owlectomy

Though probably African frogs do not say that (the chorus from Aristophanes' The Frogs).

Anyway, this was of considerable interest to me having had to do with archives relating to these here amphibians (in which they were described as 'toads'):

Escapee pregnancy test frogs colonised Wales for 50 years

and also read the ms of a work by A Friend on the history of pregnancy testing in which they played a significant role.

They replaced the rabbit test ('did the rabbit die' - the rabbit had to die, actually, in order to examine its ovaries) as this was a non-lethal test and kept producing yet more frogs.

And there was quite an issue of what to do with the little blighters once chemical testing became the norm - as I recall attempts to dispose of them as pets.

Also

The frog is genetically surprisingly similar to humans, which means that scientists can model human disease in this amphibian and replace the use of higher sentient species.

I was intending posting a link to a really depressing article in Guardian Saturday about an awful trolling site and the people who seem to have nothing to do but troll on it: but it's not currently online, you are spared.

I was thinking about such people, who seemed to be spending hours of their lives being horrible about other people and trying to dig up dirt on them, did they not have lives? could they not be doing something else?

Like, you know, bringing ghost ponds back to life: An expert team are resurrecting ice age ponds and finding rare species returning from a ‘perfect time capsule’:

The two ponds returning on farmland are the 25th and 26th ice age ponds to be restored by Sayer’s team of academics, volunteers and an enthusiastic digger driver in the Brecks, a hotspot for ancient ponds and “pingos” formed by ice-melt 10,000 years ago. Over the past two centuries, thousands of such ponds have been filled in as land was drained and “improved” for crops. So far, most of the 26 ponds have been revived on land bought by Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which has supported the restoration effort with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Brecks Fen Edge and Rivers landscape partnership scheme.
But the latest two ponds have been dug out thanks to a Norfolk farmer, who is one of an increasing number of private landowners reviving ghost and “zombie” ponds. New surveys by Sayer’s team have revealed that 22 of the ghost ponds restored since 2022 now support 136 species of wetland plant. This represents 70% of the wetland flora found in more than 400 ponds on Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Thompson Common, an internationally important nature reserve whose ponds have survived since the ice age.

The Hunt: Friction to feel. which is about the culture of searching for music before it was (theoretically) All Online:

The hunt is built upon friction. Friction is good. Friction is healthy. Friction develops adaptation. The hunt is also born of curiosity. The desire to seek and discover something you don’t know, and might never know. In the pursuit of knowledge and experience, you teach yourself about empathy, other perspectives, and mold a person who is resilient and grateful. We lost something along the way in pursuit of efficiency and this idea of saving time for productivity.

And, of course, as I am occasionally moved to point out on The Soshul Meedjas, most archives are not digitised and online (and mutter mutter a significant % of the ones that are were digitised by proprietary bodies and paywalled), and finding them can still involve Expotitions.

That thing happened this week whereby a couple of weeks ago I was looking everywhere for a book I knew I had somewhere (unless maybe I'd lent to somebody sometime and they'd never returned it, it being the biography of an NZ-born sex reformer published by Penguin NZ: and currently available according to bookfinder.com, 2nd hand, from NZ, at PRICES, not to mention, how long would that take?).

And then I was looking for Other Book entirely, in fact just vaguely casting my eye over shelf adjacent to where I was looking for that, and there was That Book, stuck between two other books and way out of any kind of order.

We are not sure that is not, in fact, entirely typical of its subject....

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I was taking my customary constitutional at lunchtime today, and walking across the grass among the trees, under which there was a certain amount of debris of fallen leaves and twigs (these were not the horse chestnuts that were madly casting conkers on the ground), caught my foot and stumbled slightly, and somebody said, 'Be careful!'

I went off muttering that there is not a lot of point in issuing warnings to be careful after the event, but people do tend to do that, don't they, sigh.

***

I am not sure this is an oddness, but normally, by the time a conference at which I am supposed to be keynoting is only just over a week away, participants will have had at least a draft version of the programme, indicating time the thing is starting, slot they are speaking in, etc.

(I also had to do a certain amount of nudging to discover how long I was expected to Go On for.)

Dept of, inventing the city: Fake History: Some notes on London's bogus past. (NB - isn't Nancy murdered on the steps of a bridge in the 1948 movie of Oliver Twist? or do I misremember.) (And as for the Charing Cross thing, that is the ongoing 'London remaking itself and having layers', surely?)

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Dept of, smutty puns, classical division: Yet More on Ancient Greek Dildos:

Nelson, in my opinion, has made a solid argument for his conclusions that, while “olisbos” was one of many ancient Greek euphemisms for a dildo, this was not its primary meaning, nor was it the primary term for the sex toy. Rather, this impression has been given by an accident of historiography.

Dept of, not silently suffering for centuries: The 17th-century woman who wrote about surviving domestic abuse.

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Dept of, another story involving literacy (and ill-health): Child hospital care dates from 18th Century - study:

"Almost certainly she was taught to read and write while she was an inpatient."
He suspects just as part of the infirmary's remit was to get its adult patients back to work, by teaching children to read and write it would increase their employment opportunities.

Dept of, I approve the intention but cringe at certain of the suggestions: How To Raise a Reader in an Age of Digital Distraction:

Active engagement is crucial. This doesn’t mean turning every book into an interactive multimedia experience. Rather, it means ensuring that children are mentally participating in the reading process rather than passively consuming. With toddlers, this might mean encouraging them to point to pictures, make sound effects, or predict what comes next. With older children, it involves asking questions that go beyond basic comprehension: “What do you think motivates this character?” “How would the story change if it were set in our neighborhood?”

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Dept of, not enough ugh: Sephora workers on the rise of chaotic child shoppers: ‘She looked 10 years old and her skin was burning’

The phenomenon of “Sephora kids” – a catch-all phrase for the intense attachment between preteen children, high-end beauty stores and the expensive, sometimes harsh, products that are sold within them – is now well established.... The trend is driven by skincare content produced by beauty influencers – many of whom are tweens and teens themselves.... skincare routines posted by teens and tweens on TikTok contained an average of 11 potentially irritating active ingredients per routine, which risked causing acute reactions and triggering lifelong allergies.