"What any village greybeard knows."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, another of my boyhood heroes, peppered his writing with the phrase. Whenever he wanted to point out that something was merely common sense. Especially, when some pretentious academic declared a new finding that common folk had known since time immemorial.
I have long believed that our summer rains have two benefits. The first I have written about: driving down our oppressive heat and humidity. But the rain also seems to beat back our plague of mosquitoes.
That "seems" is a recent addition to my greybeard wisdom because it is apparently not based on science.
You have probably all seen the recent headlines about mosquitoes and rain. I first saw the story in Nature magazine. "Mosquitoes don't let the rain get them down" is how the "International weekly journal of science" put it.
A study was released earlier this month that asserts that mosquitoes are not deterred by rain. Not even tropical downpours where they are hit by high velocity drops about every 20 seconds.
And how do they survive? They simply join with the drop and ride it downward for about 20 mosquito body lengths. And then disembark the drop. Like an aquatic Otis.
Those are the lucky mosquitoes. If the rain drop catches a mosquito perched on a leaf or the ground, the result is fatal. For the mosquito. The force of the impact is the equivalent of an SUV dropping on a person.
If Solzhenitsyn had dropped by for tea, he would probably say: "Who cares if a village greybeard would be wrong? Better yet, what kind of person even asks what would happen to a mosquito in a rain storm?"
The article doesn't answer the who, but it gives us a clue by answering why. "The team is already expanding its investigations to consider a broader range of conditions, from fog to deluge, which they say could prove useful in implementing mosquito controls for disease or for designing miniature robots that can mimic mosquitoes in flight." (My emphasis.)
There it is. This is not a group merely wasting taxpayers' money for some nonsensical reason. They are wasting taxpayers' money for some unnerving reasons.
You do not have to be part of the aluminum foil hat brigade to realize that the same futuristic remote-controlled robots that could cure little Jimmie's cancer and grab DNA samples from Osama bin Laden in his compound could also harvest information of political opponents or other law-abiding citizens. History offers a warning semaphore on the ability of governments to choose wisely.
But the study does help me understand why this afternoon, as the rain continues to fall, that I have been visited by several mosquitoes looking for a quite leg snack.
Or, at least, I think they were mosquitoes.
Note: I told you yesterday about the gully that had opened up on the street near the church building. It is now a larger gully and almost to the church building gate. Nature has her own way of reclaiming her stream beds.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, another of my boyhood heroes, peppered his writing with the phrase. Whenever he wanted to point out that something was merely common sense. Especially, when some pretentious academic declared a new finding that common folk had known since time immemorial.
I have long believed that our summer rains have two benefits. The first I have written about: driving down our oppressive heat and humidity. But the rain also seems to beat back our plague of mosquitoes.
That "seems" is a recent addition to my greybeard wisdom because it is apparently not based on science.
You have probably all seen the recent headlines about mosquitoes and rain. I first saw the story in Nature magazine. "Mosquitoes don't let the rain get them down" is how the "International weekly journal of science" put it.
A study was released earlier this month that asserts that mosquitoes are not deterred by rain. Not even tropical downpours where they are hit by high velocity drops about every 20 seconds.
And how do they survive? They simply join with the drop and ride it downward for about 20 mosquito body lengths. And then disembark the drop. Like an aquatic Otis.
Those are the lucky mosquitoes. If the rain drop catches a mosquito perched on a leaf or the ground, the result is fatal. For the mosquito. The force of the impact is the equivalent of an SUV dropping on a person.
If Solzhenitsyn had dropped by for tea, he would probably say: "Who cares if a village greybeard would be wrong? Better yet, what kind of person even asks what would happen to a mosquito in a rain storm?"
The article doesn't answer the who, but it gives us a clue by answering why. "The team is already expanding its investigations to consider a broader range of conditions, from fog to deluge, which they say could prove useful in implementing mosquito controls for disease or for designing miniature robots that can mimic mosquitoes in flight." (My emphasis.)
There it is. This is not a group merely wasting taxpayers' money for some nonsensical reason. They are wasting taxpayers' money for some unnerving reasons.
You do not have to be part of the aluminum foil hat brigade to realize that the same futuristic remote-controlled robots that could cure little Jimmie's cancer and grab DNA samples from Osama bin Laden in his compound could also harvest information of political opponents or other law-abiding citizens. History offers a warning semaphore on the ability of governments to choose wisely.
But the study does help me understand why this afternoon, as the rain continues to fall, that I have been visited by several mosquitoes looking for a quite leg snack.
Or, at least, I think they were mosquitoes.
Note: I told you yesterday about the gully that had opened up on the street near the church building. It is now a larger gully and almost to the church building gate. Nature has her own way of reclaiming her stream beds.
