Divertimento #195

It has been years since I've done a proper linkfest with excerpted content.  For the past 3-4 years all the divertimentos have been gif-fests.  Those are quick and easy to assemble from piles of bookmarks, but a proper linkfest should include occasional brief excerpts to highlight content and help the reader decide which to visit.

I file bookmarks for linkfests in folders of 12 so I can open all simultaneously in tabs.  At present I have 155 folders with 12 links each.  Lots of the older ones are undergoing linkrot, so best to start getting some of this material out onto the blog.  I'm going to start with the oldest links, which begin in 2018.

The Ig Nobel prize winners for 2018

The biology prize was for demonstrating that wine experts can reliably identify, by smell, the presence of a single fly in a glass of wine.  The chemistry prize for measuring the degree to which human saliva is a good cleaning agent for dirty surfaces.  The reproductive medicine prize for using postage stamps to test whether the male sexual organ is functioning properly.  And more.  Links at the link.

How the Boston underground (MBTA) was designed

The redesign was done in the 1960s, mostly re esthetics, colors, lighting, and information: "One common ground in our analysis was that we could transform the entire system by simply helping people figure out where they were and where they were going."

Iranians are properly considered not to be Arabs.  They are Persians.

"Given its location in the Middle East, Muslim majority, and language which resembles Arabic, Iran is often mislabeled as an Arab nation. A cognate of “aryan,” Iran means “land of the Aryans” and is excluded from the list of Arab League nations in the Middle East/North Africa region."

When you are buying a home, consider getting a sewer inspection.  "...shared a bunch of sewer inspection videos with me over the past year showing failed, relatively newer sewer lines. Each one of these drain lines requires an expensive repair that I would absolutely not want to get stuck with as a home buyer. I put together a short video of these defects."  Compilation video at the link.

Girl pulls 1500-year-old sword from lake.  I was reminded of a Python sketch:  "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."

Physicist sells his Nobel prize medal for $765,000.  "That put the transaction at No. 4 on the list of 10 Nobel Prize sales over the past 30 years."  The top three are discussed at the link; two of them are familiar names.

RPG doesn't stand for "rocket-propelled-grenade."  It actually stands for "ruchnoy protivotankovy granatomyot"  "Rocket-propelled grenade" is a backronym.  Just like "save our souls" is a backronym for the easy-to-click Morse code signal.

A new menace: Asian long-horned tick.  "For the first time in 50 years, a new tick species has arrived in the United States — one that in its Asian home range carries fearsome diseases.  The Asian long-horned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, is spreading rapidly along the Eastern Seaboard. It has been found in seven states and in the heavily populated suburbs of New York City...  a woman who had been shearing her pet Icelandic sheep came to his department with ticks on her hands and wrists.  “I thought she’d have a few,” Mr. Rainey said in an interview. “But she was covered in them, easily over 1,000 on her pants alone.”

The elevation span (vertical distance from highest point to lowest point) is charted for every country.  You will need to click on the image twice to make the country names readable.

 

A truncheon is a prosthetic penis enhancer.  "First, surgeons sever the organ’s suspensory ligament, causing it to hang an inch or two lower, giving the impression of extra length. They then extract fat from the patient’s stomach and inject it into the penis shaft, increasing girth by around two inches. Erect, it’s worth noting, it remains roughly the same size, suggesting the motives for many men are not necessarily to enhance either their – or a partner’s – sexual experience."

How biomass is distributed among Earth's taxa.  Which of the following taxa has the greatest total mass on our planet:  protists (single-cells, amoebae), archaea (bacteria-like),  fungi, bacteria, plants, fish, arthropods...  Answer at the link.

Two-billion-year-old water found in a mine in Canada.  “When people think about this water they assume it must be some tiny amount of water trapped within the rock,” said U of T geochemist Barbara Sherwood Lollar in a conversation with the BBC. “But in fact it’s very much bubbling right up out at you. These things are flowing at rates of litres per minute—the volume of the water is much larger than anyone anticipated.”  The water has a salt concentration 8X seawater.

"French doctors do not know why clusters of babies have been born with limbs missing (13 babies).  Ongoing arguments as to whether the cause is environmental (pesticides etc) or coincidental.

Antoine Winfield's incredible interception for the Minnesota Gophers in 2018.  In the final minute of the game, Fresno State had the ball on the Minnesota 4-yard line, 1st and goal.  Then the interception.  And necessary because a simple deflection would have allowed Fresno State three more tries.  Winfield went on to star as a safety in the NFL for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Quarterback playcall language "Double Right Open. Z-Orbit, Scat Left, 787 F-Drag On 2".  Includes an explanation of the "Omaha!" emergency call.

