Columnist joins The New York Times, then writes how the newspaper's power might be bad news.

Point #1:  Ben Smith used to work at BuzzFeed when it was a startup company.

Point #2:  The New York Times has more digital subscribers than the COMBINED subscribers of The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, and San Francisco Chronicle.

Point #3:  Ben Smith left BuzzFeed, joined The New York Times as a columnist, and on Sunday wrote his first piece about how his now-employer's consolidation of media power might not be so good.

He joined the very problem he fears.

The New York Times has become such a monopoly of information that it can hire people to criticize the company, publish it, play it as self-aware, and simply laugh as they watch more money roll in.

Mount Holyoke professor allegedly attempts killing colleague with fire poker and garden shears.

That tenured track position probably doesn't look too great right now...

Things at sleepy Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA, weren't as sleepy over the holiday break, as one professor allegedly tried to kill another faculty member over unrequited love.

According to Massachusetts State Police, art professor Rie Hachiyanagi, 48, went to the home of an unnamed fellow professor from Mount Holyoke around 10pm on December 23rd. After being invited in, police allege that Hachiyanagi wasn't the most gracious house guest, and repeatedly beat her colleague about the head using a fire poker, garden shears, and a rock. The victim suffered multiple fractures throughout her face.

Police allege Hachiyanagi repeatedly told her colleague that she loved her and the colleague should have always known. Granted, swinging a fire poker might send some mixed messages. After hours of beatings, the alleged victim feigned sympathy and professed love to Hachiyanagi, so as to get 911 help for her wounds. The victim told authorities of the attack while safely at the hospital.

NBC News reports that Ms. Hachiyanagi's specialty at Mount Holyoke is with handmade paper works. Writing on her faculty profile statement--in poetic form, no less--she states, "The process of making paper by hand allows me to be humble / As plant fiber and its beauty must be generated from nature." Maybe that's where her garden shears angle comes from. One can only guess. She's humble after all.

Ms. Hachiyanagi is being held without bail until February 4th and is on administrative leave from Mount Holyoke pending the investigation.

Ahhhh, relief.

Like this, except...only one.

Drank too much water? Had the refried beans last night with dinner? Good news if nature calls while you're visiting the North Amherst, MA, library. A port-o-potty is on the way to help you out.

It seems the western Massachusetts hub for books doesn't have a bathroom at its disposal, which leads librarians to send visitors across a busy street to a shopping complex to scope out an available toilet.

Retired elementary school teacher Terry Johnson decided to offer assistance. Knowing that visitors spike in the summer months, Johnson offered to pay the $500-$650 fee of renting a port-o-potty and having it cleaned regularly.

The library actually ignored Johnson's offer at first because they acquired a former auto mechanic shop next door and thought they could modify the bathrooms inside it. Alas, the bathrooms didn't meet the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, and fixing them wasn't feasible with budgetary constraints. The library was back to square one.

Luckily, Terry Johnson is a seemingly patient and kind woman, as when the town manager, Paul Bockelman, reached out weeks later to ask for the port-o-potty, Johnson still kept her side of the offer. The port-o-potty is on its way to offer relief to all those crossing their legs in anxiety.

Just don't bring a book in with you. There's only one port-o-potty after all, and people gotta go.

Kermit the frog is no longer Kermit the frog.

Kermit plotting his revenge against Elmo and company.

Steve Whitmire, the voice of Kermit the frog, has been fired, and no one exactly knows why.

Disney, who owns the Muppets, announced in October 2016 that they intended to recast Kermit's voice, but never explained to Whitmire why, or to anyone else for that matter. Whitmire took over the voice of Kermit in 1990 after the Muppets creator--and original Kermit--Jim Henson died.

On his personal blog, Whitmire is taking the whole matter pretty hard.

"I want all of you who love the Muppets to know that I would never consider abandoning Kermit or any of the others because to do so would be to forsake the assignment entrusted to me by Jim Henson, my friend and mentor, but even more, my hero," he wrote.

Oh, boy.

"I just want you all to know that I am sorry if I have disappointed any of you at any point throughout our journey, and to let everyone know that I am devastated to have failed in my duty to my hero," he added.

