Indiana discovered by scientists. “When we ponder biodiversity, we often take our own backyard for granted,” writes John Shuey in the fall newsletter of the Nature Conservancy in Indiana. “Indiana is indeed producing a rash of new species discoveries….Eric Metzler has been sampling prairie and savanna moths for years in Ohio. With the restoration of Kankakee Sands underway [in northwest Indiana’s Newton County], the Nature Conservancy asked him to sample savanna and sand prairie moths for two years at the site….During the course of this work, Eric encountered something we didn’t really expect in a group of insects as well known as moths: two new species–both of which are limited to very high-quality habitats,” Cochylis ringsi and Aethes patricia.
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From Constantinople to Puritanism to Buy Nothing Day. University of Illinois historian Elizabeth Pleck notes in a recent press release that Saint Gregory Nanzianzen, a fourth-century bishop of Constantinople, complained that the populace was destroying the true meaning of Christmas by “making merry. He urged Christians to commemorate the birth of Jesus in a heavenly rather than an earthly manner.”
