Elephants, The Lord of the Rings

For my Physics final, I'm doing a project with my team (I'm using "team" loosely here. There four of us, of whom only two are doing actual work and stuff) about elephantine seismic communication (it's pretty cool. In a nutshell, the idea is that elephants thump the ground so that other elephants can hear them and thump back, and they can chat about things). There's this one woman, Caitlin O'Connell, who's THE elephant communication researcher. She pretty much discovered this method of communication the year I was born and has been working on it ever since.

So anyway, I was reading a preview of her book about elephants on Google Books, and she's making an analogy between seismic communication in elephants and the way people put their ears on the ground to hear things (awkward position, by the way, and what if an ant gets in your ear? That almost happend to me today as I lay on the grass at school), and then she adds,

Or, for Lord of the Rings fans, Aragorn putting his head to the rock to listen for the distant thumping feet of the fearsome Urukai as they bore Merry and Pippin away to Isengard.

Wow! How did she know?? That totally struck home; that's exactly what I've been envisioning for the past month whenever I think about this elephant project. And then the bit where Aragorn (or was it Gimli?) says, "Legolas, what do your elf-eyes see?" and then Legolas stands on a boulder or something in his leggings and looks sexily across the plains.

I love Legolas.

The book is The elephant's secret sense: the hidden life of the wild herds of Africa

By Caitlin O'Connell

Ritter

It's the end of semester, so I don't have time to write much of a blog post (I do, however, have ample National Geographic browsing time. Such is life).

There's a woman at the Science Faculty who sells candy (well, there's two candy ladies, but I only like one of them, even if her bubble gum is more expensive). But it's not just ordinary candy! I mean, some of it is ordinary, but she always has cool imported candy, which is why I've dubbed her Exotic Candy Lady. ECL has supplied me throughout the semester with cool stuff like a Giant Reese's Cup and a Reese's Crispy Crunch Bar, and also has things like Wonka Jelly Donutz*, Pop Rocks Chocolate Bars, SweeTarts, Ritter Sport chocolate bars (!), etc.

I never bought a Ritter Sport because I'm not exactly rolling in money over here, but today she had some mini Ritter Sports. I was really happy, because:

a) CHOC OLATE!

b) mini candy!

c) CHOCOLATE!

d) it's cheap!

e) CHOCOLATE!

f) ...chocolate!

So I bought two, and I worked it out just now: they were a better deal than a bigger bar; 22% cheaper, in fact (no, I'm not a dork for having worked that out. *Shoves glasses up nose*). Did Exotic Candy Lady steal a shipment of these or something? And if so, does she have a son I can marry?

Whatever, I'm stocking up tomorrow. If I buy them by sending my friends to fetch 'em, she'll HAVE to restock, right? Otherwise she'll know it's just me buying them all. Because as it is, she already knows that I get all excited over her candy, mainly Reese's products and chocolate (she gives me little discounts sometimes on clearance chocolate. Just another reason to like her). And I've only had the valor to eat one of my little chocs, because what if they're all gone by tomorrow?! NOOOOOOO!

*Which never appealed to me, but I've just found out via googling that they're CHOCOLATE! Drat. I passed on those for like 2 months and now she'll probably never re-stock them, because they were slow sellers.