The Milky Way - horizontal and vertical orientations

Both images were entries at NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day (November 5, 2024 and July 2, 2025).  Relevant discussion at each link.

Not The Onion

I have no words.  Just waiting to see who else climbs out of the clown car.

The image is a nonclickable screencap.  Details at The Daily Mail, which seems oddly appropriate.

The cartoon equivalent of a "dad joke"

"The muumuu /ˈmuːmuː/ or muʻumuʻu (Hawaiian pronunciation: [ˈmuʔuˈmuʔu]) is a loose dress of Hawaiian origin. It is related to the Mother Hubbard dress, introduced by Christian missionaries in Polynesia to "civilize" those whom they considered half-naked savages. Within the category of fashion known as aloha wear, the muumuu, like the aloha shirt, are often brilliantly colored with floral patterns of Polynesian motifs. In Hawaiʻi, muumuus are no longer as widely worn as an aloha shirt, but continue to be a popular dress for social gatherings, church, and festivals such as the Merrie Monarch hula competition.

The word muʻumuʻu means "cut off" in Hawaiian. The dress, which was originally used as an undergarment or chemise for the holokū, lacked a yoke and may have featured short sleeves or no sleeves at all. The muumuu was made of lightweight solid white cotton fabric and, in addition to being an undergarment, served Hawaiian women as a housedress, nightgown, and swimsuit. Holokū was the original name for the Mother Hubbard dress introduced by Protestant missionaries to Hawaii in the 1820s. In contrast to the muumuu, the holokū featured long sleeves and a floor-length unfitted dress falling from a high-necked yoke which was worn by the aliʻi as well as the common people. By the 1870s, the holokū of the aliʻi took on a more fitted waist and often a train seven or eight yards in length for the evening, and included ruffles, flounces and trimmings, while the modest loose-fitting train-less holokū continued to be widely worn by women of all classes as their daily dress. In time, upon the introduction of printed fabrics to Hawai'i, the muumuu, essentially a shortened and more comfortable version of the holokū, gained popularity for everyday wear."

An articulated T. rex foot

We all know T. rex were big, but wow...  The foot is up for bids at Sotheby's "Geek Week" auction.  Lots of amazing items there, priced for the megamillionaires.

Image from a "Photos of the Day" gallery at The Guardian.

A fascinating video about Roman aqueducts

Lots and lots of information I didn't know, most of it quite interesting.  Sadly, the speaker employs an execrable narrative style of pauses and emphasis that has to be tolerated to extract the info.

Reposted from 2022 to add a much higher quality video which uses animation to explain some of the engineering challenges facing the Roman architects.

The engineering of roman aqueducts explained.
byu/cosmic_voyager01 inDamnthatsinteresting

Nonuplets thriving

"On 4 May 2021, nine children were born to Halima Cisse (Mali) in the Ain Borja clinic in Casablanca, Morocco. This is the first known incidence of nonpulets surviving birth.  The record previously belonged to eight babies born in 2009 to Nadya Suleman (USA) aka "Octomom".

Nonuplets are extremely rare, and until the arrival of the Cisse children, no cases had been recorded of nine babies from a single birth surviving for more than a few hours."

The children are now 4 years old.  Updated info at Neatorama.

There are a lot of good people in the world

From a Facebook post by the Longville Campground Residents.

Update on the Facebook post: "7/8/25 Update: We have found 3 possible foster homes for this liittle chick!  He’s on his way to meet the first family. If the family does not accept him, it’s on to number 2.  Thank you to all who shared the call for help, and the people who messaged they might have a match."

Frostbite of the vocal cords

Symptoms of painful swallowing and hoarseness, resulting from the recreational use of inhaled nitrous oxide.  Details at The New England Journal of Medicine.

Addendum:  a tip of the blogging cap to an anonymous reader who provided a link to Inside the Nitrous Mafia, an East Coast Hippie-Crack Ring (in The Village Voice).  It's a longread, but well worth perusing.

