Scientists in Australia took this footage of octopuses carrying coconut shells from place to place. It’s long been common knowledge that an octopus will hide in concave objects, but this is the first time anyone has seen them taking their hiding place with them. It’s the first known case of invertebrates using tools.

Don’t they look cute lugging the shells around?

This futuristic pattern book from 1970 was published in Switzerland by Brunswick. It’s called Space Youth, and jumps on the bandwagon for all things spacey following the then-recent Apollo moon landing.

Here are patterns for the dress, pants, and hat.

More knitting patterns

Wynton Marsalis performs my favorite Mr. Rogers song.

Here’s the lyric:

It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair–
But it’s you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you–
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys–
They’re just beside you.

But it’s you I like–
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you’ll remember
Even when you’re feeling blue
That it’s you I like,
It’s you yourself,
It’s you, it’s you I like.

Here’s a little klezmery jingle bells for the first day of Hanukkah, from T.C. McManus.

I’ve recently completed an English translation of Purge (Puhdistus), by Sofi Oksanen, a gripping tale of secrets, shame, and danger, set in Estonia from the beginning of the Soviet era through the break-up of the early 90s. The translation will be published by Grove/Atlantic in April, and is available now for pre-order.

Purge has stirred an unusual amount of interest this past year, and will be published in 25 languages over the next few months. I love the book, and highly recommend it.

Here’s an excerpt:

Silence spread dark around her. The night was thickening. She took a few steps and stopped to stand in the yellow light of the lamp in the yard. Crickets were buzzing, the neighbors’ dogs barked. The white trunks of the birches shone dimly through the dark. She could see the peaceful fields through the chain-link fence, its mesh like tired eyes.
She inhaled so deeply that she felt a stab in her lungs like ice on a tooth. She had been wrong. The relief took her legs out from under her and she fell onto the steps with a thud.

No Pasha, no Lavrenti, no black car.

She turned her face toward the sky. That must be the Big Dipper. The same Big Dipper that you could see over Vladivostok, although this one looked different. Grandmother had looked at the Big Dipper from this same garden when she was young, the Big Dipper that looks like that one. Her grandmother—she had stood in the same place, in front of this same house, on the same stepping stones. The grass that tickled Zara’s foot was her grandmother’s touch and the wind in the apple trees was her grandmother’s whisper, and Zara felt like she was looking at the Big Dipper through her grandmother’s eyes, and when she turned her face back up toward the sky, she felt like her grandmother’s young body stood inside hers, and it ordered her to go back inside, to search for a story that she hadn’t been told.

Zara felt in her pocket. The photograph was still there.

More information at Grove/Atlantic.

I’ve posted the song Love Train before, because it makes me happy. Here’s an extra dose of awesomeness from the audience/dancers showing off their moves in a line dance on Soul Train in 1973.

I like the way some people are just randomly deploying their best moves, while others have rehearsed a special line dance routine. The slo-mo bit is particularly cool.

One fashion note: I vote we bring back the shortie shirt for boys, don’t you?

Found on the always entertaining Everlasting Blört.

I mentioned in a previous post that Finland has laid claim to the longest single-word palindrome in the world – with the word saippuakauppias – so you can probably imagine that ordinary Finnish words that aren’t spelled the same backward and forward can get pretty long. According to the 1st International Collection of Tongue Twisters, the longest Finnish word is

järjestelmällistämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän.

As far as I can tell, it seems to mean “You mean, not even (when it’s done) with their (usual) lack of systematization?” Or maybe “Are you telling me they didn’t even use their (trademark) lack of organization?”

Or something like that. Depends on the context. If anyone can use it in a sentence to clarify, please let me know.

I love how one Finnish word equals 9 English words (or 13, depending on how you measure it). It is also an elegant example of how one word can be a sentence in Finnish. Of course, one word can be a sentence in English, too, but it’ll be a lot shorter. Right? Agreed.

As often happens, though, the number of letters is about the same in both languages. We just like to put spaces between ours.

Anybody got a longer word?

Just heard of Gloria Jones for the first time recently, when I learned that it was she who first had a hit with the song Tainted Love. Here she is performing Heartbeat on Shivaree in 1965. Isn’t this an awesome song?

Just watched The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie again after many years. It’s always been one of my favorites.

I love the way this movie defies our expectations of the traditional teacher and student story. Every other film on the subject equates charisma with virtue. In this film, as in the real world, charisma can be a dangerous thing.

Some people seem surprised that President Obama has decided to escalate the war in Afghanistan – which is weird, since he told us over and over all through his presidential campaign that if he was elected he would escalate the war in Afghanistan. Because he is convinced that we must win this war, for some reason.

Fafblog says it well:

Let us never forget just what’s at stake in the war in Afghanistan: nothing less than the success of the war in Afghanistan. This war may be a mistake, a blood-soaked blunder, an unholy charnel house mindlessly consuming the bodies and souls of untold thousands, an open sore on the pockmarked face of history and an abomination before the sight of God and men, but it is first and foremost a war, and wars must be won. If the United States doesn’t win this war, then will it not lose it?

More at Fafblog.