TYWKIWDBI ("Tai-Wiki-Widbee")

"Diner lingo"

2012-01-27T11:34:00.002-06:00

Selections from an assemblage at Wikipedia:

Adam & Eve on a raft & wreck 'em: two scrambled eggs on toast

Baled hay: shredded wheat cereal

Cops & Robbers: Donuts and Coffee.

Customer will take a chance: hash

Don't cry over it: omit the onions

Drag it through Wisconsin: serve with cheese (e.g. a cheeseburger)

Drown the kids: boiled eggs

Fish eyes or Cat's eyes: tapioca pudding

Foreign entanglements: spaghetti

Hockey puck: a hamburger, well done

Mother and child reunion: chicken and egg sandwich

Noah's boy: a slice of ham (Ham was Noah's second son)

Put a hat on it: add ice cream

Shit on a shingle/S.O.S.: minced dried beef with gravy on toast

Two cows, make them cry: Two hamburgers with onions

Zeppelins in a fog: sausages and mashed potatoes

Many of these come from a column at Diner Talk.

Lobster tails for hospital patients

2012-01-27T11:13:00.000-06:00

Health-care related posts seems to elicit the most vigorous and conflicting comments on this blog, so here's a little grist for the mill, from a column in the New York Times:

The bed linens were by Frette, Italian purveyors of high-thread-count sheets to popes and princes. The bathroom gleamed with polished marble. Huge windows displayed panoramic East River views. And in the hush of her $2,400 suite, a man in a black vest and tie proffered an elaborate menu and told her, “I’ll be your butler.”

It was Greenberg 14 South, the elite wing on the new penthouse floor of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. Pampering and décor to rival a grand hotel, if not a Downton Abbey, have long been the hallmark of such “amenities units,” often hidden behind closed doors at New York’s premier hospitals. But the phenomenon is escalating here and around the country, health care design specialists say, part of an international competition for wealthy patients willing to pay extra, even as the federal government cuts back hospital reimbursement in pursuit of a more universal and affordable American medical system..

A waterfall, a grand piano and the image of a giant orchid grace the soaring ninth floor atrium of McKeen, leading to refurbished rooms that, like those in the hospital’s East 68th Street penthouse, cost patients $1,000 to $1,500 a day, and can be combined. That fee is on top of whatever base rate insurance pays to the hospital, or the roughly $4,500 a day that foreigners are charged, according to the hospital’s international services department...

In Eleven West’s library on a recent Friday, Nancy Hemenway, a senior financial services executive, was reading the paper in a spa-style bathrobe. “I was supposed to be in Buenos Aires last week taking tango lessons, but unfortunately I hurt my back, so I’m here with my concierge,” she said.

“I’m perfectly at home here — totally private, totally catered,” she added. “I have a primary-care physician who also acts as ringmaster for all my other doctors. And I see no people in training — only the best of the best.”

That last comment reminds me that some years ago a midwestern university hospital (which I will leave unnamed) had an upper floor reserved for wealthy patients, with posh accommodations, special food, and innumerable amenities. When physicians were on morning rounds, the students and housestaff would stay behind while the attendings went to see their private patients.

However, at night if there was an emergency and the attending was in a distant suburb, the housestaff and fellows were called and had to correct problems with electrolyte imbalance, improve inappropriate ventilator settings, or detect missed diagnoses. Many of the attending physicians were less procedurally competent (and frankly less practically knowledgeable) than the "physicians in training," who joked (among themselves) that the only good thing for the patients in the top floor suite was that the location was "close to a hospital."

One final salient comment from the Times story:

“These kinds of patients, they’re paying cash — they’re the best kind of patient to have,” she added. “Theoretically, it trickles down.”

This is all very complicated, re the finances, re the medical implications, re the ethics etc. I'll defer any additional commentary; there's much more in the Times and in a related story in Salon.

Photo: Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

A boy's plaid dress (1854)

2012-01-27T10:04:00.002-06:00

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s 1851 purchase and subsequent renovation of Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands caused a fad for plaid to sweep the fashion world. Fine tartans in wool and silk became the most desired fashion fabrics for all ages and styles of dress.

From Ye Olde Fashion.

"Beer oyster" explained

2012-01-27T10:00:00.001-06:00

This question was posed at Reddit:

At an engagement party last weekend, my husband enjoyed a Beck's. He decided he would like to enjoy another and so opened this bottle, took a sip and cringed. His beer tasted awful and he wiped off what looked like dirt from the bottle cap. He held the beer to the light and the liquid was murky through the green glass there was something floating in it. We go in to the kitchen, pour the beer down the sink and something slipped out. I turned it over and it kind of looked like a mushroom and smelled a whole lot like shit. This image is the bottle and the offending object.

Answer below the fold (it's not offensive - just giving you a moment to ponder...)
Two of the comments:

That's a Beer Oyster. It was caused by a pasteurization failure, the beer was not heated to the right temperature. Leftover yeast/bacteria were able to use the leftover air in the top of the bottle to survive and make a slimy, stinky mess. Source: My mother and brother work for major beer companies.

Close. At 2-3 minutes the pasteurization of 140F isn't going kill the yeast. Also through fermentation the environment is already inhospitable to the yeast. It has fermented out and can ferment no more. If it isn't fermenting it isn't reproducing. It isn't building yeast cake. Even so this would appear as a light film on the bottom as in a bottle conditioned beer.
What you are seeing is most likely a plate filter failure. It's going to be a mix of proteins, yeast and hop matter. Filter probably let loose a clogged bit at the end. It's unlikely to be an infection if the others were unaffected. Source: Homebrewer for 15 years, have brewed at a micro brewery.

Selections from the November "Harper's Index"

2012-01-27T09:50:00.001-06:00

Amount employees of private-equity firm Bain Capital have donated to the campaiign of its co-founder Mitt Romney: $69,500

To the Obama campaign: $119,900

Percentage of all Americans who consider themselves part of the top 1 percent of U.S. earners: 13

Miminum number of U.S. colleges that offer courses in unmanned-drone operation: 5

Portion of the Veterans Health Administration's budget devoted to veterans with mental-health or addiction problems: 1/3

Chance that a U.S. worker is of normal weight and without a chronic health problem: 1 in 7

Number of working-age people for every person over sixty-five worldwide in 1950: 11.7

Number today: 8.6

Projected humber in 2050: 3.9

The President gets mail

2012-01-27T09:44:00.001-06:00

A pair of items from this month's Harper's Index:

Number of letters from Americans President Barack Obama reads each evening: 10

Number of staffers in the Corespondence Office responsible for seelecting those letters from the 11,000 received each day: 7

There's a lot to ponder there. First of all, it's not a Democrat/Republican thing - the same must have been happening since the office of the presidency was established. But look how it must have ramped up - now 11 thousand letters every day.

And seven staff persons just to sort through that mail. One knee-jerk reaction would be that this is an example of how government has become bloated. But on the other hand many of these letters are from people with genuine concerns, and probably the staff forward items to relevant congressmen or government agencies.

Still - 11,000 letters every day. And how many emails? Interesting to think about.

Addendum: A hat tip to Chuck for finding this relevant story at ABC News.

New USDA plant hardiness zone map

2012-01-26T10:37:00.003-06:00

I had heard that a revision was in the works, and it has been eagerly awaited by gardeners.

The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location. The map is based on the average annual minimum winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones.

The embed above is a static image, but if you go to this USDA page, you can access an interactive map with detailed state maps.

Most locations in the US are now in warmer zones; we've gone from 4b to 5a in just the last ten years.

Buying/selling something on Craigslist ??

2012-01-26T10:29:00.002-06:00

Why not meet your seller/buyer at the police station? The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel explains:

After a recent rash of robberies involving people trying to sell items on the web site Craigslist, Milwaukee police on Monday encouraged people to conclude their transactions at perhaps one of the safest places in town - the local police station...

A 33-year-old man wanting to sell a cell phone met a suspect at the gas station. The suspect got into the victim's car and forced him drive to the back of the parking lot, where he threatened the victim with a small revolver. He went through the victim's pockets and took $40. After a fight, the robber and another suspect stole two cell phones from the victim. Other robberies of people wanting to sell iPads and vehicles happened Jan. 15 and 19...

"This is nothing new. It's happening all over the country," police officer Lisa Staffold said Monday. "The media has deemed it 'robbery by appointment' because you're posting ads, you're selling your iPhones, your iPads, your vehicles, and when you go to a meeting location, you're being robbed."

The crimes are done by either pretend-buyers who show up to rob the seller of the advertised item, or pretend-sellers, who want to steal money from the buyer.

Police hope to put a stop to the robberies by having sellers and buyers meet at a safe place. "If they don't want to meet you at a safe place, if they don't want to meet you at a police district, that should be a red flag, an indicator: Don't do business with that individual," Staffold said.

Very clever idea, found at The Consumerist.

Iceberg

2012-01-26T10:24:00.003-06:00

Photographed in the Antarctic near Peterman Island by Kseniia Maiukova (Caters News), via The Telegraph.

A new life form discovered in Canada

2012-01-26T10:20:00.005-06:00

The Burgess Shale continues to produce amazing fossils. PhysOrg has a summary:

Officially named Siphusauctum gregarium, fossils reveal a tulip-shaped creature that is about the length of a dinner knife (approximately 20 centimetres or eight inches) and has a unique filter feeding system.

Siphusauctum has a long stem, with a calyx – a bulbous cup-like structure – near the top which encloses an unusual filter feeding system and a gut. The animal is thought to have fed by filtering particles from water actively pumped into its calyx through small holes... Most interesting is that this feeding system appears to be unique among animals.

And some additional details from EarthTimes:

Siphusauctum gregarium looked like a tulip, about 20cm (or 8ins) long, filter feeding from the floor of the sea. The body or "calyx" is enclosed by a sheath, with six small filtering holes and a terminal anus. It has a large stomach, followed by a conical gut and straight section of intestine. Six radially-symmetrical sections contain the filtering combs... Only the stomach, and anus of the digestive tract show any phylogenetic relationships, but exactly which relationship is up in the air. Hence the new family, new genus, new species, in fact, new everything.

TL;DR - it's like a tulip with an anus. Next fossil, please.

Reconstruction image artwork: © Marianne Collins.

DeBeers settles a class-action lawsuit

2012-01-26T10:08:00.001-06:00

DeBeers has announced a settlement of a class action lawsuit. Here are the allegations:

The lawsuits claim that the largest suppliers of diamonds in the world—De Beers S.A. and its associated companies—violated antitrust, unfair competition, and consumer-protection laws by monopolizing diamond supplies, conspiring to fix, raise, and control diamond prices, and disseminating false and misleading advertising...

And the company will pay millions of dollars -

...the Settlement provides that the Defendants will pay a total of $295 million for the benefit of Class Members plus up to $7 million for the costs of providing notice of the Settlement terms to the Indirect Purchaser Class.. The Settlement provides that $22.5 million will be paid to Direct Purchaser Class Members who submit valid claims, and $272.5 million will be paid to Indirect Purchaser Class Members who submit valid claims.

The payments go to resellers and customers, the latter defined as -

All persons located in the United States who purchased any diamond or diamond jewelry or other products containing gem diamonds for personal use and not for resale between January 1, 1994 and March 31, 2006. For example, Consumers include people who purchased diamond jewelry to wear or to give as a gift.

However, while the "sightholders" (companies reselling the diamonds) get an estimated US $173,000 each, consumers fare less well -

"...consumers are estimated to receive US $1.15 each... But here is the real insult: The court agreed that any payout under $10.00 does not have to be paid..."

The funds designated for consumers ($135 million) but not paid out reverts to the general settlement fund, 25% of which goes to the lawyers in legal fees.

