Something/Someone Old

A cabinet I'm thinking of buying on craigslist is my Something Old today. One hundred bucks is actually a reasonable price for an old piece of furniture in good condition made out of solid wood:

In other news, I have (fingers crossed) finally got the corner china cabinet I needed, assuming that the deal doesn't fall through (there's some details about the guy's moveout date and putting furniture in storage that are getting in the way. Also getting in the way is my not having an old-fashioned Dodge van.)

I think the little cabinet pictured above would look great in my dining room (I finally just bent and embraced the goddamned orange and golden oak trim of my house), but its shelves, since they are designed for pies, are not really good for storing much else. My honey thinks it's impractical, and he's right, so I probably won't buy it.

Something New

OK, so this isn't exactly *new*, as it dates from six years ago and three years ago, respectively, but it's new to me because I let this author, who is one of my favorites, and his work, which I re-read constantly until about five years ago, drop off my radar:

Steven Brust did what so many people involved in a great D&D campaign want to do, and rarely do successfully: he took the world of his friend's campaign and turned it into a series of novels that lots of people read. I'm trying really hard to avoid descending into review-speak here so I won't use words like "insightful" or "engaging," or even "fun," which, unfortunately, has had most of the fun leached out of it by overuse. Let's just say I massively enjoy his series, which has a deep and intricate history in a well-realized fantasy (or science fiction) setting: Dragaera.

I don't want to give away too much for those who haven't read the series, but let's call it a reimagining of the idea of elves and men, extremely long-lived beings and mortals bound to a 100-year lifespan, living side by side. Now take away the morality of Tolkien's elves and put it all through the framework of imperialism, colonization, and racism. Now complicate it further by having the actual indigenous people of the planet not be who you think they are. Now add magic.

Combine it all with a big dollop of 1940s detective fiction and season heavily with intelligence and humor.

I really like it.

I hope some here try it on for size. Begin with Jhereg, though if you begin later, it might not necessarily matter (I accidentally began with Taltos.)

You can find it here
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-book-of-jhereg-steven-brust/1113509808
or likely in your local library (for those lucky enough to still have one of those.)

Something Borrowed

I had to go back and look through all of my previous Open Threads because I couldn't believe I'd never used this for my "Something Borrowed" section. When I first saw this in 2013, I (briefly) reconsidered my desire not to have children, because this young man is so awesome. He did all the singing (a capella), all the video work, and it's his master's thesis he's rendered into song:

Please click through and watch it. You'll be glad you did.

Something Blue

Japanese scientists have engineered a blue chrysanthemum.

This is from something called the Mother Nature Network:
https://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/stories/the-scie...

...for the first time, a group of scientists say they have genetically engineered a flower — a chrysanthemum — to produce a blue hue. "Chrysanthemums, roses, carnations and lilies are major floricultural plants, [but] they do not have blue flower cultivars," Naonobu Noda, lead study author and scientist at Japan's National Agriculture and Food Research Organisation, told Gizmodo. "None has been able to generate blue flower cultivar by general breeding technique."

Apparently, blue flowers are rare in nature because plants can't directly create blue pigments:

David Lee, author of "Nature’s Palette: The Science of Plant Color" and a retired professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University in Miami...[states,] “Less than 10 percent of the 280,000 species of flowering plants produce blue flowers”...


“There is no true blue pigment in plants, so plants don’t have a direct way of making a blue color,” Lee said. “Blue is even more rare in foliage than it is in flowers.” he added. “Only a handful of understory tropical plants have truly blue foliage.”

To make blue flowers, or foliage, plants perform a sort of floral trickery with common plant pigments called anthocyanins...The key ingredients for making blue flowers are the red anthocyanin pigments. “Plants tweak, or modify, the red anthocyanin pigments to make blue flowers,” Lee said. “They do this through a variety of modifications involving pH shifts and mixing of pigments, molecules and ions.”

Pretty amazing, and it results in sights like this:

How are y'all doing today?