Storm cloud

Photo taken in Taber, Canada, last month by Pat Kavanagh.  Created by stitching several photos vertically.  Found in the Telegraph.

The top 100 crime novels

Two lists, actually.  One published in 1990 by the British-based Crime Writer's Association, and the other in 1995 by the Mystery Writers of America.  Here are the top 10 from the former list:

1. Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time (1951)
2. Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep (1939)
3. John le Carré: The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963)
4. Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night (1935)
5. Agatha Christie: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
6. Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca (1938)
7. Raymond Chandler: Farewell My Lovely (1940)
8. Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone (1868)
9. Len Deighton: The IPCRESS File (1962)
10. Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon (1930)

The top ten from the U.S. group are listed at The Centered Librarian, and the other 90 of each list are at Wikipedia.

We'll all agree that such lists are quite arbitrary, but I find them interesting places to look for book-reading ideas.

"You push it in with your fingers!"

In 1900, Mr. Edwin Moore founded the Company with a capital of $112.60. He rented a room and devoted each afternoon and evening to making push-pins, an article of his own invention which may be briefly described as "a pin with a handle." In the mornings, he sold what he had made the night before. The first sale was one gross of push-pins for $2.00. The next memorable order was for $75.00, and the first "big deal" was a sale of $1,000 to the Eastman Kodak Company. As soon as he was well established, Mr. Moore saw the desirability of advertising. In 1903, his first national advertisement appeared in "The Ladies' Home Journal" at a cost of $168.00. The Company continued to grow, and was incorporated on July 19, 1904, as the "Moore Push-Pin Company." Over the next few years, Mr. Moore invented and patented many other items, such as the picture hangers and map tacks that we still make and sell today. From 1912 through 1977, the Company was located on Berkeley Street in Germantown. Today, the Moore Push-Pin Company occupies a large, well-equipped plant in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. The business is still exclusively devoted to the manufacturing and packaging of "little things." 

Text from the company's website.  Photo from the archives of the Harvard University Library, where you can browse issues of the Ladie's Home Journal, via Centuries of Advice and Advertisements.

Wingwalking

Ormer Locklear is the first man credited with bringing wing walking to the forefront of American aviation and air shows...  While there are a variety of reasons given for Lt. Ormer Locklear's first walk out on the wing in 1918, the New York Times reports in an August 4, 1920 article that he had originally begun wing walking because he conceived the idea that it would be possible to mount machine guns on the wings of a plane. Army officers said it would be impossible to maneuver with a man’s weight on the extreme edge of the wings, and some of his first “stunts” were done to demonstrate that a plane so weighted could be maneuvered. According to the US Centennial of Flight Commission, although Locklear could have been court-martialed for such antics, his commanding officer encouraged him, instead, to perform more "stunts" because they boosted his colleagues' moral, and their confidence in the soundness of their Jenny biplanes, which were suffering a rash of accidents at the time...

Additionally, Locklear was the first person to transfer from one plane to another in flight. This is what inspired and led to the world's first air-to-air refueling in 1919. Wesley May, with a five-gallon can of gasoline strapped to his back, transferred from a Standard flown by Frank Hawks to a Jenny piloted by Earl Daugherty...

 Text from the Atlantic Flyer.   The photo is not of Ormer Locklear, but of Clarence "Ace" Bragunier.

Information found while researching the "first law of wingwalking" -

"Never let go of what you have hold of until you have hold of something else."

I wanted to use that quote to respond to a young woman in Sweden who is a software developer.  She has received an offer of a job in California from Microsoft, but emailed me because the current economic turmoil in the U.S. was making her decision more difficult.  Personally I would err on the side of caution if her current employment is reasonable, but I'm an old man and she's a young woman who could probably recover from an unexpected job dislocation were Microsoft to downsize after she got there.

Any readers of this blog work for Microsoft?  Can you comment on whether a prolonged recession is likely to cause layoffs there?  Or have other advice relevant for her?

Addendum:  Those interested in trying modern-day wingwalking should check out the post at Emma's Bucket List.

Scythian griffin

I didn't even have Art 101 in college, so I'm the first to admit that my knowledge base is minimal.  If someone had shown me this sculpture as an unknown, I would have pegged it as being modern art.  Imagine my surprise to discover that it dates from the 4th century BC:

Scythian Griffin holding a stag head in its beak.
From Pazyryk, Russian Altai mountains, 4th century B.C.
Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum.

Found at petrus.agricola's Flickr photostream, via Merisoniom.

Google Street View database being updated

I was in our front yard last week when the Google Street View car went by.  Apparently they are updating their database with higher resolution photos:

...the fourth generation street view camera provides clear, sharp, and vivid images. In most of Europe, for example, all images were taken with the 4th generation camera.... All older images where street view was first made available, such as America, Australia, and Japan, will be phased out and replaced with newer imagery taken with the fourth generation street view cameras.

In some countries objections have been raised based on privacy concerns, but here in Madison elected officials are very supportive, for a surprising but logical reason:

"I'm very glad to hear they're getting new data," said Dave Davis, Madison's geographic information system manager for the engineering department. City staff rely extensively on Street View to show them such things as fire hydrants, traffic signs and sidewalks without having to leave the office, he said, saving trips and time.

A "hopper crystal" of bismuth

For years I've been seeing these at rock and mineral shows; we finally bought a small one to display at home.  It wasn't until today that I found at a Reddit thread the proper designation of the specimen as a "hopper crystal."  Here's the explanation re the formation, from Wolframscience -

When a pool of molten bismuth solidifies it tends to form crystals like [the one above].  What seems to give these crystals their characteristic "hoppered" shapes is that there is more rapid growth at the edges of each face than at the center... Hoppering has not been much studied for scientific purposes, but has been noticed in many substances, including galena, rose quartz, gold, calcite, salt and ice.

