Mummy gets a bath

"Here we have some screenshots from Russian TV channel where the operation of regular service on Lenin’s mummy was shown."

Found at English Russia, where there is additional explanation and more photos.

Addendum May 2013:  A Reddit thread discusses this same set of photos, with a claim that the top three do not depict Lenin's body, but rather are screencaps from a movie about a mausoleum.

"Seamless pictures"

Paintings done in the style of M. C. Escher by Rob Gonsalves. More here.

You can be arrested for DWI even without driving

A Minnesota man was recently convicted of "drunken driving", and an appeals court upheld that conviction - even though he wasn't driving. He had admittedly been drunk and had been found asleep in his car. There was no evidence that he had driven the car to its location, but...

The appeals court said that Fleck's keys were "readily available to him," and there was no evidence he was in the car to do something other than drive. That he may not have intended to drive is "immaterial," the eight-page decision said...

Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kendall, also president of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association, said Tuesday's ruling is consistent with the law and public safety. "The point behind the physical control law is they could take off with it at any time," she said.

Historic hotel closes

We note with a twinge of sadness that a historic landmark in Minnesota has closed its doors. The Anderson House in Wabasha, on the Mississippi River, was in business continuously for 150 years. It was known for its Dutch cooking, its lack of elevators and telephones, its warm bricks for cold feet in one's bed, but mostly for its cats - one of which was placed in each guest's room overnight.

Credit for photos.

Humphrey Bogart in 1950

This photo was taken toward the end of his film career, about the same time he won his Academy Award for The African Queen, and several years before the effects of his esophageal carcinoma became apparent.
Credit.

How good people are tricked into Islamophobia

Several months ago while surfing blogs I encountered a post that seemed out of place. It was headed by the two images at the top, watermarked at Metacafe.com, and allegedly describing in two languages the events to be seen in subsequent images - an 8-year-old child caught stealing bread who "in the name of Islam" will have his arm crushed by a car.

I was immediately suspicious that this was going to be fake material. The next photos confirmed my suspicion:


The towel cushioning the arm was totally inappropriate for any sort of judicial punishment. I'm also familiar with traumatic injuries and know of cases in which automobiles rolled over the thoraxes of children (leaving tread marks across the ribs) without breaking any bones. This had all the earmarks of a show.

It took only about 5 minutes of searching on Snopes to find the answer. As explained here, with additional photos, what is depicted is a form of street circus during which performers hustle money from gawkers. This event was filmed in Iran, but such stunts are done around the world by gypsies and other street people. I even found a YouTube video in which an American/Brit/Aussie has his friends roll over his arm (without a blanket) in typical jackass fashion to get a moment's fame.

But back to the blog where I found this. The appended commentary included "this is what Islam is about" and "I've read the Qu'ran and there's lots of stuff like this" and "I want the Council on American Islam Relations to explain this to me." I then explained it to him in a comment with links, and to his full credit he then published a retraction and further explication in his blog.

What interests (and disturbs) me is that the blogger who posted this seems to be a sensible, educated fellow and not particularly naive re the internet. Yet, when he encountered this, he accepted it as truth and was on the verge of further spreading this distortion. The true "wickedness" lies in the creation of the slander, by someone who copied the photos off a legitimate Iranian website, added false information, and then sent it out into cyberspace. Thereafter the propagation relies on credulity and xenophobia.

Next week's news: Riots in London

London will be hosting the G20 summit meeting next week, and the consensus is that protests this year will be even more vigorous and violent than in previous years. Commentary from The Guardian:

Thousands of G20 Meltdown campaign posters show a mannequin wearing a suit being hanged, while an anarchist website has the slogan: "Burn a banker!"

...a rumoured plan to block the Blackwall Tunnel and cause a security scare on the London Underground by leaving bags unattended on trains. There is also speculation that protesters will drive a tank to the ExCeL conference centre in London's Docklands, where the G20 are meeting, and attempt to harass politicians with wake-up calls to their hotels in the middle of the night.

There are growing fears for the safety of people making their way to work on 1 and 2 April... "Businesses might want to consider asking their staff not to dress in a suit and tie as a lot of the protesters say they're going to target bankers...

