Not in play: the “reasons” was that her publisher believed that young boys (the primary target audience for her books) would not want to read a book from an author with a female name. Similar reasoning has historically caused many female authors to either go by similar “initial” pen names, or adopt androgynous pen names, often at the insistence of their publishers.
In play:
“The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” is a novelty song from 2013, recorded by the Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis. The song was created as an “anti-hit” to promote the duo’s television talk show, and was intended to be a flop; instead, it went viral, became a #1 hit in Norway and a top-10 hit in the U.S., and has generated 1.2 billion views on YouTube.
“Gangham Style” by South Korean artist Psy debuted on Youtube on July 15, 2012; on December 21, 2012, it became the first video to register 1 billion views on the platform.
The Gangnam in “Gangnam Style” is a wealthy neighborhood of Seoul; think of it as the Korean version of Beverly Hills or Park Avenue. Even if you don’t understand Korean, you can get the general drift of what the video is about by watching for clues in the video. Basically, Psy is poking fun at himself for striving to look Gangnam, and failing. For example, it looks like he’s on a tony beach, until the camera pans out and you can see he’s just in a public park. Or it looks like he’s getting a fancy massage, but he’s just in a sauna with tatted-up mobsters. The song is actually a parody; it’s putting people who strive to look wealthy and prestigious on blast.
“Seoul Man” is a non-fiction book by Frank Ahrens, a former journalist for the Washington Post, who spent three years working in South Korea as the global public relations director for Hyundai Motors. The book details the culture clashes, and differences between Korean and American business cultures, which he experienced.
The Gyeongbu Line is an intercity railway that connects Seoul to other major cities in South Korea. Built in 1902, it was upgraded in 2016 to accommodate super high-speed service (also called KTX), which shortened the travel time from Seoul to its terminus in Busan (approx. 250 miles) to 150 minutes.
The dividing line between North Korea and South Korea is known as the Military Demarcation Line (MDL). Running directly across the center of the peninsula, this line is surrounded by the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a heavily fortified 2.5-mile-wide and 160-mile-long buffer strip. The line roughly follows the 38th parallel. This border was originally established in 1945 to determine the boundary between the Soviet and American occupation zones, following the surrender of Japan, which had ruled the country of Korea for the previous 35 years.
40 years after the 1986 nuclear accident, a large number of species that are threatened in Ukraine and in wider Europe are thriving in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, including the wild Przewalski’s horse. Surprisingly, studies have shown no major negative effects of current radiation levels on the animal and plant populations living in Chernobyl..
On the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, a scale going from 1 (low) to 7 (highest), there have only ever been two Level 7 events. Besides the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is the only other Level 7 event in history.
Level 42 is an English jazz-funk band from England that is best remembered for their hits, “Something About You”, which reached No. 7 on US pop charts, and “Lessons in Love”, which hit No. 3 on UK pop charts. The band took its name from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, in which “42” is the answer to “the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.”
In 1947, MLB baseball player Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on 15 April. In doing so he became the first African American to play in the major leagues. He played for 10 seasons, all for the Brooklyn Dodgers. His last appearance was on 10 October 1956.
Robinson, born in 1919, suffered a heart attack in 1968. In his middle age years he suffered from heart disease, and diabetes which rendered him nearly blind. In 1972 at the age of only 53 he died of a heart attack.
During his baseball career Robinson won the inaugural Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, was an All-Star for six consecutive seasons from 1949 through 1954, and won the National League (NL) Most Valuable Player Award in 1949. In 1997 MLB retired his jersey number 42 throughout all of baseball. Jackie Robinson was the first professional athlete in any sport to be so honored.
Before he became a professional, Jackie Robinson was an outstanding athlete in high school and college. He played five sports at John Muir Technical High School in Pasadena, and he broke his brother’s junior college broad jump record while attending Pasadena Junior College. He then attended UCLA, where he became the school’s first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football, and track.
Notable alumni of John Muir High School in Pasadena, CA, include David Lee Roth (former frontman for the metal band Van Halen), Rodney King, and Sirhan Sirhan.
The naturalist and author John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt were friends who strongly agreed on the necessity of conservation in the U.S. Muir hosted Roosevelt at Yosemite National Park in May 1903.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota has three separate units: the North Unit, the South Unit, and the Elkhorn Ranch Unit. The North Unit is along Highway US-85 near Watford City ND, the South Unit is along Interstate 94 near Medora ND (about 60 miles SSW as the crow flies), and the Elkhorn Ranch Unit is in open country along the Little Missouri River about 40 miles SSW of Watford City as the crow flies. The Little Missouri River flows through all three units of the park. The area is tied to Theodore Roosevelt because he first went there in 1883 to hunt bison. He fell in love with the area and its “perfect freedom” that it offered.
Bison and buffalo, whose names are interchangeable in North America, are very different animals. True buffalo are native to Africa and Asia, while the shaggy, humped animals roaming North America are actually bison.
Some key differences:
Bison have a prominent shoulder hump. Buffalo do not have a hump.
Bison have massive heads, thick shaggy coats, and long beards. Buffalo have smaller, more cow-like heads and smoother coats.
Bison have short, sharp horns designed for plowing snow and defense. True buffalo have much larger, sweeping horns that can resemble a handlebar mustache.
Why the confusion? When early French and American settlers arrived in North America, they encountered the American bison. The animals resembled the buffalo they knew from the Old World, so the nickname stuck. In North America, calling a bison a “buffalo” is completely accepted in casual conversation, but scientifically, they are very different.
It is located near DD coordinates ▲ 43.651, -103.373. Pasting those numbers into a map should take you to very near it. The park has a free roaming herd of nearly 1,400 bison . It is one of the world’s largest publicly owned bison herds. The park’s map shows the Bison Center at the south east area.
A “basin” (or bison in Australian or British English) can refer to a geological depression where water collects, an endorheic region (meaning its waters never reach an ocean), or a specific geographic landmark. At Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada, much of its landscape was carved by glaciers and some of them are still here. The Lehman rock glacier – a large mass of boulders cemented together by ice – is visible from the Glacier Trail and the Summit Trail. A single remnant of the true ice glaciers that formed the park 10,000 years ago resides in Lehman Cirque, just above the Lehman rock glacier.
. It is one of the world’s largest publicly owned bison herds. The park’s map shows the Bison Center at the south east area.