Awesome origami

 

The 7" scorpion was created out of one uncut square of Korean hanji paper.

This is an example of "hex pleating," a design technique analogous to box pleating, but that uses hexagonal symmetry.

The 5" tree frog was folded from one uncut square of Origamido paper. Many more at the artist's website. (via k9pincushion)

Reposted from 2008 (!) to add this super-awesome recent example:

Via, where the artist notes "It took me 3 months to design and fold this origami samurai from a single square sheet of paper without any cutting."

See also proof of the Pythagorean Theorem using origami.

It's a planthopper nymph

Via Neatorama.

Zip cuffs confirmed in the Capitol insurrection

Photo (cropped for size) from Snopes, which has additional photos of others carrying zip cuffs, plus a video of the Capitol police opening the doors to let the rioters in.

"Here's your refund. Don't return the item"

A somewhat counterintuitive corporate retail policy: 

Retailers have a new message for consumers looking to return an item: Keep it.

Amazon.com Inc., Walmart Inc. and other companies are using artificial intelligence to decide whether it makes economic sense to process a return. For inexpensive items or large ones that would incur hefty shipping fees, it is often cheaper to refund the purchase price and let customers keep the products.

The relatively new approach, popularized by Amazon and a few other chains, is being adopted more broadly during the Covid-19 pandemic, as a surge in online shopping forces companies to rethink how they handle returns. “We are getting so many inquiries about this that you will see it take off in coming months,” said Amit Sharma, chief executive of Narvar Inc., which processes returns for retailers.

Lorie Anderson of Vancouver, Wash., was pleasantly surprised when she tried to return online purchases of makeup at Target and batteries from Walmart. The chains issued her a refund but told her to keep the items.

“They were inexpensive, and it wouldn’t make much financial sense to return them by mail,” Ms. Anderson, 38 years old, said. “It’s a hassle to pack up the box and drop it at the post office or UPS . This was one less thing I had to worry about.”

Full story behind a paywall at The Wall Street Journal.

And, as an example of how walls don't keep determined people out, here is the content from behind the paywall, courtesy of an anonymous reader.

29 holes in Mars

"We all know Mars as the Red Planet, we see that in the night sky. However, as our drill tailings gallery shows, once we drill just a small depth in to the interior, Mars can be very different. We have drilled successfully 29 times now and the sediments show a range of hues from ochre-red to blue-grey reflecting the minerals and fluids that passed through the ancient rocks. Drilling allows us to get through the topmost, oxidized surface that has been most exposed to cosmic radiation."

"My Octopus Teacher"

 

Available on Netflix, and should be of interest to anyone who loves the natural world.  This gif of a man interacting with a wolf spider is conceptually related.

Reposted to add this awesome photo of a bioluminescent octopus:

"Stauroteuthis syrtensis, also known as the glowing sucker octopus or bioluminescent octopus, is a species of small pelagic octopus found at great depths in the north Atlantic Ocean...

Stauroteuthis is one of only two genera of octopuses to exhibit bioluminescence. S. syrtensis emits a blue-green light from about 40 modified suckers known as photophores situated in a single row between the pairs of cirri on the underside of each arm. The distance between these decreases towards the ends of the arms with the light becoming fainter. The animal does not emit light continuously, but can do so for a period of five minutes after suitable stimulation. Some of the photophores emit a continuous stream of faint light, while others are much brighter and switch on and off in a cyclical pattern, producing a twinkling effect. The function of the bioluminescence is believed to be for defence, being used by the animal to scare off predators, and also as a lure for the planktonic crustaceans that form its main diet. The light may also be used for sexual signaling, but this is considered to be an unlikely function, as the light is deployed by both sexes and by immature, as well as mature, individuals."

13th century numeral system

A single icon can represent any number up to 9999 (see bottom row).  It's not hard to decipher.  Break the icon into four quadrants, then read the bottom left, then bottom right, then top left, then top right.

I have no further information on the system, or its name.  The via at Reddit indicates that it was developed by Cistercian monks and was "used for years, divisions of texts, the numbering of notes and other lists, indexes and concordances, arguments in Easter tables, and even for musical notation."

This system is explained - somewhat slowly - in a Numberphile video (hat tip to reader Keith).

Related: Hieroglyphic numbers

Walking with the insurrectionists

Excerpts from an essay in The Atlantic:

I told the woman in the cat costume that I would walk with her group. “Only if you take off your mask,” she said. The media is the only real virus, she explained, knowing that I was a part of the media. I told her I would keep my mask on. Trumpists had asked me periodically to remove it. Some were polite about it, a few others not. It seemed to me that only 5 percent or so of the thousands of people gathered for the insurrection wore masks. At one point, when I was caught in the thickest part of the crowd, near the Ellipse, a man told me, “Your glasses are fogging up.”

“Yep, masks,” I said.

“You don’t have to wear it. It’s not a mandate.”

“No, I do.”

“Why?”

“There’s a pandemic.”

“Yeah, right.”

We will find out shortly if today’s insurrection was also a super-spreader event. What I do know, after spending hours sponging up Trumpist paranoia, conspiracism, and cultishness, is that this gathering was not merely an attempted coup but also a mass-delusion event, not something that can be explained adequately through the prism of politics. Its chaos was rooted in psychological and theological phenomena, intensified by eschatological anxiety. One man I interviewed this morning, a resident of Texas who said his name was Don Johnson (I did not trust this to be his name), told me that the country was coming apart, and that this dissolution presaged the End Times. “It’s all in the Bible,” he said. “Everything is predicted. Donald Trump is in the Bible. Get yourself ready.”

