Still time to make this your Halloween costume

There are a number of mythical creatures in the world. Well, there are a number of mythologies in the world. That doesn't necessarily mean the creatures stride the Earth. Although there could be some factual basis to some, if distorted.

The Kishi, stemming from Angolan folklore, is a distinctive one. In front, there's a human face, attractive and persuasive. In back, the face of a hyena, all ravenous appetite. It's sort of the Janus concept mixed with werewolves. Of course hyenas are more closely related to cats than wolves, and also scavengers. You wouldn't want to tangle with one, though.

This sounds like a natural boogeyman tale to frighten children with. It also nails something about how human behavior can be deceptive. Versatile that way.

2 tons of fun

Yes, I've seen it up close.

Nibbles Woodaway, the Big Blue Bug, is an engineering marvel of a sort, and apparently the world's largest bug. And on a smaller scale, he's a beloved costumed character, the costumes having less insectoid and more cartoony features. The Big Blue Bug is a mainstay here in Rhode Island.

Which is weird, when you think about it. Most of us wouldn't welcome an actual termite of that size, if such a thing were possible under the square-cube law. Or for that matter, the regular size ones. Nibbles is perched on top of an exterminator's business, after all. But a good monument unifies, sometimes to odd effect.

In flight

 

Looking for a feel-good story? This young woman doing a bat family reunification may do the trick. (A family of actual bats, not Batman and his cohorts.) I don't think I'd ever realized how shaky bats are when they're not in the air. The baby, especially, had a kind of Muppet way of moving.

"Mum" isn't standard American for mother, so I gather this is either the British Isles or the Antipodes. Doesn't look much like Australia, but it is nighttime in the city, so it's harder to tell.

Night chill

Today I went out wearing a purple camp shirt with nothing over it. That was fine. The sun was shining and the wind wasn't too strong, so I felt warm enough.

As the sun went down, things changed. It hasn't gotten cold enough for the heat to kick on, yet. But when day becomes night it's time to shut the windows, and there's still a little chill. Good thing there are sweaters, then.

View from the eatery

 

When I first started seeing the name "George Segal" in art books, I thought, "Wow, the actor did this? Must be a pretty busy guy." Well, I'm sure he was, at times. But they're too different guys. 

This sculpture is called "The Restaurant Window II". Strictly speaking I guess it's a little more than a sculpture, because there's the background, incorporating incandescent lights. But the figure in the foreground is the key part. While the plaster she and her clothing are made of are uncolored, you can pick things up. Those are thick boots on her feet, so it's probably winter. And she looks to be waiting. For what or whom, we don't know. But it's starting to strain her patience.

Halo effect

I recently borrowed a short book from the library: The Saint and the Templar Treasure by Leslie Charteris. Or rather, by "Leslie Charteris." What I've since found out is that Charteris, though busy writing novels and short stories with his most famous creation for a period of about 30 years, largely left things to ghostwriters from the mid-late 60s onwards. The book is a good crime adventure, but it's "in the school of"  rather than by the original master.

Reading the story, it's pretty easy to hear Roger Moore in both Simon Templar's dialogue and in some of the narration. Moore was ideally suited to playing the Saint. He was winning as a bon vivant who loved fine wine and fancy baubles, but was ultimately a knight in shining armor. 007 wasn't as good a role for him because Bond shouldn't have easy charm, but rather be a little blunt.

Hey what're the odds

The full title of Joseph Mazur's book Fluke is Fluke: The Math & Myth of Coincidence. The cover of the 2016 Basic Books edition shows a man in silhouette, walking his dog. A lightning bolt descends from the word "Fluke", aimed at the man's head. Wouldn't it be crazy if he had been hit by lightning before and was about to be so struck again?

An excerpt: 

By definition, coincidences are events that happen without apparent cause. Apparent to whom? It does not mean there is no cause. The world generally moves by cause and effect. I say generally, because there are acausal phenomena in physics, psychology, and religion. But the word apparent tells us that the moment we learn the cause of a coincidental phenomenon, its status diminishes to a simple time-space event. That must mean that coincidences are relative to the people affected by them. It also means that the unapparent cause is there, waiting to be discovered. If there is no cause at all, then it happens by chance. 

This is graspable in theory. It doesn't necessarily make this "unapparent cause" easy to pin down. There are probably some coincidences where the actual odds for and against remain a topic of hot debate.

One interesting thing I learned about in this book is the birthday problem, meaning that the probability of two people having the same birthday reaches 50% when there are 23 people in the group. This threw me at first. I would have guessed that this point came at 183, which is about half the number of days in the year. But the numbers check out when you look at it.