Class-action lawsuits really suck (unless you are an attorney). I wasn't involved in this one, but I've been a "participant" in a couple during my life, and they are never worth the time and effort.

Via the newsletter of the Madison Gem and Mineral Club.

The "crooked forest" of Gryfino (Poland) - updated

2012-01-25T13:30:00.000-06:00

The link for the embedded photo was sent to me by Jennifer Fox, with a request for an explanation, since her web search had not proved satisfactory.

Several possibilities come to mind. It's obvious that the trees were bent when very young, then recovered. Those who live near large lakes with prominent ice heaves will have seen trees affected in this manner, and a similiar effect could occur after a blowdown by straightline winds.

I get the sense that this forest is a tree farm, because of the uniformity of age of the trees, and I suspect this is a man-made curvature, because of the similarity of all the trees involved. If that's true, then my best explanation would be that these trees were trained as "compass timbers" for shipbuilding or as material for other woodworking. See this post from last fall on that subject.

This blog gets about 500 visits a month from readers in Poland; perhaps someone can offer a definitive answer.

Photo credit: tapenade.

Addendum January 2012. One of the curious aspects of blogging is that you never know which posts will be popular or produce sustained interest. I posted the above about a year ago, and it has continued to accumulate hits (40,000 so far!) and comments, so I thought a repost with an update was warranted.

One of the early comments included a link to Discovery News, with a map showing the location of this forest:

The bent trees are in a small suburban area, surrounded by normal trees (evident in some of the photos in the gallery at this link).

Re the etiology, my original postulate was that they were bent by humans for shipbuilding timbers or other woodworking. Others chimed in with suggestions of "gravity anomalies," crop circles, the Tunguska Event (!!), "evil," and tank maneuvers.

I favor the later suggestion that the trees were intended to be used for furniture making in the "German Jugendstil style (1900/30), which is noted for its numerous curvilinear features." Another reader offered a link to this photo of a sledge with curved wooden runners:

Government limousine numbers soaring

2012-01-25T13:16:00.002-06:00

The number of limousines owned by the federal government has risen by 73% during the first two years of the Obama administration, as reported at the Center for Public Integrity's IWatch website:

Most of the increase was recorded in Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Obama administration officials said most of the increase reflects an enhanced effort to protect diplomats and other government officials in a dangerous world. But a watchdog group says the abundance of limos sends the wrong message in the midst of a budget crisis...

According to General Services Administration data, the number of limousines in the federal fleet increased from 238 in fiscal 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, to 412 in 2010. Much of the 73 percent increase—111 of the 174 additional limos—took place in fiscal 2009, more than eight months of which corresponded with Obama’s first year in office. However, some of those purchases could reflect requests made by the Bush administration during an appropriations process that would have begun in the spring of 2008...

“The categories in the Fleet Report are overly broad, and the term 'limousine' is not defined,” adding that “vehicles represented as limousines can range from protective duty vehicles to sedans.”..

The department said it defines a limo as a vehicle that carries a VIP or “other protectee,” rather than by the type of car, but said most of its limos are Cadillac DTSs, which cost the taxpayer more than $60,000 for a 2011 base model...

If the data is [sic] correct, some federal employees who once rode in style now face more proletarian transportation options. The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, ran a fleet of 21 limousines in 2008 under George W. Bush, according to the fleet report. It now makes do with only one. The Government Printing Office also lost all of its six limos between 2009 and 2010. The VA and the Government Printing Office did not respond to calls for comment.

This is a "shinplaster"

2012-01-25T13:04:00.002-06:00

Found at the Hennepin County Library's tumblr, the above is -

- a type of emergency currency issued in the Northwest following the start of the Civil War. Issued at Minneapolis October 10th, 1862. Name of issuer is R.J.Mendenhall. Denomination is 5 cents.

Wikipedia has more on shinplasters, including a suggestion re the etymology -

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the name comes from the quality of the paper, which was so cheap that with a bit of starch it could be used to make paper-mâché-like plasters to go under socks and warm shins.

- and a description of similar local currencies in Canada and Australia (where they were also called "calabashes)."

In some places they formed the core of a company shop economy (Truck system), circulating as private currencies. They were often of such low quality that they could not be hoarded, and shopkeepers off the property would not take them, as they would deteriorate into illegibility before they could be redeemed.

There are tales of unscrupulous shopkeepers and others baking or otherwise artificially aging their calabashes given as change to travelers so that they crumbled to uselessness before they could be redeemed.

"Truck system" - twice in one week.

Your blog may someday be your résumé

2012-01-25T12:54:00.003-06:00

From a story in the Wall Street Journal:

Instead of asking for résumés, the New York venture-capital firm—which has invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and other technology companies—asked applicants to send links representing their "Web presence," such as a Twitter account or Tumblr blog...

Companies are increasingly relying on social networks such as LinkedIn, video profiles and online quizzes to gauge candidates' suitability for a job. While most still request a résumé as part of the application package, some are bypassing the staid requirement altogether...

The world's largest carved emerald

2012-01-25T12:48:00.003-06:00

The emerald, discovered at Carnaiba, in the emerald-producing province of Bahia, Brazil, in August, 1974, made its way to Palo Alto via a local gem trader with whom we had worked and partnered for many years. He took it to Hong Kong for carving, where a team of four carvers was commissioned to sculpt the design of Tao Heaven...

The original weight of the emerald was 62 pounds, or over 140,000 carats. Its dimensions then were approximately 16 1/2" high, 14" wide, and 7" deep... the final weight after carving is 86,000 carats, or 38 pounds. The excess material ended up as dust on the studio floor...

From the owner's website, via the newsletter of the Madison Gem and Mineral Club.

The vegetation is changing in Siberia

2012-01-25T12:43:00.003-06:00

As reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

The pair of images above shows a site on the Siberian tundra near Russia’s Yenisey River in the summers of 1966 (top) and 2009 (lower). In the 43 years that passed between the first image and the second, shrubs colonized virtually all of the previously open tundra surrounding a cluster of lakes...

At the site Frost studies, the tundra is often patterned with bald spots—circles of bare ground where seasonal frost heave can uproot plant seedlings. These frost circles, sometimes called “frost boils,” give the tundra in the top center of the images its speckled look. The bare spots create an open canvas for shrubs to colonize, presuming they can withstand the seasonal frost heave. At this site, the colonizing shrubs are usually alders...

The conversion of tundra to dense, tall shrubland triggers a cascade of changes in how the ecosystem functions. Observations from Europe, Alaska, and Siberia in recent decades have shown plant communities became less diverse as mosses, lichens, and other shorter-growing plants disappeared under the shade created by shrubs. The loss of lichens, in particular, could pose a problem for caribou and reindeer, which forage on them extensively.

The change from tundra to shrubland can also affect the thawing of permafrost...

More at the link. Via NASA's Earth Observatory.

The double tragedy of Sarah Burke

2012-01-25T11:39:00.004-06:00

While training on that halfpipe slope, Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke suffered a torn vertebral artery in her neck that caused bleeding in her brain, an injury that she would die from...

That's the first tragedy. The Center for Public Integrity explains the second:

...her family will be laying her to rest in her native Canada — and pleading for money to help cover the estimated $550,000 they owe for the medical care she received at University of Utah Hospital over nine days.

The irony is that had the accident occurred in Canada... her care would have been covered because, unlike the U.S., Canada has a system of universal coverage...

It is clear the family needs help. Not only are they grieving, they are facing financial ruin, simply because Sarah Burke’s accident was in the United States of America.

And, in case you are wondering about who pays for Gabrielle Giffords' rehab, that is discussed at ScienceBlogs' Pump Handle public health blog -

"Congresswoman Giffords was injured while she was on the job and her rehabilitation is covered by workers' compensation under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act."...

The type of acute rehabilitation she receives - involving speech, occupational and physical rehab - costs about $8,000 a day, according to the Brain Injury Association of America. Post-acute rehabilitation can range in cost from $600 to $2,500 daily. The expenses leave the treatment options well out of reach for most patients whose insurers won't pay for the services.

Photo: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images.

World's largest opal matrix (55,000 carats)

2012-01-24T12:58:00.000-06:00

"The opal is about 30 cms in length with a height of 15-20 cms and a 4 cm thickness. Its estimated value is at least 1 million dollars USD... Historically, the largest opal found so far was just 6,100 carats in size. The current one is nearly ten times that size."

Photo and text via JustLuxe. I often see opals at rock and mineral shows, but have never owned one or understood their geology, so I had to look up the details -

Matrix opals are a type of boulder opal and are found as part of a host rock, called Boulder ironstone. They contain opal randomly distributed through the rock. The boulder ironstone with the precious opal inclusions are cut as one piece, giving an appearance similar to what you see when you look at the night sky, except that the ‘stars’ in this case are flecks of glories opal color.

Different types of matrix opals come from a variety of fields. Boulder matrix comes from the Queensland fields in the northern part of the opal regions in Australia. There is another form of matrix opal from Andamooka in South Australia which is treated to give it a darker background. The specimen is soaked in sugar solution and boiled in acid, which causes carbon to get deposited in the spaces in the rock, giving it a dark or black opal appearance.

From Opalmine, which has pix of examples for sale. Rock and mineral collecting has changed a lot since I was a kid in the 50s; nowadays much of what is available for purchase has been altered chemically or with heat or with radiation. But with worldwide transportation much improved, there are now some amazing finds and products available.

Via the newsletter of the Madison Gem and Mineral Club.

Marine accused in Haditha killings makes plea deal

2012-01-24T12:47:00.000-06:00

From the Los Angeles Times:

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the court-martial of Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, accused in the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis in 2005, announced an agreement Monday to settle the case. Wuterich will plead guilty to a single count of negligent dereliction of duty. Other charges were dropped. No announcement was made on what kind of discharge Wuterich would receive...

Wuterich, 31, was accused of manslaughter, assault and dereliction of duty for allegedly leading his squad on a bloody rampage on the morning of Nov. 19, 2005, after a roadside bomb killed one Marine and injured two in the Euphrates River town of Haditha.

When the smoke cleared, Wuterich's squad had killed 24 Iraqis, including three women and seven children, in a fruitless effort to find the gunmen that the Marines believed was firing on them from a house near the bomb blast.

Wuterich's case is the last to be settled among the eight Marines accused in the killings: four enlisted Marines accused of firing the fatal shots and four officers accused of not investigating thoroughly. Six cases were dropped, one officer was acquitted at court-martial...

The hearing officer at Wuterich's preliminary hearing in 2007 predicted the prosecution would fail because of inconsistent testimony from witnesses and poor forensics.

The maximum sentence is three months in the brig.

More on the Haditha killings. I'll withhold comment, but not block them for the post.

Make your own mineral water

2012-01-24T12:38:00.001-06:00

Edible Geography notes that the ratios of the ingredients are prominently listed on each product "so that you can easily find the total dissolved solids in such premium sparkling waters as Perrier, Badoît, and Vichy."

So... you can make your own.

Lersch has created a mineral water calculator — a handy downloadable spreadsheet into which you simply enter your tap water composition (optional, but recommended for best results; your water company should provide this upon request) and select your preferred mineral water, in order to generate a printable ingredients list of minerals and salts.

Some ingredients ("food grade sodium bromide") are difficult to find, but then all you need to do is carbonate the mineral water (which affects the pH). Details at the link.

When did the earth have two moons?