"Hypocorism" explained

I encountered the word in a crossword puzzle clue.  As an almost-eighty-year-old English major, I still learn something every day...

Hypocorism: A term of endearment, often a diminutive; a pet name; a nickname.  Rarely used for "baby talk", such as bow-wow for dog and choo-choo for train. 

"Hypocorism joined the English language in the mid-19th century and was once briefly a buzzword among linguists, who used it rather broadly to mean "adult baby talk"—that is, the altered speech adults use when supposedly imitating babies. Once the baby talk issue faded, hypocorism settled back into being just a fancy word for a pet name. Pet names can be diminutives like "Johnny" for "John," endearing terms such as "honey-bunch," or, yes, names from baby talk, like "Nana" for "Grandma."

Etymology from Greek terms for "a small degree" + "caress".

A golden retriever lay in state at the Minnesota capital

I trust every reader here is politically aware enough to know that a political assassination occurred last month in Minnesota when State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot to death at their home.  Many of you may have missed the detail that when the gunman entered the Hortman's home he also shot their golden retriever, Gilbert.

This was not a hunting dog.  Melissa Hortman was training this dog for Helping Paws, a nonprofit that provides service dogs to people with disabilities, including veterans and first responders with PTSD.  Gilbert did not graduate from the program, so the Hortmans decided to keep him as a house dog.  There are no living witnesses to the assassination, so it is not known whether the dog came to the front door out of curiosity or to protect his humans, but it doesn't matter.  Governor Walz decided to include Gilbert in the memorial at the state capital.

There is no record of any other nonhuman ever lying in state, and Melissa Hortman, a former state House speaker still leading the chamber’s Democrats, is the first woman. The state previously granted the honor to 19 men, including a vice president, a U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senators, governors and a Civil War veteran, according to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library.

If any readers consider a dog lying in state to be trivial, please read my post five years ago entitled Remembering Sugar Rae.  And if you still don't understand, please find a different blog to follow.

"Past Lives"

The storyline is very simple.  Lifelong childhood friends in Seoul, Korea are forced apart by circumstances when the girl's family emigrates to Canada.  About 12 years later they re-connect via the internet, but he is stuck in Korea, and she has career commitments in Canada and the U.S.  So, in a decision reminiscent of the memory-erasure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, they agree to stop corresponding and Zooming online and pay attention to their real lives.  Another 12 years pass, and he is invited to meet her and her husband in New York City.  They meet, talk, and ponder.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.  The three actors are excellent, and the dialogue with its hesitations and pauses is utterly realistic - which I value highly in movies that are dialogue-driven.  Regarding the overall tone of the movie, one of the reviews I read used the term "pitch-perfect", which is exactly correct.  This movie is not overly sentimental or overly analytical - and it's not a "rom com" because there is no comedy.  It is a serious contemplation of destinies, alternative possibilites, and stark choices that echo Frost's "The Road Not Taken."

As I looked through various reviews for salient commentary, the best I found was this comment, oddly enough in the YouTube trailer comment thread:

The quick cut at the end showing them as kids was sublime. Gave me chills. There they are once again the two kids standing together but also apart on their divergent paths. The memory now in nighttime mirroring their present was beautiful visual poetry. A realization that their feelings for each other can only exist in a time and space both real and imaginary."

Past Lives has won multiple awards internationally and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Screeplay at the last Academy Awards.  I borrowed the DVD in our library, but the movie should be available streaming and it's available on Netlix.

We should be celebrating the 2nd of July

This Fourth of July, Americans will celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence with picnics, parades and, of course, fireworks. It's a tradition that's been in place for more than 200 years — and for more than 200 years, it's been kind of wrong.

"It is the right day to celebrate the Declaration of Independence," author and historian Ray Raphael tells NPR's Guy Raz. "It is not the right day to celebrate the signing of the declaration or the right day to celebrate independence. The vote for independence was on July 2 — two days before — and the first signing of the declaration ... was not until August 2 — a month later."..

In his book Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, Raphael explores the truth behind the stories of the making of our nation — like how America ended up lighting fireworks on the 4th and not the 2nd.

