non sequitur

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we learn that the palaeontological community has formally accepted the name thagomizer for the anatomical arrangement of spikes on the tails of stegosauroid dinosaurs.
Coined in a 1982 comic by Gary Larson, the term was already in common-parlance, having been adopted and championed by several authoritative text books and museums and in the panel was named in honour of a departed caveman. We enjoyed seeing the Wikipedia stub on the naming waxing pedantic in pointing out, “The cartoon fate of Thag Simmons notwithstanding, stegosaurs and humans did not exist in the same era,” apparently not for the first time, as Larson suggested there be a sort of confessional whereby cartoonists can ask for absolution for such transgressions. A highly specialised parasitic louse that only plagues a species of owl in central Africa called Strigiphilus garylarsoni is named after the author.

i am only one of six people in space

On Friday night (and I can’t imagine how we missed this spectacle but we can all enjoy it now) Kraftwerk’s (previously here, here and here) founding member Ralf Hüttner synced up with German astronaut Alexander Gerst aboard the International Space Station to deliver a short lesson on space exploration and perform live a duet of the group’s 1978 song Spacelab for their closing number at the Stuttgart Jazz Open Air festival.  It is unclear if the crew’s executive assistant played any role in scheduling this act.

geobra brandstätter

Via Present /&/ Correct, we are treated to the grand tour of the factory located in the Maltese industrial estate of Ħal Far where since 1976, all Playmobil figures have been manufactured.
The Zirndorf-headquartered company turned to the newly independent Mediterranean nation because of near full-employment in West Germany at the time and has been pleased with the decision ever since. Seeing all the plastic bits are a bit harrowing in the present light of ocean pollution (the vignette dates back to the company’s fortieth anniversary), but Playmobil has always been a committed steward of resources and the environment, the line itself a product of the Oil Crisis of the 1970s, having gone into production in the first place by dent of its more efficient design that used less plastic than other toys.

and little lambs eat ivy

A class of phonological sound junctures, like an eggcorn, called an oronym describes what occurs verses honouring stops and pauses and eliding over them—like I scream for ice cream, four candles instead of fork handles.
In most other languages it retains its original sense—after the Greek ὄρος for studying the naming-conventions of mountains and mountain-dwellers and the continuum or isolation among valley residents, and in a sense, the pronunciation and stress differences could be like a distinct alpine dialect. A reverse example, presented to make it hard for the listener or reader to interpret, due to an intentional challenging presentation—like in the novelty song, “Mairzy Doats” (and dozy doats).

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.