2012-01-24T10:49:00.001-06:00

The last time was in the autumn of 2006. But after orbiting the earth for less than a year, it departed. Details via PhysOrg:

Temporary satellites are a result of the gravitational pull of Earth and the Moon. Both bodies pull on one another and also pull on anything else in nearby space. The most common objects that get pulled in by the Earth-Moon system’s gravity are near Earth objects (NEOs) — comets and asteroids are nudged by the outer planets and end up in orbits that bring them into Earth’s neighbourhood...

They found that the Earth-Moon system captures NEOs quite frequently. “At any given time, there should be at least one natural Earth satellite of 1-meter diameter orbiting the Earth,” the team said. These NEOs orbit the Earth for about ten months, enough time to make about three orbits, before leaving.

One implication is that the study of the cosmos can be facilitated by visiting/sampling these temporary moons rather than trying to access more distant bodies.

"Crab into kick" crosswind landing technique

2012-01-24T10:39:00.005-06:00

YouTube link.

The airplane approaches the runway at a "crabbed" angle, to offset the wind -- then at practically the last instant before touchdown the pilot uses the rudder to "kick" the plane into alignment with the runway, so when the wheels make contact they are pointed straight ahead.

Discussion and an additional video in James Fallows' Atlantic column.

"Have no truck with..." explained

2012-01-24T10:36:00.001-06:00

According to World Wide Words:

For the genesis of the term we must go back to medieval England. Truck had been borrowed from Old French troquer, which meant to obtain goods by barter or to give in exchange. It still does in expressions such as truck farm for a market garden, because its produce was often bartered rather than sold. Truck here has nothing to do with vehicles; that sense comes from a different source, a Latin word meaning the sheaf of a pulley, later a small wooden wheel.

In order to barter you had to negotiate with the person you were dealing with and truck later extended to refer to dealing or trading in all sorts of commodities. By the seventeenth century it had broadened and weakened into the idea of communication in general or of being on familiar terms with another person.

I had always assumed the term "truck farm" referred to vehicles used to transport the produce. You learn something every day.

This is a "Schnee bath"

2012-01-24T10:24:00.002-06:00

The Schnee Four Cell Bath was used for treating general rheumatic conditions and painful joints. A patient would be seated with an individual bath for each limb. Each bath had its own current, which could be varied independently. In this treatment patients could bear a much stronger current than with electrodes on small areas, because of the large skin area exposed to the current in each bath. There was no danger of electric shock as in a full bath as the porcelain tubs were not connected to water pipes and were well insulated from earthing. The quantity of water required was not great and did not depend on a nearby water supply. It also allowed the person to be treated without undressing, speeding up treatment times and proving much more comfortable and convenient than a full body bath.

Text from the Sacred Medical Order of Hope. Photo from Edward Reginald Morton and Elkin Cumberbatch’s Essentials of Medical Electricity (Third Edition) (1916), via A London Salmagundi.

Deleveraging debt

2012-01-24T10:18:00.000-06:00

The graph above shows two decades of the trending of debt in ten countries. Some will be surprised to note that the U.S. is not the top blue line - that's the United Kingdom ! And while the U.S. has started to "deleverage" since the 2008 crisis, for other countries the line is still rising.

Also of interest to me was this second graph, which breaks total national debt into its component parts. In the U.S. since 2008, financial institutions have reduced their debt by 17%, household debt has fallen 11%, and corporate debt is down 7%. Only government (presumably fed+state+local) debt has risen. It may be that the latter has been necessary in order for the former three to be facilitated; I don't understand economics well enough to comment on that. But I do think these two graphs are important.

Graphs from a report by the McKinsey Global Institute, via The Telegraph. There are more graphs and discussion at both links.

Your tax money at work

2012-01-24T09:20:00.001-06:00

YouTube link.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Via The Dish.

Help for a babushka

2012-01-23T11:14:00.001-06:00

A group of volunteers headed to a village in the Tula Region to visit an elderly lady who they heard needed wood to burn in her stove or in other words were in trouble. Entering her home, they found her sitting next to the stove with tears in her eyes. It was very cold and it smelled like dampness...

This is the first of about twenty images in a photoessay at English Russia. It does have a happy ending, and raises questions about society's priorites.

Rus. "бабушка" - grandmother, old woman.

1/998001 generates a fascinating series

2012-01-23T11:07:00.000-06:00

1/998001 = 0.000001002003004005006007008009010011012013014015016017018019020
0210220230240250260270280290300310320330340350360370380390400410420430440450
4604704804905005105205305405505605705805906006106206306406506606706806907007
1072073074075076077078079080081082083084085086087088089090091092093094095096
0970980991001011021031041051061071081091101111121131141151161171181191201211
2212312412512612712812913013113213313413513613713813914014114214314414514614
7148149150151152153154155156157158159160161162163164165166167168169170171172
1731741751761771781791801811821831841851861871881891901911921931941951961971
9819920020120220320420520620720820921021121221321421521621721821922022122222
3224225226227228229230231232233234235236237238239240241242243244245246247248
2492502512522532542552562572582592602612622632642652662672682692702712722732
7427527627727827928028128228328428528628728828929029129229329429529629729829
9300301302303304305306307308309310311312313314315316317318319320321322323324
3253263273283293303313323333343353363373383393403413423433443453463473483493
5035135235335435535635735835936036136236336436536636736836937037137237337437
5376377378379380381382383384385386387388389390391392393394395396397398399400
4014024034044054064074084094104114124134144154164174184194204214224234244254
2642742842943043143243343443543643743843944044144244344444544644744844945045
1452453454455456457458459460461462463464465466467468469470471472473474475476
4774784794804814824834844854864874884894904914924934944954964974984995005015
0250350450550650750850951051151251351451551651751851952052152252352452552652
7528529530531532533534535536537538539540541542543544545546547548549550551552
5535545555565575585595605615625635645655665675685695705715725735745755765775
7857958058158258358458558658758858959059159259359459559659759859960060160260
3604605606607608609610611612613614615616617618619620621622623624625626627628
6296306316326336346356366376386396406416426436446456466476486496506516526536
5465565665765865966066166266366466566666766866967067167267367467567667767867
9680681682683684685686687688689690691692693694695696697698699700701702703704
7057067077087097107117127137147157167177187197207217227237247257267277287297
3073173273373473573673773873974074174274374474574674774874975075175275375475
5756757758759760761762763764765766767768769770771772773774775776777778779780
7817827837847857867877887897907917927937947957967977987998008018028038048058
0680780880981081181281381481581681781881982082182282382482582682782882983083
1832833834835836837838839840841842843844845846847848849850851852853854855856
8578588598608618628638648658668678688698708718728738748758768778788798808818
8288388488588688788888989089189289389489589689789889990090190290390490590690
7908909910911912913914915916917918919920921922923924925926927928929930931932
9339349359369379389399409419429439449459469479489499509519529539549559569579
5895996096196296396496596696796896997097197297397497597697797897998098198298
3984985986987988989990991992993994995996997999 ...

Start at the beginning, or pick a place in the middle and start reciting the numbers. Someone out there can probably explain why. At its extremes, mathematics devolves into a kind of magic...

Found in the Futility Closet, which has an abundance of math-related items.

Increasing fresh water in the Arctic Ocean

2012-01-23T11:01:00.003-06:00

As reported by Nature Geoscience and summarized by the BBC:

UK scientists have detected a huge dome of freshwater that is developing in the western Arctic Ocean.The bulge is some 8,000 cubic km in size and has risen by about 15cm since 2002.The team thinks it may be the result of strong winds whipping up a great clockwise current in the northern polar region called the Beaufort Gyre...

Dr Giles and colleagues made their discovery using radar satellites belonging to the European Space Agency (Esa).These spacecraft can measure sea-surface height even when there is widespread ice cover because they are adept at picking out the cracks, or leads, that frequently appear in the frozen floes.The data (1995-2010) indicates a significant swelling of water in the Beaufort Gyre, particularly since the early part of the 2000s. The rising trend has been running at 2cm per year...

If the freshwater were to enter the North Atlantic in large volumes, the concern would be that it might disturb the currents that have such a great influence on European weather patterns. These currents draw warm waters up from the tropics, maintaining milder temperatures in winter than would ordinarily be expected at northern European latitudes.

The embed above is a screencap; to view the animation, go to the BBC link. The animation ends with this graph of the change over time -

Decrying partisan politics

2012-01-23T10:50:00.001-06:00

“I think it would be a great tragedy . . . if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line...

I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided generally violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to the other. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been room for a broad spectrum of opinion.”

Therefore, “when your Administrations come to power, they will represent the whole people rather than just one segment of the people.”

Timely words, uttered over fifty years ago by a famous American politician. His identity is not as important as the sentiment, but if you need to know, it's in this New Yorker column.

Ever wonder what medieval warfare was like ?

2012-01-23T10:42:00.001-06:00

YouTube link.

Until the invention of firearms, the bow and arrow was the weapon of choice for warfare throughout most of the world. In Hollywood movies, I think it's crossbows and the longbow that get most of the attention (Braveheart et al), but in this video Iza Privezenceva, a young Russian woman, shows how a shorter bow could be wielded as the forerunner of a machine gun.

Imagine being a peasant pressed into the king's service, being provided with a long pointed stick and perhaps a leather shield, and facing a line of these archers...

Via Blame It On The Voices and Neatorama.

Question for someone - which arm needs to be stronger in a professional archer - the one holding the bow, or the one drawing the arrow?

Consider Shenzhen

2012-01-23T10:31:00.001-06:00

Excerpts from a recent episode of This American Life:

Shenzhen is a city without history. The people who live there will tell you that, because 31 years ago Shenzhen was a small town. It had little reed huts, little reed walkways between the huts. The men would fish in the late afternoon. I hear it was lovely.

Today Shenzhen is a city of 14 million people. It is larger than New York City... And the most amazing thing is, almost no one in America knows its name...

Foxconn, a single company, makes a staggering amount of the electronics you use every day. They make electronics for Apple, Dell, Nokia, Panasonic, HP, Samsung, Sony, Lenovo, a third of all of it... including MacBook Pros and iPhones and iPads...

The Foxconn plant in Shenzhen has 430,000 workers. That can be a difficult number to conceptualize. I find it's useful to instead think about how there are more than 20 cafeterias at the plant. And then you just have to understand that workers told me that these cafeterias can hold up to 10,000 people. So now you just need to visualize a cafeteria that seats 10,000 people. I'll wait...

And along the edges of each enormous building [described earlier as an "arcology" :.) ] are the nets, because right at the time that I am making this visit, there's been an epidemic of suicides at the Foxconn plant. Week after week, worker after worker has been climbing all the way up to the tops of these enormous buildings and then throwing themselves off, killing themselves in a brutal and public manner, not thinking very much about just how bad this makes Foxconn look. Foxconn's response to month after month of suicides has been to put up these nets...

And I say to her, you seem kind of young. How old are you? And she says, I'm 13. And I say, 13? That's young. Is it hard to get work at Foxconn when you're-- and she says oh no. And her friends all agree, they don't really check ages... Do you really think Apple doesn't know? In a company obsessed with the details, with the aluminum being milled just so, with the glass being fitted perfectly into the case, do you really think it's credible that they don't know? Or are they just doing what we are all doing? Do they just see what they want to see?..

They work a Chinese hour, and a Chinese hour has 60 Chinese minutes, and a Chinese minute has 60 Chinese seconds. It's not like our hour. What's our hour now, 46 minutes? You know, you have a bathroom break, and you have a smoke break. If you don't smoke, there's a yoga break. This doesn't look anything like that. This looks like nothing we've seen in a century...

And I go to the dormitories. I'm a valuable potential future customer. They will show me anything I ask to see. The dormitories are cement cubes, 12-foot by 12-foot. And in that space there are 13 beds, 14 beds. I count 15 beds. They're stacked up like Jenga puzzle pieces all the way up to the ceiling. The space between them is so narrow, none of us would actually fit in them. They have to slide into them like coffins...

