Happy Thanksgiving

For all of my American readers and friends, LL and I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. Tycho, of course, is a lizard and has no concept of holidays. I'm sure he'd wish you many juicy crickets if he could, though, as long as he got some, too.

May your turkey be done just right, may your relatives all get along around the table, and may you not forget to have some antacids on hand. You're an American on Thanksgiving Day. You're going to need them.

For my readers and friends in India, we wish you safety, peace and calm. Now.

That extends to everyone else, everywhere else, come to think of it. On every day, too.

More tomorrow, with pictures, from a lucky and significantly larger mad mycologist.

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Blog Toy: What Type of Blog is Hyphoid Logic?

I read about a blog toy courtesy of Dispatches from the Culture Wars called Typealyzer. It purports to analyze the dominant style of a given blog and tell you a little something about both that blog and its author.

I plugged in the URL for Hyphoid Logic and got the following result:

The analysis indicates that the author of http://vyoma108.blogspot.com is of the type:

INTP - The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

All of which is, I think, close to the truth. When I was interviewed by Bruce Berman for an article he's writing about the impact of science bloggers on the evolution/intelligent design "controversy," he told me something very similar to what that last sentence says, although he used the more accurate "not gentle," a characterization with which I fully agree. I don't try to be most of the time, particularly when it comes to confronting those who wish to substitute superstition for reason. The way I see it, someone else declared a "culture war" and decided that I'm part of the opposing "army." Who ever heard of a gentle war?

I have no idea of how this particular blog toy works, and Ed Brayton notes that it calls him "hardworking" whereas he sees himself as potentially "the laziest human being on the planet." I'm not so sure about that. Whatever the reason, Typealyzer seems to have me fairly well sussed. Give it a try for your own blog and see what it has to say.

That concludes today's navel-gazing session.

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Busy with Beetles: Collections and Hypotheses

I haven't had much free time since returning from Florida, hence the lack of updates here. My schedule this semester is rather packed. For instance, on Thursdays I have two hours of open time between 10 AM and 9 PM which I will be using to eat. It will all work out, but it will also take a couple of weeks for me to get settled into this new calendar. As it stands right now, though, I haven't even had the chance to edit my photos from the trip.

I have, however, finished identifying the beetle specimens to the extent I've been able without molecular work. It's not a bad collection for under a week's time, and a couple of the species are of particular interest for reasons I'll mention below.

Megalodacne heros is without doubt the most visually spectacular of the bunch. It's one of the largest (if not the largest) of the Erotylidae and quite a colorful insect. I collected four specimens from the pore surface of Ganoderma applanatum, which is not nearly so common in Florida as it is in cooler climates. In Florida, it seems to be replaced by species in the Ganoderma lucidum complex. I didn't find M. heros on any other fungi, including the numerous G. applanatum specimens I saw in the field. That might be chance, of course.

A teneb mimic of M. heros, Platydema ellipticus, was also collected from the pore surface of Phellinus gilvus. While this beetle is substantially smaller than Megalodacne, it has what I suspect is aposematic coloration. That is to say, natural selection has favored individuals with markings similar to the larger and more toxic erotylid in this particular teneb. Five specimens of this insect came back with me.

Platydema nigratum is a close relative of the above. It doesn't have much going for it in terms of coloration, but this is an exciting find for me for two reasons. First, the habitat of this beetle is uncertain. I can say definitively that I collected it from between fruiting bodies of Stereum ostrea, and I watched one specimen chewing on that fungus. I have no doubt at all that it is a fungivore and macrophagous at that. Second, the larva of this species isn't described in the literature. I recovered a specimen of what I believe will turn out to be a larval P. nigratum from within the fleshy base of a relatively large S. ostrea sporophore. Once I've sequenced both adult and larva I should be able to connect the two definitively.

