Breton woman

Via Couleurs.

Demographics of the U.S. Supreme Court

As noted by a BBC columnist:

The nomination of Elena Kagan to replace the retiring John Paul Stevens on the US Supreme Court means, if she is confirmed, all of the justices will have been at either Harvard or Yale law schools...

If Ms Kagan is confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, there will be five from Harvard law school, three from Yale law school and one from Columbia law school. But Ruth Bader Ginsburg started out at Harvard law school before transferring to Columbia.,,

For much of its history, a geographical spread of justices was the top priority, notes Peter Hoffer, distinguished research professor at the University of Georgia, and co-author of The Supreme Court: An Essential History.

"Theoretically, the court is supposed to be divided among different parts of the country. Now we have gone past that - we are one nation, connected by the web and the media - that kind of geographical distinction is not so important any more."

After the need for geographical diversity of the court ebbed, other priorities emerged.

"As late as the 1960s you had a Catholic seat and a Jewish seat to ensure some kind of representation. It's rather ironic that now you have six Catholics and three Jews," says Prof Joel B Grossman, co-editor of The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Of course, with a small group of people, it's hard not to have some imbalances.  "There is only a limited number of ways you can divide up nine," says Prof Grossman.

Talking Points Memo emphasizes the New-York-City-centeredness of some of Obama's appointments:

Barack Obama's vision of American justice seems a bit parochial, with Attorney General Eric Holder hailing from the New York City borough of Queens; Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg coming from a once-proud, upwardly mobile Jewish section of Brooklyn that contains her alma mater Abraham Lincoln High School and is near Coney Island; Justice Sonya Sotomayor coming from a public housing project in the Castle Hill neighborhood of the South Bronx; and, now Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan coming from a part of Manhattan's Upper West Side....

Impressive backhoe

This video is of a publicity stunt for a German backhoe.  You'll want to skip through to save time, but it is an impressive performance.

The fashion world's most commonly used cosmetic

Via Joanne Casey's I Have Seen the Whole of the Internet.

The Karner Blue butterfly

I mentioned last week that I was looking forward to a field trip with the Southern Wisconsin Butterfly Association (an outstanding group of people, btw, for any locals who might be interested.  See this link re future field trips).

We met on Monday at the Bauer Brockway Barrens, a Wisconsin State Natural Area, and explored for several hours.  Although the countryside looked thoroughly uninviting (notice "barrens" in the name of the location), the trip yielded an impressive list of the sightings.

I was happy to capture the above image of a "Karner Blue" (Lycaeides melissa samuelis), which is listed as a Federally Endangered species.   The butterfly, originally identified by Vladimir Nabokov, relies on wild lupine as a food plant for its caterpillar.

The lupine in turn requires requires a barren, prairie, or open savannah setting because vigorous tree growth shades out the plant.  Wisconsin has more Karner Blues than anywhere in the world.  The individual in the photo was unusually cooperative in holding still for its portrait, but only showed me the underside of its wing.  The top of the wing sports the remarkable blue from which the group derives its common family name.

Under mommy's skirt

Found at Olov~'s Flickr photostream, via Lost Found and Envied.

Removing "Flash Cookies" from your computer

Flash cookies (or "local shared objects") are explained in a Wired article:

More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plug-in to track users and store information about them, but only four of them mention the so-called Flash Cookies in their privacy policies, UC Berkeley researchers reported Monday.

Unlike traditional browser cookies, Flash cookies are relatively unknown to web users, and they are not controlled through the cookie privacy controls in a browser. That means even if a user thinks they have cleared their computer of tracking objects, they most likely have not...

Websites can store up to 100K of information in [flash cookies], 25 times what a browser cookie can hold. Sites like Pandora.com also use Flash’s storage capability to preload portions of songs or videos to ensure smooth playback.

All modern browsers now include fine-grained controls to let users decide what cookies to accept and which to get rid of, but Flash cookies are handled differently. These are fixed through a web page on Adobe’s site, where the controls are not easily understood...

More at the link.  After reading about flash cookies, I installed a Firefox add-on called BetterPrivacy.  It surveyed my hard disk and found 2000+ flash cookies that had been set by sites such as WaPo, The Onion, MSNBC, ESPN, the BBC, NASA, WhiteHouse.gov, Masters.com, and by lots of game sites.  I tediously reviewed them (because some flash cookies can be left in place to help certain sites function better when visited) and deleted 99% of them. 

What you do is up to you, but you should read about this and think about it.

Anti-global-warming advertisement

"They Will Come To Town" is supposed to frighten people about the prospects of the consequences of global warming.  From my viewpoint, it makes the future look a little brighter for the planet (if not for humankind).  A win for the whales...

Oklahoma hailstorm

This video has been posted widely, so it's not a TYWK... but I thought it was worth storing and sharing.  The person narrating the footage uses a rather limited vocabulary, but we'll chalk it up to the excitement of viewing nature's fury, which can have that effect even on normally eloquent people.

Here are a couple additional photos, from Paul Douglas' weather blog:

University of British Columbia research study on Time Spent Alone

I received an email from a reader of this blog who is a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.  They are undertaking a study of people who spend a significant proportion of time alone, and are seeking participants who are over 25 years old and residents of North America.

I know nothing more about the project, but it seems to be a valid academic study.  Those interested in possibly participating can visit the link for further information.

A yellow Beetle

Found at Shorpy and reposted because this photo reminds me so much of my Beetle, which was the same vintage and the same color.  This picture could have been me in 1972, except that I (unfortunately) never visited Zion.

Marijuana prices are plummeting in California

Legal pot, under the guise of the California's medical marijuana laws, has spurred a rush of new competition. As a result, the wholesale price of pot grown in these areas is plunging...

Prices are now much less than $2,000 a pound, according to interviews with more than a dozen growers and dealers. Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman says some growers can't get rid of their processed pot at any price.

"We arrested a man who had … 800 pounds of processed," Allman says. "Eight hundred pounds of processed. And we asked him: 'What are you going to do with 800 pounds of processed?' And he said, 'I don't know.'"

...He says the drop in pot prices is in part the result of more growers and a more tolerant legal landscape. But he says another factor is quality. Indoor-grown marijuana is increasingly favored by dispensaries and consumers for its looks, consistence and potency. It costs more to produce than pot grown under the sun, but commands as much as double the price. That's one reason retail prices haven't hit the skids...

Further details at NPR.  Photo credit Justin Sullivan/NPR.

1938 Ford V8: 22-27 MPG

About the same as my current car.

I plugged the 1938 cost of $784 into an inflation calculator, which says that that price would be equivalent to $11, 814.78 in 2009 dollars.

Source: The Daily Inter Lake (Kalispell, MT), January 26, 1938, via Ye Olde News.

Addendum: A hat tip to Mark, who found this sales brochure (pdf).

Do you see what I saw?

I took this photo earlier this week while walking along one of the trails I visit for quick outings.  On the right is a farm field presently being cultivated for its annual corn planting.  On the left is a field that is undisturbed, with grasses and wildflowers and brush.  Straight ahead leads to some ponds and woods.

I've walked this dozens of times, but this day there was something new and unusual...

Click to enlarge, or go to this post for the answer.

Butterfly wing closeups

Both pix credit linden g., who has a gallery of butterfly wings.  Depth of field achieved by combining multiple images using "focus stacking."

Via the nature tumblr Electric Orchids.