It's All Over Baby Blue

"Observed, the world is transformed." - Gretel Ehrlich

[nprglobalhealth]

This 3-foot rat can sniff out tuberculosis!

The rats, which can grow to 3 feet long (including tail), are trained and ready for disease-sniffing at the age of 9 months. Though they have a lifespan of about 8 years, the animals are allowed to retire whenever they want.

Read the full story here

[npr]

This story about Chewa, (pictured above), a 3-pound African giant-pouched rat is amazing. -Mabinty 

[itsalloverbabyblue]

I’m gonna say that a three foot rat better have a job!

[aharsherworld]

that’s how we keep going. we make the best of things.

[itsalloverbabyblue]

Girl Crush: Andreanna Ditton shares why online dating is totally contrived and perfectly natural.

Welcome to our first ever guest Medium. We are excited to share the thoughts, experiences, and writing of all kinds of a…

I wrote a thing in response to the new web series Girl on Girl.

Watch the episode here: https://youtu.be/Ta-qiA3tCQI?list=PLXE317Aao2nfWGZPJWB1rMi16MzGGo4Cc

[therumpus]

Also – also, while you were looking for pen and paper the diary has been unfolding. Not growing, exactly, but it’s sitting upright on your tabletop and seems to fill or absorb the air around it so that the air turns this way and that, like pages. In fact the book is like a hand and you, your living room and everything in it are pages being turned this way and that.

Read a short story from Helen Oyeyemi’s new collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours at Buzzfeed’s newest platform, Reader. (via therumpus)

[itsalloverbabyblue]

Taylor Mac - A 24-Decade History of Popular Music

This is "Taylor Mac - A 24-Decade History of Popular Music" by pomegranatearts on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

This just barely manages to convey the absolute mind-blowing inspiration of this show.  Perfection thrown aside, gender binaries squashed, music as message, and letting go, moving forward.

[montereybayaquarium]

A Brief History of Our (Really) Great Tide Pool

Our Great Tide Pool was recently in the news again when a pregnant sea otter gave birth on a rock inside this outdoor amphitheater. She was the second female in two months to have a pup inside the Great Tide Pool.

Besides fluffy sea otter pups being born in its waters, leopard sharks have cruised its corners and pelagic red crabs have peppered its depths. And it was once home to two humpback whales named George and Gracie (thanks to little Hollywood magic) in Star Trek IV.

Just what is it about this scenic area that attracts humans and animals alike?

The Great Tide Pool is one special place, and might even be considered the heart of the Aquarium and in 30 years, it’s seen a few things! Here are some highlights we think you’d like to know about this fabulous—and famed—outdoor arena.   

The concrete stairway was originally built to lead guests to an intertidal trail winding among the pilings and old cannery footings under the deck. We dropped the plan when a closer look at tide tables indicated that we’d get only a few hours a month to use the trail during public hours. But the stairs proved to be a good idea anyway, and we use them for all sorts of reasons. 

We created most of the craggy rocks that encircle the Great Tide Pool over several weeks in 1982 by pouring concrete over rock-shaped forms—sometimes even at night under green lights that made the area look like an alien landscape.

For several summers after we opened, Dr. Steve Webster—one of the four Aquarium co-founders—taught snorkeling classes in the Great Tide Pool, mostly to members’ kids. Steve says that after two or three sessions he’d take them over the rocks and into Monterey Bay, “whereupon they realized the water was a lot warmer in the bay than in the Great Tide Pool, and they didn’t want to come back!” 

(The Great Tide Pool is the final reservoir for ocean water we first pull in from the bay–from a depth of 60 feet–at about 2,000 galllons per minute. The water circulates through exhibits before emptying into this area.)

During the early days of our Sea Otter Program, our marine mammal staff swam in the Great Tide Pool with otter pups, teaching them skills such as diving and cracking open clams.(Nowadays we rely on surrogate sea otter moms to instead.)

In its waters and on its rocks we’ve also rehabilitated and/or released other injured ocean wildlife—including brown pelicans, harbor seals, giant Pacific octopuses—and young leopard sharks we held here as evidence for a federal investigation into fish poaching and smuggling.