Someone get this guy a drink...or six...because he's going to need them.

Since Disney is quiet on the matter, I think it's fair to throw wild accusations around and blame Elmo for this. We all know he's power hungry.

Maurice Sendak has a new book coming out. He's been dead for five years.

Famed children's book author Maurice Sendak, arguably the most important picture book author in history, and who died five years ago, is apparently channeling his inner Tupac Shakur and releasing work posthumously. (Lest you forget, rap legend Tupac died many years ago, but out of his eleven platinum albums, seven were released posthumously. Now, it seems Sendak wants to be as popular in death as in life as well, too.)

According to Publisher's Weekly, in 1990, Sendak was interested in collaborating with the London Symphony Orchestra for a performance of Leoš Janáček’s Rikadla, a 1927 composition dealing with Czech nursery rhymes set to orchestral music, of which he had drawings.

But Sendak had his fingers in multiple projects at the time. His occasional collaborator, Arthur Yorinks, remembers seeing the drawings and having a brainstorm session with Sendak over the work, and how they could turn it into a book. Alas, Sendak became distracted by those other projects lingering around him, and the drawings never saw the light of day with London or anyone else.

Fast forward to 2016, and Lynn Caponera, president of the Maurice Sendak Foundation, was combing through mounds of Sendak's work to throw out, when she stumbled on the drawings. Presto and Zesto in Limboland, the work Sendak and Yorink brainstormed over, that the London Symphony Orchestra hoped for, was rediscovered--and Sendak's work continues, a la Tupac.

A release date for the fall of 2018, published by Michael di Capua Books/HarperCollins, is planned. No word on whether seven other random "lost" books will be found either, but time will tell.

In the meantime, let's remember Sendak when Stephen Colbert visited him shortly before his death, and revel in the illustrator huffing markers and dropping f-bombs:

The Colbert Report

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: Heroin never looked so boring.

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.


Today:  Little dolls are the true drug smugglers amongst us.





Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.)  Slow down there, buddy! You're oozing excitement and enthusiasm!
2.)  Now I'm going to look at every 5-year old with a doll as a potential dope smuggler.
3.)  "But this doll isn't something to play with." I think any heroin addict would beg to differ, sir.
4.)  Has this guy ever gone through customs? I'll allow a smack-peddling doll in our borders if it'll shed a few minutes off my wait.

Mark Zuckerberg is going back to Harvard.

Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard as a sophomore with entrepreneurial dreams of starting a social network. Facebook was born, and Zuckerberg never went back to Harvard.

Until now.

Lest you think Zuckerberg is going back to complete his bachelor's degree--HA! That's a good laugh--think again. Harvard is looking the other way and asking the Facebook founder to give its commencement address this year, where he'll be bestowed with an honorary degree.

When you're a billionaire multiple times over, any degree from Harvard, real or fake, is just icing at this point.

The Weird History of College Mascots, No. 1: Tufts University, P.T. Barnum, and Jumbo the Elephant

Some colleges have perfectly boring mascots with no history outside a public relations-approved cartoon character. Other colleges have histories--often weird--behind their mascots. This is where we recount the oddities.

Today:  Tufts University and the circus

On one side we have a fledgling Tufts University prior to its 1852 opening looking to add individuals to its Board of Trustees.

On the other side we have P.T. Barnum, one half of the famed Barnum & Bailey Circus, who was looking to be philanthropic.

Here the two shall meet.

P.T. Barnum looking for another sucker.

Tufts was looking to add board members, and turned to the wealthy and famed showman to help prop up their institution. Barnum didn't want to leave a legacy of simply being an entertainer, so he happily obliged, donating $50,000 (more than $2,000,000 in today's money) to the school to have a museum and hall for the Department of Natural History.

Meanwhile, in 1860, purportedly on Christmas day in what would be modern-day Sudan, an elephant was born. After its mother was killed by hunters, the elephant was sold to an Italian animal dealer. The young elephant made its way to Trieste, Italy, then stops in Germany and a French zoo, before landing at the London Zoo in England.

