–Janet Leigh died today. She was 77. Perhaps best known as the doomed, philandering Marian Crane in Psycho, Leigh was an accomplished actress who appeared in over 60 other films, including the Orson Welles classic Touch of Evil and John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate. However, it was Psycho that cemented her reputation as a scream queen, and by the 1970s she was relegated to small films such as Night of the Lepus. One of her last film appearances was with her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween: H2O.

–Richard Avedon, 81. Reknowned as a fashion photographer, Avedon had been documenting all of society for half a century. Although diametric opposites, his celebrity portraits and his political images both capture the fleeting moods of the instant, whether it was a pensive Marilyn Monroe or the quietly defiant Chicago Seven. An artist equally comfortable in the realms of moody black-and-white or of vibrant color, in 1992, Avedon became The New Yorker’s first staff photographer. By the time of his death, he had been honored with two exhibits at the Smithsonian, and his work appears in numerous museums around the world.

–Yang Huanyi, about 95, the world’s last speaker of Nushu, the only known female-specific language. The language, incomprehensible to men, was developed 400 years ago as a way for women to communicate their thoughts and feelings to one another. (There are some who would argue that such a language has always been around and is alive and well.) Add Nushu to the rolls of extinct languages, along with countless American Indian dialects and those of remote tribes and villages. As communities spread and merge, and inter-regional communication becomes cheaper and easier to achieve, these minority langauges are going to begin disappearing at an exponentially faster rate. It’s not difficult to imagine a world which one day contains at most five languages, with one global, consolidated language prevelant over all. Already, we can see the merge beginning. As just one example among thousands, for some time now English has crept steadily into Japanese, and Japanese words and phrases have crept into English as our television programs become more prevelant each other’s countries.

The melding of langauges is nothing new; it’s been happening since the first two hominids created different grunts for “stick”*. A couple of excellent, brief introductions to the evolution of langage are Our Marvelous Native Tongue by Robert Claiborne, and The American Language by H.L. Mencken. (After that, you can hunt down some Noam Chomsky and really develop some opinions!)

While the evolution of language is natural and inevitable, it’s always sad when knowledge dies, even when it’s something as simple as a method for a handful of Chinese women to laugh about what an idiot their master is.

*This is providing that one hominid did not beat the other to death with a rock during the ensuing argument.

Mt St Helens released a plume of steam at approximately noon local time. Within an hour, the “eruption” was over and only wisps could be seen emerging from the crater.

I remember my mom calling me downstairs early in the morning of May 18, 1980, when St Helens first erupted, flattening over 200 sq miles around it. I sat on the sofa and ate breakfast in my PJs while watching the first natural disaster of my young memory. Days later, an extremely thin layer of dust-like ash settled upon my hometown in South Dakota. Not enough to collect, but enough to wipe off with your finger and go, “Wow”. I still have a baby food jar of MSH ash that I bought for $1 at the Hot Springs, SD, mammoth site later that year.

I kind of like volcanos, hurricanes, tidal waves, and tornados. I don’t like the deaths and ruined lives that inevitably come in their wake, but I enjoy seeing the earth scour and transform itself. Kind of reminds you that you aren’t where you are because of your job, or your health plan, or homeland security, but because the planet is allowing you to be there. And whenever she wants, she’ll take you out.

(Mucho gracias to Hekate for grabbing the screenshot from her computer when my browser was unable to connect to the US Forest Service’s webcam.)

–On the lighter side, Tomato shares with us this column that asks the question: does god hate Florida?

I didn’t watch most of the debate last night. We were both tired and fighting off some bug that’s trying to set up base camp in our immune systems. Besides, the aquarium needed to be cleaned, and the well-being of my sharks is much more important than the canned rhetoric that was sure to be slung by the candidates (though most assuredly not directly at one other, thanks to their “Memorandum of Understanding“). (There is also a .pdf version of the full memo, if you have the bandwidth and the patience to wade through it.)

I half-listened to the debate during the moments when Arial flipped over during commercial breaks in the other shows she was watching. I didn’t hear enough to draw a well-informed conclusion (that’s what transcripts and archived audio streams are for). However, the parts that I did hear left me with the feeling that Kerry came across and clear and concise, with Bush pausing and fumbling at many points. I would like to have heard more specifics about the plans Kerry repeatedly said he had, and further explanation of his policy shift regarding that $87 billion Iraq spending bill. (I have a pretty good idea why, but I want to hear it directly from him.) As for Mr Bush, I wish he would have justified his own policies a little more and not engaged in so much “How can you listen to this guy? He changed his mind!”

Having seen Kerry’s oratorical abilities shine in previous debates over the course of his career, and seeing how well he appears to have done in this one, I’m looking forward to how he performs during the next two.

Here is a good analysis not of the debate itself, but of the veracity of what the two men said. You’ll probably need one of these Bugmenot registration codes to view it.