Toothbrush injuries

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that 2,953 Americans were treated in 2007 for toothbrush-related injuries. The odds a person will visit an emergency department due to an accident involving a toothbrush in a year are 1 in 99,340, making a toothbrush slightly more dangerous on average than a garage door.

So, what injuries might a toothbrush cause? It is an object designed for safety, after all. Today’s designs have reinforced handles to prevent snaps or breaks at stress points, and the long-traditional boar-hair bristles have largely been replaced by nylon filament, which breeds significantly less bacteria.

Still, toothbrushes—typically by dint of slips and falls—can cut gums or cheeks (from pokes), puncture palates or pharynges (from falling or passing out with a toothbrush in one’s mouth), and break teeth.

More details at the Book of Odds, via the New Shelton wet/dry.

Image credit Duncan Wright, via Wikimedia commons, with this notation: "Albatross bolus - undigested matter from the diet such as squid beaks and fish scales. This bolus from a Hawaiian albatross (either a Black-footed Albatross or a Laysan Albatross) has several injested flotsam items, including monofilament from fishing nets and a discarded toothbrush. Injestion of plastic flotsam is an increasing hazard for albatrosses."

Life underground in central Australia

A survey commissioned by the National Geographic Society has identified 850 new invertebrates living underground in the arid central region of Australia. It is believed that these creatures retreated to a subterranean environment about 15 million years ago when the continent's climate changed. They have survived in underground springs, aquifers, and "microcaverns."

Pictured above is a blind cave eel; other blind creatures discovered incude a spider, a fish, and a pseudoscorpion. A gallery of nine photos is available at the National Geographic website. See also related links here.

Photo credit Douglas Elford, Western Australian Museum.

Domestic dispute

I haven't posted anything in the WTF category lately...

Credit Bits and Pieces.

Marigolds for Diwali

"Schoolgirl Bhargavi, 7, arranges garlands made from marigold flowers at a roadside stall on the eve of the Hindu festival of Diwali in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad October 16, 2009. Flowers are offered to Hindu gods and goddesses on the occasion of Diwali, the annual festival of lights that was celebrated across the country on Saturday, October 17th." (REUTERS/Krishnendu Halder)

"October 17th marked the celebration of Diwali among Hindus and other groups around the world. Diwali is also known as the "Festival of Lights" (the name translates as "row of lamps" in Sanskrit). The festival marks the homecoming of Hindu God Rama to Ayodhya after a 14-year exile in the forest following his victory over Ravana, and signifies the victory of good over evil, of light over darkness. Celebrants observe Diwali with fireworks, colorful lanterns, lamps, garlands, sweet treats and worship."

The Big Picture has a photoset of 33 images related to Diwali.

"There's too many pigs for the teats"

So spoke Abraham Lincoln, besieged by officeseekers desiring jobs in the federal government, quoted by Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War.

Flammable tap water

This isn't a new event, but today Conservation Report has compiled a number of relevant references.

A paean to bad penmanship

Note from poet Thomas Bailey Aldrich to zoologist Edward S. Morse:

My dear Morse:

It was very pleasant to receive a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don’t think I mastered anything beyond the date, which I knew, and the signature, at which I guessed.

There is a singular and perpetual charm in a letter of yours — it never grows old, and it never loses its novelty. One can say every morning, as one looks at it, “Here’s a letter of Morse’s I haven’t read yet. I think I shall take another shy at it to-day, and maybe I shall be able in the course of a few years to make out what he means by those t’s that look like w’s and those i’s that haven’t any eyebrows.”

Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever–unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime.

Admiringly yours,

T.B. Aldrich

(Found at the always-interesting Futility Closet)

Two owls on a stump

Scops-owls on a tree stump. These were photographed in India, but they are widespread in the Old World. Wiki says they are "colored in various brownish hues, sometimes with a lighter underside and/or face, which helps to camouflage them against the bark of trees." I'll say - it took me a long time to decide there were two owls in this photo.

This is a football weekend, so there's no time this morning to look up the origin of the interesting name. Or that of the even-more-curiously-named "flammulated owl."

Photo credit: Chris Johnson, published in The Guardian.

Addendum: "In French, you call them "petits Ducs scops", small scops dukes. Scops comes from the greek word σκοπι : to peer, to scrutinize. And Otus means the one who has ears. Thus the otus scops is the one who has ears and watches everything." Thanks, Mademoiselle.

