"Don't forget about the duplicate printing of the 2013 B $1 star note. There are millions of them out there, it's just a matter of finding them. Depending on the condition of the bill, the serial number sequence (collectors will pay more for unique sequences as mentioned in the subreddit or ones like 10101010 or 12345678), and who may have the other matching bill, they can be valued at $20,000 to $150,000. New site: https://project2013b2.com/ Older separate site: https://www.2013b.com/ . Also, any bill that has a star at the end of the serial number is a reprint and can be worth more than the face value."
According to the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves [an excellent book, by the way, which I recommend to all who love the English language], the semicolon was first used by Aldus Manutius in the 15th century (illustration at left; image credit to Auburn University).
"... a study published last month in the Nature journal Scientific Data significantly updated the estimated size of the Roman Empire’s road system, increasing its total length to 187,460 miles from about 120,000 miles. Rome probably achieved peak road sometime around A.D. 150, when the empire was at its most prosperous and extensive. But the database tallies all the roads presumed to have existed during Rome’s life span, from roughly 312 B.C. to A.D. 400.The data set does not reflect one particular year or even century because sadly, for the entire empire, we cannot confidently say how the road system changed within the entire Roman period,” Tom Brughmans, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark who collaborated on the paper, wrote in an email. “We definitely have chronological information for some roads, but this is a minority...Dr. Brughmans and his colleagues defined Roman roads more broadly to include any walkable path and used a practical, terrain-following mapping technique, rather than imposing unrealistic straight lines. The change substantially increased mapped networks in North Africa, Greece and the Iberian Peninsula..."
I first tried this in December of 2009 as a Christmas card, then revived the concept in 2017 and again in 2018 as a New Year's endeavor.
Here are the instructions on how to participate:
1) In the comment section of THIS post, give me a LINK to a photo (or a bit of artwork or other image) that you have in your blog, or in your Flickr photostream or in some other online storage site that I can access. I'd prefer that you not email me the photo - just give the link and I'll go there and copy/paste it.* (but see addendum)
The picture can be of you, or your family, or your computer, or your cat, or whatever - it doesn't matter. It should belong to you (not a commercial image with copyright issues).
2) With the photo link send a brief (~25 words) greeting, directed to the other readers and visitors. This is to be a greeting to other readers, not a comment to me or about TYWKIWDBI.
3) Sign with the avatar name you use in commenting here, or in your blog, or your real name if you wish. This is not a venue to be used to say "Hi from anon." I recognize that a number of readers here prefer to leave comments anonymously - which is fine - but this greeting card is for identifiable people.
Note - as various trolls have realized, for TYWKIWDBI I am the "autocrat at the breakfast table" and reserve absolute right to control the content. For this venture I may edit comments for length and trim pictures if they are too big. I may limit the number of entries if there are too many, and I will absolutely vaporize anything that hints of spam or might be offensive to other readers.
And it doesn't need to be "Christmasy" - this will be posted after Christmas as a New Year's greeting, so it can celebrate the end of the past year or express hope about the one to come. But mostly it's just to say "hi" to other readers whose names you have seen in the comments.
*Addendum: I realize that not everyone has online places to store photos, so once again I will let you email me a photo/text/name if you have no other option. You can send it to the blog's address: retag4726(at)mypacks.net.
I'm looking forward to seeing what arrives. This was last year's collective greeting.
Reposted from 2021 because collective greetings and good wishes are more necessary now than ever before. Please note this feature is only for readers/commentors with established identities. I know some readers prefer to click the "anonymous" button when writing a comment for privacy reasons, but I encourage you if you log in anonymously to establish some kind of identity by signing your comments with a cryptic identity ("old lady in Peoria", "the guy with two bicycles" or whatever).
This was the holiday greeting for December 2021.
After getting swallowed by a frog, [a water scavenger beetle] can scuttle down the amphibian’s gut and force it to poop — emerging slightly soiled, but very much alive... A whopping 90 percent of the beetles they swallowed made it out the other end alive, all within six hours of being gulped down...Beetles of other species didn’t fare quite as well and were excreted as corpses after a couple days in amphibio. Dead Regimbartia took days too, hinting that their living counterparts were actively engineering their great escapes...Dr. Sugiura thinks Regimbartia beetles may use their legs to brace themselves and crawl through the gut, which can stretch several inches — an arduous journey for a four- or five-millimeter-long beetle. When they reach the end of that tunnel, the insects may be able to tickle open the cloacal sphincter, the ring of muscle that drawstrings the frog’s rear end shut, expelling themselves in a flood of feces.