Raphael says that even the writers of the declaration expected July 2 to be the day that went down in history.

"Adams wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail, on the 3rd of July, the day after they voted for independence, saying the 2nd of July will always be remembered and will be celebrated with parades and illuminations and patriotic speeches," Raphael says. "He described the Fourth of July to the tee, but he called it the 2nd."

America ended up with the 4th because that's the day the Declaration of Independence was sent out to the states to be read. The document was dated July 4, so that's the day they celebrated.

Image from Old Hollywood.

Reposted from 2014 because this is still a "thing you wouldn't know."

Addendum:  I found this info in the National Archives:

The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It was engrossed on parchment and on August 2, 1776, delegates began signing it.

Although the section of the Lee Resolution dealing with independence was not adopted until July 2, Congress appointed on June 10 a committee of five to draft a statement of independence for the colonies. The committee included Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman, with the actual writing delegated to Jefferson.

Jefferson drafted the statement between June 11 and 28, submitted drafts to Adams and Franklin who made some changes, and then presented the draft to the Congress following the July 2nd adoption of the independence section of the Lee Resolution. The congressional revision process took all of July 3rd and most of July 4th. Finally, in the afternoon of July 4th, the Declaration was adopted.

Perhaps my previous source was inaccurate?  I presume Adams was celebrating the addition of the Lee Resolution, which allowed completion of the declaration.

The "changing room" illusion

WWII prisoners-of-war in Minnesota

I watched this program on Minnesota public television while on a recent vacation back to my home area, and was delighted to find that is is available on YouTube.  It is an outstanding and uplifting program, and will be of interest to those outside Minnesota (I think a map in the video shows other POW camps scattered around the U.S.).

Somehow while growing up in the 50s and 60s I never learned that there were German prisoners-of-war living here and working on farms during the war.  It was win-win for American farmers and for the prisoners.  This video is well worth watching IMHO.

James Garfield - president for only 200 days

I have a new favorite president. Before reading this book, literally the only things I knew about James Garfield were that he was featured on the 20c prexie stamp (because he was the 20th president) and that he was assassinated while in office. Now I can add the following...

He grew up in Ohio in abject poverty – a one-room log cabin with a plank floor and windowpanes made of oiled paper. When he was two years old, his father died at age 33, leaving his mother with four children to feed. She farmed the land with the aid of his 11-year-old brother and saved money so that by age four James was able to get a pair of shoes. At age sixteen he began working on the Erie and Ohio Canal, but returned home after contracting malaria. By then his mother had saved $17, which was used to send him to Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, a one-building prep school. During his first year he worked as a janitor in exchange for receiving an education.

So vigorously did Garfield apply himself during his first year at the Eclectic that, by his second year, the school had promoted him from janitor to assistant professor. Along with the subjects he was taking as a student, he was given a full roster of classes to teach, including literature, mathematics, and ancient languages. He taught six classes, which were so popular that he was asked to add two more – one on penmanship and the other on Virgil. (p. 23) 

From there he moved to Williams College in Massachusetts and graduated in two years. He entered state politics in Ohio, then served in the Civil War in the Union Army, after which he was elected to Congress. He did NOT want to be president. He attended a nominating convention which was hopelessly deadlocked. On the 34th ballot, some electors voted for him. He rose to protest and was told to sit down.  On the 36th ballot, he became the Republican nominee – against his will. He was described as shocked, sickened, and pale as death during the proceedings. (pp 40-46).

He never participated in the campaign which was conducted on his behalf, preferring to work and receive visitors on his 160-acre farm.

He built a barn, moved a large shed, planted an orchard, and even shopped for curtains for the house…. he added an entire story, a front porch, and a library. Even with the new library, Garfield’s books filled every room. “You can go nowhere in the general’s home without coming face to face with books,” one reporter marveled. “They confront you in the hall when you enter, in the parlor and the sitting room, in the dining-room and even in the bath-room…” (p. 58) 

His campaign platform as a Republican emphasized civil rights and the welfare of the freed slaves, in which endeavor he was supported by Frederick Douglass. Voter turnout for the election was 78%, and he was elected by a narrow margin.