N-hexane is an iPhone screen cleaner. It's great because it evaporates a little bit faster than alcohol does, which means you can run the production line even faster and try to keep up with the quotas. The problem is that n-hexane is a potent neurotoxin, and all these people have been exposed. Their hands shake uncontrollably. Most of them can't even pick up a glass...

I'll stop here, because it's not fair to borrow too much. There's much more at the text link, and it's even better in audio, because, as the Ira Glass notes:

This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

It's Mitt Romney's turn...

2012-01-23T10:11:00.001-06:00

YouTube link.

.. to be the victim of Bad Lip Reading. Michele Bachmann here. Newt here. Obama here.

And totally unrelated (but found while searching the previous two), a lip window (a body modification, for those who want a warning...)

How to win money from your rational friends

2012-01-23T10:00:00.003-06:00

I found this logic trick at the Futility Closet:

Let’s play a game. We’ll take turns bidding for a dollar bill. Both of us will have to pay our final bids, and the winner gets to keep the dollar.

Not surprisingly, the bidding will soon reach 99 cents. But then I’ll bid $1.00, giving up any hope of profit but getting at least the dollar for my trouble. And then you’ll bid $1.01, with the same idea. And so on indefinitely: First we were bidding for gain, but now we’re trying to minimize our losses.

It sounds absurd, but in principle two sane people could go bankrupt playing this game. Yale economist Martin Shubik invented it to show how an irrational decision can be reached by perfectly rational steps.

The key is that all bidders have to pay the amount of their final bid. I'm definitely going to try to pull this when my cousins come to visit, and may consider it as a fundraising method at a hobby club I'm a member of...

Drop crotch skinny jeans

2012-01-21T11:26:00.002-06:00

Available from Oak (marked down from $158 to $79). They also have drop crotch sweat pants on sale for half-price at $64:

I can't advise you as to whether the heels are part of a coordinated look, but I do know that for drop crotch jodhpurs, you'll need to go to Comme des Garçons:

Also available for half price at $298. It would make me wonder if the wearer had scrotal elephantiasis, but then I'm not up on fashion, so I'll leave the commenting to those of you with a more enlightened and contemporary viewpoint.

Via The Stir.

I'll bet there weren't many mosquitoes around this house

2012-01-21T11:12:00.006-06:00

YouTube link.

Via Nothing To Do With Arbroath.

Behold the power of the internet

2012-01-21T11:10:00.001-06:00

And in South Carolina --

At tonight’s debate in South Carolina, the remaining 4 candidates for the Republican nomination for president were asked if they supported the Stop Online Piracy Act. Speaking in turn, they all came out against it, albeit with caveats about its current form...

In answer, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich came out strongly against SOPA. “You’re asking a conservative about the economic interests of Hollywood?” Gingrich said. “I’m weighing it. I’m not rushing in... Well, I favor freedom! ... the idea we’re going to preemptively have the government start censoring the Internet on behalf of giant corporations, economic interests, strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do.”

“The law as written is far too intrusive, far too expansive,” said former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who agreed with “everything” Gingrich said... A very broad law which gives the government the power to start stepping into the Internet and saying who can pass what to whom, I think that’s a mistake. I’d say no, I’m standing for freedom.”

“This bill is not going to pass,” Paul said. “But watch out for the next one! I am pleased that the attitude is sort of mellowed up here, because the Republicans unfortunately have been on the wrong side of this issue...

Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum said that he doesn’t support SOPA but that more needs to be done to protect intellectual property from offshore pirates. He also observed that he didn’t know where the idea that anything should be free on the Internet came from...

So here’s the question: Now, Santorum, Romney and Gingrich have publicly come out all against these bills. If asked last week, would they have given the same answers? I’ve been frustrated that so few questions about the Internet and technology have been asked. Clearly, the political calculus around supporting them has shifted. At least Ron Paul is consistent; he — and Rep Michele Bachmann — came out against SOPA weeks ago.

The "bloodbath" at Goldman Sachs

2012-01-21T11:00:00.001-06:00

Excerpts from a Huffington Post report:

Reports are creeping out that yesterday's bonus day wasn't all fun and games at America's most iconic investment bank...

"It's a bloodbath," a midlevel Goldman Sachs employee said in an interview with CNBC. "One girl was actually crying, I think," another Goldman employee said according to the report.Some first-year Goldman analysts received $40,000 bonuses, and some second-year analysts received bonuses between $40,000 and $56,000, according to Dealbreaker. Business Insider notes that these bonuses can amount to half of these junior bankers' base salaries.

In fact, some Goldman Sachs bankers and traders learned that they were taking home no bonuses at all, the Wall Street Journal reports. And on top of that, the firm halved the total pay of some partners -- the company's highest-level employees -- while some traders got hit even harder.

Volkswagen's Superbowl advertisement

2012-01-21T10:52:00.003-06:00

YouTube link.

The barking of the puppies is rather melodious - it reminds me of some famous musical theme. Wait, wait, don't tell me...

This will be posted everywhere, so it's not a "TYWK..." but it's so cute I want to archive it here as well.

Via Copyranter.

Swiss "Verdingkinder" and American "orphan trains"

2012-01-21T10:43:00.001-06:00

An exhibit about Swiss "verdingkinder" ("contract children") is presently touring that country, and creating some controversy. Excerpts from a BBC report:

A dark chapter of Swiss history is getting increased attention, with the release of a feature film about "Verdingkinder" or "contract children" and an exhibition about them which is touring the country.A common feature of Swiss life until the mid-1950s, Verdingkinder were primarily children from poor families in the cities, forcibly removed from their parents by the authorities and sent to work on farms.There, many of them were regularly beaten and even sexually abused. They had little education and consequently, as adults, little chance of making careers for themselves...

"Up to the 1950s there were regions in Switzerland that were really poor," he explains. "The Verdingkinder were taken from poor families in the cities."Families were deprived of custody if they didn't live according to a middle-class family model - unmarried mothers, or divorced people, or people who weren't able to keep their money together."The authorities took away a lot of children and placed them in agricultural environments where they had to work really hard."Some children were lucky enough to stay in farming families who cared for them, but by and large they were used as child labourers, in an era when, as Mr Weidmann points out, Swiss agriculture was not mechanised, and a great deal of work had to be done by hand...

The exhibition "Verdingkinder Reden" or "Contract Children Speak", contains first-hand testimonies from former Verdingkinder, memories they have now shared with Ruedi Weidmann and his colleagues to draw attention to what happened...

Other rooms show a variety of farm implements - rakes, wooden shoes, leather straps, cast iron pans. These, explains Mr Weidmann, were things the contract children mention regularly because they were used to hit them.Other exhibits include small toys, and letters and postcards sent to the children by their real parents."These were nearly always taken away - presents for Christmas they were not allowed to have… to interrupt the contact with the real family," says Mr Weidmann...

Meanwhile the feature film Der Verdingbub (The Contract Boy) is bringing what was once a taboo subject to a wider public. The film has been number one at the Swiss box office for weeks."It's time to talk about it," says Mr Weidmann. "Since we began working on this exhibition we talk about it, we tell our friends, and I would say every third or fourth person we talk to says 'yes, my mother', or 'yes, my grandfather was a Verdingkind'.""It's something that affects a large part of Swiss society in one way or another."

My wife found this link, and pointed out the many similarities to American "orphan trains," featured on a segment of the American Experience television program (an excellent series, btw...):

Eighty years ago, Elliot Bobo was taken from his alcoholic father's home, given a small cardboard suitcase, and put on board an "orphan train" bound for Arkansas. Bobo never saw his father again...

Between 1854 and 1929, more than 100,000 children were sent, via orphan trains, to new homes in rural America. Recognizing the need for labor in the expanding farm country, Brace believed that farmers would welcome homeless children, take them into their homes and treat them as their own. His program would turn out to be a forerunner of modern foster care...

Placement into new families was casual at best. Handbills heralded the distribution of cargoes of needy children. As the trains pulled into towns, theyoungsters were cleaned up and paraded on makeshift stages before crowds ofprospective parents...

The separation from families, the beatings and the abuse were unspeakably cruel, but I have mixed feelings about how the labor aspect per se should be viewed. In those days children were incorporated into the labor force much more quickly than most people (most first-world people) can imagine nowadays. I can cite this example from a brief biography I posted about my mom several years ago:

She was born in 1918 to a classic 2nd generation Norwegian immigrant family in southern Minnesota, in an era when children were expected to help work the farm. She wore a huge bonnet in the summer sun, so that neighbors said it looked "like a big hat was driving the rig." She learned to drive that team of horses in a straight line so the cultivating tines wouldn't disturb the planted corn. She was 8 years old at that time.

That wasn't considered either abnormal or unloving at the time; children were expected to assist with the support of the family when they were capable of doing so. School was closed during key harvest times.

I often think today's youth are actually deprived of the experience of various forms of family-related work. I see neighborhood children reaching their teen years never having raked a leaf or mowed a lawn because hired crews do that. Housekeepers do the household cleaning. A truck with a blade arrives after a snowstorm to clear the driveways. They don't seem to have summer jobs like I had, selling door-to-door or working in a factory or washing bedpans. I'm not saying it's a better or worse experience for them, but it's different.

Goodbye to "@ anon 10:14 AM"

2012-01-21T09:57:00.003-06:00

This blog is a bit atypical in that comments by readers often contain as much relevant content as the original post. I was particularly pleased when one reader said he/she read every comment on every post.

Most posts here don't get a lot of comments, but when one does (conspiracy theory, religion, education, politics), it can get confusing trying to sort out who is responding to which comment.

For that reason, today I've implemented a feature just made available by the Blogger host - threaded commenting. It should now be possible when writing a comment to make a choice between a) commenting on the post in general or b) replying to a previous post.f

It should be an improvement for all involved; we'll see how it goes.

(And the rest of you who have .blogspot.com blogs might want to consider checking the instructions on how to set up this feature).

A "Rat King" -- and three bucks

2012-01-20T12:30:00.000-06:00

"Rat kings are cryptozoological phenomena said to arise when a number of rats become intertwined at their tails, which become stuck together with blood, dirt, and excrement. The animals consequently grow together while joined at the tails, which are often broken. The phenomenon is particularly associated with Germany, where the majority of instances have been reported...

Most researchers presume the creatures are legendary and that all supposed physical evidence is hoaxed, such as mummified groups of dead rats with their tails tied together. Reports of living specimens remain unsubstantiated…

Specimens of purported rat kings are kept in some museums. The museum Mauritianum in Altenburg (Thuringia) shows the largest well-known mummified "rat king", which was found in 1828 in a miller's fireplace at Buchheim [above]. It consists of 32 rats. Alcohol-preserved rat kings are shown in museums in Hamburg, Hamelin, Göttingen, and Stuttgart. A rat king found in 1930 in New Zealand, displayed in the Otago Museum in Dunedin, was composed of immature Rattus rattus whose tails were entangled by horse hair.

The term rat king has often led to the misconception of a king of rats... The Nutcracker, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, adapts a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann that features a seven-headed Mouse King as the villain..."

Image and text from Wikipedia. Credit to Neatorama.

Reposted from way back in the summer of 2008 (long before most of you guys found your way here, so probably new info anyway) in order to add this related interesting phenomenon found by my wife at the Buck Manager website:

[T]hese three white-tailed bucks were found locked during the rut. The bucks were located on a ranch in east-central Texas and, from the information that I received, one of the bucks was still alive when the trio was found.Apparently, the antlers were cut from the dead deer and one very tired buck was lucky enough to run back off into the woods.