It was at the London Zoo that the elephant gave visitors rides, mainly children. Seeing how smart, docile, yet large, the elephant was, the keeper, Anoshan Anathajeyasri, gave the elephant the name Jumbo. The name potentially has roots in Swahili, maybe "jumbe," which means "chief."

In 1881, Barnum & Bailey Circus purchased Jumbo from the zoo for a then-$10,000. So distraught were the children of London at the thought of losing Jumbo, Queen Victoria received over 100,000 letters asking for her to intercede.

She did not. Jumbo headed to America.

Jumbo late in life.

For the next four years, P.T. Barnum showcased Jumbo in order to make his investment money back. Jumbo (and other elephants) were paraded over the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge to show it was strong enough. Jumbo also was featured at Madison Square Garden. People flocked to see the famed "biggest elephant in the world."

In the end, Jumbo's time in America was short-lived, even if his history has been long-lasting. On tour with the circus in St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1885, while moving the elephants across a rail yard, Jumbo died. The reasons are varied and vague, filled with as many facts as there is dramatic fiction. Most sources agree Jumbo tripped crossing some tracks, and probably impaled himself on his tusk, killing himself instantly. To further compound his death, a locomotive came down the track and couldn't stop in time, hitting his seemingly lifeless body.

The scourge that is rail yards strikes again.

The romanticized version of the story is that a small elephant named Tom Thumb was lingering on the tracks. Jumbo, being the bright animal he was, hustled to push Tom Thumb out of the way as the locomotive burned down the track, and that Jumbo tripped in front of the train saving the smaller elephant. Is there any validity to the story? It was 1885 after all, and P.T. Barnum was involved. Barnum always loved a good story.

To benefit a bit more by Jumbo's death, Barnum had the elephant's corpse separated. In time, the skeleton ended up at New York City's American Museum of Natural History, while the heart went to Cornell University. The hide was stretched and stuffed to try and mimic the original Jumbo, and it was donated to Tufts University.

Stuffed Jumbo years before the fire.

A fire at Tufts in 1975 destroyed the hide, but they had already adopted Jumbo as their mascot by then. Ashes believed to be the hide of Jumbo were placed into a peanut butter jar, where they remain today in the athletic director's office. Only a piece of Jumbo's tail, which was taxidermied when Barnum separated Jumbo, remains in a display case at Tufts.

Today, Barnum Hall still exists on campus, while a monument of Jumbo was erected at the St. Thomas, Ontario, rail yard in 2006, 121-years after his death. New York City's American Museum of Natural History maintains Jumbo's skeleton to this day as well, a donation from Barnum they have never parted with.

And Tufts University has fully embraced the image of an elephant, of Jumbo, as their mascot.

Tufts University campus today.

It is not the most common of mascots to be had for a modern day university, but the common denominator is Jumbo's impact. The bright, docile, fantastically large animal that made children beg a queen, that drew crowds around the world, that made a wealthy P.T. Barnum even wealthier--the giant that spent its life in captivity--remains in the consciousness of those his path crossed 132-years later.

If anything should be a mascot, if anything should represent a school, it should have meaning. And few mascots have the meaning quite like Jumbo the elephant.

Randomness Corner: Nebraska state flag flew upside down for ten days over the state capitol and no one noticed.

...said no one--ever.

Nebraska--a mythical barren land mass of corn and desperation that some claim exists in the middle of the United States--apparently had the state flag fly over the capitol in Lincoln FOR TEN DAYS before someone noticed it was upside down.

Was it a declaration of surrender to neighboring Kansas? Wyoming? There's a chance South Dakota has invaded at this point. Would anyone notice?

As if being forced to live in Nebraska wasn't humiliating enough, now the citizens realize their politicians can't recognize the state flag. Nebraska State Senator Burke Harr suggests the state redesign the flag so people actually knows what it looks like. This, despite criticism that the state has more important issues, like a looming budget deficit.

Harr disagrees. "[Nebraska] can walk and chew gum at the same time," he said.

Impressive!

Except Nebraska just can't raise or notice its own state flag at the same time, that's all.

Poet can't answer questions about her own work that appears on a standardized test.

Modern standardized testing exists.

That's about the only positive that can be said about it these days, and even that's not a positive thing.

