The text in the "square" is NOT magnified

First of all, there really isn't a "square" in the upper left part of the image.  Your brain creates a white square by extending the margins of the four black  three-quarter-circles.  But that's not the main point of the illusion, as explained at Mighty Optical Illusions:

When the brain sees an image like this, it interprets depth relationships to perceive the square as set on top of black disks – as a result, the inside of the square is perceived as being closer to your eyes than its surroundings, ultimately creating visual illusion that makes you think the area within the square is enlarged!

The link will guide you to a site with similar examples.

Worst basketball player ever?

YouTube link. 

The Belgian basketball player grabs the rebound from the missed free throw, and apparently momentarily confused about which end of the floor he is at, attempts to make a layup (which would count for the other team).

He misses four times at the undefended basket before his teammates intervene.

p.s. - I have never seen an auditorium floor marked for so many different sports.  Impressive.

Advances in bioweapons

Excerpts from a long, thought-provoking article at The Atlantic:

The U.S. government is surreptitiously collecting the DNA of world leaders, and is reportedly protecting that of Barack Obama. Decoded, these genetic blueprints could provide compromising information. In the not-too-distant future, they may provide something more as well—the basis for the creation of personalized bioweapons that could take down a president and leave no trace.

...consider that the DNA of world leaders is already a subject of intrigue. According to Ronald Kessler, the author of the 2009 book In the President’s Secret Service, Navy stewards gather bedsheets, drinking glasses, and other objects the president has touched—they are later sanitized or destroyed—in an effort to keep would‑be malefactors from obtaining his genetic material. (The Secret Service would neither confirm nor deny this practice, nor would it comment on any other aspect of this article.) And according to a 2010 release of secret cables by WikiLeaks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directed our embassies to surreptitiously collect DNA samples from foreign heads of state and senior United Nations officials. Clearly, the U.S. sees strategic advantage in knowing the specific biology of world leaders; it would be surprising if other nations didn’t feel the same...

Personalized bioweapons, the focus of this story, are a subtler and less catastrophic threat, and perhaps for that reason, society has barely begun to consider them. Yet once available, they will, we believe, be put into use much more readily than bioweapons of mass destruction. For starters, while most criminals might think twice about mass slaughter, murder is downright commonplace. In the future, politicians, celebrities, leaders of industry—just about anyone, really—could be vulnerable to attack-by-disease. Even if fatal, many such attacks could go undetected, mistaken for death by natural causes; many others would be difficult to pin on a suspect, especially given the passage of time between exposure and the appearance of symptoms...

Presidential DNA could be used in a variety of politically sensitive ways, perhaps to fabricate evidence of an affair, fuel speculation about birthplace and heritage, or identify genetic markers for diseases that could cast doubt on leadership ability and mental acuity. How much would it take to unseat a president? The first signs of Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s may have emerged during his second term. Some doctors today feel the disease was then either latent or too mild to affect his ability to govern. But if information about his condition had been genetically confirmed and made public, would the American people have demanded his resignation? Could Congress have been forced to impeach him?

For the Secret Service, these new vulnerabilities conjure attack scenarios worthy of a Hollywood thriller. Advances in stem-cell research make any living cell transformable into many other cell types, including neurons or heart cells or even in vitro–derived (IVD) “sperm.” Any live cells recovered from a dirty glass or a crumpled napkin could, in theory, be used to manufacture synthetic sperm cells. And so, out of the blue, a president could be confronted by a “former lover” coming forward with DNA evidence of a sexual encounter, like a semen stain on a dress...

...even modern cancer therapies could be harnessed for malicious ends. Personalized therapies designed to attack a specific patient’s cancer cells are already moving into clinical trials. Synthetic biology is poised to expand and accelerate this process by making individualized viral therapies inexpensive. Such “magic bullets” can target cancer cells with precision. But what if these bullets were trained to attack healthy cells instead? Trained against retinal cells, they would produce blindness. Against the hippocampus, a memory wipe may result. And the liver? Death would follow in months.