There are lots of comments at the site, some opining that the event was faked and arguing the method of death, and one who reported seeing a buck attack a pair that was already locked. My wife found another example at the same website (I suppose I need to put that image below the fold)...

"...there is nothing worse than finding a dead buck that you did not shoot, but how would you feel if you found not one, but three dead bucks on your property? Okay, it gets worse. What if those three bucks totaled 450 inches of antler? That is exactly what a hunter in the mid-West found on his Ohio farm..."
"They had the bank of this creek all tore up."

Addendum: And reader Lisa knew of a ancient example of the phenomenon.

There's something extremely sinister about this piano concerto

2012-01-20T12:14:00.006-06:00

YouTube link.

Only the most musically adept among you will be able to define what is sinister about this music.

The piece is by Maurice Ravel, which probably doesn't help much. It's played by Paul Wittgenstein, which might help.

Listen for a couple minutes before seeing the answer below the fold.
Wittgenstein is playing only with his left hand.

He studied with Malvine Brée and later with a much better known figure, the Polish virtuoso Theodor Leschetizky. He made his public debut in 1913 and favourable reviews were written about him. The following year, however, World War I broke out, and he was called up for military service. He was shot in the elbow and captured by the Russians during an assault on Poland, and his right arm had to be amputated.

He commissioned this and other works:

Following the end of the war, Wittgenstein studied intensely, arranging pieces for the left hand alone and learning the new composition written for him by Labor. Once again he began to give concerts, and became well known and loved. He then approached more famous composers, asking them to write material for him to perform. Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith, Alexandre Tansman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Sergei Prokofiev, Franz Schmidt, Sergei Bortkiewicz, and Richard Strauss all produced pieces for him. Maurice Ravel wrote his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which became more famous than any of the other compositions that Wittgenstein inspired. But when Wittgenstein made changes to the score for the premiere, Ravel became incensed and the two never reconciled.

Wikipedia has a page listing works for the piano left hand and orchestra. There are over 40 of them, but - surprisingly (to me) - only four composed for the right hand only. Why the discrepancy ??

Unemployment rates for recent college graduates

2012-01-20T12:05:00.002-06:00

From an essay entitled "Not all college majors are created equal," in the Washington Post:

Too many students aren’t sure what job they could get after four, five or even six years of studying a certain major and racking up education loans. Many aren’t getting on-the-job training while they are in school or during their semester or summer breaks. As a result, questions about employment opportunities or what type of job they have the skills to attain are met with blank stares or the typical, “I don’t know.”

And don’t get me started on people who borrow heavily to get an advanced degree without really knowing whether it will lead to a fatter paycheck that can easily service the debt. In some cases it will, but for some academic disciplines, the salary bump isn’t as much as people expect.

Maybe a new report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce will help encourage students to make better choices about which college and degrees they pursue. “Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal” answers the question that many people are asking in the aftermath of the recession. Is college still worth it?

For most, it is. But it all depends on your major, the report concludes.

Details and hundreds of comments at the link.

Hues

2012-01-20T11:55:00.002-06:00

Yes, the loud colors hurt my eyes too, but I'm posting the image for its qualities as an optical illusion. In the top figure, the orange at the left and the red at the right are the same color, and in the lower one, the yellowish-green on the left and the bluish-green at the right are also identical.

Found at Mighty Optical Illusions, where the screencap I've embedded can be viewed as a dynamic gif.

More homes selling "below assessed value"

2012-01-20T11:47:00.000-06:00

News stories about the housing market typically feature reports on foreclosures and new home construction. Less well appreciated is that sales of existing homes are occurring with increasing frequency at prices below the home's previously appraised value. The graph above comes from the Madison (Dane County, WI) area, but I should think the same principle applies to most of the country.

This past year 65% of home sellers received less than the assessed value of their property. That's way up from the only 12 percent of homes that sold forless than assessed value in 2000, in a major turnaround from thepattern before the housing crash...

"It used to be you could count on a Madison home selling formore than (its) assessed value. Those homes that didn't sell forassessed value were generally fixer-uppers or homes that belong todistressed sellers." Not so anymore, Miller notes, arguing that market value thesedays has "very little to do" with assesed value.

Understanding this is very important for anyone wanting to monetize their existing home or downsize from an "empty nest." A corollary is that when assessors revalue existing homes (in most communities, this is done on a rotating basis every several years), they should - in principle - lower assessed values to reflect ongoing sales, which may result in lower property taxes, even in the absence of a lowering of tax rates. I am aware of this happening in some parts of Minnesota.

They live in a different world

2012-01-20T11:09:00.002-06:00

I truly do not enjoy reposting celebrity news from the rags, but every now and then there are stories that resonate on different levels. Above is the newly-completed $20 million "home" of pro football quarterback Tom Brady and his supermodel wife Gisele Bundchen, as reported in the Daily Mail:

The mansion, which is 22,000-square feet and boasts eight bedrooms, has a six-car garage, a lagoon-shaped swimming pool with spa, a weight room forn Tom to train in and a wine cellar.The two wings are connected by a bridge and there's a nursery for Benjamin, a lift and a butler's room.The couple bought the land in 2008 for $11 million and had plans drawn up for the property which they then had amended as they didn't think the building was big enough...

Gisele came under fire from environmentalists for building the huge home but she insisted that its construction is very environmentally-savvy using solar energy, energy-saving lighting, rainwater recovery systems, waste reduction and recycling programs, energy-efficient appliances and sustainable building materials.

I'll defer any commentary, but I can't resist appending this related story:

Tiger Woods's ex-wife has defended the decision to flatten her $12m home without ever moving in.Elin Nordegren ordered a demolition team to level the house so that she could build a new home from scratch at the Florida waterfront property...

But her realtor has said the plan was always to flatten the home as it was in such a bad state of repairs.'The home had fallen into disrepair, the roof needed to be replaced, the shutters were falling apart and the pool was not functioning.'Adams said the home was only worth $2m while the land with its views of the Atlantic Ocean was worth $10m.

This is nice:

Before ordering in demolition crews Nordegren allowed a local charity to take what they wanted from the building.Habitat for Humanity were given two weeks to take anything they wanted from the house and sell it off.Bargain hunters have been flocking to the charity's store in North Palm Beach to snap up the items.

Their local Habitat for Humanity branch has a website where you can view donated items; the merchandise appears to be a step up from that carried by Goodwill and St. Vincent dePaul (but perhaps that's a reflection of the location). Some of you might want to check re branches near your own home (there's one in Madison).

"Ice volcanoes"

2012-01-20T10:42:00.004-06:00

Photographed by Pete Schenck, who lives in Herbster, Wisconsin (on Lake Superor):

Attached is a photo I shot this morning outside our back door. We're used to seeing these ice "volcanoes" on shore when the wind and waves coincide and actually squirt water up and out through a small opening. The water then freezes on top and the "ice volcano" grows.

Via Paul Douglas' outstanding On Weather blog.

Riding with the pizza guy demonstrates "crystallized intelligence"

2012-01-20T10:38:00.001-06:00

From a column at the New York Times discussing mental fitness in the elderly:

Many researchers believe that human intelligence or brainpower consists of dozens of assorted cognitive skills, which they commonly divide into two categories. One bunch falls under the heading “fluid intelligence,” the abilities that produce solutions not based on experience, like pattern recognition, working memory and abstract thinking, the kind of intelligence tested on I.Q. examinations. These abilities tend to peak in one’s 20s.

“Crystallized intelligence,” by contrast, generally refers to skills that are acquired through experience and education, like verbal ability, inductive reasoning and judgment. While fluid intelligence is often considered largely a product of genetics, crystallized intelligence is much more dependent on a bouquet of influences, including personality, motivation, opportunity and culture.

To illustrate how crystallized intelligence can operate, Gene D. Cohen, a founder of the field of geriatric psychiatry, related a story about his in-laws from his book “The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain.” The couple, in their 70s, arrived in Washington for a visit during a snowstorm and found themselves stranded by the train station. When they saw a pizzeria across the street, his father-in-law had an idea. The couple went inside, ordered a pizza to be delivered to their daughter’s house, and then asked if they could ride along.

An excellent story - and a tip to remember.

More at the link, with a hat tip to CCL.

A modern-day "Potter's field" in America

2012-01-19T09:46:00.004-06:00

Photos from the Daily Mail of coffins being buried in a mass pauper's grave in a suburb of Chicago.

The pauper's burial section at Homewood Memorial Gardens was established for those who could not afford to pay for a burial plot...

Tony Cox, the legislative chairman and former president of the Illinois Coroners and Medical Examiners Association, earlier told the Chicago Sun Times other cities, including New York, follow similar mass burial procedures for those with limited options.New York City Department of Corrections spokesman Stephen Morello referred to a burial site in Hart Island, New York, where 800,000 bodies lie.*Officials there, he said, follow the same procedure - stacking coffins with inmates' remains three deep.

The term "Potter's field" dates from Biblical times, and referred originally to a field used for the extraction of potter's clay, which rendered the area useless for agriculture but suitable as a burial site.

Personally, I don't understand why it wouldn't be more practical, more sanitary, and probably less expensive, to cremate the remains.

* For more information on Hart Island, see the Al Jazeera video in the next post.

Hart Island is New York's "potter's field"

2012-01-19T09:40:00.000-06:00

YouTube link.

It's hard to believe that 800 THOUSAND bodies have been buried on this island in mass graves over the past 150 years.

(reposted from December 2010 to accompany a new post)

Children going to school

2012-01-19T09:27:00.001-06:00

Children hold on to the side bars of a collapsed bridge as they cross a river to get to school at Sanghiang Tanjung village in Indonesia. The flooded Ciberang river broke a pillar supporting the suspension bridge, which was built in 2001, on Monday. Sofiah, a student crossing the bridge, says she would need to walk for an extra 30 minutes if she were to take a detour via another bridge.

Show these to your children if/when they complain about having to wait for the school bus. Alternatively show them this photo of a mountainside path to school in China, or this one (a three-hour hike for the privilege of attending school...)

The two photos come from a photoessay of eight posted at an MSN affiliate. Text translation via The Telegraph. Photo credit Reuters/beawiharta.

Addendum - veganboyjosh remembered another example I posted two years ago of children using a zip line to cross a chasm to get to school.

TYWKIWDBI cracks the "top 50" science blogs

2012-01-19T09:13:00.000-06:00

I don't know when it happened, but yesterday I noticed that this blog is now ranked by Technorati as one of the top 50 science blogs they monitor (out of a couple thousand). I don't consciously try to make this a science blog, but as I look at the categories in the right sidebar, I have to admit that a lot of them are subsets of various sciences. I think I've consciously drifted away from politics lately, and perhaps I also need to return my attention more to the humor and music that were featured more frequently in the past.

Black hole photo planned

2012-01-19T08:57:00.001-06:00

Today's headline at Space.com:

New Telescope to Take First-Ever Black Hole Photo

Details:

Doeleman and his team want to create a network of up to 50 radio telescopes around the world, which will work in concert to get the job done. "In essence, we are making a virtual telescope with a mirror that is as big as the Earth," Doeleman said. "Each radio telescope we use can be thought of as a small silvered portion of a large mirror. With enough such silvered spots, one can start to make an image."..

"If we find the black hole’s shadow to be oblate instead of circular, it means Einstein’s theory of general relativity must be flawed," Psaltis said. "But even if we find no deviation from general relativity, all these processes will help us understand the fundamental aspects of the theory much better."

I have a hard time understanding the relevance of astrophysics to anything in real life (but I'm not mocking them). And btw, I posted a closer view yesterday (next post down).

