Four Random Things

A Friday Hodgepodge

This will be short, sweet, and quick, as I dash out the door for an early appointment...

1. Whether you love or hate cicadas, you might find these brood maps useful. The color-coded cicada brood map comes with a list of years at which the main part of any given 13- or 17- year cicada brood will emerge.

The usefulness will be somewhat limited by "stragglers" emerging off-schedule and perhaps also by the existence of multiple broods in your area.

2. Professional bridesmaid Jen Glantz started her business on a lark after being asked to be a bridesmaid again.

Her business really took off, and she's still at it a decade later.

"I don't like weddings. I still don't," she says. "I love supporting people through difficult times in their lives."

The combination of Glantz's entrepreneurial spirit and these "difficult times" make for some fascinating reading. (HT: Paul Hsieh)

3. Anyone who has found himself struggling to remember the difference between Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon -- hilariously parodied in Science Made Stupid (PDF) -- will be delighted to know that there are two Margaret Cavendishes in the historical record to go along with them.

I learned this at Hacker News, where the following exchange occurred in reference to the New York Times including the wrong image of one of these Margarets in a piece about the other:

Ah - this is a quite common error. They selected the duchess on the right when they should've passed the duchess on the left hand side.

Nice reference to the Musical Youth Song of 1982!

Cheers. Only waited 40+ years for it.

I am familiar with that allusion only indirectly, through the good offices of one Dr. Ring Ding.

4. In case you know someone not already suspicious of food items sold as "raw" -- as if all "processing" by human beings is inherently bad -- pass along this story: "Trendy 'Raw Water' Source Under Bird's Nest Sparks Diarrheal Outbreak."

-- CAV