Many parents want it to justify their child's educational success or failure, yet they don't want the standardized tests that are given because of personal, moral, or educational beliefs.

And:

Educators despise wasting weeks teaching toward these tests, and then spending more time to administer those very same tests.

And:

Administrators justify the testing as a means to show they're serious about improving education, yet have no other ideas or suggestions how to improve education except to enforce a standardized test upon educators and students in a one-size-fits-all model.

And:

Local, state, and federal government officials largely have no reasonable idea how actual education works, yet they pass legislation demanding standardized tests be given at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, per state, often to for-profit companies with little oversight.

And now this:

Which brings us to Sara Holbrook, a poet of merit, who recently found some of her work included on a Texas standardized test. The problem for Holbrook? As she wrote originally on the Huffington Post, the questions asked about her poetry were so open-ended and vague, even she didn't know the answer. That would seem to be a wee bit of a problem.

Many of the questions demand to know the motivations of the writer--except the test-creators never actually asked Holbrook her motivation or thought process in the poems used, so how would they know the answer? As Holbrook notes, often these tests examine dead writers' work. Dead writers are often quiet on the matter of standardized tests.

Or, as she concludes in her Huffington Post article:

"My final reflection is this: any test that questions the motivations of the author without asking the author is a big baloney sandwich. Mostly test makers do this to dead people who can’t protest. But I’m not dead.

I protest."

The comedic stylings of Drexel University professor causes a ruckus.

On Christmas day, Drexel University associate professor of politics George Ciccariello-Maher, went for the open-mic night material and decided to tweet the following (now made private on Twitter):

"All I want for Christmas is white genocide."

If this sounds similar to that time you posted your negative holiday views about fruitcake on Facebook, it's exactly like that, except deadlier and a lot more problematic for millions of racists.

Conservative news sites like Breitbart lathered up the masses, worried that an intellectual was encouraging the death of white society.

Ciccariello-Maher released a statement saying that his tweet was satirical (zing!), even though his follow-up tweet on Sunday also said:

"To clarify: when the whites were massacre [sic] during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing indeed."

This is the worst Saturday Night Live sketch ever,

Admittedly, I'm not certain the professor understands how satire works, and--if anything--the comedic stylings of Ciccariello-Maher are a little  moderately  massively dry, but it raises multiple issues.

White supremacists and their poorly run websites irrationally fear an American "white genocide" that will topple them from the socio-economic power position in the United States. Meanwhile, academics fear that freedom of speech will be smothered by a notable American university as a means to kill bad press.

In the end, what will really happen from all of this?

Nothing.

It'll blow over. News will cycle. Drexel University will sweat it out. Ciccariello-Maher will remain hidden on Twitter. White supremacists will spread hate. And everything old is new again is old again is new.

Zing!

Because satire is hard.

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is slumming it this year.

Are you that someone with a substantial amount of disposable income? You know, the kind of person who'll drop $6K on a Chanel bag or jet off to Greece with the lover-of-the-week, so you've got to woo the masses with your greenbacks to thwart your lack of personality?

Good news! You're going to save a ton this holiday season if you want to purchase "The Twelve Days of Christmas"!

According to PNC Financial Services, everything included in the lyrics of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" has barely increased since last year. The inflation rate? A meager 0.7% increase. During that same time the Consumer Price Index increased by 1.7%. Time to make it rain some turtle doves!!

Actually, two turtle doves saw the biggest percentage increase in cost, to a one-time cost of $375, an uptick of 29% from last year. Turtle doves are largely only native to Europe (but vaguely exist in 22 states!), which means import costs to America alone are going to hamper the bank account. Working on the cheap? Snatch a couple of North American mourning doves in your backyard and call it a day. No one will know the difference.

In fact, birds as a whole were fairly stagnant in price the past year, as avian flu has passed by and supply and demand are rather flat. That doesn't mean it's necessarily cheap.

The most expensive one-time purchase from the song lyrics? Swans! Seven of those vicious vixens will set you back $13,125.

The cheapest gift? Eight maids a-milking, for a tidy one-time lyric sum of $58.

