petrichor

We just had the first rain showers in weeks yesterday afternoon and the forest did indeed have the scent of something distinctively divine, so we appreciated friend of the blog Nag on the Lake making us wise to the phenomenon that goes by the name petrichor.
From the Greek for stone plus the term ἰχώρ for the ethereal fluid that flows through the veins of the immortals instead of blood, the description for a rich, earthy smell that was around since before there were human noses to detect it was only coined in 1964 by a pair of researchers found that plants released a certain oil into the soil during times of drought to chemically signal to other plants not to germinate right now. Rain drops (especially a gentle and steady fall) aerosolise the oil that’s reacted with the soil as sort of a collected sigh of relief and celebration—an odour which humans appreciate instinctively too as a sign that their crops are saved. We hope other places get relief from this heat wave soon as well.

7x7

nimby: home garden phenology is perhaps the essential first step for combating climate change and the loss of the ecosystems we all depend on

keep america great: Trump’s re-election *sighs* motto isn’t particularly original

prophet of doom: machine translation, like deep dreaming, yields some sinister prognostications with eschatological overtones, via Boing Boing

dyi or mend and make due: the global network of repair cafes has grown to more than sixteen hundred strong

found footage: television curator extraordinaire comes across a BBC engineering test and breaks it down to its component segments

octonions: the strange properties of eight dimensional numbers could potential reveal something fundamental about the nature of reality, via Marginal Revolution

closer: a 1991 real estate brokerage video’s vision of the future 

dark arts

Scientists could mine for evidence of dark matter indirectly by careful study of core samples from deep beneath the Earth’s surface and looking for glitches in the samples recovered.
By glitches, we don’t mean impurities or Golden Spikes in the ancient samples but rather some ghostly and microscopic structural flaw that might only be explained by interaction with membranes of dark matter that the Earth passes through. Anything sufficiently large and stable has an uptapped role as a cosmic detector for such phenomena.  Research might even render us the ability to conjure up dark matter by inducing the signature types of material flaws found.  Visit BLDGBLOG at the link up top for more metaphysical speculations.

the fix is in

Via an engrossing discussion on the word like gaining the status of a tmesis, from the Greek for “I cut,” as in parsed phrases “fan-f’ing-tastic” or “un-f’ing-believable,” with its premiere as a milder way to express shock and hyperbole—“un-like-sympathetic”—we learn more about the parts of speech categorised as affixes.

An infix, inserted within a word, is a pretty rare occurrence in English outside of chemistry jargon, but some colloquial examples include hizouse and edumacation, affecting an air of sophistication with the superfluous syllable. Another category is the linking element the interfix, like the s or z appearing in many German compound words like Arbeitszimmer (office) or the connecting o of pedometer and odometer.