I collected numerous specimens of Neomida bicornis from two fungi. I first found them inside the same G. applanatum sporophores that had Megalodacne on their surface. I found specimens again several days later living in the context of Trametes elegans, a particularly fleshy member of the same genus that contains the ubiquitous turkey tail, T. versicolor. An interesting thing happened when I collected N. bicornis from that fungus that I wish I had noticed in the field. When I first started collecting, I found six specimens and put them in a microtube. Then I noticed additional galleries and collected fourteen more specimens in a second tube. When I brought them all back to the lab, it turned out that all six specimens in the first tube were male and all fourteen in the second were female. The probability of this happening purely by chance is so small that it suggests to me that males and females were segregated for some reason at the moment that I found the insects. I know nothing about the behavior of N. bicornis; I doubt that anyone has really investigated it. Also, it's worth noting that the specimens from Florida are very, very different from what's called N. bicornis in New England, which I've collected from Pycnoporus cinnibarinus at Wachusett. The Floridian specimens have an orange prothorax and males have straight horns. The New England version is dark metallic green and the male's horns are slightly curved. There's a chance, I think, that the two are really two different species and, indeed, I don't find any sequences for Neomida in EntrezGene other than one for a basidiomycete yeast from its gut discovered by Suh and Blackwell. I'm looking forward to pulling sequences from the northern and southern "morphs." If they do turn out to be two different species, I think I get to name one of them. The two insects look so different that I find it hard to believe they could be the same species.

I also found a second Neomida, N. ferruginea, in the context of a second G. applanatum sporophore. I only recovered one specimen of this rather drab little teneb, though. When I eventually do the phylogeny from the genus, I suspect that this beetle will be more closely related to the southern "morph" of N. bicornis than it is to the one from New England. That's just a hunch, of course.

Of course, no teneb hunting expedition would be complete without the recovery of a couple of specimens of Bolitotherus cornutus. I collected specimens of the widely-distributed beetle from both G. applanatum (the same cluster of fruiting bodies above) and G. lucidum on this trip. B. cornutus seems to be the most successful of the larger fungus-dependent tenebs of North America based on my experience. I can hardly help but find the insects whenever I search polypores. The genus, and in fact the whole tribe, is quite small as compared to other teneb tribes, but Bolitotherus seems to be the champ in sheer numbers. Having some specimens from Florida will give me the chance to eventually compare sequences from specimens from three states. Perhaps I'll someday investigate population genetic structure in this insect, which doesn't get around much but seems to be everywhere.

I also have a couple of specimens that I haven't been able to identify beyond family yet, including a few of what are probably Nitidulidae but are potentially Leiodidae, too. I'm hoping for the former, though. Nitidulidae seems to be a family with taxa in transition between feeding on the sap from tree wounds and living on the polypores that grow from those wounds. Most beetle families have hind feet with five segments (tarsomeres). Tenebrionidae, which I've hypothesized to be primitively macrofungivorous, have only four. Nitidulidae still have five, but many species in the family have a markedly decreased fourth tarsomere, so one can imagine a scenario in which the transition from living on the surface of a fungus and eating the hymenium (Erotylidae) leaves the beetles with five tarsomeres, there's a transitional state in which the fourth (or other) tarsomere is reduced as the beetles begin to tunnel into the fungi (Nitidulidae) and, ultimately, the tarsomere is lost entirely over time as a fully fungus-exploiting lifestyle is adopted (Tenebrionidae).

One of the fungi I collected also turned out to be an unusual specimen. A glossy, brown, trametes-like, sessile thing with subdaedaloid pores turned out to be the tropical Nigroporus vinosus. Nobody in my lab has seen it before. One of the ongoing projects in the lab is the exploration of wood-decaying fungi (N. vinosus is a white-rotter) for use in bioremediation. It may be worthwhile to mount another trip to look for unusual species to be cultured in this regard, too. We'll see about that. I'm planning on going back again at some point, anyhow, and perhaps swinging around the Gulf Coast a bit in the future to sample both polypores and beetles from more climes. I've barely scratched the surface here, after all.

Clearly, I've got a ton of work to do, and I haven't even really started yet... hence my absence from the blogosphere of late. Rest assured, though, that situation is only temporary. I have no intention of disappearing just yet!

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Bad Blogger: Finally, an Update from Florida

No, I have not been eaten by an alligator. I'm still in Florida; it has been a busy few days that have started quite early. We're up before dawn each day in an attempt to get our field work done before the sticky heat of the day begins. It hasn't worked every day, but it has for most of them. Generally speaking, we're on-site around 8:00 AM and done with collecting by about 11:00. Then it's a quick shower, lunch and off to the lab.