That's right. Hiring eight women to milk cows will set you back the equivalent of an average Tuesday night's dinner at Applebee's, while a handful of swans will cost you a month's rent for a two bedroom walk-up in midtown Manhattan. Thankfully, Americans are resistant to living wages for their employees. We wouldn't want a woman to be worth more than a swan.

In the end, what's the total amount spent when repeating the lines of the song?

$156,507.88

The repeated lyric of eight maids a-milking costs a total of $290 of that.

At least our priorities are straight.

(Sigh.)

Haverford College 's library has a cat that it really, sorta, kinda doesn't want.

Valentino is his real name, and he has real owners. But the cat named Valentino tends to go by Havercat these days, named after the Haverford College campus he has wandered for nearly a year, and the library he has chosen as home.

According to Philly.com, the college claimed the cat wandered into the library last December, yet despite every attempt to shoo him out, Havercat found a way back in.

Havercat's original owners apparently didn't want him back. As a result, eventually a litter pan was brought into the library. Then food. Then bedding. Valentino became Havercat, and Havercat became a college prowler. So much so, he was caught on video killing a wild baby bunny.




Oh...oh, dear lord, this turned dark quickly. I thought this was about a cute cat living in a college library?

The library's Facebook page even posted casual follow-up videos to the baby bunny murder with a non-action packed eight second video labeled "Looking for more."





The joys of casual murder! It's adorable when so much fur is involved!

Except all of that prowling of the campus led to Havercat recently becoming injured somehow. Maybe it was a car that hit him, maybe a posse of ticked-off rabbits had a go--no one knows--but Havercat was found hurt. Veterinarians claim it was only bruising, but that he'd need weeks of indoor seclusion to rehabilitate, which the library cannot provide.

In the meantime, he'll be fostered in various homes until a forever home is available--preferably far, far away from Peter Rabbit's home.

Parents throw DOWN at Brooklyn kindergarten graduation ceremony.

There are times in any small child's life where certain things need to be learned. Like counting, ABCs, and momma's secret ability at dropping 'bows.

When the tiny tots at Brooklyn's P.S./I.S. 178 in Crown Heights prepped to walk the stage for their graduation, things became tense between mothers who jockeyed for position to take photos. Pushing beget shoving...beget yelling...beget left hooks landing...beget cops being called...beget little Bobby and Suzy learning all about the nuances of the justice system.

According to The New York Post, although a school aide who only was known by Mrs. Nelson was clocked while trying to break up the fracas, no charges were pressed after police threw the unruly parents out.

Philly.com might want to rethink that headline...

The Philadelphia Phillies baseball team is having a good year, with their pitching staff striking out seemingly everyone they face. Lest you don't know, "K" is the baseball scoring symbol for a strikeout.

This led Philly.com to post a story about their home team's strikeout dominance with the following headline, which this Twitter user caught:

Uhhh, hey @phillydotcom, you may want to reconsider this headline. pic.twitter.com/Fe59SV5dfq

— Tim Lemke (@TimLemkeTweets) May 1, 2016

Smooth.

Once alerted to their snafu, Philly.com swapped out the headline for the following, which has no double-meaning. No, none whatsoever. Not for a team that had a player just suspended for banned substances:

Sigh. Let's try this a third time...

Maine governor walks off stage mid-speech after students hold up sign criticizing him.

Come check out the comedic
stylings of Gov. LePage!

From the Thin Skin Department comes the state of Maine's governor, Paul LePage. Let's welcome him to the stage! Come up here, Gov. LePage!!

[[[crickets]]]
[[[no governor]]]

Gov. LePage! Welcome to the stage! Let's hear it!

[[[yawns]]]
[[[no governor]]]

Governor?






The sad part is that this was generally the case the other day as governor and all-around wannabe rejected comedian, Paul LePage, stormed off the stage at the dedication of the Theodora J. Kalikow Education Center and called two students "idiots" after the duo held signs up that said "LePage: Maine’s Shame." That's about as hot a take as you'll get in Maine, where the protests are as scorching as the weather.

Why were the students unhappy? Maybe because any time Gov. LePage gets in front of a microphone he has something offensive to say. Take this past weekend, when he decided to randomly alert people that he thinks speaking with Indians requires an interpreter and Bulgarians are hard to understand.