The first known photo of a surfer - in 1890 !

Weatherman's exaggerated hurricane report.  Apparently he was instructed to lean into the wind for emphasis; nobody told the pedestrians.

An outrageous hospital charge.  There are of course endless examples of this, but nobody in the health care delivery field does anything to prevent or correct it.

Pennsylvania prisoners may not receive books; they have to pay $149 for an e-reader and then $2-29 for each e-book.  "The library of ebooks available contains 8,500 titles and consists largely of material that exists in the public domain and could be read freely through Project Guttenberg, “but that cost anywhere from $2.99 (Moby-Dick) to $11.99 (The Federalist Papers), all the way up to $14.99 (Joseph Conrad’s The Rescue)."  Shameful.

Scary earthquake footage.

"When a middle school in Stafford County, Va., had a lockdown drill... to prepare for potential mass shootings or other emergencies, a transgender student was barred from both the boys’ and girls’ locker room — where other students were taking shelter. She was instead instructed to sit in the gym and then the locker room hallway while teachers discussed where she should go... “Let me be clear. During an event that prepares children to survive an attack by actual assailants, she was treated as if she was so much of a danger to peers that she was left exposed and vulnerable..."

Bicycle converted into a water bike.

"Nonso Muojeke and his family, who fled Nigeria in 2006, were facing deportation from Ireland until his classmates began a campaign to save them. They gathered 22,000 signatures and delivered it to the justice minister, convincing the government to allow the family to stay."

If you are told there is a fee to cancel an appointment on short notice, ask if you can reschedule for a later time.  Then call back to cancel the later appointment.

The £750 Touch of Fur shawl by Fendi looks like a giant vulva.  Picture at the link.

Marie Antoinette's jewelry being auctioned off by Sotheby's.

"Shortly after she hoisted her sample from the well, the bottle ruptured from internal pressure. The water gushed out through the cracks, fizzing like soda. The gas erupting from it was not carbon dioxide, as it is in soft drinks, but hydrogen—a flammable gas."  An article at The Atlantic discusses endoterrestrials - organisms that live deep underground.

A hunting dog trapped in a hollow tree trunk died there, and his body became mummified. "Chestnut oaks contain tannin, which is used to tan animal pelts and prevent decay. Tannin is a natural "desiccant," or material that absorbs moisture and dries out its surroundings. The low-moisture environment stopped the microbial activity. And no microbial activity means no decay. "  What a horrible way to die (pic at the link).

A man died from a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease because he ate squirrel brains.

"Some bird species have been reported to fly at the upper levels of the troposphere. On November 29, 1973, a Rüppell's vulture (Gyps rueppelli) was ingested into a jet engine 11,278 m (37,000 ft) above the Ivory Coast."

"The condition looked remarkably like polio—the viral disease that is on the verge of being eradicated worldwide. But none of the kids tested positive for poliovirus. Instead, their condition was given a new name: acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM. .. Parents have described their children collapsing mid-run like “marionette dolls,” or going to bed with a fever and waking up paralyzed from the neck down. AFM wasn’t a one-off, but likely a new biennial normal. It’s still rare, affecting just one in 1 million people, but that’s little comfort for the roughly 400 children who’ve been affected, many of whom are looking at lifelong disability or paralysis."

"Workers were readying commercial space at the T.B. Converse Building, located on North Patterson Street in Downtown Valdosta, when they found an estimated 1,000 teeth buried in a second floor wall."

"Scientists say West Coast waters now have a hypoxia season... "If there are crabs in the pot, they're dead. Straight up," Bailey says. And if you re-bait the pots, "when you go out the next time, they're blanks, they're absolutely empty. The crabs have left the area." A hypoxia event will kill everything that can't swim away—animals like crabs, sea cucumbers and sea stars."  Just like the Gulf of Mexico.

A list of films that feature miniature people.  Over 60 movies, from Alice in Wonderland to Ant Man.

The Human Terrain is a map depicting population around the world using vertical bars for number of people.  You can pan and zoom.  Cool.