It’s witnessed thousands of sunrises and sunsets, low tides, high tides and king tides, and depending on the weather, can seem downright moody. 

It’s been the perfect backdrop to many lively, fun and educational deck programs and some television news and feature programs, as well as for ceremonies honoring individuals who are working on behalf of the ocean and its inhabitants. 

Our most recent summer deck program even included the Great Tide Pool as a character that supported authentic tule and Chinese sampan boats. 

In 2003 we debuted a kids’ surface SCUBA experience, called Underwater Explorers. An instant hit, we expanded the program to include magical days for special needs children. We named one the Zach Bunnell Day of Discovery in honor of this 10- year old boy who in 2004 fulfilled a year-long wish to participate in Underwater Explorers, despite fighting bone cancer that left him blind.

Bunnell passed away a few months after fulfilling his dream, but the memories of his gentle and witty spirit still inspires aquarium staff to share the wonders of the ocean with all children. 

[criterionfilms]

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

[itsalloverbabyblue]

Josh Ritter: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

@handypolymath - his adorableness will either charm you or put you off entirely:)

[itsalloverbabyblue]

Acoustic version of “Getting Ready to Get Down.” 

[bundlebrent]

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Marion Ravenwood

“Listen, Herr Mac, I don’t know what kind of people you’re used to dealing with, but nobody tells me what to do in my place.”

[itsalloverbabyblue]

No Blank Space, Baby: Taylor Swift Is The Soul Of Ryan Adams

Adams' 1989 recognizes a rock lineage born of a woman. He's not legitimizing Swift's work – he's figuring out how her voice can validate and include his.

I’ve got so many thoughts about Adams covering this, about women in rock and pop, about whether this is tribute (I think it is), and whether having a “legitimate” (quotes all mine) artist like Adams cover this is acknowledgement of Swift’s talent and this record’s qualities, or if it’s bringing a concept of legitimacy to 1989 that neither the album nor Swift need. And as always, Ann Powers has much smarter things to say about  it all.

[nicasiosilang]

ICYMI: I’ve got a story out in Strange Horizons! Here’s a bit:

In a dream I meet an elk in the rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula. I’ve never seen an elk, like I’ve never seen a temperate rainforest or the mountains. Hanging moss meets a floor swollen bulbous with foliage. The thickness of the green foreshortens my gaze, flattens the trees. It’s the thick pelt of the world. The elk and I stand across a rotting log from each other. He’s my height, his antlers branching into knife-points high above our heads. His dark, shaggy mane breaks in a wave at his shoulders into the tan of his summer coat. I think at first that there’s some sort of thin moss hung among his antlers. But then he tips his great, brown head down. He breathes out dew, I breathe in. I reach my small, brown hand for him, and I see, in the bone-thick low limbs of his antlers, that it is delicate strips of skin that are draped there, and when my fingers brush them, they cling to me like cobwebs. The elk lowers its head further, and the skin lays itself over me, a shroud. Then I wake up sweating, mixed up in the blanket, Ida in the bunk above me kicking out hoof beats.

[itsalloverbabyblue]

Really lovely writing, makes me think (in the best way possible) of Kelly Link’s work.

[itsalloverbabyblue]

(via Where the Night Goes)

Clearly October is bringing me everything I always wanted from my over oral musician heroes.

[itsalloverbabyblue]

Why Would I Now? (Audio) - The Decemberists

I'm listening to "Why Would I Now? (Audio)" by The Decemberists

Goddammit Colin Meloy. You are such a pretentious asshole, and so talented that it doesn’t matter. God this song is good. Sigh.

[ingridsbergman]

[handypolymath]

This is my romantic sensibility in an nutshell.  A slightly burnt yet toasty good nutshell.

[itsalloverbabyblue]

This whole movie embodies my vision of romance;) pissiness, stoicism, poison, poor choices and spies.

[nicconrads]

Girls don’t want boys. Girls want dresses with pockets and a Black Widow movie.

[itsalloverbabyblue]

This!!!! 1000% this.

[itsalloverbabyblue]

And then there are the days you drive around Los Angeles with the windows open listening to NWA and Pulp, embracing your middle-aged WASPiness.