In the days that followed… Garfield could not shake the feeling that the presidency would bring hi only loneliness and sorrow. As he watched everything he treasured – his time with his children, his books, and his farm – abruptly disappear, he understood that the life he had known was gone. The presidency seemed to him not a great accomplishment but a “bleak mountain” that he was obliged to ascend. (p. 64) 

The assassin, Charles Guiteau, was a religious fanatic who was delusional to the point of frank psychosis. He borrowed $10 to buy a gun, used it to shoot the president not for any political or philosophical reason, but because he believed God wanted him to do it.

His first and primary defense was “Insanity, in that it was God’s act and not mine. The Divine pressure on me to remove the president was so enormous that it destroyed my free agency and therefore I am not legally responsible for my act.” (p. 237) 

The “insanity defense” was well established at the time. Interestingly, everyone at the time agreed that Guiteau was insane and that insane people were not liable for their actions. Everyone on the jury knew this also, but they were so angry that they basically said “he’s guilty – hang him anyway.”

Other interesting tidbits from the book: After Garfield was shot, the second physician who responded to the event was Charles Purvis, surgeon in chief of the Freedmen’s Hospital, 39 years old, one of the first black men in the U.S. to receive medical training at a university, and obviously the first ever to treat a president. (p. 140)

The White House of that era was like a slum residence, perpetually damp with rotting wood and vermin-infested walls and the odor of raw untreated sewage, situated next to a malarial tidal marsh. (p. 176)

Garfield was a Republican who embodied the party’s enthusiasm for helping immigrants, freed slaves, and impoverished people. He believed the key to improving the country lay in educating those people. (182)

It has been said that Guiteau did not kill the President – he shot him, but the doctors killed him by repeatedly probing the wound with ungloved, unwashed fingers. Guiteau used this argument in his own futile defense (“General Garfield died from malpractice.”). The bullet had lodged on the left side of his body behind the pancreas, but the attempts to find it on the right side resulted in profound septic sequelae:

One cavity in particular, which began at the site of the wound, would eventually burrow a tunnel that stretched past Garfield’s right kidney, along the outer lining of his stomach, and down nearly to his groin. An enormous cavity, six inches by four inches, would form under his liver, filling with a greenish-yellow mixture of pus and bile. (p. 196) 

He apparently developed septic emboli:

Just two weeks after the surgery, another abscess formed, this one on Garfield’s right parotid gland… the abscess had become so filled with pus that it caused his eye and cheek to swell and paralyzed his face. Finally, it ruptured, flooding Garfield’s ear canal and mouth with so much pus… that it nearly drowned him. (p. 216) 

The woefully incompetent Dr. Bliss treating him [“Ignorance is Bliss”] tried to cope with the president's rapid cachexia by feeding him intrarectally. The eventual cause of death (determined by autopsy) was hypovolemic shock following a rupture of the splenic artery (probably from a septic aneurysm).

Garfield does not get credit for any particular legislative achievements, because his time in office was too brief. Rather, his legacy is reflected in how his illness and death united the people of the country during the fractious time in the aftermath of the Civil War. And since Guiteau’s act had arisen in connection with the corrupt “spoils system” for giving out lucrative government job contracts, the popular revolt after the death led to the establishment of the civil service system. After his death, Garfield’s widow assembled his books and papers in a wing of their farmhouse, establishing the nation’s first-ever presidential library. 

The book is Destiny of the Republic. A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard, published by Doubleday in 2011. I'm pleased to add it to my list of recommended books.

Addendum 2016:
I am delighted to report that the superb television series American Experience has just released a program entitled "Murder of a President," about President Garfield; it is based on the book I reviewed above in 2012.  The two-hour program is playing on PBS stations around the country, and it can be viewed online here.

Reposted from 2016 because of the upcoming Netflix series Death by Lightning, which is scheduled to drop later this year.