That these Mesozoic marine reptiles, contemporaries of the dinosaurs, got the bends can be seen from their bones. What can also be seen is a curious evolutionary tale—for not all ichthyosaurs succumbed...It's the latter sentence that leads to the interesting part:
To this end, [Bruce Rothschild of the University of Kansas] and his colleagues travelled the world’s natural-history museums, looking at a total of 116 ichthyosaurs from the Triassic period... and 190 from the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods...Fascinating.
When he started, he assumed that signs of the bends would be rarer in younger fossils, reflecting their gradual evolution of measures to deal with decompression, such as the ability found in many whales to store lots of oxygen in their blood. Instead, he was astonished to discover the reverse. More than 15% of Jurassic and Cretaceous ichthyosaurs had suffered the bends before they died, but not a single Triassic specimen showed evidence of that sort of injury...
As he reports in Naturwissenschaften, he suspects it was evolution in other species that caused the change. Whales that suffer the bends often do so because they have surfaced to escape a predator such as a large shark. One of the features of Jurassic oceans was an abundance of large sharks, and also of huge marine crocodiles, both of which were partial to ichthyosaur lunches. Triassic oceans, by contrast, were (from the ichthyosaur’s point of view) mercifully shark- and crocodile-free. In the Triassic, then, ichthyosaurs were top of the food chain. In the Jurassic and Cretaceous, they were prey as well as predator—and often had to make a speedy exit as a result.
The rooster plays a small but crucial role in the Gospels in helping to fulfill the prophecy that Peter would deny Jesus “before the cock crows.” (In the ninth century, Pope Nicholas I decreed that a figure of a rooster should be placed atop every church as a reminder of the incident—which is why many churches still have cockerel-shaped weather vanes.)From the Wikipedia entry I found that the word 'vane' comes from the Anglo-Saxon word 'fane' meaning 'flag', which fits in nicely with this observation from an article about the history of weather vanes:
In Britain, Germany, and Normandy lords and noblemen flew banners and flags from castle towers. These flags were not intended to predict the weather, but actually helped archers calculate the direction of the wind when defending the castle. Through the years, the cloth flags were replaced by metal structures.So that explains why images of castles often show the battlements festooned with flags; I always thought they were just decorative. You learn something every day.
Matthew 23:37 contains a passage in which Jesus likens his care for the people of Jerusalem to a hen caring for her brood. This image, had it caught on, could have completely changed the course of Christian iconography, which has been dominated instead by depictions of the Good Shepherd.Here's the passage (King James Version):
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!It makes me wonder how my old church - the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church - might otherwise have been named...
"There's a significant amount of energy, literally enough to heat hundreds of homes within the streets of the city of Brainerd," Peter Nelson of Hidden Fuels told the Minnesota Public Radio News...
Hidden Fuels would rely on technology already in use. A heat pump will circulate water from which energy can be extracted to heat or cool buildings, similar to how geothermal heating and cooling systems work.
Officials in Canada used a similar system during the Vancouver winter Olympics. But it didn't have the challenges of using an existing sewer. What Nelson and others want to do in Brainerd is new because the water's full of waste...
Earl Wolleat, director of buildings and grounds for the school district, said he's confident Hidden Fuels can pull it off, but it will take years before it's cost effective.
Leuser, a blind Sumatran orangutan has survived poachers, air rifles, and deforestation during his 13 years of life. Leuser has been saved twice by the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program (SOCP), but now resides in captivity at their quarantine centre in Medan, Sumatra, after being shot 62 times by villagers seeking entertainment.These are his skull xrays:
One of the most common depictions of Bes were jars decorated with his face. If a child were ill, milk would be given to them in one of these Bes jars. It was believed that the milk would turn to medicine and protect the child. If the child didn’t get well though, of course a doctor would be called. It was then not uncommon for the physician to offer medicine out of a Bes jar. The final form of Bes jars came during the Roman period. Bes jars were no longer delegated to only children. Soldiers, believing that they were vulnerable, just like a child, often drank their beer rations out of Bes jars in hopes of protection from attacks.With pix at the link and more with a Google Image search.