Write to your congressmen to protest SOPA

2012-01-18T00:01:00.000-06:00

I don't have the expertise (or the courage) to change the blog's format to black, so the embed above will have to serve as a reminder. You can use the Wikipedia protest page to look up the names and email addresses of your elected representatives.

Please use the time you would have spent enjoying TYWKIWDBI today to email your senator and representatives instead.

A supercut of tumbleweeds in movies

2012-01-17T21:45:00.000-06:00

YouTube link.

Commissioned by the Columbus Museum of Art; found at The Presurfer.

Tumbleweeds...

2012-01-17T21:40:00.000-06:00

Live Leak link.

... demonstrate their method of seed dispersal. Depending on your tolerance for childhood laughter, you might want to hover your finger above the "mute" button.

Reblogged from 2009.

Tumbleweeds in a vortex

2012-01-17T21:15:00.000-06:00

YouTube link.

Filmed in Queensland. Found at Neatorama. Reposted from 2008.

Rising college costs, 1990 - 2010

2012-01-17T21:11:00.004-06:00

The graph comes from a Moody's report (pdf), via The Dish (the title has been cut off the embed - it said "Tuition vs. other price indices - CPI, cumulative...").

I find this incredible, especially when I remember that from 1968-1972 I paid for four years of graduate school tuition by borrowing $600 per year at 3% interest, deferred until after graduation (I also had a $300 scholarship, but even a total of $2,400 is minuscule compared to what today's students face).

Addendum: see N. Normal's comment re online courses available from MIT.

A dog balancing on a chain

2012-01-17T20:56:00.001-06:00

YouTube link.

Via Nothing to do with Arbroath.

I always wonder what's under sand dunes

2012-01-17T20:52:00.000-06:00

I spent a long time looking at this photo of a sandy desert (?the Atacama?) somewhere in Chile. Whenever I see sand dunes, I start to wonder what might be underneath them. Dunes move, and in so doing can bury anything in their path. I remember reading stories* about Hollywood movie sets abandoned decades ago now emerging as the California desert dunes that covered them up now move onward. When glaciers retreat, archaeologists find well-preserved artifacts from prehistoric times.

What's under these dunes? Remnants of old cities? Burial sites? Fire rings? Fossils? Diamonds? Alien artifacts? Sandworms?

Photo credit Jerome Prevost/Associatied Press/Pool, from a photoessay on the Dakar Rally.

*A hat tip to twoeightnine for locating a story in the Los Angeles Times re the (intentional) burial of a Cecil B. DeMille set for The Ten Commandments in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes.

Future physician

2012-01-17T20:38:00.002-06:00

From the weekly compilation at The New Yorker.

A neolithic skier

2012-01-17T13:09:00.000-06:00

Many years ago I visited the famous Holmenkollen ski jump in Norway. Recently, while reading about the Nordic ski championships held there in 1966, I saw the embedded photo of a set of stamps issued in Norway to commemorate the event.

My eye was caught by the stamp at the upper left. The 55 and the 60 show modern jumpers and X-country skiers, and the 90 shows a stylized Holmenkollen. The 40 looked to me like a cave drawing (or other geoglyph).

So I started to research the antiquity of skiing. Medium aevum (via Uncertain Times) had this to say -

The primitive ski dated back to 1010, and is thought to be Greenland’s oldest ski brought by Norsemen circa 980 A.D...

The oldest account involves the famous story from 1206 A.D. of the Birkebeiners during a civil war in medieval Norway. Considered the underdog, the Birkebeiners were at war against a rival faction known as the baglers. Following the death of the Birkebeiner chief, the baglers feared a rival in his young son Håkon Håkonsson. To protect him, two of the most skillful Birkebeiner skiers, with toddler in tow, skied through treacherous conditions over the mountains from around Lillehammer to safety in Østerdalen valley.

- accompanied by this way cool painting:

- entitled Birkebeinerne takes Haakon Haakonson as a child toTrondheim by Knud Bergslien, apparently from the Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum (northern Norway art museum).

But more relevant to the image on the Norwegian stamp I found the following:

The oldest and most accurately documented evidence of skiing origins is found in modern day Norway and Sweden. The earliest primitive carvings circa 5000 B.C. depict a skier with one pole, located in Rødøy in the Nordland region of Norway.

That's what's on the stamp, according to a Facit catalogue. Now to try to wrap my mind around the idea of someone skiing in 5000 BC (predynastic Egypt, maize introduced to Mexico, wheel invented in Mesopotamia, beer brewing invented...), and then noting the accomplishment by carving it on a stone.

You learn something every day.

The debate in South Carolina

2012-01-17T12:17:00.002-06:00

I never watch televised political debates, but I do read commentary about them. Herewith some excerpts re the most recent debate:

They are all seeking even further drastic cuts in federal income taxation. Ron Paul even goes to zero. How on earth are they going to cut the debt if they slash the top rates even further? The radicalism here is breath-taking.

Jeers and boos for someone who has Mexican ancestry [Romney]. Wow. The rank xenophobia in the GOP base sometimes surprises.

"Rich white people don't get the death penalty very often." Yes, I just heard that at a Republican debate. That's that racist Ron Paul for you.

Juan Williams tries to find out if Gingrich can even understand why some of his rhetoric may offend some. Newt responds by backing child labor in schools. Juan Williams hangs in. The crowd boos the black moderator.

Now Romney tries to coopt the bloodlust. "We are under attack." If you believe that the US is under attack, and that this gives the US the right to go anywhere and kill anyone, then this is your party.

A chilling defense by Romney of the right to put people in prison for "treason" without any due process... this party that allegedly believes in individual freedom is completely comfortable with the abolition of habeas corpus whenever an administration cries out: "terror suspect!"

This is Jon Huntsman's best debate by far.

Another discussion of No Child Left Behind with no mention at all of its architect, George W. Bush. In fact, I think it's an amazing thing that over 16 debates, the last Republican president has gone unnamed. He doesn't exist.

From my perspective, Romney was cringe-inducing, shudder-worthy, and plastic beyond measure. I suspect he's going to try and rig this year's tax returns to hide his far lower rate of taxation and far, far, far higher income than 99.999 percent of the population. It was a weak answer.

The embedded image is a photo of a cartoon that has been on my bulletin board since 2004; the original can be accessed in the archive of Real Life Adventures.

Iapetus

2012-01-16T11:51:00.000-06:00

The photo above is the Astronomy Picture of the Day, from NASA's website. Here's part of their text:

Vast sections of this strange world are dark as coal, while others are as bright as ice. The composition of the dark material is unknown, but infrared spectra indicate that it possibly contains some dark form of carbon. Iapetus also has an unusual equatorial ridge that makes it appear like a walnut. To help better understand this seemingly painted moon, NASA directed the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn to swoop within 2,000 kilometers in 2007. Pictured above, from about 75,000 kilometers out, Cassini's trajectory allowed unprecedented imaging of the hemisphere of Iapetus that is always trailing.

A huge impact crater seen in the south spans a tremendous 450 kilometers and appears superposed on an older crater of similar size. The dark material is seen increasingly coating the easternmost part of Iapetus, darkening craters and highlands alike. Close inspection indicates that the dark coating typically faces the moon's equator and is less than a meter thick. A leading hypothesis is that the dark material is mostly dirt leftover when relatively warm but dirty ice sublimates. An initial coating of dark material may have been effectively painted on by the accretion of meteor-liberated debris from other moons...

I got interested in Iapetus several years ago (see the post below this one).

And for completeness:

In Greek mythology, Iapetus... was a Titan, the son of Uranus and Gaia, and father (by an Oceanid named Clymene or Asia) of Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius and through Prometheus, Epimetheus and Atlas an ancestor of the human race. He was the Titan of Mortal Life, while his son, Prometheus, was the creator of mankind.

Iapetus, a fascinating moon of Saturn - updated

2012-01-16T11:40:00.000-06:00

NASA's Cassini spacecraft is returning awesome photos of Saturn, its rings, and its moons, many of them assembled at Boston.com's Big Picture.

I was especially interested to see a closeup of Iapetus, the eighth moon, which has a circumferential ridge around its equator. The photo embedded above is from NASA in 2007. The photo below comes from what I'm sure everyone would consider a "wacko" website that suggests that Iapetus is an artificial (i.e. manufactured) moon.

Certainly the comparison with a Deathstar is striking - and that website is quite interesting (especially if you enjoy pondering conspiracy-theory-type improbabilities).

Whether or not the Iapetus stuff interests you, the rest of the photos from Cassini are truly impressive.

Update December 2010: When I originally posted this is May of 2009, that equatorial ridge around Iapetus was unexplained. A new hypothesis suggests that this ridge comes not from deformational stresses within the moon, as previously postulated, but rather that it is the remnant of a collapsed ring of debris:

...we propose intact capture or accretion from a debris disk of a "sub-satellite" (possibly more than one) around Iapetus... Such a sub-satellite would be tidally drawn towards Iapetus, once Iapetus is sufficiently despun by tidal interaction with Saturn... Once deep inside the Roche limit, tides would then tear the sub-satellite apart. The resulting debris would collisionally evolve to the equatorial plane, dissipating orbital energy and ultimately raining down on the equator (deorbiting) at subsonic speeds... Assuming the density of ice and a high porosity, rubble-pile structure, all the mass in the ridge can be supplied by a sub-satellite ~100 km in radius, a size relative to Iapetus far smaller than the relative sizes of the Moon to the Earth or Charon to Pluto...

That's from the abstract at the American Geophysical Union meeting. A BBC summary is here.

Reposted in 2011 to accompany even better photos of Iapetus in an adjacent post.

Word for the day: Rhyton

2012-01-16T11:22:00.001-06:00

A rhyton is an elaborate drinking vessel, common in ancient Persia and later popularized in Greece:

The word is believed to be derived from Greek rhein*, "to flow".... Many vessels considered rhytons featured a wide mouth at the top and a hole through a conical constriction at the bottom from which the fluid ran. The idea is that one scooped wine or water from a storage vessel or similar source, held it up, unstoppered the hole with one's thumb, and let the fluid run into the mouth (or onto the ground in libation) in the same way wine is drunk from a wineskin today.

One's thoughts wander to collegiate "spring break" parties... But to continue -

They are often shaped like an animal head or horn and can be very ornate and compounded with precious metals and stones. In Minoan Crete, silver and gold bulls' heads... seemed particularly common...

Not all rhyta were so valuable; many were simply decorated conical cups in ceramic. It is also likely that in shepherding cultures, the primary material for rhyta was animal horn; this cannot be substantiated, however... Chusid speculates that Biblical Israelites used ram's horn (shofar) for both sounding purposes and for drinking...

A Google image search shows a wide variety of examples, and the topic of drinking horns is of course closely related.

The photo is of a 5th-6th century rhyton "in the form of a Saiga antelope head," found in Poland, from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, via A London Salmagundi.

*yes, I had the same question. Apparently the Rhine river's name is from a different derivation.

Etymology of "the C--- word"

2012-01-16T11:03:00.000-06:00

The Oxford University Press blog addresses this word in a forthright manner:

By way of introduction, I should note that, judging by the examples in the OED, the English C-word was not offensive or at least not always offensive in Middle English. No combination of sounds appeals to our prurient instincts because of their intrinsic qualities. To shock or make us blush, they need a certain attitude on our part...

...there are innumerable descriptive and playful names for the genitals. Is our C**t one of them? I have looked at Classical Greek, Elizabethan, Modern German, and American students’ names for “vagina, vulva” and compared them with a list collected from the Samoyeds, a Ural-Altaic people inhabiting the tundra lands of the north, and another list from Italian dialects, that is, words used by people having minimal contact with book culture...