"It's hard to hear what they're saying," LePage said over the weekend. "Have you ever tried to say, 'What's the special today?' to somebody from Bulgaria?"

Rim-shot!! Try the veal!

Maybe the students were Bulgarian though? They might have just been answering what the special was.

New York City's elite public high schools are not a hotbed of racial and ethnic diversity.

There are nine "specialized public high schools" in New York City for either the "academically or artistically gifted" student. Eight of those schools require an admissions test. One, LaGuardia High School, which is more arts-based, requires an audition.

According to a report, those nine public high schools have appallingly horrible rates of racial diversity representing the city of which they are a part.

Of the eight schools that require testing, students identifying as African-American or black made up 3% of accepted students. Those identifying as Latino or Hispanic made up just 5%. When you consider New York City is made up of 70% of people identifying from those racial and ethnic backgrounds, this would seem like a tiny, slight imbalance.

At lower Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School, considered the city's best public high school, nine African-American/black students were accepted for the next academic year, compared to 178 white students and 682 Asian students.

Time to pause. Those numbers might have blended in a paragraph for you, but this is important. Here it is again.

9 African-American/black students
178 white students
682 Asian students

...all accepted into next year's class at a public school.

If you're not sure whether grimacing, scowling, or awkwardly sighing is the right reaction to such a statistic, all three at once is acceptable!

Until you learn that Stuyvesant High School is a downright racial utopia. Why? At Staten Island Technical High School, another of the testing eight, not a single African-American/black student was accepted. Not one. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

0.

This is New York City we're talking about, not Salt Lake City.

This is a city where over 27,000 students took the specialized admissions test, a test with almost a 20% acceptance rate, better than most Ivy League and "second tier" colleges--and, this can't be noted enough, is still a public institution representing the city these schools exist within--a city that is 70% black or Latino. This is a city where the link to the city's specialized schooling website shows photos of six students on the page and four of the six appear to be either black or Latino. It's bad when stock website photography for a specialized school is more accepting than the actual specialized public school.

It's not just a New York City issue. It happens in every major city at their own "specialized" high schools. Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and so on. Despite the obvious statistics, the moral outrage (hey!), nothing will be done to solve this. Politicians and school administrators and colleges and universities will pay wonderful lip service to say a change needs to be done. Studies will be commissioned. A movement will begin.

And the cameras and microphones will be put away. And there's another story to cover. And we forget. And we move on.

And, still, barely a single black or Latino kid will be admitted to an elite public school in the city of New York.

It was fun reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird' in school while we had a chance.

Harper Lee died last month as a relative mystery in the publishing world, one who gave few interviews during the course of her lifetime and fewer hints as to what she ever wanted. There's little knowledge on Lee's behavior, quirks, life, beliefs, or the wishes for her estate after she died. Even Lee's last will was sealed by a judge in Alabama, keeping the public eye away from the Harper Lee enigma once again.

Now, Lee's estate--through a request made by the estate's lawyer, Tonja Carter--has demanded book publishing house Hachette cease selling its mass-market paperback edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, which is the most popular choice in schools across America. This means the cheapest version of the book, usually sold at $8.99, will no longer exist as of April 25th. Instead, the cheapest edition will now be paperback varieties costing $14.99 and $16.99.

What this means for Lee's estate is the potential for higher royalties from future book sales. What this means is a school likely won't make the book required reading much longer. What this means is a child no longer reads the book.

What this means is greed wins.

When Science Goes Bad: The Cutting Down of a Nearly 5,000 Year Old Tree

Science performs a multitude of greater good for humanity. The good outweighs the bad in almost immeasurable ways. But there are those fleeting times science goes off-the-rails in head-shaking, sigh-inducing, groan-grumbling fashion. This is where we point to those great moments mistakes in science.

Today:  The Cutting Down of a Nearly 5,000 Year Old Tree


They are relatively short and fairly ugly with little foliage, but they are as alive as they are ugly--and they are old. The oldest non-clonal organisms in the world are not the giant sequoia or the redwood. Instead, age is found in the plump, gangly limbs of the Great Basin bristlecone pine, found in the western United States, in spots humans rarely tread, so far and so distant the trees climb away from civilization and often into the mountains.