One of the most common taboos across human societies of the past and present has been incest. Virtually every known culture has considered it repulsive, especially when involving siblings or a parent and child. The leading behavioural theory that has been proposed to account for the ubiquity of this aversion is known as the Westermarck effect, after Finnish scholar Edvard Westermarck, who proposed it in his 1891 book The History of Human Marriage. The idea of the Westermarck effect is that young children will become sexually/romantically desensitised to anyone they live in close contact with over the course of the first few years of their lives...More at the Damn Interesting, via Neatorama.
Note that crucially, the connection does not have to be biological; according to the theory, it applies just as readily to children adopted at a young age as to those raised by their birth parents... However, when a child is separated from biological family at an early age, there is no chance for the Westermarck effect to take hold; reunions between biological relatives who were separated much earlier sometimes lead into unforeseen emotional territory. ...
The Westermarck effect is a hypothesis, but there is evidence to support it... A study by American cultural anthropologist Melford Spiro that examined 3,000 marriages within the kibbutz system found that only about 15 weddings involved pairs of people who were raised in the same group of children. Furthermore, none of these pairs had been raised with their partners before the age of six...
Another source of evidence for the Westermarck effect comes from what happens when it is noticeably absent. Genetically related individuals who are not raised together often fail to be sexually and romantically blind to each other....Genes ensure that the two have a lot in common, and the absence of the Westermarck effect sometimes makes them difficult for one another to resist. This is a converse theory known as genetic sexual attraction (GSA)....
Freud did not think much of Westermarck’s ideas, and he himself actively recalled having once had a fairly noticeable physical reaction to his naked mother getting dressed. But, says cognitive scientist Steven Pinker in his book How the Mind Works, it is Westermarck who may have the last word. Pinker speculates that the reason why Freud was able to have such a dramatic response to the sight of his own mother putting her clothes on was that as a baby, Sigmund had been cared for by a wet nurse. Perhaps it was this nurse, and not his mother, to whom Sigmund became desensitised; in other words, the Westermarck effect was not fully activated between the young Freud and his biological mother. “The Westermarck theory,” Pinker says in summary, “has out-Freuded Freud.”...
Sex Madness (1938) is an exploitation film directed by Dwain Esper, along the lines of Reefer Madness, supposedly to warn teenagers and young adults of the dangers of venereal diseases, specifically syphilis. Wild parties, lesbianism, and premarital sex are some of the forms of 'madness' portrayed. The educational aspect of the film allowed it to portray a taboo subject which was otherwise forbidden by the Production Code of 1930, and its stricter version imposed by Hollywood studios in July 1934.This was released two years after "Reefer Madness," and has the same producer and style. Those interested can view the entire movie at this link [Warning: boring].
Quentin Durward Corley, Sr. (January 21, 1884 - April 22, 1980) was a Texas circuit judge. On September 18, 1905 in Utica, New York he was in a railroad accident and lost both hands and one arm and shoulder. Within two years he invented and patented an artificial limb.Info from Wikipedia, via Vintage Photography.
Mecoptera have special importance in evolution of Insecta. Two of the most important insect orders, Lepidoptera and Diptera, along with Trichoptera, probably evolved from ancestors belonging to, or strictly related to, the Mecoptera.The Lepidoptera, of course, include the butterflies I like to blog.
Sumer is icumen in,- and the Modern English equivalent -
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu!
Awe bleteþ after lomb,
Lhouþ after calue cu.
Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ,
Murie sing cuccu!...
Summer has arrived,- and this clarification:
Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
The seed grows and the meadow blooms
And the wood springs anew,
Sing, Cuckoo!
The ewe bleats after the lamb
The cow lows after the calf.
The bullock stirs, the stag farts,
Merrily sing, Cuckoo...