The next part goes beneath the fold -

The most common words for “vagina” in the Germanic languages sound approximately like put, fut, and kut ~ kunt (u frequently alternates with o in them). An unsolved question is whether they are in any way connected, that is, whether we are dealing with some sort of rhyming slang, taboo, or even variants of fuzzy-muzzy. As a rule, they are looked upon as three independent words, each of which needs an etymology...

I gravitate toward the conclusion that Germanic kunt is indeed a nasalized variant of kut (because of taboo or for expressive purposes). Given this etymology, kin, along with Latin cunnus, fades out of the picture. The origin of cut ~ kut may not be too obscure. It is probably related to Engl. cot (cottage is the same word with a French suffix added). Dutch kot means “sheep pen; dog kennel; pigsty,” and the English dovecote (which should not be fluttered) belongs with them. Obviously, we have here the name of an animal house, an enclosure or some elevation above the ground. If so, our word may once have meant “hole” or “little house,” both being among the most common designations for “vagina” in various languages...

You can fill in the ellipses at OUP.

Goodbye to endless "self-esteem boosting"

2012-01-16T10:59:00.002-06:00

From the Washington Post:

For decades, the prevailing wisdom in education was that high self-esteem would lead to high achievement. The theory led to an avalanche of daily affirmations, awards ceremonies and attendance certificates — but few, if any, academic gains.

Now, an increasing number of teachers are weaning themselves from what some call empty praise. Drawing on psychology and brain research, these educators aim to articulate a more precise, and scientific, vocabulary for praise that will push children to work through mistakes and take on more challenging assignments...

A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with significant learning opportunities. As schools ratchet up academic standards for all students, new buzzwords are “persistence,” “risk-taking” and “resilience” — each implying more sweat and strain than fuzzy, warm feelings...

More at the Washington Post. Thank God for this change. The most egregious example I encountered in recent years was not in a school, but at the bowling alley. In a lane adjacent to mine, I watched as a mommy praised every single one of her little precious' gutter balls. Not a trace if real instruction on how to swing the ball or release it - just oohs and aahs and the clapping of hands after every single fruitless effort, accompanied by words expressing wonderment at the child's extraordinary (lack of) ability.

Defining the world's richest 1%

2012-01-16T10:27:00.003-06:00

A column at CNN Money reminds readers that even if they are not among the richest 1% in the United States, they may be in the richest 1% in the world. You may be in this group (I am not).

It only takes $34,000 a year, after taxes, to be among the richest 1% in the world. That's for each person living under the same roof, including children. (So a family of four, for example, needs to make $136,000.)..

In fact, people at the world's true middle -- as defined by median income -- live on just $1,225 a year. (And, yes, Milanovic's numbers are adjusted to account for different costs of living across the globe.) In the grand scheme of things, even the poorest 5% of Americans are better off financially than two thirds of the entire world.

The sentiment is correct, of course, and many Americans need this kind of reminder. But I would suspect the data as being a soft in several regards. The first is the equating of "income" with "wealth." There are many people with amassed wealth who have little current income; when I lived in Kentucky I often met old men from Eastern KY who lived on Social Security checks that would have represented several hundred dollars a month, but who owned parcels of land worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Secondly, the economist says the data are "adjusted for different costs of living," but that is an enormously complicated task - even just within a nonhomogenous country like the U.S. where a given income might represent "wealth" in one ZIP code but be marginal for living in another.

And finally, having a high current income may not place one "better off financially" than someone with a lower income living in a country with better health care and social safety nets.

Via Neatorama.

A plea for energy conservation

2012-01-16T10:08:00.002-06:00

Found via Digg; original credit unknown.

Women in Iran

2012-01-15T15:20:00.001-06:00

Iranian grooms, Javad Jafari, left, and his brother, Mehdi, right, pose for photographs with their brides, Maryam Sadeghi, second left, and Zahra Abolghasemi, who wear their formal wedding dresses prior to their wedding... (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iranian rollerbladers wait to hear whistle of referee, to start their competition, in a women's rollerblading championship league... (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Covering her face with a traditional veil, a vendor works at her produce shop on the island of Qeshm, Iran, on December 24, 2011.(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian-Kurd woman talks on her mobile phone as she walks in a bazaar while shopping in Marivan in Kurdistan province... (Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl)

Noora (right) and Shahrzad Naraghi practice on a motocross track in the mountains overlooking Tehran... Women are banned from driving motorcycles on the streets of Iran. (Reuters/Caren Firouz)

Selections from a gallery of 42 images assembled at The Atlantic's In Focus site, posted to help counter a variety of prevalent stereotypes.

A "snow roller" (1937)

2012-01-15T15:07:00.002-06:00

"For more than half a century snow rollers were used in Vermont to pack down snow on country roads rather than plowing it off."

Interesting. From the blog of the Hennepin County Library.

The etymology of "whisky"

2012-01-15T14:53:00.001-06:00

The Strange Maps column at Big Think has an interesting map of single malt flavors, and an equally interesting footnote re the word whisky -

Uisge beatha is the Scottish Gaelic term from which the word "whisky" evolved. It literally means "water of life." The Latin words for "water of life" are aqua vitae, from which comes the Scandinavian word akvavit (another potent distilled liquor). In French, "water of life" became eau de vie, (a fruit brandy).

And they note that the American and Irish drinks with similar names are typically spelled with an inserted "e" ("whiskey").

A 2-variable taste guide for single malt whiskies

2012-01-15T14:43:00.002-06:00

Courtesy of the Strange Maps column at Big Think.

“I know that people find whisky confusing - and they often try blended Scotch and get put off whisky for life”, says whisky expert Dave Broom. “They are really missing out […] You need help to find what you like.” Which is why Broom developed the aforementioned grid, also known as the Whisky Flavour Map...

The horizontal axis differentiates lighter from richer flavours... The position on the vertical axis is determined by the whisky’s degree of ‘peatiness’. Peat can be used to heat the pot stills in which the damp malt is dried, during which time the smoke gets into the barley - more time, more smoke, more smokiness...

At our house we keep three bottles hidden away in a cabinet for special occasions (guests present, day ending in the letter "y") - a Laphroaig, a Highland Park, and a Macallan. Perhaps we should add one from the lower left quadrant.

"Brute force attacks" on website security

2012-01-15T14:30:00.002-06:00

Wired has an article this week asking "Do You Really Need a Password You Can Barely Remember?"

To researchers Cormac Herley and Paul C. van Oorschot, the computer industry’s non-stop campaign to force us to to strengthen our passwords is misguided — demanding too much work from users for the benefits it delivers...

...“brute force” attacks [have] become very effective. A modern computer can quickly generate billions and billions of password combinations until one of them finally works. This is the attack that you’re repelling with that long, complicated, hard-to-remember password.

But, for websites, there’s an easier way. They can just pop up a captcha page, or force the user to wait a few minutes after a handful of failed login attempts. This type of login throttling is enough to thwart a brute force attack on the website’s login page.

It seems to work. Many heavily trafficked websites — including sites that get targeted by fraudsters all the time — let you set up accounts with mind-numbingly simple passwords. You can set up an Amazon.com account with the password “aaaaaa.” That would be guessed in seconds using a brute-force attack, but Amazon allows it...

Some even say that it’s perfectly fine to use weaker passwords in some cases. Sure, you want a unique and extremely strong password for online banking, but do you really need to go iron-clad when you’re coming up for a login to PBS Kids?..

It’s a controversial topic in the computer security field. After spending 20 years hammering home the message that complex passwords are important, who would want to admit that the whole thing might be a little overblown?

According to Wikipedia, a brute force attack may involve testing 2^56 permutations per second. How can a host site allow such to occur? Anyway, further details at Wired (which is the via for the xkcd cartoon)

Addendum: Tx to readers for comments, including pointing out that the numbers above re brute force attacks are theoretical. Read the comments for additional insights.

Crochets

2012-01-15T10:47:00.002-06:00

The prolegs of caterpillars have tiny hooks, termed "crochets," that provide a better grip on vegetation. The photo above (credit Satyrium) depicts a caterpillar on the far side of a leaf. A more detailed image is shown below:

Each proleg has a circle of hooks (or crochets), seen here in yellow and orange... Caterpillars have three pairs of true, jointed legs that remain in their adult moth form, whereas the prolegs disappear. The brilliant colours seen in this image were created using a technique called differential interference contrast (DIC) illumination.

Lower image from the Wellcome collection, via The Daily Croissant.

9/11 conspiracy theory in a nutshell

2012-01-15T10:05:00.001-06:00

YouTube link.

Summarized in less than five minutes, and presented in a humorous fashion.

"Papa's Airplane" (1934)

2012-01-14T11:52:00.000-06:00

A photograph by renowned French photographer Robert Doisneau, found at Miss Folly. I'm not sure why the little plane/stroller would be decorated with ?flowers. Perhaps it was to take part in a parade or celebration of some sort.

Robert Doisneau was known for his modest, playful, and ironic images of amusing juxtapositions, mingling social classes, and eccentrics in contemporary Paris streets and cafes... Doisneau presented a charming vision of human frailty and life as a series of quiet, incongruous moments...

Doisneau's work gives unusual prominence and dignity to children's street culture; returning again and again to the theme of children at play in the city, unfettered by parents. His work treats their play with seriousness and respect. In his honour, and owing to this, there are several Ecole Primaire (Primary Schools) named after him.

Some of his portfolios are posted here.

"Little Edie" from Grey Gardens

2012-01-14T11:26:00.002-06:00

Those unfamiliar with the Grey Gardens story can read a quick summary at Wikipedia, or explore it in depth at Grey Gardens Online.

The embedded photo (posted for the feline photobomb) shows "Little Edie" in 1972, at the time the documentary was being filmed. The LIFE online site has a rather nice photoessay showing Little Edie in 1938 and images of her mother and the mansion and grounds.

I thought the 2009 HBO film was rather good; I have not seen the more famous 1975 documentary.

This is a radioactive tissue holder

2012-01-14T11:02:00.000-06:00

The incident is all over the news today, so it's not a "TYWK," but I found several aspects interesting. As reported by the Washington Post:

Metal tissue holders contaminated with low levels of radioactive material may have been distributed to Bed, Bath & Beyond stores in more than 20 states including New York, federal regulators said Thursday...

The problem is described as a rather minor one -

“If someone has one of these, they could receive a small radiation dose from it,” he said. For example, he said someone keeping one of the boxes on a vanity in the bathroom and spending about 30 minutes a day near it for a year would receive the equivalent of a couple of chest x-rays..."

The curmudgeon in us wants to point out that if you kept it next to your bed rather than in your bathroom, you would be exposed for 8 hours a day and thus get the equivalent of perhaps 32 xrays per year. But it's not really that much radiation. Only enough to do this -

The contamination was first discovered in California when two packages bound for Bed, Bath & Beyond stores in Santa Clara and San Jose containing four tissue holders triggered radiation alarms at truck scales, according to a Jan. 6 report posted on the NRC website.

I wouldn't worry about it.

Every picture tells a story

2012-01-14T10:44:00.004-06:00

See if you can guess what's going on here.

Hint: The man became famous (rather than infamous). Note also that he's wearing a sort of smock, rather than a suit. And the pocket has his intials on it. I'll leave the answer below the fold.

As reported by Vintage Gal:

Max Factor and his “scientific device” the Beauty Micrometer which detects defects in feminine beauty that are imperceptible to the naked eye. 1934

A "crèche" of Penguins

2012-01-14T10:39:00.001-06:00

A portion of the 1500-volume personal library of Karyn Reeves, who writes about "A Penguin a Week." She has an excellent blog; if you share her enthusiasm, there is a Penguin Collectors Society.