More at the link.  Fascinating.

Sexual innuendo in comic book panels

The Mitch O'Connell blog has assembled many hundreds of these, most of which were presumably unintentional and simply reflective of different word usage at the time of the publication. 

Be aware of fake tanzanite

The International School of Gemology has an excellent discussion/explanation of the increasing prevalence of fake tanzanite.

Our previous research on this topic turned up prima facie evidence that someone out there (China or Thailand) is color infusing zoisite using the same method that the ISG uncovered being done to tourmaline...

Apparently under magnification, the infused color can be seen concentrating in the natural fissures of the stone, as shown here:

But a new treatment method avoids this pitfall:

Rather than using a simple color infusion process, it appears that this new process is using a color infusion material that itself has optical properties that emulate a tanzanite. By infusing a previously colorless or perhaps light yellow zoisite with this optical material the cookers have been able to achieve a level of treatment that surpasses anything we have yet seen on the market...

The final test that exposed the condition of this tanzanite crystal was quite unexpected and profound. This crystal, viewed through a London Dichroscope [top embedded image], clearly demonstrated that something very strange has taken place with this crystal. This image clearly exhibits four separate colors coming from this tanzanite crystal, with the blue and purple coming from the fractures and fissures, and the crystal itself offering a colorless and strong yellow reaction. One direction of viewing through a London Dichroscope, but producing four distinct colors. We believe that 2 of the colors are optical reactions from the gemstone, and 2 are due to optical reactions of the treatment material.

...we have to conclude that something artificial is being done to zoisite to create a tanzanite appearing result. Precisely what is being done, we do not know. That it is being done, we believe there is little question left on that issue. The images speak for themselves. What is most remarkable about this find is that the cookers have stepped up their game. They are not simply infusing colors, they have elevated their ability to actually infuse material with specific optical properties.

To the cookers responsible: You folks are brilliant! We need more tanzanite on the market, both natural and treated. But we need your treated material to be properly disclosed because failure to do so is destroying the entire tanzanite market for everyone. Disclose your treatments! Otherwise you will eventually cause great damage to the market for tanzanite just as you did for Ruby, Paraiba Tourmaline and Oregon Sunstone.

Via the newsletter of the Madison Gem and Mineral Club, which is holding its Gem and Mineral Show at the Alliant Energy Center this weekend.  There's always lots of cool stuff on display and for sale at this annual event.

Full medal jacket

Consider these portraits of Generals Petraeus and Eisenhower. Petraeus is wearing over 30 ribbons and badges on his uniform. I'm sure he earned each of them. But of that 30, how many civilians will notice that only one item was for heroism (Bronze Star with "V")? Eisenhower earned only ten U.S. decorations (plus countless foreign ones), and - as was the custom of the day - typically wore only three or four at a time...

But the truth is, most accoutrements merely denote successful completion of an assignment, or time spent overseas - not necessarily in combat. Servicemembers can even earn a ribbon for volunteerism in their personal lives... We used to hesitate to adorn soldiers with ribbons, medals, and the like - it smacked of European symbols of nobility. The pendulum has swung too far toward over-recognition of service.

Text and the Petraeus photo via The Dish.   Eisenhower photo cropped from a photo of the 1947 painting at the National Portrait Gallery.

The prequel to The Wizard of Oz

YouTube link. 

Oz The Great and Powerful will be released in the spring of 2013.  Here's the trailer (best at fullscreen).

Disney's fantastical adventure "Oz The Great and Powerful," imagines the origins of L. Frank Baum's beloved wizard character. When Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a small-time circus magician with dubious ethics, is hurled away from dusty Kansas to the vibrant Land of Oz, he thinks he's hit the jackpot—fame and fortune are his for the taking—that is until he meets three witches, Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz) and Glinda (Michelle Williams), who are not convinced he is the great wizard everyone's been expecting. Reluctantly drawn into the epic problems facing the Land of Oz and its inhabitants, Oscar must find out who is good and who is evil before it is too late. Putting his magical arts to use through illusion, ingenuity—and even a bit of wizardry—Oscar transforms himself not only into the great and powerful wizard but into a better man as well.