I've been more focused on collecting Tenebrionidae than fungi on this trip, and until yesterday hadn't been doing too well at that, either. I tried doing things a little differently during yesterday's outing to Torreya State Park, however, and it paid off. I recovered specimens from at least five species that I hadn't found before. I also had an encounter with a wild boar that could have turned out much worse than it did. So far, the greatest hazards of this trip have been the heat, mosquitoes, and Southern cooking — not necessarily in that order.

My traveling companion has been enjoying her first glimpses of the region's tremendous biodiversity, particularly the arachnids (and who wouldn't be impressed by Nephila clavipes and the numerous Micranthea species?) and carnivorous plants, although the alligator seen from a distance at Overstreet a couple of days ago was also appreciated by her. She's also been impressed by the local cuisine; I have never seen anyone eat so much bacon in my life. The loomingly phallic Tallahassee capital complex will no doubt haunt the dark corners of her mind forever, too.

Today is our last scheduled field day. We've left tomorrow as an open day so that we have the option to either do more collecting if necessary or to do housekeeping tasks such as shipping specimens home and laundry and whatever else pops up. Our flight back leaves on Wednesday. As much as I've enjoyed the trip, I'm about ready to get back to Worcester and to LL as well.

In the meanwhile, I'm not spending much time on the Internet. I'll get back to it as time permits... but time's not going to be too permissive for a couple more days. Nonetheless, all of my limbs are still intact.

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Wachusett Wednesday Cancelled: Fall Semester, Florida Expedition and Shifting Priorities

Due to a backlog of lab work in the face of the upcoming semester and the fact that I'll be doing field work in Florida all next week, there will be no Wachusett Wednesday this week. As perfect as the weather is and as much as I will miss this part of my weekly routine, I must put my priorities elsewhere over the next few days.

It's hard to believe that summer has come and gone so quickly, but the fact is that this is the last week before the fall semester begins. I will once again be teaching two lab sections for Introductory Biology this semester. As much as I enjoy teaching (although honesty compels me to admit that I'm not too fond of grading), this essentially means that there will be some combination of a reduction of my research time and late nights at the lab. The classroom portion of my teaching assistantship alone entails six hours each week. Add in grading, office hours, lab setup and miscellaneous issues that arise and a day disappears from my schedule. Additionally, I will be auditing an entomology course at another local university this semester; that adds up to about another six hours each week. It's going to be another very busy semester. With this in mind, I'm trying to spend the rest of this week tying up a bunch of loose ends.

A week from today, of course, I leave for the North Florida field expedition. The loss of my Wednesday on the mountain this week helps to relieve the pressure that a full week out of town will create. On the other hand, all of the planning for that trip has continued to come together very well. The biology faculty at Florida State has been exceedingly accommodating to this alumnus. My colleague and I have been furnished with laboratory space in the new biology building and the head of the university's herbarium has allowed us use of the dehydration equipment for the preservation of specimens. I still need to set up temporary accounts at FSU so that we'll have computer access from the lab.

Florida's DEP and parks management have also been incredibly helpful. In fact, I feel compelled to write a thank you to state biologist Harold Mitchell here. He has been a tremendous help in making the upcoming trip possible and interacting with him has been a pleasure. Moreover, the park managers at both Torreya and Lake Talquin State Parks have likewise been kind enough to provide my colleague and I with free and open access to their land anytime we wish, even going so far as to give us the combinations to open the gates to our sites before regular hours so that we can start as early as we like in order to beat the heat as much as possible in the Big Bend/Panhandle in early September.

Wachusett Wednesday has become one of this blog's most popular recurring features, so to readers who will miss it this week, all I can say is that it's a trade off. Wait until you see what's popping up in Florida this time of year. With the recent and unfortunate stormy weather, I expect that you'll be seeing a bumper crop of amazing and beautiful fungi in this space in the coming week.

On the other hand, Gel of the Day fans (because some people just can't get enough electrophoresis) will get a second, and quite possibly third, installment this week as I attempt to sequence a Ganoderma in the G. lucidum complex whose morphology alone hasn't been enough to provide a positive identification. I also intend to do the same with a sap beetle (Nitidulidae) collected earlier from Laetiporus sulphureus; while not in my core family, I've noticed something interesting about its foot that makes me think that having molecular data from these insects will be informative about one of the evolutionary hypotheses in my study. Markedly reduced fourth tarsomere, anyone? I have so far been unable to adequately resolve the genus of this beetle, though, and genetic sequencing should clarify the picture. Agarose lovers, rejoice!