More at the link (no paywall).

17 "priors"

"A 73-year-old Green Bay man has been charged with his 18th drunken driving offense, after a crash Friday that took out power lines and caused an outage.

Wallace Bowers had 17 prior operating while intoxicated convictions between 1988 and 2011, but he had a valid license at the time of Friday's crash.

WLUK-TV reported that Wisconsin law now requires driver’s licenses to be revoked after a 4th OWI conviction, if the most recent conviction was within 15 years. But Bowers' last conviction was in 2011, before the new law went into effect in 2018.

“I’ve been sober since the 2011 (incident), that last DWI, and I blame the medications I have to be on (they) can interfere with the few drinks I did have,” Bowers told Court Commissioner Cynthia Vopal during an initial court appearance."

I live in a state famous for its beer and its tolerance of alcohol abuse.  The Tavern League of Wisconsin is a major contributor to political candidates at all levels of government.

Addendum: a multi-vehicle collision at 0245 in the night:

Flowers and moths in Wisconsin in the winter

I don't hike the arboretum in winter, so the photos here are of our yard after the first heavy snowfall of the year.  But I do get newsletters from the arboretum on a regular basis, and the most recent one included some information that was new to me.

"It has long been believed that fallen pine needles acidify (reduce the pH of) the soil. This isn’t the case, however. While the fresh needles are acidic, the pH is neutralized during decomposition and they have no real effect on soil acidity. A recent study from the University of Wisconsin–River Falls looked at soil pH under older deciduous and coniferous trees, including four pine species, and found no relevant effect on soil pH caused by needle or leaf litter decomposition over time."

"Sporting fragrant, perfect flowers with four unique sulfur-yellow, strap-like petals, common witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), a Wisconsin native, still displayed a few flowers in December. The common name is thought to derive from the old English wych, meaning “to bend,” in reference to the plants flexible branches, and “hazel” comes from the resemblance of the leaves to those of hazels in the genus Corylus.

Witch-haze flowers are fragrant, bear nectar, and produce abundant sticky pollen. They are not able to self-pollinate however, which indicates that they are insect pollinated. Though witch-hazel reproduction is not fully understood, research indicates that flies and fungus gnats play a role in pollinating the flowers in the fall before freezing temperatures. For flowers present during winter, owlet moths in the family Noctuidae, referred to as shivering moths, appear to play a role. These moths overwinter as adults, living under leaf litter, and have the ability to raise the temperature around their flight muscles by as much as 50°F by shivering, so they can fly in search of food during winter months."

You learn something every day.

Amber bear amulet (Slupsk, Poland)

"The amber bear amulet was found in 1887 in a peat bog near Slupsk,Poland. When the figure was examined it turned out to be the amulet of a bear hunter, originating from the Neolithic period. It was dated at between 1700 B.C. and 650 B.C. "

Last lines of novels

But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before. –Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

He loved Big Brother. –George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’ –Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth. –Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. –Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. –Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city. –Albert Camus, The Plague (1947; trans. Stuart Gilbert)

“Good grief—It's Daddy!” –Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, Candy (1958)

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, "God bless Us, Every One!" –Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. –George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing. –A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner (1928)

The old man was dreaming about the lions. –Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

“Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.” –Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)

The coronavirus "lab leak" hypothesis

You've heard the rumors, the chit-chat, the idle speculation - that the current coronavirus pandemic is the result of a "leak" of a wild virus from a research lab in Wuhan, that it is an intentional form of biological warfare, that the virus was synthesized to be used as a weapon...

By a wide margin the best reporting I have so far encountered on this subject is a longread (very long read) at New York Magazine.  I'll break from my usual practice of excerpting the best bits to embed here, because snippets may confer wrong information.  The article does not provide a definitive answer to the question, but there is a lot of relevant information.

Related:  Yesterday I listened to a very interesting podcast of This American Life.  "The Other Extinguishers" is a 21-minute segment interviewing scientists who developed a key element in the Moderna vaccine years before COVID-19 emerged.  They were inducing cells to produce the "spikes" of the SARS-2 virus as an immunizing agent.  It's worth a listen, if only to realize that without this fortuitous happenstance, it might have been years before an effective vaccine to COVID-19 could have been produced.

Mommy, can we watch the TV show about the giant penis?

"John Dillermand has an extraordinary penis. So extraordinary, in fact, that it can perform rescue operations, etch murals, hoist a flag and even steal ice-cream from children.

The Danish equivalent of the BBC, DR, has a new animated series aimed at four- to eight-year-olds about John Dillermand, the man with the world’s longest penis who overcomes hardships and challenges with his record-breaking genitals."

The resulting controversy is discussed at The Guardian.

Music from the dorsalis pedis

Arguably the most interesting item I bookmarked during my blogcation, as reported by the New England Journal of Medicine -

A 65-year-old man who had previously undergone bilateral hip arthroplasty presented with a dislocated hip after a fall. When a handheld Doppler device used to assess the pulses in his feet was placed on the dorsalis pedis, it picked up music in addition to the pulse, as shown in a video.

The article at the link was outside the paywall initially; I don't know whether it will remain so.  In the audio at the gif, the music is clearly a broadcast by a radio station.  The staff at the hospital tried using other Dopplers, all of which gave the same result, so it was not a Doppler malfunction.  They then checked other patients' pulses, but heard no music, so the phenomenon appears to be somehow caused by this patient's prosthesis.  I like when they pan the camera to show him smiling about everything at the end.

Addendum:  The app Shazam identified the music in the gif as “Gracias Por Tu Amor” by Banda El Recodo De Cruz Lizárraga.