The translation of "bucke uerteþ" is uncertain. Some translate as "the buck-goat turns", but the current critical consensus is that the line is "the stag farts", a gesture of virility indicating the stag's potential for creating new life, echoing the rebirth of Nature from the barren period of winter.A hat tip to Adrian for finding an mp3 of the round that you can listen to.
‘Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.’ –Henri Cartier-BressonVia The New Shelton 'wet/dry.
Text from CBSAtlanta.com staff; photo via TNT Magazine, where it is noted that "under Texan law any student skipping classes for more than 10 days in a six month period faces jail time and a fine," but...Tran said she works both full-time and part-time jobs, in addition to taking advanced and college level courses. But the judge said Tran's case was bigger than the individual situation of one student. "If you let one run loose, what are you gonna' do with the rest of 'em?," said Judge Lanny Moriarty. "Let them go too? A little stay in the jail for one night is not a death sentence."
But Tran's classmates said she had a lot more to juggle than the average teen. "She goes from job to job from school. She stays up until 7 a.m. in the morning doing her homework," said Devin Hill, a classmate and co-worker.
On top of that, Tran said her parents spilt up and moved away, leaving her to support her younger sister. The judge admitted that he wanted to make an example of the teen. Tran had to spend 24 hours in jail and had to pay a $100 fine.
News of Diane’s plight has spread online, with a petition at change.org and a helpdianetran.com.
The tradition of building castells originated in Valls, near the city of Tarragona, in the southern part of Catalonia towards the end of the 18th century. Later it developed a following in other regions of Catalonia and, since 1981, when the first castell of 9 levels of the 20th century was built, it has become very popular in most of Catalonia.Not a bad motto for life in general. More info here.
A castell is considered a success when stages of its assembling and disassembling, can be done in complete succession. The assembly is complete once all castellers have climbed into their designated places, and the enxaneta climbs into place at the top and raises one hand with four fingers erect, in a gesture said to symbolize the stripes of the Catalan flag. The enxaneta then climbs down the other side of the castell, after which the remaining levels of castellers descend in highest-to-lowest order until all have reached safety.
The sash (faixa) is the most important part of their outfit, since it supports the lower back and is used by other castellers in the team as a foothold or handhold when climbing up the tower. This tasselled piece of cloth varies in length and width and depends on the casteller's position inside the tower and also on choice. The length of the sash ranges from 1.5 to 12 m, and usually is shorter for those higher up in the castell. Performing castellers usually go barefoot as to minimise injures upon each other as they climb to their position and also for sensitivity when balancing and to have better feel and hold each other.
The motto of Castellers is "Força, equilibri, valor i seny" (Strength, balance, courage and common sense).
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause...
Derived from 16th Century English, "coil" refers to tumults or troubles. Used idiomatically, the phrase means "the bustle and turmoil of this mortal life." "Coil" has an unusual etymological history. It was coined repeatedly; at one time people used it as a verb to mean "to cull," "to thrash," "to lay in rings or spirals," "to turn," "to mound hay" and "to stir." As a noun it has meant "a selection," "a spiral," "the breech of a gun," "a mound of hay", "a pen for hens", and "noisy disturbance, fuss, ado." It is in this last sense, which became popular in the 16th century, that Shakespeare used the word.
For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies.More at the Shreveport Times.
Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin. And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn't sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry.
Beginning in the early 1800s, or possibly before, the term Melungeon was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border. But it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry.
G. Reginald Daniel, a sociologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara who has spent more than 30 years examining multiracial people in the U.S. and wasn't part of this research, said the study is more evidence that race-mixing in the U.S. isn't a new phenomenon. "All of us are multiracial," he said. "It is recapturing a more authentic U.S. history."
Estes and her fellow researchers theorize that the various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery. They conclude that as laws were put in place to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating together from Virginia through the Carolinas before settling primarily in the mountains of East Tennessee...