In the words of Willie Wonka, "So much time, so little to do! Strike that. Reverse it."

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On the Significance of Numbers

Sometime in the next couple of hours, Hyphoid Logic will receive it's 33,792^nd visitor since I started keeping track with Sitemeter.

Is that more, less or equally significant as compared to the 30,000^th and 40,000^th visitor?

Idle thoughts, really. Just waiting for an electrophoresis gel to finish running. Gel of the Day coming soon.

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Run Your Subconscious Mind and Wear Your Deflector Beanie

I received this fortune in a cookie I got at the China Lantern restaurant on Main Street in Worcester a couple of weeks ago.

Who runs your subconscious mind? Is it this guy?

In related news... I found the site for all of your aluminum foil deflector beanie needs. I've had a couple of comments in the last week or so that indicate a need among certain individuals reading here for this service, and as a good host, I aim to please.

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Blog Logged by Worcester Magazine

An entry I wrote recently about my inclination to shake my fist and scream at the Asian longhorned beetle has been blog-logged by Worcester Magazine. It's becoming something of a hot topic around town, I guess. Fellow Worcester blogger Jeff of Wormtown Taxi has written several bits on it, including this newest one.

I've also just learned this morning of the Massachusetts Introduced Pests Outreach Blog. There's useful information there about how to recognize the damage done by the beetles even if you don't see the beetle itself. I suggest that any locals take a look at MIPO Blog and learn how they can help their state keep track of this infestation. It's always possible that the extra bit of information you provide could be the one that tips the scales against the big bad bug.

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Metahyphal Blogulating: Changes to Anonymous Posting and New Icon

Readers may have noticed two changes to this blog today. Since it hasn't changed that much in the previous year, here's the story on the disabling of anonymous comments and the appearance of a new icon/link at the foot of each entry.

For whatever reason, Google has picked up a recent entry and turned it into a featured blog link on its search engine. That's great for increasing good traffic, but it has also had the effect of attracting what look like a bunch of spambots. There have been a couple of them, it seems, crawling over the place today and attempting to leave numerous advertising spams. Each time an attempt is made, I get a moderation email notifying me of a new anonymous comment. I had scores of them after just a few hours, so I've decided to turn off anonymous commenting for the time being in the hopes that these notices won't turn into a flood in my inbox. I don't know for how long this will last, and I may or may not decide to turn it back on. Multiple anonymous comments can cause some confusion and, with the advent of OpenID and the like, it isn't all that necessary, anyhow.

The other change is the inclusion of an icon and link for Sphere that appears at the bottom right of each entry. Sphere is a free service that connects readers of an article they find interesting with other content sources containing related information, including blogs and mainstream media. Try it out; I did some surfing on it this morning and found it interesting enough to include it here. It looks benign as far as I can tell, so I'll give it a few weeks and see if people are using it.

If you were wondering, now you know.

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Fundamentalist Hate-Spew: Comments from Molly Kagan

I received the following anonymous comment on yesterday's article on Molly Kagan, the Tallahassee Millenialist who insists that Barack Obama is a "false prophet" revealed in the Book of Matthew, and how her experience demonstrates the effects of a kind of child abuse visited on the children of Fundamentalists. I think the replies are very pious bits of writing, and since they came with a dare that I wouldn't approve them all I thought I'd bump them up to entry status:

Wow. What a disappointing piece of garbage you are. I bet your pussy is bigger than Molly Kagan's. Why don't you lift your skirt and show us your pussy, pussy boy?

and I can see why you moderate your comments. because pussypussies are afraid of the truth about them.

edit out my comments, pussy. i know about them, and so do you, and that's all that needs to know.

July 6, 2008 7:51 PM

A few minutes later, I also received a second anonymous comment. This one claims overtly to be from Molly Kagan:

This is a cease and desist notification. My blog is registered with MyFreeCopyright.com.