Via A London Salmagundi.This shell from the 11th century, which was probably used to hold and pour sacred water during religious ceremonies, depicts the god Vishnu who is known for using a conch shell as a war trumpet. (Bengali or Orissan)
The use of large Charonia seashells as labial vibration aerophones is documented in various cultures around the world. In Catalonia, north-eastern Iberia, 12 such instruments have been recovered from Neolithic contexts, dating from the second half of the fifth and the first half of the fourth millennia BC, yet they have received little attention in academia. Given that some examples retain the ability to produce sounds, their archaeoacoustic study offers insight into possible uses and meanings for Neolithic communities. While not all can still produce sounds, the high sound intensity of those that do may indicate a primary function as signalling devices that facilitated communication in Neolithic communities...Based on the results obtained from the acoustic testing of the eight playable shell trumpets from Neolithic Catalonia, we argue that the primary acoustic characteristic of these instruments—their most notable and likely most functional feature—is their high sound intensity, which aligns with their interpretation as signalling instruments. In this context, techniques such as bending or hand-stopping, which involve a loss of energy, may aid expression but would likely hinder the effectiveness of signalling over long distances. A similar issue applies to overtones: producing them requires more effort and technical skill, and the resulting sound tends to be weaker in terms of intensity.Shell trumpets may have enabled long-distance communication due to their high sound pressure levels, surpassing any other known prehistoric tool in acoustic power.
“If the ice is clear, you can sometimes see snapping or painted turtles moving slowly under the ice,” said Jeff LeClere, zoologist and amphibian and reptile specialist with the Minnesota Biological Survey.“All of Minnesota’s nine species of turtles overwinter aquatically,” he said.This winter dormancy, called brumation, requires them to be deep enough to avoid being fatally frozen in ice and to slow their metabolism drastically to conserve energy. Most don’t move at all once this turtle equivalent of hibernation begins. It also minimizes their need for oxygen, which they absorb from the frigid water through a process called cutaneous respiration...Softshell turtles tend to bury themselves about an inch beneath sand, silt or gravel, while other species sidle under logs or rocky nooks. Map turtles like to congregate along the wing dams, which are rock structures along navigation channels of the Mississippi River, LeClere said. Having shelter can lessen the threat of winter predators such as otters...Some turtles, such as painted or snapping turtles, simply seek the right depth at the bottom of a lake or pond. They may congregate in areas where natural springs or a lack of shade encourages quicker melting — with vital access to sunshine and food — in the spring.
When the American republic was founded, the Earth was no more than 75,000 years old. No contemporary thinker imagined it could possibly be older. Thus Thomas Jefferson was confident that woolly mammoths must still live in “the northern and western parts of America,” places that “still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed by us.”The idea that mammoths or any other kind of creature might have ceased to exist was, to him, inconceivable. “Such is the Å“conomy of nature,” he wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia, “that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.”
Those illusory behemoths roaming out there somewhere beyond the Rockies remind us that the world of the Founding Fathers is in some ways as alien to us as ours would be to them... The originalist fallacy that dominates the current Supreme Court—the pretense that it is possible to read the minds of the Founders and discern what they “really” meant—in fact turns the Founders into ventriloquists’ dummies. We express our own prejudices by moving their lips.
A diagnosis of spironolactone-induced gynecomastia — an adverse drug effect seen more frequently in men taking more than 100 mg per day — was made. The mechanism is multifactorial and includes androgen-receptor blockade and increased peripheral conversion of testosterone to estradiol.
"The drugs definitely associated with the onset of gynecomastia are spironolactone, cimetidine, ketoconazole, hGH, estrogens, hCG, anti-androgens, GnRH analogs and 5-α reductase inhibitors. Medications probably associated with gynecomastia include risperidone, verapamil, nifedipine, omeprazole, alkylating agents, HIV medications (efavirenz), anabolic steroids, alcohol and opioids."