Second addendum: "The Flammulated Owl was first described by German scientist Johann Jacob Kaup in 1852. The word flammeolus is latin for 'flame' or 'flame-shaped', refering to it's unique colouration" - found at The Owl Pages.

A weekday smörgåsbord

For the "smorgasbord" series of posts I always embed a photo of food, or someone eating, because the post is an invitation to you to sample the fares offered. (Today there are so many that I've embedded Bosch's depiction of Gluttony.)

From my standpoint, however, what would be needed would be a picture of "egestion" because this is how I get rid of accumulated links. These are items that either don't require a photo, or can be explained in a sentence or two, or are otherwise not worthy of the time for a full independent post, but are still interesting enough to be blogworthy.

The word "ostrobogulous" is defined as part of a tribute to Professor Christian Kay, who has spent an incredible 42 years compiling the forthcoming Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Mental Floss offers a selection of twelve of the million-dollar questions from the television program Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (I got 9/12)

A golfer achieves a hole-in-one when his ball richochets off another ball and into the cup.

A column at Huffington Post argues that journalism schools are unnecessary and should be eliminated.

A Swedish couple vacationing in Italy wanted to visit the island of Capri, but punched "Carpi" into their GPS and were led 400 miles astray.

Citigroup wants to pay $100,000,000 in bonuses to their top executives. No. My mistake. They want to award the hundred million $ to one man.

Photo of a 1930s rural woman suckling a fawn and a baby simultaneously.

51 headless Vikings discovered in England. They were also buried naked.

Britain's biggest (64 lb) and "best-loved" carp has died. It had been caught (and released) 63 times in its 13-year life. Photo and audio report at the BBC link.

Cahokia is a very cool place deserving of a full blog post. For the moment try this Salon post (ignore the sensationalist title).

TSA employees confiscate a child's toy weapons, then play with them.

A woman spent $32,000 for the entire business section of a El Al flight so that her dog could set next to her and wouldn't suffer from severe anxiety in the cargo hold.

Language Log offers an academic discussion of the phrase "f**king shut the f**k up" - complete with a sentence diagram!

A man robbed a 3-year-old toddler of her purse.

The Hugo Award Winners for 2009 have been announced. Before I started blogging I used to read from the Hugo list every year; I have some catching up to do. Here's a list of winners for the past 50 years.

A man hurled his girlfriend through a shop window in London's West End. He died when he accidentally impaled himself on a shard of glass from the broken window.

Ian's Shoelace Site offers 33 different methods for tying the laces on your shoes.

Wired offers practical tips on how to disappear. A long and fascinating article about "missing persons" - legal and illegal.

Germany's monetary hyperinflation of the 1920s summarized at Der Spiegel.

Mother Jones explains the phenomenon of bottled "Fiji water."

A neo-Nazi "hate blogger" has been outed as an FBI agent provocateur.

The website "Gives Me Hope" posts brief anecdotes about ephemeral events that - per the title - give people hope about the future of humanity.

The funniest joke at this year's Edinburgh Fringe festival... isn't very funny. #2 and #5 are pretty good.

Read this article and the appended comments (pro- and con-) before you decide re visiting the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

Wanderin' Weeta writes a fascinating nature-based blog. The link goes to a sample entry about bryozoan colonies and sea slugs.

The People of Walmart website is like a grisly car accident that you really don't want to look at, but can't help yourself...

I have occasionally seen photos of deer, moose, etc. hanging from the telephone or electrical wires. People argue whether they get there after being hit by cars/trains, or as a result of pranks. Here's a photo from the 1940s of a human in a similar situation. The cause is obvious. Posted here so the photo is "below the fold" away from sensitive eyes.

When a Johns Hopkins student confronted a burglar, he armed himself with his Samurai sword. After two swings, it was all over.

A man found a metal thingy in his back yard and thought it was part of a lawn mower. It was an anti-tank grenade. A live one.

1000 cat postcards assembled at Flickr.

If you haven't heard from the MacArthur Foundation yet, then you didn't win one of their "genius grants." Here's a list of the people who did.

The man who won an eBay auction for a dinner with Sarah Palin is a defense contractor. Why am I not surprised?

Queen Elizabeth photographed with eleven U.S. Presidents.

A man teaching his girlfriend about firearms safety shot himself in the head.