Via The Guardian.

The complexities of mass transit and energy policy

...many studies of energy efficiency by mode often make questionable and — depending on the author’s point of view — self-serving assumptions. The main trick is to look at autos with but one passenger and compare them to transit vehicles in which every seat is full...

But in the real world, this is emphatically not the case.  At any given time, the average auto has somewhere around 1.6 passengers, and the average (typically 40-seat) bus has only about 10. Rail vehicles typically have more passengers (on average about 25), but then again they are also typically much larger...

It is not clear that moving around large and largely empty vehicles is much of an improvement over moving around smaller ones. In fact, it may be worse...

Pumping up ridership by adding transit service will probably do little good, and may even be counterproductive. The reason is that new service promises to reduce transit’s already less-than-spectacular load factors and result in largely empty vehicles. Why? At this point we have picked all the low-hanging fruit in terms of transit markets....

On the other hand, if we can persuade travelers to leave their cars and ride existing transit service, rather than new service, the environment will benefit greatly. Given its current low load factors, transit generally has plenty of capacity to absorb new customers with practically zero additional energy expenditure. Strategies to pursue this would involve economic incentives to influence behavior. These might include pull strategies designed to lure riders onto transit, such as fare cuts, or push strategies designed to get them out of cars onto transit, such as increasing gas taxes, congestion tolling, or charging market rates for street parking...

So there it is: to benefit the environment, probably the best thing to do is be very skeptical about adding new transit service and even to discontinue some service we are currently providing (sorry, liberals). Simultaneously, we should raise fees and taxes for driving (apologies to you conservatives).

I heard part of this essay on the radio last night while driving to pick up Chinese take-out, and found the rest of it this morning at Freakonomics.  It's a complex matter that's not reliably represented by excerpts, so please view the original for details and caveats.

Birthing (parturition) chair

It is made from wood, padded leather and iron. The seat shape allows a clear route for the emerging baby and access for those assisting the birth. The chair is also known as a parturition chair. They were used from ancient times until the 1800s. The grooved parts on the bottom of the frame were used for leg rests, which the mother would use for support and to press against. Some birthing chairs have low centres of gravity so the mother can squat and still be supported by the chair.

This chair has a reclining back, which is demonstrated in a second photograph at the source.  From the Science and Society Picture Library at the Science Museum London.  Image cropped and brightened from the original.  Via Neatorama.

Choosing the right shampoo

Found at imgur; original credit unknown.

Miscellaneous links.

A 12-year-old boy in Texas has been ruled "too big to play PeeWee football."  He's six feet tall and weighs 300 pounds.  News video at the link.

Winners have been announced for the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

If you like TED talks, their website now has a listing for the 20 most-watched TED talks.

A WSJ article reports on the high salaries being offered to nannies for children. "A British staffing agency called Imperial Nannies cited a Russian client who wanted to poach a nanny from another family. Their salary offer: $200,000 a year."

"Rob McLeod of Calgary set a new quadruped world record in Denver, Colorado earlier this month when he threw a Frisbee 116.5 yards to quick-footed canine Davy Whippet."  Video at the link.

Superlinguo offers some guidelines on how to write (and translate) ERMAHGERD memes.

"Randy Lee Tenley, 44, of Kalispell, Montana was killed yesterday while reportedly attempting to stage a Bigfoot hoax. Tenley was walking on a highway wearing a hunter's ghillie suit, likely similar to the one seen here, when he was struck by two different vehicles driven by teenagers..."

"The leader of a far-right anti-semitic political party in Hungary, who was notorious for his incendiary comments against Jews, discovered that he's actually Jewish himself."   More details here.