Donald Currey, then a graduate student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 1964, was one of many scientists looking to seek out the oldest trees on the planet. For Currey, this was to examine the climate dynamics of the Little Ice Age, an event that happened from roughly the years 1300 to 1850. Currey's search brought him to Wheeler Peak in Nevada, where nearby bristlecone pines were known to survive well over a thousand years.

What's left of Prometheus. (Wikipedia)

Through a series of curious decisions by Currey, the National Park Service, or others, the then-oldest known living organism on the planet, a bristlecone named Prometheus, was cut down. The question that never has had a collectively-agreed upon answer is simple. Why?

Currey's aim seemed noble. He was looking to study climate change when it wasn't a talking point, even if it was climate change of centuries ago, and the coring of some trees in the Wheeler Peak area suggested this specific grove of bristlecones was at least 3,000-years old.

The problem with--or, maybe better said, the beauty of--bristlecones is that the very features of their appearance that look dead are often that. Dead. Significant portions of the tree can be killed during forest fires or other natural disasters, but if a portion survives the tree itself usually survives. Sometimes, although rarely, this strip of living tree can be as small as two inches wide, but such tiny available living trunk makes taking a coring sample difficult in order to ascertain the tree's actual age. Such was the case with Prometheus.

Stories vary as to how Prometheus ended up dead and on its side. The National Park Service claims they simply granted permission to "a researcher" (who is not named on their site, oddly) to take coring samples from some trees and to entirely cut down one other bristlecone. The Park Service alludes that Currey (who shall not be named!) simply chose Prometheus by chance. Upon felling the tree, he counted the rings and performed various analyses that said the bristlecone was 4,844 years old (and later raised to 4,862 years old), making it the then-oldest known living non-clonal organism in the world.

Other stories, like by The Smithsonian Magazine, claim that Currey simply aimed to sample Prometheus--yet, as the tree was so old, his coring tool became stuck in the bristlecone's deadened facade. A park ranger, Donald Cox, offering assistance at the time, allegedly allowed the tree to be the lone bristlecone cut down. And yet others, like at Terrain, say Currey knew fully well the tree he wanted was much older than others in the area and sought it out. The great curiosity, as the San Francisco Chronicle once noted, is if one is researching the Little Ice Age that happened somewhere around 600 years ago, why cut down any tree thousands of years old when many other younger trees would do?

The reasoning or fault for the end of Prometheus varies on which individual tells the story. Regardless, what always remains a constant is some people agreed, at some point, that the cutting down of a known thousands-of-years-old tree was acceptable. And--which might be the only concrete point of this story--Currey was only a graduate student at the time, not an expert in his field. His wealth of knowledge on ancient trees in 1964 was solid, although probably not rich. Not nearly as rich as when he died in 2004 as an esteemed scientist in his field.

In the end, Prometheus--the ancient Titan from Greek mythology--created mankind and gave humans fire, the power to destruct.

Leave it to humans to kill Prometheus--the ancient tree older than most Greek mythology--to complete the sad, poetic circle.

It makes my ribs ache because it's funny and they're the Canadiens (and I'm a Bruins fan): Twitter whoopsie for Montreal Canadiens leads to problem jersey names.

Much like when the New England Patriots celebrated their one millionth Twitter follower by creating customized avatar Twitter jerseys for fans, the Montreal Canadiens followed suit for the same reasons.

The problem?

Not everyone's Twitter handle is--how shall we phrase this politely?--good.

Take the @ILOVEISIS jersey. Yes. That ISIS. Not the ancient Egyptian goddess with the wonderful wings.

Hey, welcome to the family!!

Twitter trolls came out in abundance with every unsavory handle they could muster--all because every time they posted to the Montreal Canadiens Twitter feed they were replied with a visual similar to above.

Except if you followed hockey (you don't) or you're a Boston Bruins or Toronto Maple Leafs fan (you're not) you'd know it's difficult to tell which were Twitter trolls and which were actual Canadiens fans.