Reading of the birds and the attempts to kill them with shotguns reminds me, with sorrow, of the extinction of the passenger pigeon, once so prolific they changed forest ecosystems. Audubon described one time when it took three days for the mega-flock to fly by [The Birds of America, v5]: "The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose."

Florida's timezone difference helped me get into grad school.

I had to take the GRE but the slots in Tallahassee were booked up, so I decided to take it in Panama City, which is an hour's drive away. Somehow I woke up late, with a scant hour to get to PC. I threw on my clothes and started driving. Then to my relief I passed the sign welcoming travelers to the Central Time Zone and reminding us to set our clocks back an hour.

That meant I had time to eat breakfast and still arrive early for the test, in a calm state of mind.

Until this video I never realized how odd it is that the west Florida panhandle and east Oregon were only one timezone apart.

Probably safer than sleeping on the .. I don't have a word for it. The shelf behind the rear seat, between the rear window and above the most forward part of the trunk. As a small kid I remember sleeping on that shelf in our 1973 Ford Galaxie sedan.

When we got bigger, my sister and I would stuff the footwells and and nap laying flat. W/o seat belts, of course.

I remember back in the early 1980s when all the planets were on the same side of the Sun - within an arc 95 degrees wide, says Wikipedia. Some were worried about "The Jupiter Effect", wherein it was predicted the alignment would cause catastrophes on Earth. March 10, 1982 came and when without a problem.
I only just now realized I confused it with "The Late Great Planet Earth", a book arguing the Biblical end-times were coming by the 1980s.

Manatees also like the warm water of the nuclear plants during cold winters. In the upcoming movie, it will be the manatees who save us from the crocs.

The wires are needed because, as Earnshaw's theorem shows, ferromagnets cannot levitate a static object against gravity. Ha! I knew the college physics would come in useful!

Following along the lines of Captain Womble's "prescriptive and descriptive", I was hoping for something like: "I am no longer the simple prescriptivist you once knew. Now I am a descriptivist, and wield the deeper grammar."

Then for every false grammar rule, like the prohibition on splitting an infinitive, reply with something like "the rules am meaningful" or "wood red small house" to make even the Errorist cringe in pain.

It could be they tried 50 times, in which case perseverance was also a factor.

I've not heard of that use of "heater" before. I think of it as a gun or weapon because of Star Trek ToS episode "A Piece of the Action", which would give an entirely different meaning to "sucks on a heater." OTOH, "Hepcats Jive Talk Dictionary" from 1945 defines it as "a big cigar", so perhaps John is simply more hep than I am.

My wife's Dad took us to the gun range where I got to fire his Mosin–Nagant, which is similar to the rifle Häyhä used, and also with iron sights. It made me appreciate more the skill, patience, stamina, and, well, sisu that Häyhä must have had.

To quote my grandmother: "Oh my stars and stripes!" The grain alignment is perfect, and the amount of sanding incredible.

My wife uses an app to count steps. We live in Sweden, within walking distance of stores and schools, or we take mass transit. About 15 months ago she went back to the US for her mother's 60th birthday. Her step counts for that week were a small fraction of normal, as even when she wanted to walk, it just wasn't possible.