Silver coins have been found on Mars.

An op-ed piece in the Journal of Medical Ethics asserts that pursuing aggressive but futile life-extending procedures on children in hopes of a miraculous recovery via divine intervention is ethically wrong.

If you have a seizure disorder that can be triggered by flashing images, do not wiggle your mouse violently back and forth above this website.

Some ATM skimmers are now so wafer-thin that they can be fitted entirely inside the card-insertion slot.  ATM users beware.  (for more re skimmes, search TYWKIWDBI).

"Women and children first" on a sinking ship is nonsense in real life.  "They studied 18 different maritime disasters, including 16 previously unstudied shipwrecks, between the 1850s and 2011...  the average survival rate across the 16 other unstudied wrecks was less than 30 per cent for women and closer to 40 per cent for men. And while children fared better than men onboard the Titanic, this wasn't the case in the majority of shipwrecks. "Children appear to have the lowest survival rate," write Elinder and Erixson."  Also: "The most stunning finding from the other shipwrecks is of course the low survival rate of women and children, but also the relatively high survival rate of crew members and captains." (Of course that doesn't prove that lack of chivalry is the driving factor).

An explanation of memory leaks with Firefox 15 (the problem that was plaguing my Mac before I finally installed more RAM).  Also here.

An article in the Paris Review discusses the prevalence of "coitus more ferarum" ("sex in the manner of beasts') in the television series Game of Thrones.  With photos that are marginally NSFW.

"In her book Big Sister, photographer Hana Jakrlova explores an internet sex club in Prague where the clients get to have sex for free as long as they agree to let their exploits be filmed and broadcast live across the web." 

For wordsmiths only, an interesting post at The Guardian looks at the different styles of cryptic puzzles.  (Jack Fitzgerald Kennedy becomes FLAGELLATED - clever!)

A Reddit discussion thread on the LIBOR scandal.

In a Guardian column, Glenn Greenwald notes that the media is becoming unreservedly and inappropriately obsequious with Obama: "But in exchange for such access, Lewis, unbeknownst to readers of his profile, had agreed to a journalistically corrupt practice - now banned by many large media outlets - whereby the only quotes he was permitted to use were ones the White House approved in advance. Unsurprisingly, the profile was pure hagiography that left Obama's most devoted media fans gushing with ecstacy.

How to make your own lapidary equipment, including a tumbler, a rock saw, and - most interesting - an elutriator which will allow you to reuse grit.

A video about the so-called "can-opener" bridge that removes the tops of trucks.

A quiz for you - you have five minutes to name all the letters in the Greek alphabet.  (I got 19.  You can do better than that).

For football junkies - a defensive player intercepts the snap between the center and the quarterback and returns it 76 yards for a touchdown.

A gene required for the regeneration of nerve cells has been identified.

Advice from a disabled woman to other disabled women on how to maintain one's femininity.

Video of an otter who jumps onto a fishing boat to escape killer whales (but calls out to her lost offspring).

In 2005 a documentary movie was made in which a homeless person was given $100,000 and followed to see what he did with it and with his life. 

Dillian Warden was fined $2,500 for urinating within view of the public even though it was on his own property (in his home's front yard).  Dillian Warden is 3 years old.

Israel has allowed medical marijuana use for the past seven years. "Unlike in the United States and much of Europe, the issue inspires almost no controversy among the government and the country's leadership. Even influential senior rabbis do not voice any opposition to its spread, and secular Israelis have a liberal attitude on marijuana."

A message to the Republicans who said they would move to Australia if Obama won.

Outtakes from the scene in which James Bond jumps over crocodiles in "Live and Let Die."

At Poemas del río Wang, a nice photoessay about the Georgian military road (which may have been used by Alexander the Great, and has been much used by the Russian military).

While fighting fires in Australia, a helicopter mistakenly drew up raw sewage rather than fresh water, and dumped it on the fire - and on the firefighters.