I'll bet this hurt

A biker named Zhang Bo rode into an open manhole and ended up in hospital. Bo, 28 - from Changchun, Jilin province, eastern China - hadn't spotted the missing cover and was sent flying over the handlebars when the front half of his bike disappeared into the hole. He sustained a broken jaw and fractured skull. "The manhole cover had been stolen to melt down for scrap. It's an increasing problem," said a police spokesman.

Found at the Telegraph.  Photo credit: CEN

120 years of census data on American librarians

Excerpts from an article at the Oxford University Press blog:

The U.S. Census first collected data on librarians in 1880, four years after the founding of the American Library Association. They only counted 636 librarians nationwide... The number of librarians grew over the next hundred years, peaking at 307,273 in 1990. Then, the profession began to shrink, and as of 2009, it had dropped by nearly a third to 212,742. The data enable us to measure the growth, the gender split in this profession known to be mostly female, and to explore other divides in income and education, as they changed over time.

At the link there are also data regarding librarians' income over time (it has consistently been above the median for all workers), the sex distribution of librarians (they were predominantly male in 1880), the racial distribution ("In 2009, 89 percent of librarians were white while the whole population was 82 percent white"), age, education, and marriage rates ("Today, the marriage rate among librarians is the highest it has ever been with 62 percent of librarians married in 2009.")

A maze made with salt

The artist is Motoi Yamamato; the installation appears to have been in Cologne, Germany last year.  Another photo showing the entire 12-meter diameter work is at this link.

Via Nan Koenig's tumblr.  Photo credit Stefan Worring.

Targeting of civilians. Sympathy for al Qaeda.

Results of a recent Gallup poll of Americans.  Another interesting set of numbers from the same source:

Some discussion re sampling methodology at the Gallup site, which has links to further details.

Via The Dish.

A great tit with avian pox

A bird disease which can leave great tits riddled with lesions, stopping them feeding and leaving them vulnerable to predators, is spreading across the UK, researchers have warned. Members of the public are being asked to look out for garden birds that have signs of avian pox, a virus which could be transmitted through contaminated bird feeders as well as direct bird-to-bird contact and through biting insects.

This was one of 33 pictures of the day at the Telegraph.  Credit: Liz Cutting/Zoological Society of London/PA

Can your cryptanalysis skills help apprehend a vandal?

Most of you will remember the tragedy that occurred in 2007 when an interstate highway bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis suddenly collapsed, killing 13 people.

This week a memorial in memory of the victims was unveiled.

The memorial includes a row of 13 vertical steel I-beams, each engraved with the name of someone who died in the collapse and a personal tribute written by relatives.

The names of 171 survivors of the collapse are engraved on a stone wall, which has a sheet of water flowing over it. The wall featured this message -- the one damaged by vandals -- written by survivors of the collapse:

"Our lives are not only defined by what happens, but by how we act in the face of it, not only by what life brings us, but by what we bring to life. Selfless actions and compassion create enduring community out of tragic events."

Within two days of the unveiling of the memorial, some scumbag vandalized it by removing letters.  Of interest, the letters removed were noncontiguous, suggesting that the malefactor was not taking them for the metal value of the stainless steel, but to spell a message - probably his name.

Authorities have subsequently received many requests for a list of the letters; today they responded:

The missing letters, in the order they took in the message: u, l, n, t, d, w, a, i, n, y, a, w, g, e, a, s, r, m, m, o, g, e. [a single comma was also removed, and the dot over the i).

I couldn't come up with anything.  "Stan awed uglier gym woman" certainly isn't relevant.  Perhaps you can do better.

p.s. - if you're going to tackle anagrams, I highly recommend taking advantage of specialized web resources, such as the page at Wordsmith.

Photo credit.

"Ice Rider"

To my eye this is an absolutely awesome image.  The photo was taken at Siberia's Lake Baikal, which in and of itself is unique and amazing:

"It is more than 25 million years old, a thousand times older than any other lake. At over a mile, it is the deepest lake in the world. If you emptied it, it would take every river in the world flowing into it a year to fill. It contains more water than the five US great lakes combined.

More photos via here.

The photo I've embedded is by Matthew Paley, whose website is here.  Via findout.

Home gardening

Several years ago when articles were being written about the urban decay in cities like Detroit, I remember wondering why those abandoned wrecks couldn't be bulldozen down and replaced with garden space.  Now an article at Wired Science suggests that in some cities that is exactly what is being done.

By transforming its vacant lots, backyards and roof-tops into farming plots, the city of Cleveland could meet all of its fresh produce, poultry and honey needs, calculate researchers from Ohio State University. These steps would save up to $155 million annually, boost employment and scale back obesity...

Both Scott and Grewal hope that shift is coming. Cleveland now has hundreds of community gardens. Some residents are growing market gardens, cultivating and selling produce as a full-time job. The city is seeing the grandest show of large public gardens since the Victory Gardens of World War II, when 40 percent of U.S. vegetables came from private and public gardens.

And speaking of (sub)urban gardens, our backyard garden is now coming to fruition.  The tomato plants to the right center of the photo are about six feet tall (the one behind me is closer to 7 feet), all of them supported on steel frames.  On the left side of the photo are the eggplants in containers; lower right center are cucumbers climbing a trellis (and a tomato cage).  At the very bottom are zucchini and radishes (the latter already bolted to seed).  Out of the frame are the peppers and dill and cabbage and broccoli - and of course the milkweed and butterfly plants.  My wife gets the credit for all of this.