The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

Another week has flown by -- with little here to entertain or edify. The usual excuses would only be tiresome, so before we get to this week's quiz, I'd like to offer a select list of more satisfying excuses than my usual blah blah about fatigue and family and "work" etc. Please be advised that these can also be applied to my failure to make any progress on the book this week. In no particular order:

• I'm busy preparing an elaborate meal of illegally imported ortolan.
  
• Caught in the grip of a giant clam. Should not have left apartment without dive knife in bookbag.
  
• Rockford Files Season 2 DVD set arrived on Monday. I haven't eaten or slept.
  
• I'm actually Neck Face; been out looking for a new place to do a really big, scary-looking arm.
  
• I was flying down to Rio, investigating a rumor about a silver mine left to me by my uncle.
  
• Been breathlessly awaiting Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. (Actually, that one's almost true.)
  
• Too much Boss. Thanks, Rory.
  
• Can't stop clogging.
  

In any event, there's been little enough here to command your attention -- so if you've returned today for the quiz, you have the Wombat's sincere appreciation. Let's get to it:

An Englishman named John Walker invented one version in 1827, which he called "congreves," but a similar invention was patented shortly thereafter, under a different name which lasted in Britain up through the First World War. In 1836, a Hungarian student, János Irinyi, invented a different version. He sold his innovation to a manufacturer named István Rómer for a small fee, and died penniless, while Rómer went on to tremendous success with the product.

However, all of these versions involved a substance whose use for this purpose was banned by more and more countries as time went on -- Finland in 1872; Denmark in 1874; Sweden in 1879; Switzerland in 1881 and Holland in 1901. The Berne Convention of 1906 committed signatories to similar actions, and Great Britain outlawed it by 1910. The U.S. did not -- but did impose a heavy tax on products which used the substance. China, however, didn't follow suit with laws against the substance until 1925.

What was the product? For a bonus point, what was the banned substance? For a double bonus point, what was the commercial name of product that beat out John Walker's "congreves"?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a large bucket full of discarded egg-timer sand, suitable for pouring out in melancholy gestures symbolic of the past's irretrievability. No Googling. No giggling. No making goo-goo eyes. And absolutely no Goo Goo Dolls, please. (You may, if you like, continue to read Barney Google, but I won't be held responsible). One guess (to each part of the question) per comment, but feel free to comment like it's 1999.

Posted by BT at 07:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)

There hasn't been a collection o' links here in a while. That's no excuse. Nevertheless, here's a bunch of stuff, mostly Metafilter/YouTube in nature. Happy browsing.

Gimme Gimme Octopus. My favorite is the one is the child-care-themed episode.

Pitchfork's "100 Awesome Music Videos". Some of these are pure 80's nostalgia, some purely fascinating in their own right, some pure camp. If you don't know this one by now, you will never, never know why it's so awesome.

Rory says that the new album from The Divine Comedy is great, and he's right. I'm going to have to go back and find the earlier CDs, now. Warning: once "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" gets in your head, it's stuck for 3-5 days minimum.

It was a while ago, but our pal KF was interviewed about her new book on Wisconsin Public Radio's To the Best of Our Knowledge.

No, not Playboy Bunnies. PLAYMOBIL BUNNIES. (We have this one, but I kind of want them all).

Recommended reading: Alison Bechdel's wonderful Fun Home; Alan Furst's The Foreign Correspondent; Douglas Brinkley's harrowing The Great Deluge.

Posted by BT at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Another excursion into bestsellers past. I can't help it -- the Wombat just finds the old lists too inviting to pass up. Excuse the long-winded setup on this two-part question, which is not as complicated as the thicket of verbiage that precedes it might suggest.