A climate camp - similar to those at Heathrow airport and Kingsnorth power station in Kent - will target the European Climate Exchange at Bishopsgate. The Stop the War campaign will march on the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. Police are also expecting action to block streets, attempts to infiltrate and occupy buildings, and marches heading in several directions simultaneously...

"There will be a lot of people out there for whom this is the first opportunity to express their anger and look for another way of doing things. The anti-globalisation movement last time was doing it in the teeth of a boom. Now capitalism has floundered and people want an alternative to what we've had."

Sadly, the most spectacular and destructive actions will likely be performed not by people who are conscientiously protesting, but by others drawn to such spectacles with a simple desire to destroy, damage, and create havoc. This happens at American poltical conventions, at antiwar rallies as far back as I can remember in the 1960s. Often there are suggestions of "black ops" amid the "protests." It is definitely a time to be cautious about knee-jerk interpretations of apparent events.

Trainspotting - Russian style

A dozen photos at this website of a young woman lying down in the middle of the track while the railroad train passes overhead. She seems to have worn a stocking cap to keep her hair from being sucked up into the undercarriage of the train.

Who are the world's most influential people?

Time Magazine wants you to vote.

As I write this, the leading vote recipient is "moot," the founder of 4chan, one of the most innovative, influential, and profitable sites on the web. #2 is Rain, a Korean pop star. Apparently not resting on his laurels after having a room on the Space Station named after him, Stephen Colbert is in the 5th spot, with Jon Stewart just ahead of him in 4th.

Obama? 14th - well behind Morgan Tsvangirai and the Dalai Lama. George Bush is just ahead of Tina Fey. Sarah Palin is neck-and-neck with Bill O'Reilly and Jim Cramer.

"Christianism" defined

In his Daily Dish column this weekend, Andrew Sullivan reiterates the difference between a "Christian" and a "Christianist" - a distinction he first elucidated for Time magazine in 2006:

Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

News from Lake Wobegon

A bill has been introduced into the Minnesota legislature which would combine parts of three counties to form a single county, with a name to be chosen by the residents, but tentatively identified as "Lake Wobegon County."

This actually is not a promotional stunt. The urban area of St. Cloud, Minnesota includes parts of three counties (Stearns, Benton, and Sherburne), thus creating an administrative nightmare for officials dealing with 47 different jurisdictions within a 30-mile radius.

I have thought for years that the American system of "counties" could be markedly streamlined and made more efficient. County borders were determined when territory was settled (eighteenth century on the East coast, 1850s in the Midwest), and the goal was to have the county seat within a one-day journey for county residents so they could travel to the courthouse and return home. Those boundaries were established when the mode of transportation was the horse or the horse-drawn cart. Nowadays there is little sense in duplicating administrative offices and services within an hour's drive of one another.

Those unfamiliar with Lake Wobegon can read the link about Garrison Keillor's home town in Minnesota where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average."

Indonesian man killed by dragons

Komodo dragons, of course - but still quite remarkable. The first adult human death in 30 years. In television documentaries they look to be rather modest in size and slow afoot, but like all reptiles they are probably capable of bursts of speed, and this man presumably had injured himself after falling out of a tree. It must have been a horrible way to die. Details at the Guardian.

Another severed foot!

I had some doubts when I created the "severed feet" category for TYWKIWDBI as to whether I would continue to find material. But the cases keep trickling in. Or washing ashore, to be more accurate.

The latest one was found on a riverbank in Gloucestershire. Det Insp Steve Bean said:

The foot is within a dark grey sock and a size nine-and-a-half, in a mid grey, blue suede shoe, with a white rubber sole and a bright blue 'V' logo edged in white on the side.

"V" - for Vendetta?? From the comments at the Arbroath post, this apt phrase:

"Hurry, Watson, the game's afoot!"

Can you guess what this is?

It was manufactured sometime between 200 B.C. and 400 A.D.

It's not a doughnut.

It's made out of bronze in two pieces which were fitted together.

It was inserted into a body orifice.

Survivor of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima AND at Nagasaki

TOKYO - A 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II, officials said Tuesday...

Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city. He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki just in time for the second attack...

Photo found at Arbroath.