Molly Kagan

July 6, 2008 8:03 PM

Because I, like many other bloggers, use SiteMeter, I can see from where comments are coming and how the person leaving them arrived at my page. According to sitemeter, the person who left the comments came by following a link used for approving comments on the Tallahassee Democrat blogs:

http://sitelife.tallahassee.com/ver1.0/PersonaBlog/PendingCommentsFrame.rails?plckBlogId=20500f58c1874479b56a12336edf76a5&plckCurrentPage=0&sid=sitelife.tallahassee.com

I attempted to leave a comment on Kagan's blog pointing her at my critique of her Bible-fueled ravings in order that she have the opportunity to respond, and clearly she has... because only the author of her blog would be able to see that link. The comment was never approved. Only she could have seen the pointer and only she could have clicked on the link above.

Of course, the hypocrisy of someone criticizing me for having comment moderation turned on while refusing to approve my own comment on their blog is incredibly blatant, and I must admit that I had considered rejecting the "pussy boy" raving at first. It's exactly the kind of contentless stream of nastiness I occasionally receive from Fundamentalists — sometimes punctuated by the hysterical notion that the person who has written it will "pray for me." But I gave Kagan the opportunity to respond as she saw fit, and she did exactly that. Moreover, the string of epithets referring to her own genitalia with a derogatory term illustrate precisely the kind of self-loathing that the Fundamentalist abuse she suffered as a child engenders. It also, I think, well demonstrates the mentality at work and serves as a good example of what's roiling just below the Millenialist facade of piety and righteousness. These are people who've been brought up to hate the world and all the people in it who aren't like them. These are people who are waiting around to see mounds of bodies piled up in the streets.

The second comment is a rather vague threat. Neither this blog nor Kagan's are written for commercial purposes, and the reproduction of her rantings about Obama were precisely intended to reach the public free of charge. My quotation of them in no way impedes that purpose. Since Kagan isn't paid to write and neither am I, there are no possible damages here. As anyone who writes a private blog can tell you, our articles get reproduced all the time. Case in point, this reproduction of my previous article about the Texas Supreme Court and exorcism. This is part of life in the blogosphere. In my case, I used the reproduced material as a basis for a critique that is longer than the original piece, as an example that in the end wasn't as good as the string of epithets and threats issued by Kagan herself. I think it's covered by Fair Use and since there are no recoverable damages from my having quoted it, it's not really an important point.

The point that is worth noting is that there's no attempt made to refute the arguments I presented. There's no attempt to deconstruct what I've written, to demonstrate any inconsistencies or fallacious reasoning. When the Millennialist gasbag, who feels absolutely justified in trying to damage the prospects of someone running for president by resorting to fear-mongering and emotional appeal, gets punctured, she vents pure hate. That she would go so far as to insinuate that she has been damaged by a discussion of her claims is the same kind of hypocrisy that is exemplified by her criticism of my comment moderation after she rejected publication of my own comment to her blog.

This is Millennialism in a nutshell. These people are damaged goods at best, ticking time bombs of hostility and resentment toward humanity at worst. Their Bible makes for a fine justification, in their own minds, for their own hopes that others will suffer and, as importantly, that they'll get to wring their hands in sadistic glee while they watch their cosmic hitman level the sword at the infidel's neck.

I've approved Kagan's swearing and comments in this one case to illustrate the point of yesterday's article. Now that it's done, I don't plan to make a habit of it. Further bile such as this, should it appear here, will not be approved for publication.

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Gel of the Day: Epic Fail!

I hate it when I don't get PCR products on a Friday afternoon. I especially hate it when one of the attempts was extraction from a species of which I have but a single specimen. Blah.


#007 is Pentaphyllus sp. and #004 is Penthe pimelia. The latter was going to be an outgroup useful for rooting trees. What I've got is pretty useless, though, because it's nothing. As for Pentaphyllus, it looks like I got my small subunit product but nothing else. I'll take it and try the whole thing again over the weekend, I suppose. Or on Monday. I'm feeling a bit frustrated with the whole thing at the moment. I've got the COI and wingless dilutions down to 1:5, too.

Stupid bugs. How am I going to work out your phylogeny if you won't give me nice big globs of amplifiable DNA?

