Happy Birthdate, Jason Li!

After days of eager anticipation, Jason Li, son of Louren and William Li, finally debuted at 1122 Central Time, weighing 7 lbs, 9 oz.

A congratulatory holler to Louren, William, and big sister Dakota!

For more news on Jason in the days, weeks, and years to come, see 3 of 4.

Letter to David Rapp, Editor of the Congressional Quarterly Weekly

Dear Sir -

Well, which is it?

Sincerely,
Sir Robert the Irritable GCB

Can you believe it? Another freaking cicada post!

Unfortunate readers of The Elkridge Hollerer last spring will recall interminable reports of Brood X, the 17-year cicada swarm that emerged in 2004. Believe it or not, I still find things to discuss about those critters.

The cicadas emerge from their long life underground to mate and to lay their eggs under the bark of trees. This is typically described as being harmless to trees, except for saplings. Not quite so: apparently the damage of the egg-laying is too much for the smallest branches at the extremities. As such, last summer, all of the green trees were fringed with dead leaves.

Half a year later, I mention this as those early-dead leaves are now the only leaves on many of the trees. My guess is that the damaged branches were unable to communicate the chemical message in the fall to jettison all leaves, so the cicada-killed ones remained. Our arboreal skeletons have clumps of dead leaves, like dried flower bouquets, hanging from their fingertips.

True to my heritage

My family talks about the weather - a lot - so I reckon I should report on the snow today. It's not been too bad so far. We got several inches, but no more than half a foot, I don't think, between 0830 and 1600 today. It may have started back up, but it's dark, so I can't see it, and Kerry's home from the hospital, so I don't care too much. We're not going anywhere.

I need to call Hermanito Scott and see how he's enjoying the 1+ foot of snow and 50 mph winds in Boston. I expect he's not enjoying it much at all, and I can't see how my calling him will help, yet I feel a strong desire to speak with him. How odd...

On the plus side of the snow, I got to know one of our new neighbors, Ted, much better, as we shovelled the Holler's ultra-driveway. If Kerry wakes up, he and his wife, Eileen, may come over tonight, and we can all meet and chill.

I'm not too good at remembering people's names when I meet them, but Ted and Eileen were a piece of cake. I can't even think of them without hearing Dexy's Midnight Runners singing their names to me.

"Life on Earth snuffed out by global warming"

In case you didn't know it, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but The Australian reports that life on Earth has indeed ended.

OK, it's really just a misleading headline. The article is about a paper published in Science, suggesting that "continuous volcanic eruptions in Siberia", versus a huge meteor impact, set off mass extinctions 250 million years ago. The eruptions released a lot of hydrogen sulfide which set off global warming.

Actually, the article is kind of misleading, too, since it just talks about climate change, while the abstract of the paper emphasizes a lack of atmospheric oxygen and indicates that "sulfide toxicity was a driver of the extinction and a factor in the protracted recovery." Well, until there's a heated debate over regulating volcanic emissions, I guess we'll never get the full story.

Meanwhile, it's a small comfort to me to know that I'm not really looking at a squirrel eat our little remaining birdseed. After all, life on Earth was snuffed out.