Claims of Portuguese ancestry likely were a ruse they used in order to remain free and retain other privileges that came with being considered white, according to the study's authors...
Writing about his argument in a memoir published years later, Shepherd stated, "Our Southern high-bred people will never tolerate on equal terms any person who is even remotely tainted with negro blood, but they do not make the same objection to other brown or dark-skinned people, like the Spanish, the Cubans, the Italians, etc."...
In recent years, it has become a catchall term for people of mixed-race ancestry and has been applied to about 200 communities in the eastern U.S. — from New York to Louisiana. Among them were the Montauks, the Mantinecocks, Van Guilders, the Clappers, the Shinnecocks and others in New York. Pennsylvania had the Pools; North Carolina the Lumbees, Waccamaws and Haliwas and South Carolina the Redbones, Buckheads, Yellowhammers, Creels and others. In Louisiana, which somewhat resembled a Latin American nation with its racial mixing, there were Creoles of the Cane River region and the Redbones of western Louisiana, among others....
The study does not rule out the possibility of other races or ethnicities forming part of the Melungeon heritage, but none were detected among the 69 male lines and 8 female lines that were tested. Also, the study did not look for later racial mixing that might have occurred, for instance with Native Americans.
"Let me feel your finger!" said the witch to Hansel every day to check if he was getting any fatter. Now, Gretel had brought her brother a chicken bone, and when the witch went to touch his finger, Hansel held out the bone.
‘The Meeting on the Turret Stairs’ is one of the better-known works of Frederic William Burton. The theme comes from a medieval Danish ballad which describes how Hellelil fell in love with Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland, one of her twelve personal guards. Her father orders his seven sons to kill him.They stood at the door with spear and shield:
‘Up Lord Hildebrand! out and yield!’
He kissed me then mine eyes above:-
‘Say never my name, thou darling love’
Out of the door Lord Hildebrand sprang;
Around his head the sword he swang.Hildebrand kills her father and six brothers before Hellelil intercedes to save the youngest. Hildebrand dies of his wounds and Hellelil herself dies shortly afterwards.
Burton did not choose a violent episode and instead freely interpreted the story, placing their farewell on the turret stairs and leaving the reason for it to the imagination. His invention of the kiss on the woman's outstretched arm and the lack of eye contact adds to the poignancy of the painting.
A public vote promoted by RTÉ’s competition to find the nation’s favourite painting over the past five weeks found that the Frederic William Burton piece, which hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland, polled most preferences. One in five of those who voted (22 per cent) went for the romantic 19th century depiction of a young soldier stealing an illicit kiss from his beloved as they pass on a turret stair. Burton was from Corofin, Co Clare.The other paintings in the competition are posted here.
All the preliminary studies show a medieval tower as the setting for the picture; the direction of the stairs is accurate in being clockwise, like an Irish tower-house, just as the view is correctly taken from a chamber doorway looking towards the stairs. The artist was vigilant about accuracy, incorporating a late medieval loop window made of a narrow vertical slit in the wall, splayed on the interior so that it could be used by archers... The figure of Hellelil draws especial attention, her elongated back view emphasising the costume, with only a glimpse of the face and outstretched arm. The particular shade of deep blue was also used in Burton’s The Child Miranda (1864). The gown appears made of fine wool, with long hanging sleeves fringed in fur, fitted with a tight bodice down to the hips, creating an elegant outline majestically folding into an extremely full skirt, both the sleeves and gown lined in white fur. The decorative girdle about her waist is of a generic late medieval type, its band interspersed with a sequence of bronze buckles, linked so that it could move with ease on the hips. Wound around her golden hair are mauve ribbons that end with the hair woven into a mauve toggle, tucked into the belt...