If any men out there have had unprotected sex with a pregnant woman confident that you couldn't impregnate someone already pregnant, think again. "Superfetation" is rare but possible.

A man killed his wife and his five kids, but didn't kill himself because "if you kill yourself, you're not going to heaven."

Rotten Tomatoes is a site for community rating and ranking of movies. Here they list the ten movies with the lowest ratings in the past 10 years. I haven't seen any of them.

Bloody nipples. A photo gallery of a complication of distance running.

Carole Lombard offers an obscene comment about horseback riding.

A man in Germany tried to "moon" a railroad train, but his trousers got hooked on the passing carriage, dragging him along. "He advised others not to try the same thing."

New video of Babe Ruth.

"How skiing changed the Alps" - a photoessay at The Telegraph.

General Electric is worried by reports that the dye used in association with an MRI procedure can induce severe renal disease.

African Christian churches are still pursuing witchcraft - in children.

The BBC explains "crash for cash" schemes in which accidents are purposely caused in roundabouts. One man caused 93 of them and earned £46,000 in the process.

"Charlie No-Face" was an unfortunate man whose face was destroyed by lightning and had to keep out of the public view for 60 years.

Eudora Welty was a photographer as well as a writer.

The strange properties of moon dust.

Two wonderful whale videos at the BBC

I can't embed them here, so you'll need to go to the links. The one posted today is of humpback whales battling for the right to mate with a female. The "battles" per se are not dramatic or bloody - mostly pushing and shoving - but these are 40-ton creatures, and just the "call" of the female (slapping the water with her fin like a beaver slaps with its tail) is impressive. One also has to admire the enthusiasm/bravery of the divers who entered the water (without scuba gear) to do some of the filming. The mating itself is not on the video (has never been filmed). The excerpt is from the David Attenborough-hosted BBC series "Life."

While I was viewing that video I noticed a sidebar link to an older one - a brief clip of a white humpback whale off the coast of Queensland.

How to choose a religion that matches your beliefs

A handy, tongue-in-cheek, flowchart that has some errors and arguable points (discussed here), but otherwise concisely summarizes a vast spectrum of belief.

Dystonia after flu shot? Yes. Caused by it? No.

The video is of a news story about a young woman who seemed to develop a rare and strikingly unusual neurological disorder after receiving a seasonal flu shot (not swine flu shot). Her syndrome was one of dystonia (muscle spasms/contractions) that impaired ambulation (but not running) and disappeared when her ambulation was backwards. Most unusual - but not impossible.

A causal relationship to vaccination was raised because other neurological conditions such as Guillain-Barre syndrome have been documented in association with influenza vaccinations (and with influenza itself).

Addendum: One of the citations offered by Jacob in the comments section is from a thoughtful article in the Milwaukee Examiner which discusses the possibility that the dystonia is real, but that it is psychogenic in origin rather than vaccine-mediated. If you watch the video, you should also read this article.

Video via Arbroath.

Addendum: I received this comment from the author of the Milwaukee Examiner article: "Hi. I'm the author of the Examiner.com article you linked to. Thanks for the link. I think that this is very much up in the air, and I hope I made that clear by using "may" instead of "does", or other definitive words. Nonetheless, the risks from the flu outweigh the risks from the vaccine, and people should consult with their health care providers before blindly following the advice of starlets or other famous people."

Second addendum: More details were found re her case, and now she reports having been "cured" by a doctor known to use urine injection therapy and other nonconventional interventions. See the link at scienceblogs for an extensive discussion.

Third addendum: Additional followup and discussion at NeuroLogica blog.

So... do you want to dance?

Two screenshots from the 1925 silent movie The Plastic Age, starring Clara Bow.

Credit Old Hollywood.

p.s. -if anyone recognizes the font, please leave a comment for Emily.

Reptilian eye

A comment in the discussion thread at the source suggests this is the eye of a Plumed Basilisk.

Photo credit True Bavarian, via Electric Orchid.

New search engine installed in TYWKIWDBI

Very soon (perhaps later today), TYWKIWDBI will pass the 5,000 mark for number of posts. As the material accumulates I'm beginning to notice inadequacies in the Blogger search feature (upper left corner of the template for this blog), which misses some posts and doesn't search comments.

Today I've installed the Lijit search Wijit in the right sidebar near the top. We'll see how that works. Please give me feedback if you encounter problems or surprises.