This bestselling author wrote his first novel while still an undergraduate, in 1920. After working for some time as a journalist (and continuing to write novels under a psuedonym) he began to have enough success as a novelist to work at it full-time. In 1933 The British Weekly commissioned a 3,000-word short story from him to be published in its Christmas edition. The unabashedly sentimental piece he turned in was over five times that length, and it was published as a special illustrated insert. The story was then sold to The Atlantic Monthly in the U.S., and was an immediate in the States: it wound up published in a hardcover edition that made it the No. 4 fiction bestseller in the U.S. in 1934, and continuing in 1935 as the No. 5 fiction bestseller, according to Publishers Weekly.

The same author ALSO hit the yearly Top 10 in '35 with another story -- one he wrote and published before the short-story-turned-novel mentioned above. In this case, it was a novel he'd published with quite a different theme, back in 1933. It took Britain's Hawthornden Prize in 1934. It took a little longer to become an enormous success in America, rising to No. 8 on the Publishers Weekly chart for 1935. The author continued to have big hits in the forties, but none as well-remembered as these two books. The title of one is well-known, even though the book is not widely read any more. It was adapted as a successful film in 1937, and re-adapted more than once. The other -- also adapted for the movies -- is best remembered not for its title, but for a name coined in the book that has passed into such common use that it appears in many dictionaries. President Franklin Roosevelt was so taken with it, that he used this name to denote a favorite place-- now known by a different name.

What are the names of the two books? For a bonus point, name the author. For a second, super-bonus point, a gold star, and a roll of Smarties, by what name do we know the place Roosevelt loved?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a damaged cassingle of 3rd Bass's "Pop Goes the Weasel," which runs at an eerie half-speed. No Googling or going through those old copies of the British Weekly in your great-uncle's country house. One guess (at each part of the question) per comment, but comment as often as you like.

Posted by BT at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The quiz is likely to be a little late tomorrow, as I am not able to get it set up in advance tonight. But there should be something for you to chew on before the weekend. Stay tuned.

Posted by BT at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Father's Day, you should know, is most profitably spent flat on one's back with the kind of fever that gives one the oh Dear I'm not doing this well at ALL-feeling whenever one has to elevate to a standing position. And it's not bad to garnish that with a little episode of air-conditioner installation (wait until the ibuprofen kicks in -- you don't want to faint carrying that thing) for maximum effect. This bestows upon one the greatest gift one can receive on this meaningless Hallmark-iday; the gift of justified self-pity. When one is sharing a household with a nursing mother, this is a precious commodity indeed, one well beyond the means of an underperformer such as yours truly. So, sick as a dog, but perversely loving how helpless and hapless being sick as a dog made me -- that was my weekend. I hope you have enjoyed this excursion into Wombat Emotional Logic.

***

As a young child -- before my family moved down to the Gulf Coast -- we would spend a week every late-summer occupying a cheap but lovable efficiency in the ramshackle Owens Motel, out on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My memories of family beach-blanketry are nothing if not typical American scenes; not even pre-adolescent, I was young enough to be enthralled by endless days digging pits and making castles with my sister and my dad, or hunting for sand-crabs in the surf line.

I also remember going swimming past the breakers, when I got a little bigger, and learning about the rip tide. If one didn't watch carefully (and even, really, if one did), the powerful cross-cutting current that ran down the beach would inevitably move one along with it. One started out by going out to play in the waves directly in front of one's family encampment, the familiar umbrella and day-glo hues of the lawn chairs providing a landmark, a homing signal for eight-year-old eyes. But after you'd paddled and splashed and top-floated over or through or under a dozen or so waves, if you turned around you'd find yourself looking at the wrong umbrella, some kite-flying couple you didn't remember, a guy casting into the surf where you thought your sister was making mudpies. The rip tide would have moved you "downstream" from where you thought you were -- and you'd turn your head to the right and sure enough, there, fifty yards to your north, were all those familiar little figures.

No big deal (as long as you weren't also being nudged further out to sea -- which the rip current could also accomplish, not being precisely parallel to the beach), but the effect was always a bit of a shock when you first noticed.

