"It is not a bad thing in a tale that you understand only the half of it."

Eventually If I Take Enough of These Tests I'll Really Get to Know Myself

You scored as Pacifist. Congratulations. You are a pacifist. A pacifist is someone who values life above all else, and thinks peace is more important than anything else. Combine this with your second result to get your answer.

Pacifist

80%

Guardian

60%

Citizen

45%

Loner

30%

Hedonist

30%

Altruist

30%

Destroyer

20%

Conqueror

15%

Narcissist

10%

Miscreant

5%

Where is your moral compass pointed?
created with QuizFarm.com

Norway News

The Norwegians plan to spend $3 million to build a seed vault near the North Pole. (via Bear) Really, that's not a lot of money for something as important as this. My fave quote from the article: "It will not be permanently manned, but 'the mountains are patrolled by polar bears,' says Fowler."

Japan's emperor wrote a poem about his visit to Norway last year. Could we have an emperor here, if their only duty was to write poems? If only Dorothy Parker was still alive. Empress Dorothy. Hell yeah.

Honestly? I like Garrison Keillor, at least, on the radio I do. But I don't know what the hell he's talking about.

Talk about social engineering; within two years 40 percent of the board members of Norway's large, publicly traded private companies must be women. (No plans for sexual reassignment surgery that I'm aware of, at least not so far.) The boys in the boardroom are not very happy about this.

Not Norwegian news--although some of the work was reprinted in a Norwegian Christian publication--but Muslims in Europe are incensed over some cartoons recently commissioned by and published in a Danish newspaper. This page has the cartoons in question.

Tellin' You Questions, Askin' Me Lies

While I'm skeptical that much will come of this, I don't think I can muster up any real content for today, so here's something that's been going around (catch it!):

Ask me something (in the comments thread) that you think you should know about me, or that you've always wondered about. I may answer honestly, or I may make something up. We'll laugh, we'll cry, we'll annoy our co-workers. We'll walk away better people.

I promise.

Now step up!

Strange Things Happen To a Man On the Road

Headlines on Elephants and Kenya:

Wacky scientists are using analysis of elephant hair to track the animals' diets and migration patterns, supplemental to GPS and on-the-ground tracking.

The KWS elephant transfer program has been put on hold due to the drought; more on that below.

One of the Hawthorn elephants has died during preparations to transfer her to the sanctuary at Hohenwald. Elsewhere, the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida is protesting the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. A hopeful sign (?); the Pittsburgh Zoo plans a 700-acre facility for elephant breeding and handler training. However, at this point there are no plans to move elephants from the zoo itself.

Can rogue bull elephants be rehabilitated? Rory Hensman thinks so. Tembo and Mabitsi may soon be used in anti-poaching operations.

Is elephant libido related to a human "sixth sense"?

Baby elephants!

In non-elephant news, Owen and Mzee recently celebrated their first anniversary. That would be the baby hippo and the 130-year-old tortoise who appear to have become best friends.

In Kenya:

Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai urges Kenya's government to preserve its forests; but are environmental concerns being used to obscure political motives behind mass evictions from the Mau forest?

"According to United Nations estimates, Kenya alone has 650,000 children under age 17 who have lost one or both parents to AIDS."

The drought: it's bad. Even Kibaki says so. Most of the nation's prisoners gave up their New Year's meal to send food to the affected areas. The Masai are pissed. Could more be done? With the dry weather, there's also a risk of forest fires which could endanger the elephant population.

Finally, Kibaki says the decision on Amboseli is final.

Someday I Wanna Be Dignified and Old

It's done. I went above and beyond my cutting goals, mainly because there was so much excess verbiage (I would have given you examples, Greg, but they were too damned embarrassing). I ended up cutting about 10,000 words and 40 pages, and this despite adding a couple of needed scenelets and one pretentious allusion. So the monster is on its way to agent-land, which is good because I need to not look at it for a little while.

For those of you keeping score at home, that means I have 1, 4, and 9 of the items on my to-do list accomplished, and several more in progress. I doubt I'll finish War and Peace (7) before the semester starts, but I'm about 500 pages in. (I'm liking it: duels! Freemasons! Subtle social satire! Napoleon!) This week is for finishing up 2, 3, 5, 6, and 10. 8 is more of a lifetime sort of goal, one that I hope you will all help me out with . . .

I'm having thoughts about this novel-thing, related in part to this post by Jay Lake, but only time will tell if those thoughts will coalesce into anything approaching an actual post.