And I can't resist contrasting her bookshelves with this stack on a wall (original credit unknown) posted at Book Porn:

People doing the right thing

2012-01-14T10:19:00.002-06:00

YouTube link.

The story is told at the Lowell Sun:

An area veterans group pledged to fill every seat in Babylon, a downtown Iraqi restaurant where owners feared hatred drove a man to throw a 20-pound rock through a window last Wednesday.Instead, those veterans filled every seat twice...

The veterans, joined by the likes of Lowell Mayor Patrick Murphy, held flags and signs in front of the restaurant as they took turns sitting down inside to eat meals.

Owner Leyla Al-Zubaydi and her father Ahmed Al-Zubaidi said their family was terrified the vandalism was fueled by hate. Ahmed Al-Zubaidi said the incident drove his wife to tears, and prompted her to question whether the family should close the restaurant.

The show of support from veterans and the community drove her to tears of joy last night, he said."This solidarity gives us the courage to stand," said Al-Zubaidi. "There is no more fear in my heart because there are such nice people behind us."

I note one of the participants is the "coordinator of Chapter 9 Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace."

"Spooning" - and "Prufrock"

2012-01-14T10:00:00.000-06:00

The conventional definition involves sentimental love, but the photo source also offers this comment:

The word also had homosexual connotations, as in Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. Says old A. E. Housman to young A. E. Housman: “Centuries later in a play now lost, Aeschylus brought in Eros, which I suppose we may translate as extreme spooniness; showers of kisses, and unblemished thighs. Sophocles, too; he wrote The Loves of Achilles: more spooniness than you’d find in a cutlery drawer, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Found at Modern Foppery, via.

Addendum: I originally posted this back in 2010. This week I encountered the photo again while browsing the web, and decided to search for more information on the unusual imagery. When I Googled several key words, the #1 hit was...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I have to admit that was a bit startling, especially since it was one of my favorite poems back when I was an English major in college (never could quite memorize it all, but I can still call up key passages). And the connection to the photo? - just the coincidental presence of the keywords I selected ("women," "spoons," "behind," and "back.")

So I'm going to use this serendipitous event as an excuse to post the poem.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress	65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? . . . . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . . . . .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.	125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Composed by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), and published in Prufrock and Other Observations (1920).

Addendum: Here's a very interesting and perhaps relevant observation by reader frenchfarmer:

"Spoon" in french is "cuillère" and is pronounced "quee-er."

Ennio Morricone's "Ecstasy of Gold"

2012-01-14T09:45:00.000-06:00

YouTube link.

Morricone is perhaps my favorite modern composer. Even better in my view than the embedded selection above is Jill's Theme in Once Upon a Time in the West, and the musical theme of Cinema Paradiso.

How did "spendy" become a popular adjective ?

2012-01-14T09:40:00.000-06:00

I've heard the term used with increasing frequency in recent months, but discovered that it was discussed three years ago in an entry in the Macmillan dictionary:

Spendy has caught on as a catchy new synonym for expensive. Its appeal and correspondingly speedy journey into mainstream usage may have been galvanised by its form, i.e. like pricey and costly, spendy's meaning is instantly recognizable as a money concept (compare: price, cost, spend).

Though spendy is regularly used across the board as an informal and trendy alternative to expensive, its typical contexts of use are in relation to the purchase of desirable, luxury items, things which might have cost you an arm and a leg, but will give you lots of pleasure once you've got them. Typical examples of goods that might be described as spendy are designer clothes and jewellery, or electronic products such as large plasma screen TVs or digital SLR cameras...

The exact origins of spendy are unclear, with some arguing that it evolved from a blend of the words expensive and trendy, and others believing it to be an adjectival play on spend (taking inspiration from e.g. pricey, a derivative of price which was first attested in 1932).

I don't like the word. I try not to be a prescriptivist when it comes to new additions to language, but in this case it just seems that the word is totally unnecessary when "expensive" would do just as well.

Snake on a (vertical) plane

2012-01-14T08:19:00.000-06:00

YouTube link.

Filmed in Florida. Via Nothing To Do With Arbroath.

Marginally related - the skyrocketing number of "toilet snakes" in Alice Springs.

Limited blogging today

2012-01-13T10:17:00.002-06:00

I need to shovel my driveway so I can drive to the dentist. What a bummer combination. Makes your head want to explode...

Heads blowing up

2012-01-13T10:14:00.001-06:00

YouTube link.

A compilation of clips from over 30 movies, each depicting a human head exploding. Everyone will remember the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and perhaps the Scanners ones, but it's surprising how many others there have been over the years.

At the risk of being a nitpicker, we'll point out that human heads do not contain nearly as much blood as the cinema events depict. A head exploding would probably spatter you more with tapioca-like material than the blood shown in most of these clips.

I've left the embed "above the fold" because the mid-video still is (reasonably) innocuous, but I'll still offer the appropriate warning that the contents include extensive violence ranging from the excessive to the improbable, and immense quantities of gore. There are no light-hearted exploding heads of Roadrunners or Sylvester cats (well, there is Weird Al...).

Schools may allow advertising on students' lockers. And on the walls. And on the floor.

2012-01-13T10:00:00.000-06:00

I'm absolutely appalled by this.

School lockers are becoming the latest venue for bombarding kids with advertising.

Just what that will look like is on display at the north suburban Centennial school administration building: four lockers wrapped in a bubblegum pink ad for the Mall of America's "Underwater Adventures" aquarium.

On Nov. 1, the school board is slated to decide whether it will allow the ads on up to 10 percent of the available surfaces in all of the district's seven schools. That includes lockers, walls and floors. The take for the district? $184,000 a year.

In a bleak economy, with dim prospects for any new state school funding, Centennial -- with $3.6 million in cuts this year and more likely on the way next year -- is just the latest school district looking at the ads as an alternative way to generate some cash. Paul Miller, president of Coon Rapids-based School Media's, the company that would install the ads, said he expects to have nine Twin Cities school districts signed up by the end of the year.

The rest of the story is at the StarTribune.

Addendum: Reposted from 2010 to add this variation on the theme -

And on school buses

Last year USA Today and the New York Times reported that some school districts were planning to sell advertising space on school buses.

Utah became the latest state to allow school bus advertising when its governor signed a law last month authorizing the practice. The strategy began in the 1990s in Colorado, then spread to Texas, Arizona, Tennessee and Massachusetts. In the last year, at least eight other states have considered similar legislation. One of them, New Jersey, approved school bus advertising in January...

Districts with 250 buses can expect to generate about $1 million over four years by selling some yellow space... Officials say that the revenue, while small, can still make the difference between having new textbooks — or a music teacher or a volleyball team — and not having them.

More at the links. I'll step aside and let those of you with school-age children debate the merits or downsides of these changes.

Photo credit: Matthew Staver.

Distribution of trees in the United States

2012-01-12T14:30:00.003-06:00

Technically this shows "above-ground woody biomass," but in practical terms it is a map of tree density.

Over six years, researchers assembled the national forest map from space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models, and a massive amount of ground-based data. It is possibly the highest resolution and most detailed view of forest structure and carbon storage ever assembled for any country.

Forests in the U.S. were mapped down to a scale of 30 meters, or roughly 10 computer display pixels for every hectare of land (4 pixels per acre). They divided the country into 66 mapping zones and ended up mapping 265 million segments of the American land surface...

Posted at Neatorama by Miss Cellania, who found it at NASA's Earth Observatory (their Image of the Day page is well worth a bookmark).

p.s. - The embedded image enlarges with a click, but I jpegged it to save on my allotted space at Blogspot. For maximum detail, enlarge the original at NASA.

Some female snakes can store sperm for five years

2012-01-12T14:16:00.001-06:00

From New Scientist:

The rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus) in question was collected in Florida in 2005 and kept in a private collection for five years, with no contact with other snakes. In late 2010, she unexpectedly gave birth to 19 snakelets. To find out what had happened, Warren Booth of North Carolina State University in Raleigh took samples of DNA from the mother and her young.

Booth studies "virgin birth", in which a female produces young without any contribution from a male. But in this case the snakelets carried genes that their mother didn't, so she must have mated before she was captured and stored the sperm...

Previous studies have hinted that reptiles can store sperm for several years, but this is the first case confirmed by genetics.

It is not known how they do this.

U.S. intervention in Iran began in 1953

2012-01-12T14:11:00.001-06:00

YouTube link.

Various viewpoints re the video, both pro and con, are expessed in the Reddit thread.

Where in the world is this "yellow ribbon" located ?

2012-01-12T14:01:00.002-06:00

This is astronaut photograph ISS028-E-29679, acquired on August 21, 2011, with a Nikon digital camera using a 16 mm lens, photographed by the crew on the International Space Station. The yellow-orange linear structure is real; it is several hundred miles long.

Where on earth is it located? The answer is below the fold.

This is the fenced and floodlit border zone between India and Pakistan. The fence is designed to discourage smuggling and arms trafficking. A similar fenced zone separates India’s eastern border from Bangladesh (not visible).

From NASA's Earth Observatory, via.

Why young Republicans favor Ron Paul

2012-01-12T13:50:00.002-06:00

According to a Salon column written by Robert Reich:

The Republican right thinks Paul’s views on the economy are responsible for this fire among the young. Tuesday evening, on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC program, I squared off with Larry and the Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore. Both are convinced young people are attracted by Paul’s strict adherence to the views of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, and Paul’s desire to move America back to the gold standard.

Baloney. The young are flocking to Ron Paul because he wants to slice military spending, bring our troops home, stop government from spying on American citizens and legalize pot.

"Wet mummy" found in China

2012-01-12T13:14:00.002-06:00

The Chinese are not known to have intentionally mummified their burials, but some occur naturally in extremely dry, cold, or wet environments. This recently found one dates from the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644). She is not thought to have been a royal personage, but was apparently wealthy, based on a jade ring and silver hairpin found with her.

Additional pix and some details at National Geographic. Her slippers are shown in one photo in a gallery at The Telegraph.

Stop the music !

2012-01-12T13:04:00.003-06:00

The New York Philharmonic's performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony was interrupted by a cell phone:

The jarring ~~ringtone—the device's "Marimba" sound, which simulates the mallet instrument~~*—intruded in the middle of the movement, emanating from the first row at Avery Fisher Hall.

When the phone wasn't immediately hushed, audience members shook their heads. It continued to chime, and music director Alan Gilbert turned his head sharply to the left, signaling his displeasure.Minutes passed. Each time the orchestra reached a quiet section, the phone could be heard above the hushed, reverent notes.Finally, Mr. Gilbert could take no more: He stopped the orchestra...

After Mr. Gilbert took matters into his own hands, the man reached into his pocket and silenced the device. Mr. Gilbert asked him: "Is it off? It won't come on again?" The man nodded.

Satisfied, the conductor addressed the audience. Usually, Mr. Gilbert said, it is best to ignore disruptions, because the reaction itself can be even more disruptive. "This was so egregious that I couldn't let it go by," Mr. Gilbert told the audience, apologizing.

The audience applauded vigorously.

Further details in the Wall Street Journal.

*Update: The original posting of this story was at thousandfold echo, who report that the sound came NOT from the phone ringing (it HAD been silenced), but from a preset clock alarm.

Anti-Obama message

2012-01-12T12:12:00.003-06:00

Attributed to Romney's supporters, perhaps as a guerilla marketing campaign rather than a formal purchase of the space; said to be in airports and fast-food establishments around the country. Or it could be 'shopped and the Reuters story faked; in any case, it is clever.

Via Copyranter and The Dish.