I didn’t initially think it was a jellyfish either, but around 4:46 in the video you get to see the mouth on its long, pendulous manubrium hanging from the center. From the base of the mouth, you can see the extensions of the gut radiating symmetrically outwards, where they meet the gonads (the white masses). This is a great diagnostic to identify it as a jellyfish, whatever the shape of the bell.- and from Jellywatch:
Deepstaria is not that rare, but is large (more than a meter diameter), so rarely seen intact. In the video, the swirling from the sub makes the medusa appear to undulate and it even turns inside-out. Normally they just hang out like a balloon.And finally, a hat tip to Robb for finding a report on this video at RT which includes screencaps of the creature (useful in case the video is taken down again).
In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, a cyclops was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead. The classical plural is cyclopes [you learn something every day...]. The name is widely thought to mean "circle-eyed".There is another possible origin of the legend:
Given their penchant for blacksmithing, many scholars believe the legend of the Cyclopes' single eye arose from an actual practice of blacksmiths wearing an eyepatch over one eye to prevent flying sparks from blinding them in both eyes...
Text from Wikipedia (skull photo color-adjusted). The image is "Marcel Marien, L'introuvable, 1937. Glass, acrylic glass, 11 x 27 x 18 cm. Coll. Sylvio Perlstein, Antwerp © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010," posted at ArtDaily as an example of a surreal art object. Via Uncertain Times....prehistoric dwarf elephant skulls – about twice the size of a human skull – that may have been found by the Greeks on Crete and Sicily... the large, central nasal cavity (for the trunk) in the skull might have been interpreted as a large single eye-socket. Given the inexperience of the locals with living elephants, they were unlikely to recognize the skull for what it actually was...
The short bits and noils are caught in the teeth of the carder. I card these together with the shorter fibers to make a very light rolag. This spins up into a much lumpier, but still usable, yarn... I made just a couple of quick samples with the silk. On the left is the fine yarn - about a 2/50's or so. The combed fibers are easy to use to spin a very fine, even shiny yarn. On the right is the noil yarn, made from the rolag.Fascinating, and some new words for me to look up - but not today, because I'm in a hurry to get outdoors on a glorious spring day.
The Phantom Corsair is a prototype automobile built in 1938. It is a six-passenger coupé that was designed by Rust Heinz of the H. J. Heinz family...Only two passengers in back because of the on-board beverage cabinets!!
The Phantom Corsair's steel-and-aluminum body measured just 57 in (140 cm) in height and incorporated fully skirted wheels and completely flush fenders while forgoing running boards. The car also lacked door handles, as the doors were instead opened electrically using push-buttons located on the exterior and the instrument panel...
The Lycoming 80º V8-powered Cord chassis also featured front-wheel drive and an electrically operated four-speed automatic gearbox, as well as fully independent suspension and adjustable shock absorbers...
The body measured an impressive 237 in (600 cm) long and 76.5 in (194 cm) wide, enough to accommodate four people in the front row, including one person to the left of the driver. The back seats could only hold two passengers, however, in large part because of space limitations posed by on-board beverage cabinets. Though weighing a hefty 4,600 lb (2,100 kg), the Phantom Corsair could achieve speeds of up to 115 mph (185 km/h) because of its modified, naturally aspirated 190 bhp Lycoming engine as well as its aerodynamic shape.
Rust Heinz planned to put the Phantom Corsair, which cost approximately $24,000 to produce in 1938 (equivalent to about $370,000 in 2010), into limited production at an estimated selling price of $12,500. However, Heinz's death in a car accident in July 1939 ended those plans, leaving the prototype Corsair as the only one ever built. The Phantom Corsair now resides in the National Automobile Museum (also known as The Harrah Collection) in Reno, Nevada.
Sadly, the Kretchmars’ experience is not unique. In households across the country, children conceived with donated sperm are struggling with serious genetic conditions inherited from men they have never met. The illnesses include heart defects, spinal muscular atrophy and neurofibromatosis type 1, among many others...More at the link.
