An interesting twist is that the Strepsiptera (twisted wing parasites) evolved their haltares from the front wings.

Life be wonderfully convoluted.

In fact, taking a step back and looking at the broad picture, I’m pretty sure we’re looking at a Biden-Fetterman ticket in 2024, this for several reasons:
– The way things are going, the Democrats could nominate a turnip and a rutabaga and they’d still win.
– They’d capture the “challenged” sector of the electorate, which at this point is probably well over 60%-70% of the country.
– It would definitely appeal to that oh-so-special “Biden” sense of humor…

File under: Biden-Fetterman: the leaders America wants and needs!

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/06/joe-biden-tells-fire-fighter-union-after-brain-aneurysm-docs-had-to-take-the-top-of-my-head-off-a-couple-times-to-see-if-i-had-a-brain/

Just think: if The Wizard of Oz is ever redone, Brandon can try out for Ray Bolger’s role as the Scarecrow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg66kwRnOpw&ab_channel=mwa1928

Why God Has an Inordinate Fondness for Beetles

The Economist, The Economist March 19, 2015

Why God Has an Inordinate Fondness for Beetles
“AN INORDINATE fondness for beetles.” That was the reply of J.B.S. Haldane, a British scientific polymath of the early 20th century, when he was asked if there were anything that could be concluded about God from the study of natural history. There are 380,000 catalogued species of beetle, making them the most species-rich group of insects—and insects are the most species-rich group of animals. But why there are so many has been a mystery.”

full article at:

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2015/03/18/beetlemania

link to quote from:

https://www.realclearscience.com/2015/03/19/why_god_has_an_inordinate_fondness_for_beetles_263850.html#!

Doesn’t mention BeeGees.

That only happens if I copy/paste the transcript into Google Translate. Which I have no compunctions about doing, if I’m wondering.

Serious language folks complain about Google Translate. The computer voice is bland and mechanical, the translations often lack contextual awareness.

For instance French is strongly (and confusingly) gendered and some pronouns aren’t. So if a pronoun in the current sentence refers to something feminine in the previous sentence, it will be translated as “he/him/his.”

When will the Trans Pronouns Jihad go after France and Google is what I want to know.

So OK, Google Translate ain’t perfect but it is such a huge advance over bilingual dictionaries and language lab recordings.

In the sequence showing the Hover fly (flying) you can see the haltares beating 180 degrees out of phase with the wings. Very good camera angle.

PA+Cat:

Nice of you to think of me and my current obsession…

I still can’t hear French well without a transcript. It’s like that “Far Side” cartoon of what a dog hears when a human speaks: “Blah blah, Ginger, blah blah blah. Ginger, blah, blah….” Only a touch more informative.

Fortunately, with the miracle of modern computer speech recognition, I can click the Show Transcript button on a YouTube and see the French words nicely separated, reasonably translated and printed before me with the current line bolded. I’ve got enough vocabulary to generally get the gist.

This is the Golden Age for self-learning languages. There are YouTube videos on using YouTube videos to learn languages.

The school and article are legit — not jokes.

https://dornsife.usc.edu/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797619895284

They’ve taken the work Jonathan Haidt has publicized on conservative vs liberal moral value systems and added a layer of body feeling questions.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/06/georgia-bureau-of-investigation-charges-23-antifa-agitators-with-domestic-terrorism-following-violent-clash-with-police-in-atlanta/