Did Jesus have long hair, or short hair?  It's not really "important," but it is interesting.

The first cheerleader in history was a male student at the University of Minnesota - in 1898.   And the first chant was ""Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-u-mah, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!"

Caterpillarblog presents a photoessay on entomophagy.  "I will save the “reasons why you should eat insects” post for another time – here I will give my reviews of the dishes I made, and how my students reacted! (they got extra credit points for trying every dish, which greatly enhanced enthusiasm)

General Petraeus and Paula Broadwell used a cybertrick to communicate their intimate messages secretly via e-mail.  "The trick has achieved notoriety as a tactic of terrorists who are rightly wary of espionage."  You can do it, too.  It's easy.

The (totally unrelated) photos are of pet beds, from a much larger group assembled at Marinni's often-fascinating LiveJournal.   They seem to be mostly dog beds (I guess cats tend to sleep mostly on human beds).  (Sources via the link).

Carnivorous harp sponge

YouTube link. 

Very cool creature newly discovered, and described at Nature:

...the vertical branches and horizontal stolons that make up the sponge’s basic harp-like structure, called a vane, are covered in barbed hooks and spines. They found that a number of crustacean prey were passively ensnared on these branches thanks to the Velcro-like hooks and then aggressively enclosed in a cavity to be dismembered into small, digestible particles, which provided direct evidence of the species’ carnivorous appetites...

They can have 1-6 vanes, each supporting a number of equidistant vertical branches, and each of these end in swollen terminal balls. According to the researchers, these terminal balls produce condensed packets of sperm called spermatophores, which are released into the surrounding water in the hopes of fertilising other harp sponges in the area...

Why MTV doesn't play music videos

YouTube link. 

Apparently a spoof interview, but probably truth-based.  Language (and a gesture) NSFW.

Transparent solar film

As reported at PhysOrg:

One of the holy grails of solar cell technology may have been found, with researchers at UCLA announcing they have created a new organic polymer that produces electricity, is nearly transparent and is more durable and malleable than silicon. The applications are mind-boggling. Windows that produce electricity. Buildings wrapped in transparent solar cells... "

(A solar film) harvests light and turns it into electricity. In our case, we harvest only the infrared part," says Professor Yang Yang at UCLA's California Nanosystems Institute, who has headed up the research on the new photovoltaic polymer. Absorbing only the infrared light, he explains, means the material doesn't have to be dark or black or blue, like most silicon photovoltaic panels. It can be clear. "We have developed a material that absorbs infrared and is all transparent to the visible light."

"And then we also invented a new electrode, a metal, that is also transparent. So we created a new solar cell," Yang adds. Well, the metal is actually not transparent, Yang points out; it's just so small that you can't see it. The new polymer incorporates silver nanowires about 0.1 microns thick... 

Someday the geopolitics of oil will be irrelevant.  Perhaps not in our lifetime, but someday.

Interesting comments from Bill Kristol

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol says that Republicans in Congress should “take Obama’s offer” to raise taxes on the wealthy because the GOP shouldn’t “fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires.”..

“Four presidents in the last century have won 50 percent of the vote twice: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Obama,” the conservative pundit explained. “It pains me to say that, to put him in with those other three, but it’s a fact.

He continued: “The leadership in the Republican Party and the leadership in the conservative movement has to pull back, let people float new ideas. Let’s have a serious debate. Don’t scream and yell when one person says, ‘You know what? It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.’ It really won’t, I don’t think.”

“I really don’t understand why Republicans don’t take Obama’s offer to freeze taxes for everyone below $250,000 — make it $500,000, make it a million,” Kristol insisted.

“Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of them live in Hollywood?”

Text via The Raw Story.  Context: "William Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel. Kristol is associated with a number of prominent conservative think tanks. He was chairman of the New Citizenship Project from 1997 to 2005. In 1997, he co-founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) with Robert Kagan.