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Bleh. We have tickets for the Jonathan Coulton show tonight in Boston/Cambridge, but I may be too sick to go. Called in sick to work today, and am finding when I walk around the house that I'm a bit dizzy - that's not conducive to standing for 4 hours during a concert.

Bird Trivia!

Following a conversation about training Kappa to go to the grocery store for me while sick, I ended up looking up homing pigeons, and the Wikipedia effect led me to the homing pigeon named Cher Ami, the only animal to receive the Croix de Guerre, akin to our purple heart.

As Cher Ami tried to fly back home, the Germans saw him rising out of the brush and opened fire and for several minutes, bullets zipped through the air all around him. The men of the Lost Battalion saw Cher Ami shot down, but he was soon airborne again. He managed to arrive back at his loft at division headquarters 25 miles to the rear in just 25 minutes^*, helping to save the lives of the 194 survivors. In this last mission, Cher Ami had delivered the message despite having been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, covered in blood, and with a leg hanging only by a tendon.

[Wikipedia]

*I started out a bit doubtful at this speed, as a mile a minute is 60mph, but more Wikipedia hunting says they can top 130km/h, or 80mph.

And it was to that hanging leg that the message was attached! The vets army medics gave Cher Ami amazing treatment, and his life was extended by 9 months, but he did eventually succumb to the injuries. He's now stuffed and mounted in the Smithsonian collection "The Price of Freedom".

Book Review: "I Am Legend"

I finally got around to reading the 1954 post-apocalyptic novel by Richard Matheson upon which the 2007 film starring Will Smith was loosely based.

If you didn't want to read the spoilers below, my summary is that the novel's good in an entirely different way from the film.

( Spoilers for both the novel and movie herein )

Okay, that came out really lengthy. If you don't want to read the novel eventually, at least give the film's alternate ending a gander.