Donated eggs pose a risk as well, but the threat of genetic harm from sperm donation is arguably much greater. Sperm donors are no more likely to carry genetic diseases than anybody else, but they can father a far greater number of children: 50, 100 or even 150, each a potential inheritor of flawed genes...
By some estimates, there are more than a million children in this country conceived with donated sperm or eggs. The Food and Drug Administration requires that sperm donors be tested for communicable diseases, but there is no federal requirement that sperm banks screen for genetic diseases. Some of the betters ones do anyway...
A lack of regulatory record-keeping also makes it difficult for sperm banks to warn related families, or even donors, when a genetic illness is discovered in one or more children. And donor families are not required to report births or illnesses to the sperm banks. Since the clinic has no way to know a donor’s sperm is flawed, it may continue to be sold long after problems have surfaced.
Pamela Callum, a genetic counselor at California Cryobank, the largest sperm bank in the country, recently discovered that a donor to the bank had passed on the gene for neurofibromatosis type 1, or NF1, to five children... a registry might help prevent the spread of genetic diseases among donor children by providing a way for parents to report children’s illnesses to their sperm banks, thus allowing banks to weed out donors who may be carriers.
The cow shoe is a strip of metal to which is tacked a wooden block carved to resemble the hoof of a cow, which may be strapped to the human foot. A man shod with a pair of them would leave a trail resembling that of a cow.The Holmes story was "The Adventure of the Priory School." I had to look up the context:
The shoe found was picked up near Port Tampa where a still was located some time ago. It will be sent to the prohibition department at Washington. Officers believe the inventor got his idea from a Sherlock Holmes story in which the villain shod his horse with shoes the imprint of which resembled those of a cow's hoof.
There is one other small point upon which I desire some light. This fellow Hayes had shod his horses with shoes which counterfeited the tracks of cows. Was it from Mr. Wilder that he learned so extraordinary a device?"But while searching that, I found an example of a Holmes deduction that was inaccurate. This from The Urban Country Bicycle Blog:
The Duke stood in thought for a moment, with a look of intense surprise on his face. Then he opened a door and showed us into a large room furnished as a museum. He led the way to a glass case in a corner, and pointed to the inscription.
"These shoes," it ran, "were dug up in the moat of Holdernesse Hall. They are for the use of horses, but they are shaped below with a cloven foot of iron, so as to throw pursuers off the track. They are supposed to have belonged to some of the marauding Barons of Holdernesse in the Middle Ages."
The nascent third-party movement called Americans Elect assembled a dream team of prospective presidential nominees: Mike Bloomberg! Colin Powell! Chris Christie! Mitch Daniels! Condi Rice! Rick Santorum! Hillary Clinton!
There was only one problem: None of these candidates wanted the nomination. Neither did the other “draft” candidates who received support on the Americans Elect Web site, including Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Howard Dean, Donald Trump, Al Gore, Sarah Palin and David Petraeus.
Americans Elect had taken care of just about everything a third-party candidate would need. It spent about $35 million on marketing, technology and ballot access. As of Tuesday it had won a place on the November ballot in 28 states (and it still expects to be on the ballot in all 50 by Aug. 1). It had attracted 3.5 million people to its Web site. But what it couldn’t — or hasn’t yet been able to — do is persuade a plausible candidate to submit himself or herself to the ravages of a presidential run.
“We’ve had hundreds of [candidate] briefings,” Kahlil Byrd, the group’s chief executive, told me on Tuesday. “We have met with current and former governors, current and former senators, university presidents, think tanks, mayors of large cities and people who have been running Fortune 300 companies.”
But the main objection Byrd heard from these would-be candidates: “Do I want to put myself and my family through what it takes?” Looking at the prospect of running, Byrd said, candidates saw only negative ads and attack politics. Among would-be candidates, there was fear and loathing of “the permanent and negative campaign.”..Americans Elect says it will announce its next steps on Thursday. But, really, the group already delivered on what it set out to do. The lack of takers suggests the political system is farther gone than the reformers realized.