Right now I'm having the rip-tide feeling about life. When I'm working hard to dog paddle through my days --- treading water, as it were -- the current keeps moving me anyway. The end of the day finds me exhausted, and while I'm far from feeling that it's to no purpose -- indeed, the purpose of it all is clear enough -- I just feel further and further down the beach, away from the landmarks I had expected to swim back to.

Luckily, these two keep moving down the beach with me, for which I shall thank them here and (with luck), many times in the future.

Posted by BT at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I compose tonight's breathtakingly lunkheaded query a full ninety minutes before it can, according to the ITWU* bylaws, be posted. So I will lovingly save it now, to release it at the dawn. Sleep well, little quiz!

Now, all rested up? Excellent. Let's begin.

In England, it dates from the administration of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, and re-appeared in administrations of the Earl of Derby, Lord Palmerston, and Gladstone -- reaching a glorious and unequalled triumph with the accession to office of the Marquess of Salisbury. It ran riot in the in the 20th century, however, coming to a conclusion in 1963, well after the sun had set on the Empire. The executive branch of the U.S. only took a little while to catch up: the phenomenon began in the U.S. in 1837 -- but it ran its course in the states more quickly, wrapping up apparently for good in 1913, with an almost-resuscitation from 1929-1933.

To what phenomenon do we refer? Bonus questions, by the way, will be revealed after the primary question has been answered.

First correct answer posted to contest wins what's left of a huge bag of Abuelita corn chips, before I make myself horribly ill by eating the whole damn thing. No Googling or consulting your six-volume set of Balfour's memoirs. One guess per comment, please, but you are encouraged to comment and comment again, feeding the comment-string a healthy diet of answers both clever and tossed-off.

*International Time-Wasters Union

Posted by BT at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (66)

The problem with wanting one's Saturday fix of " Morning Edition" is that in and among the good (if sometimes predictable in outlook) array of general news pieces is the tendency of the producers to pick from among the most fatuous of our nation's ready-for-radio public intellectuals is doubled and redoubled on the weekend versions of the show. This morning brought a great example in the form of this interview with University of Chattanooga professor Bill McClay, on...wait for it...modesty. It was occaisioned, it seems, by McClay's essay in this journal (a product of the science-n-theology mashup that is the John Templeton Foundation).

The interview itself was of a piece with the harmless timewasting that I should know NPR well enough to expect on a Saturday morning. For every worthwhile feature there's one like this one. McClay's opinings caught my ear though, because, in his effort to spin some relatively uncomplicated social-conservative dicta about how nobody is modest anymore, and of course the Victorians were right, and we've coarsened ourselves with our lack of respect for this pivotal virtue...he manages to miss the one compelling argument I can think of for elevating modesty to the first rank among desirable social virtues. McClay's main point is an ecumenical but largely Christian one. He points to the emphasis on modesty in the Garden of Eden story, and also in the Song of Songs, and uses these examples to claim that we need to both acknowledge our fundamentally imperfect nature and to protect (as a "garden enclosed" in Solomonic terms) certain parts of our lives from the destructive exposure to the public world -- the obvious referent in the latter case is either sexuality or the purity of the soul itself.

He doesn't try too hard, however, to play up the sexual angle -- his hobbyhorse is really boasting, or claiming the importance of ones achievements. There's nothing at all wrong about protesting this, in my opinion, except that he makes an argument which leans more heavily than it needs to on the Bible -- and seems, not incidentally, to chiefly serve to bring in the Good Book as a "foundation" of our morality without demonstrating why that might be so. I suppose it's to be expected -- but I'll maintain that there's a stronger case for personal modesty as a virtue, based on nothing more than the demonstrable value of sensitivity toward the complicated world.

I think it makes sense to be modest, because however wonderful we think we or our achievements are, a moment's reflection reminds us of how little others know about what goes on inside of our minds or hearts. And another moment's reflection ought to lead to the converse suspicion that we know too little about others to adequately compare our achievements or talents to theirs. We don't know their histories, the obstacles they've faced, the distractions their lives provide. Or the things (wonderful or awful) they've done which haven't come to our attention. This isn't to say we should never believe that we deserve notice, credit, or praise. Just that we should remember all the times our achievements or accomplishments have been overlooked whenever we put any stock in our own public profile.