"The international team of scientists reviewed two datasets, including a large registry from Sweden, and found that removal of the appendix was associated with a decreased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. They also found that the human appendix contains clumps of a protein called alpha-synuclein in a form associated with the disease. There’s more work to be done, and the authors are not advocating that people preemptively remove their appendixes, but they hope that the research could provide a pathway towards treatment."  That was in 1918, and coincidentally this week I heard a science podcast reporting that genomic studies have found tentative links between manic-depressive disorders and the pancreas.  The human body is more complex than we realize.  

A hotel sign suggests that your end of the hallway might not be very peaceful.

"A Scottish man has had his peanut-butter smeared genitalia bitten off by an English bulldog. Paramedics were unable to recover them for reattachment."  I was sorry to read that the dog was later put down.  It wasn't the dog's fault.

"Inaccessible Island rails live only on Inaccessible Island; it appears, as far as any evidence shows, that they never even made it to the neighboring Nightingale Island."  They are flightless, but apparently their distant ancestors flew there (then discovered they didn't need wings).

Placebo pills actually work.  "You don’t even have to deceive the patients. You can hand a patient with irritable bowel syndrome a sugar pill, identify it as such and tell her that sugar pills are known to be effective when used as placebos, and she will get better, especially if you take the time to deliver that message with warmth and close attention. Depression, back pain, chemotherapy-related malaise, migraine, post-traumatic stress disorder: The list of conditions that respond to placebos — as well as they do to drugs, with some patients — is long and growing."

Some phonograph records have "locked grooves." "It is usually a silent loop that keeps the needle and tonearm from drifting into the label area. However, it is possible to record sound in this groove, and some artists have included looping audio in the locked groove."

An impressive sea-stack.  "A few years ago, a helicopter landed several scientists on the stack; they were the first humans to set foot there for ages. They stayed there overnight and examined the surface where they found the remains of a medieval house, walls, cultivation ridges, and a corn grinding stone."

"The average wedding in the U.S. now has five bridesmaids—according to an annual survey conducted by the wedding-planning platform The Knot—a number that is up from four in 2007 and appears to be steadily rising. It’s now common, several wedding experts told me, for a bride to have 10 or 11 maids. “In the South, forget it,” says Meg Keene, the author of A Practical Wedding Planner. “You’re going to have 50.”

In the Czech Republic there is "Vila Mátma, or “My Darkness Villa,” where clients spend seven days or longer alone and in complete absence of light... There’s not much to do in the dark, at Vila Mátma or any other darkness-therapy center. And that’s more or less the point. Depending on the facility, clients sleep, exercise, and meditate. They eat and bathe in the dark. They sometimes write, draw, sculpt, or play an instrument, all in total darkness. Without access to their phones or to the internet—or even to a clock or calendar—they tend to spend a lot of time alone with their thoughts, and on occasion chatting with a therapist or “guardian.” Not infrequently, clients report intense audiovisual experiences, most likely vivid dreams or hypnagogic imagery (the sort of micro-dreams you experience in between wakefulness and sleep), which can be pleasantly mind-expanding or downright terrifying. At the BRC, the procedure costs 2,000 Czech koruna a day, or just under $100, and patients must reserve the one-person facility for a minimum of a week at a time."

Horseshoe Bend is what happens when a patch of public land becomes #instagramfamous. Over the past decade photos have spread like wildfire on social media, catching the 7,000 residents of Page and local land managers off guard. According to Diak, visitation grew from a few thousand annual visitors historically to 100,000 in 2010 – the year Instagram was launched. By 2015, an estimated 750,000 people made the pilgrimage. This year visitation is expected to reach 2 million."  I remember visiting national parks in the 1960s-70s when they were mostly empty.

Impressive graphic zooms along the U.S. - Mexico border when you scroll with your mouse.  This was important in 2018, and looks to become important again.

"A video released by the US Forest Service shows the moment when a gender reveal party in Arizona went horribly wrong, sparking a wildfire that burned nearly 47,000 acres and caused more than $8 million in damage."

Football-throwing championship won with two-handed passes.

The history of Nancy Drew books.

In a 5-minute video, conservators at The British Museum explain how they decide whether to wear gloves or not when handling an object.

Enough for now.  That emptied 10 folders of 12 links each, yielding about 50 useable links (the others have undergonelinkrot or are now behind paywalls, or are now irrelevant (politics), and some I moved to my blog-it-now folder because they were extra good. But it only cleaned out my bookmarks for 2018.  There may be some copy/paste errors; if so, let me know. More to come...

Embedded photos from the 2015 Nikon Small World photography competition.  Identification of the subject matter and photo credits via the link.