of demoralized having to warm up to this music.”

She was right. I can’t tell you what music they had playing. In fact, if I am ever able to identify it by name, please dispatch someone right away to burn me alive. This was the sort of music you might expect to hear were you out running Sunday-morning shopping errands with Pharrell or One Direction. (We actually spotted One Direction in the stands. It was so weird; for some reason, they were all wearing Deep Run HS t-shirts.) In other words, this was not motivational music. The makers of this majestic game called it The Little Brother of War. What we heard was not war music, not unless your definition of war includes a pedicure, a Bellini, and the latest copy of Cosmopolitan. In all honesty, I could have gotten more keyed up listening to Air Supply or Barely Manenough. In fact, I awoke this morning from a freakishly real-seeming nightmare in which players were warming up for the NCAA finals; they were running man/ball drills, listening to Toto …

“. . I love the rain down in Aaaaafricaaaaa . . “

One point loss. Call it fundamentals if it makes you feel better. If I were UR, I would sack the DJ as soon as possible and ban him or her from coming within a quarter mile of the stadium. Then, I’d send someone to consult with whoever runs the music for the baseball program. As it happened, we drove past by the diamond on our way out of X Lot after the game. The baseball team had taken the field to work through its own set of pregame rituals and drills. They were listening to vintage AC/DC.

(Other notes: Why does #1 keep shooting from a belly crawl? That doesn’t seem to be working.)

#lax #Lacrosse #UR #University of Richmond

currentsinbiology

Why I don’t kill spiders.

Spiders eat astronomical numbers of insects: an estimated 400 to 800 million tons of insects and other pests annually

A new study reveals some stunning estimates about just how much the world’s spiders eat annually: between 400 and 800 million tons of insects, springtails, and other invertebrates. In the process, these eight-legged carnivores play an important role to keep countless insect pests, especially in forests and grassland areas, in check. This is according to the findings of Martin Nyffeler of the University of Basel in Switzerland and Klaus Birkhofer of Lund University in Sweden and the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg in Germany, published in Springer’s journal The Science of Nature.

Using data from 65 previous studies, Nyffeler and Birkhofer first estimated how many spiders are currently to be found in seven biomes on the planet. Their conclusion: altogether there are about 25 million metric tons’ worth of them around. Most spiders are found in forests, grasslands and shrublands, followed by croplands, deserts, urban areas and tundra areas.

Martin Nyffeler, Klaus Birkhofer. An estimated 400–800 million tons of prey are annually killed by the global spider community. The Science of Nature, 2017; 104 (3-4) DOI: 10.1007/s00114-017-1440-1

This is a jumping spider Phidippus regius preying on a bush cricket (Tettigoniidae).Credit: Copyright David E. Hill, Peckham Society, Simpsonville, South Carolina

A few inches of sub-tropical water and some Tevas = aquatic nerd utopia.

tobeagenius

valentines day for nerds pt.2 (pt.1)

mizar113

earthstory

Amazing, this is a crinoid swimming (edited after comments)

artbymonikajasnauskaite

Actias luna, pencils on paper.

ftcreature

Rainbow Jumping Spider, Maratus robinsoni.

Read more here. Photos by: Peter Robo

gartenarbeit

A Girl and her Dog

#Peppermint Patty #Sausage Patty #PityPatty #Patty #N. Topsail

radiofreerichmond

Three years ago, Churchhillpeoplesnews posted a picture of this dog hiding in a vestibule at Chimborazo Elementary school; by the time I found her that sweltering 105-degree evening, she was almost dead. She could move only her eyes, and she couldn’t even drink. The good folks at the RVA Animal Care and Rescue named her “Supernatural,” because she shouldn’t have survived. An allergy to fleas caused her to break her own teeth on her hindquarters. Three years of Shea butter got a lot of her hair back, but not all of it; the blue you see on her butt is sunblock. It was a hot week on Topsail Island, but it was her kind of heat And it was sure as hell her kind of surf.

#Peppermint Patty #Sausage Patty #PityPatty #Patty

When couples have a big argument, sometimes it is followed up with flowers; instead of apologetic roses, I got Franklin. He first made an appearance on a morning in early June when Dave found him crying piteously on the street corner in front of the old Julep’s location at the corner of Franklin and 18th street. He was a big lover with a big purr from the beginning…and came with a big, stubborn appetite for whatever it was that you and anyone else were having for dinner. His day typically started with a splash of milk handed out when I was pouring some into my coffee, followed by free-grazing on the giant bowl of crunchy food he shared with his siblings. You had to watch what you left on the counter, because he would find a way to eat it. He loved food so much that he would pop out of solid REM state of sunshine sleep if you even touched the hand-crank can-opener. Random banging noises that came from the kitchen usually came with the tragedy of finding out that he had eaten the toppings off of a couple slices of pizza or had taken a single bite or two off of all the leftover donuts. He had no shame; he even ate the dogs’ food. I shudder to think what he would have done if he had possessed opposable thumbs.

Like his appetite for food, he loved big, too. He never knew a stranger and simply walked up to you and loved on you, which was how Dave met him in the first place over a decade ago. If you were ever at our house and sat on our couch, chances are he probably leaped on your lap and cuddled you. If you had a beard, he was more intimate with you and probably embarrassed you as he curiously stuck his face and paws in your beard. He liked being the biggest guy cat, but he deferred to our eldest male cat and doted on the one-eyed kitten we brought in two years later. As for his human loves, he was a master at cuddling and making biscuits. He liked to sleep on the pillows above our heads and purred us to sleep, sometimes waking us up with a random love bite on the head. He was quieter than our other cats; his meow didn’t match his size. His quiet will be missed, and our house feels a very empty tonight. Even though Dave will be now be cooking future dinners without his countertop companion perched nearby; I’m sure Franklin will still be overseeing all future gourmet activity from the other side of the rainbow bridge.

#RIP FPuss