This isn't coming out as convincing as I'd hoped. But I'll leave it stand -- as evidence of my faith that I'll probably post something even worse tomorrow. Anyway, after all that, what I really want to say is this: if you want to see an example of someone really go off the rails in pursuit of unnamed (but clearly very hated) academic and cultural rivals, read McClay's essay in full. Especially the part where he goes to Cape May, and has the misfortune to dislike the B&B!

Posted by BT at 09:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In an act of supermarsupial quizmasterliness, out of the dizzy depths of new-baby fatigue another travesty of trivia. Without further ado:

His given name was Lindley. The son of a Southern Pacific railroad agent, he was taught a vital innovation on a traditional skill - which became a crucial element in his a celebrity -- by a chef in a railroad kitchen. His contribution to a 1942 work of propaganda yielded one of his most well-known creations. His career was partially fictionalized in a 1994 film, with a story written by George Lucas. This film, co-incidentally, contains the last appearance of George Burns, with whom Lindley had at one time worked regularly.

By what name is he best known?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a four-pack of Similac formula which found its way home from the hospital. Mmm...that's some good Similac! No Googling or getting more than three consecutive hours of sleep. One guess per comment, but comment as often as you like.

Posted by BT at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (25)

Just a quick note for those of you keen to know more about the newest member of our editorial team. As with Helena (who was also a month premature), Imogen proved susceptible to jaundice, which is something they watch even more closely in pint-sized newborns (a typically Wombattish explanation, almost certainly wrong in some points, of jaundice: it's caused by the buildup of bilirubin -- essentially dead blood cells -- in the body, as the newborn liver isn't really functioning well enough to handle them, and so beyond the yellowish color, the doctors monitor it by taking a bit of blood and measuring the bilirubin levels). High levels can cause a variety of bad things to happen if left untreated.

Imogen's bilirubin level was fine when we left the hospital Sunday, but turned up too high for our pediatrician's liking on Tuesday, so that night found us back at the hospital, checking her in for a stay under the "bili-lights" -- essentially, blue-spectrum light that actually breaks down the bilirubin in the skin. Theresa stayed in the room with her, and they were there overnight through Wednesday afternoon. Imogen didn't mind much, as they put her in a warmed isolette for the light therapy -- but putting on/removing her little blindfold eye-protector was upsetting.

The phototherapy worked as it usually does, and she was back at home yesterday evening. Unfortunately, this made the already challenging task of getting a preemie to feed properly that much more exhausting; hospitals are lousy places for nursing mothers to get any rest. I can't imagine the hell that people with seriously ill children go through.

We're all a bit loopy here (the less so for having grandmotherly assistance), and Helena is predictably more needy and short of fuse than normal. But on the whole, every experience I have with hospitals makes me feel astonishingly lucky have had the minor issues with the kids that we've so far been faced with. Our hospital -- like, I suspect, most -- is an almost 50/50 mix of heroes and villains. When one's shift nurse or the resident looking in on you is thoughtful, pleasant, and acting with the child's welfare in mind, one feels the burden is considerably lightened.

When this is not the case, one composes angry letters in ones mind. I will not speak here of the resident who "bumped" us from the discharge process in order to move his own wife to the front of the line (we'd already been treated to his lack of a bedside manner), nor of the troglodyte we faced in the admissions office as we arrived on Tuesday night, who couldn't check us in slower and acted affronted about our requests for a bed for Theresa to sleep in next to her daughter; instead, I'll focus on the chief resident of pediatrics, who personally appeared out of nowhere, inquiring sweetly if the baby he'd been told (by our amazing doctor) would soon show was perhaps being unnecessarily delayed in the Land of Paperwork, and further suggested that perhaps the treatment could be gotten rolling immediately and the i's dotted along the way. Him, I'd like to remember.

