Today's random excerpt from the memetic maelstrom of meandering maroons:

"At once frivolous and freighted with cultural symbolism, the plastic duck makes a perfect subject for a writer of HohnÕs ambition. ÒWhat misanthrope, what damp, drizzly November of a sourpuss, upon beholding a rubber duck afloat, does not feel a Crayola ray of sunshine brightening his gloomy heart?Ó he asks. But both the birth and the afterlife of the duck, Hohn soon learns, are toxic. Adrift on the ocean, the toys can become coated with Òpersistent organic pollutantsÓ like polyvinyl chloride, bisphenol A and phthalates. Photodegraded into smaller pieces, they can be fatally ingested by sea creatures and will endure, in swirling gyres, for years. "

(From a NYT review of a new book, "Moby Duck", concerning a container of plastic bath-toy ducks lost overboard in the Pacific... Cui bonum??)