By the way, something about this blog and why I write about stuff like this. It occurred to me some time ago that there are a lot of people out there who have no idea what it's like doing research and who buy into the whole "big science" bullderdinky (like it? I just made it up.) There's a tendency to think that science is like what gets shown on TV and movies. Everything is gleaming and shiny and digital, hunches always pan out and the experiment always works. In real life that just ain't the way it is.

There are lots of blogs out there that review papers and deal with big issues in science. I like the idea of putting forth what life is like, how the successes and failures feel, and generally getting the point across that we science nerds are just like everybody else and that if there's anything like a "big science" conspiracy it has entirely passed by me and everyone I know.

Today? Epic fail. Tomorrow? Maybe not so epic fail. Maybe even success. In the meantime, I still need to go grocery shopping and, if I'm feeling up to it, do the dishes. See how that works?

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Critique of Dowd Will Wait for Morning

By the time Michael Dowd finished his presentation tonight the library was closed and I had no place to set up my laptop. I got home a little under an hour ago and I'm absolutely beat. My full critique of the evening's talk will have to wait until morning. If you absolutely must have some inkling of my opinion on Dowd's talk, click over to a comment I just left on RichardDawkins.net. It's not all that coherent, but it's there.

Sleep, then blog. See you in the morning.

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Wachusett-Related Story: It's a Small Blogosphere After All

Each time I make a trip out to my field site at Wachusett, I inform the reservation's supervisor of the fact that I'm going to be there, the time at which I anticipate beginning and ending work, and my colleagues who will be assisting me, if any. I usually do this at least three or four days in advance, but this week had been a busy one so far and it slipped my mind until this morning. I only remembered a half hour before I, one of the lab's post-docs and an undergraduate summer researcher were due to leave.

When I arrived back at the lab this afternoon there was a response from the supervisor waiting for me. It turns out that somebody who reads this blog had sent him an email about me! I didn't see the actual email, but apparently this person sent the supervisor one or more links to Hyphoid Logic and wanted to know if I was properly permitted to do my work at the reservation. Because I don't use my legal name on this blog the supervisor wasn't sure at first but finally recognized me from my photo (which I didn't think was all that recognizable in the first place).

It really is a small blogosphere out there. Hyphoid Logic hasn't got huge readership, but somebody who thought it was important to check up on me still found it and took the time to email the supervisor. The upshot is that it's entirely possible that he may be a new reader. So if you're reading this, Dwayne, rest assured that everyone here has only good things to say about Mount Wachusett.

Particularly me, since that field site is proving to be an indispensable part of my research.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm assuming that the person who contacted the supervisor at Wachusett had the best of intentions and was expressing a legitimate concern about the integrity of the place. If that's the case, I should probably be grateful to that person. Few people in the state of Massachusetts would be as upset as I would be if the place were to be trashed. I'm glad that there are folks out there who are concerned enough about the place to do something to make sure that it's being well cared for. If you'd care to leave a comment here, I'd be glad to answer any questions you might have about my work.

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Are You Worried That the World Ends on Thursday?

For whatever reason, it seems like I'm suddenly getting tons of hits on the entry I wrote about the world ending this Thursday, June 12. So far, nobody has left a comment about it, though.

That leaves me very curious. I can't help but wonder whether some of these many people who are finding "World Ends on Thursday, June 12" by searching on Google are actually concerned that it's really going to happen.

If you're one of those people and have found this entry, kindly help satisfy my curiosity. Do you believe that the world is going to end this week? Are you even a little bit concerned? Leave a comment here about the topic.

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Happy Birthday Hyphoid Logic

This blog has turned one year old today. Time flies; it seems like only days since I left LiveJournal and bounced around a couple of similar "social network" sites before landing here. I was still in Tallahassee at that time. I'm a long way from there now, both in terms of geography and life in general. A lot has changed.

I still miss the raccoons; who wouldn't miss a face like this:

Thanks to the folks who read this little blog. I haven't exactly gone overboard trying to promote it, so I'm glad that you found it and have stuck around. It's a moderately successful endeavor that gets noticed by the big blogs every so often and that's just fine with me. The next year, as far as I know, will continue in the same vein as the last. I'll ponder this and that and someone will read and the world keeps spinning 'round.

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It's a Small Woostah After All

LL met up with a woman who "might have some web development gigs" yesterday. She told me that the woman's name was Claudia, but it didn't occur to me that this might be Claudia Snell of I'm from Worcester whom, in fact, she turned out to be.