Posted by BT at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Regular readers know that we've had some recent premature-labor scares; after the third trip to the hospital, we'd started to become almost comfortable with the whole thing. It seemed like Theresa would just endure regular bouts of pre-term contractions, right on up to sometime during her last month, maybe even to her July due date itself. We'd become almost jaded about the late-night trips to the labor & delivery department of the hospital.

Friday evening brought all that to a halt, as our daughter's amniotic sac ruptured while we attended our pal Gus's rockin' third birthday party, and we found ourselves rushing to the hospital, equipped with absolutely nothing, Theresa having ingested naught but a slice of pizza, and just counting ourselves lucky that Helena's best friend in all the world had been there with his parents, who were only too happy to take her home with them.

The story of Theresa's labor is copyright her own self, so I won't presume to tell it here, but the end result was indubitably wonderful, with Imogen Bishop Claire making her appearance at a few minutes before 11 PM on Friday night, weighing in at five pounds flat (that's about 2.25 kilos, for those of you joining us from Metricland). Wee and perfect, she peeps enchantingly like a bird, an effect enhanced by the fact that her long sleeves hang off of the ends of her arms, resembling something like helplessly flailing wings when we insult her with the indignity of a diaper change. Swaddled up, post-feeding, her dark, alien eyes open up for brief periods in a very haunting fashion. At these times, I feel that we are in the possession of a magical otter (two animal comparisons in four sentences, I know. In my defense, I haven't slept much in the past 48 hours).

As I type right now, Mom and baby are well and snoozing -- we're a little anxious about a test for jaundice that's due in later today. But other than that, Imogen's in great shape. Helena is both fascinated by her new baby sister, and also a little disturbed and prone to sudden displays of pique. We are plying her with an ill-planned combination of jellybeans and discipline that will likely scar her for life. But maybe she'll be OK.

We don't have many good photos right now, in part because I am a lousy photographer, and in part because there's something wrong with the camera. Here's one which owes something to the Mirror Project:

Thanks to everyone for support, good wishes, and in many cases much more substantial aid and comfort. It's much appreciated.

Posted by BT at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

It's depressing to think that we've been reduced to little more than the Friday Quiz these days -- and sometimes, not even that. I had hoped by now to give you a review of Joe Miller's forthcoming Cross-X, plus an inquiry into the origins of artificial lemon-lime flavor, and a manifesto conclusively establishing walkie-talkie phones are the Last Goddamn Straw. Oh, and new pictures of Helena.

Pretty bad. I'd promise all those thing and more in the near future. But you know -- oh, how you know -- what the promises of a wombat are worth. It oughta be a proverb.

At least Rory's back. Welcome back, Rory!

All that flailing aside, there really is a quiz today. Read, solve, and dismiss us for the purveyors of discardable distraction that we are. Herewith our almost-weekly noggin-squasher:

Swedish emigrant Alexander Samuelsson came to the U.S. in the 1880s, and in 1915 was employed in an industrial job in Terre Haute, Indiana that built on his original profession. Asked for an innovative design for a product's package, he decided to turn to the forms of the natural world for inspiration, attempting to draw upon the appearances in nature of two things used in making the product. However, Samuelsson is said to have looked at the wrong page in the Encyclopedia Britannica as a reference. As a result, his design -- now famous -- is based on an organism that has nothing to do with the product in question.

What is the product Samuelsson was asked to help package? For a bonus point, what was the organism he mistakenly referenced?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a anklet made of sun-dried sea lice, lovingly hand-crafted by the family of Capt. Obed Marsh of the Innsmouth Ecological Preservation Institute. No Googling or hiring the Dog Whisperer. That guy is great with dogs, but the quiz is not your dog. It's not anybody's dog. One guess per comment, but you may comment as often as you like.

Posted by BT at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)