Worcester may be the second largest city in this state, but sometimes it seems like it might still be a small town. How small? Small enough that I now know that someone in this town skips over my mushroom-related entries!

It's a funny thing. Hyphoid Logic doesn't have a huge readership; there are about 50 people subscribed to it through various syndications and the like, and on a good day it might get 200 hits. Nonetheless, its not unusual for me to go to some meeting in Worcester and have someone recognize me from that funny-looking picture over in the right-hand column of the screen and tell me that they read this thing. That happened most recently at the last Greater Worcester Humanists meeting I attended, for instance.

I mean, who the heck are you Woostahnis, anyhow?

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Note to Readers: Problem with Blogger Email Notifications

For some reason, Blogger has stopped sending me email notifications of new comments. It may thus take an unusually long time for new comments to be moderated. I haven't been able to figure out why this is happening yet, but please bear with me. Sooner or later, I'll get to moderating the comment you leave.

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Blog Toy: How Much Cussing on Hyphoid Logic?

Alerted by Respectful Insolence, I was curious to try out this little blog toy that tells you how many "dirty words" are to be found at a given website. On the average, about 9% of the pages on a site contain swear words. Here at Hyphoid Logic, though, I aim for a greater level of honesty:

179% more "cussing" than the average website and a college reading level? Well damn!

It's not that I set out to use offensive language, of course, but there are some instances in which I find that only the most visceral language will do. When describing something deeply offensive, I feel it's appropriate to use words that others might find offensive but that I find cathartic and, most importantly, accurate. Bullshit is bullshit, for instance. Sometimes, "nonsense" and even my favorite word for such things, "codswallop," simply don't rise to the task of conveying my feelings about something truly noxious.

Language can be a funny thing. Where I grew up and learned to speak — Brooklyn — anybody who became flustered at the liberal application of words like "bullshit" or the intermittent dropping of "f-bombs" would have been viewed as rather snotty and fey, and probably putting on airs. I try not to do that here because hey, this is my own little echo-chamber, after all. In my Grand Unifying Blogosophy, a blog is a thing that should offer an honest extension of the workings of one's mind. However much research I do and however much I learn and however many American subcultures I may move through in the course of my life, the inmost core of my being will always be tied to the streets of Coney Island.

You got a problem widdat?

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Back from the Dead

I haven't updated in five days due to having too much else to do. The biggest single item was getting out a first draft of a review of Cordyceps (now Elaphocordyceps, Metacordyceps, Cordycipitaceae and Ophiocordycipitaceae) research which, I'm happy to say, I finished yesterday afternoon. I probably could have written something in here as well but the temptation to procrastinate was very strong and it was time I couldn't afford to put to other purposes. I had to make a deal with myself not to use my computer for anything but the task at hand until it was finished. Besides, I didn't feel much like writing anything else. I had to start the draft at least four times before the material finally came together enough in my head to roll through what has turned out to be a review just over eleven pages long.

I also received the lien release needed to get the duplicate of the title for my car. It arrived late Friday and is now on its way to Florida. The odds are extremely high that my registration will expire before I can switch it over, so there will probably be a few days where I won't be able to drive it. Still, I'm hoping that this will be my last interaction with a Floridian bureaucracy.

LL and I did manage to get out for a bit on Friday night. We saw Shutter and had dinner at a little place called Nick's on Millbury Street. I'll talk about those in their own entries.

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Setting the UK's Telegraph Straight on Jesus of the Tree Rings

The UK's Telegraph is running a story on Jesus of the Tree Rings today. Entitled "Jesus Christ found in an American tree trunk?" it provides no less than seven alternative identities for the sap stain image found in a hunk of tree trunk by Pennsylvanian furniture-maker Craig O'Connor.

Sad to say, none of the Telegraph's alternatives are correct. As readers of this blog already know, I conclusively demonstrated more than two weeks ago that the image is that of King Ramses, a character appearing in one episode of the Courage the Cowardly Dog cartoon show (see Jesus of the Tree Rings: Christ or King Ramses?, February 11)

Ramses is not going to be pleased with the Telegraph for this insolence. Expect to read about the paper being smited by cartoon locusts any day now.

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