San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake

This is an amazing photograph from Wikimedia, near-panoramic in breadth, and incredibly detailed considering the fact that it was apparently shot by triggering a camera suspended beneath a kite! You can see individual people on the streets, and look at the beautiful old ships in the harbor; what appears to be chimneys in the burned-over section are actually building facades with the remainder gutted out behind them. I think that's the mint just to the right of center partway up the hill; there are some great stories about the employees staying there to protect the U.S. coinage during the fire, dodging molten lead dripping down on them from the roof.

After you click on the photo above, click AGAIN to enlarge it to many times screen-size for exploration.

Impressive animal photography

Strong emphasis on equestrian subjects, but reasonable variety, with some interesting perspectives. The collection is at THIS LINK. Some appear to be 'shopped, but the artistic merit is striking.

Seahorses in the Thames!

An unexpected revelation in a waterway so far north, they have been there for at least 18 months.

"The Zoological Society of London discovered the colony in 2006 but decided to keep quiet until legislation could be put in place to protect the seahorses. They live in the river’s estuary, between Essex and Kent... The Thames discovery illustrates the partial success of attempts to reduce pollution in a river once considered one of the dirtiest in Europe.The clean-up has already resulted in the return of salmon, which were extinct in the Thames from 1833 until 1974 but are now breeding in Berkshire."

As the Times article indicates, however, this may represent not just a success in pollution control, but a beneficial effect of global warming.

Five-year-old blind musical prodigy

An eight-minute video worth watching. From what appears to be a South Korean equivalent of "American Idol," a little girl blind since birth plays music after hearing it once. Considering her small hand size the performance is quite remarkable. Credit to Nothing To Do With Arbroath.

If you like this and haven't seen Paul Potts' performance of Nessun Dorma, click here.

Non-electric refrigerator

"This is Mohammed Bah Abba's pot-in-pot invention. In northern Nigeria over 90% of villages have no electricity. His invention, which won a Rolex Award (and $100,000), is a refrigerator that runs without electricity. Here's how it works. You take a smaller pot and put it inside a larger pot. Fill the space in between them with wet sand, and cover the top with a wet cloth. When the water evaporates, it pulls the heat out with it, making the inside cold. It's a natural, cheap, easy-to-make refrigerator. So, instead of perishable foods rotting after only three days, they can last up to three weeks. Obviously, this has the potential to change lives. And it already has -- there are more girls attending school, for example, as their families no longer need them to sell food in the market."

This device is based on the principles of evaporative cooling - similar to the way English butlers used to quickly cool a bottle of champagne by wrapping it with a wet towel and holding it out the window while driving the Bentley down the road. Efficacy does require a low ambient humidity, but, like the merry-go-round water pump I blogged earlier, it clearly is a useful contrivance.

Fool or Fraud? - Hard choice...

The face of Leonardo DaVinci

This is one of the TED talks - a remarkable collection of educational lectures. This one is just four minutes long and worth viewing.

Making the world safer (by ignoring facts)

WESTMINSTER [Colorado]– Adams School District 50 is defending its decision to punish a third grader for sniffing a Sharpie marker. Eight-year-old Eathan Harris used a black Sharpie marker to color a small area on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.

"It smelled good," Harris said. "They told me that's wrong." Eathan shyly shook his head "no" when a reporter asked if he knew about "huffing."

Principal Chris Benisch stands by his decision to suspend Harris, saying it sends a clear message about substance abuse.

"This is really, really, seriously dangerous," Benisch said.

In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to "become intoxicated."

A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible. Dr. Eric Lavonas says non-toxic markers like Sharpies, while pungent-smelling, cannot be used to get high. "I don't know whether it would be possible for a real overachiever to figure out a way to get high off them," Lavonas said. "But in regular use, it's just not something that's going to happen."

Adams County School District 50 leaders were unfazed by the poison control center's medical opinion. "Principals make hundreds of decisions everyday based on our best judgment. And in that time, smelling that marker, I felt like, 'Wow, that's a very serious marker,'" Benisch said.

Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers.

"We've purged every permanent marker there is in this building," he said.

Monty Python - Duelling Documentaries

I'm totally swamped right now with Things To Do, so the easiest way to fill in a few blog spots is to enter some videos I've bookmarked. The first is a Monty Python sketch I think from the early years - classic over-the-top outrageous humor. If you like Pythonesque humor, you will enjoy this; if not, just give it a pass...

FedEx cavemen Superbowl commercial

From the Golden Age of Comedy

Sid Caesar and Nannette Fabray portray a married couple arguing, doing it in pantomime to the music of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Apparently done without videoediting in the era of live TV, which underscores the brilliance of the performances.

Water balloon ultra-slow-motion video

There must be hundreds of videos on YouTube of balloons popping, bullets piercing apples etc. This one is quite impressive, involving simply the puncture of a water balloon by a pin. Curious to see how the popped balloon wraps around to the far side.

The mimicry of a Superb Lyrebird

The Superb Lyrebird of southern Australia has audio mimicry capabilities that will knock your socks off. The video embedded above is from David Attenborough's Life of Birds series. As the segment starts, the natural reaction is to think "well, the mockingbird can also mimic bird calls" - but then this bird reproduces the sounds of camera shutters, a camera motor drive, and (sadly) chainsaws cutting the forest.

You have to listen to this 3-minute video - it's one of the Hundred Things To Do Before You Die. Do it now.

Parking garage sign

An Aussie Clothes Library

A brief word of thanks to "MW" who visited this blog yesterday and left a comment. Every day a few dozen people visit TYWKIWDBI, but it's rare for anyone to leave me feedback in the form of a comment. In MW's honor, I offer tonight this story from Down Under (?does that need to be capitalized?) about a "Clothing Library."

The Belmont Clothes Library is run by volunteers and has over 1,500 fashionable garments which it loans out, for free, to unemployed people so they can be well-dressed for job interviews. "People who are unsure about what to wear for job interviews can get advice from Clothes Library volunteers. In some cases, the Library can help with hair cuts, make-up and accessories."

A brilliant idea. There are of course a variety of used clothing sources in the U.S., but nothing quite like this apart from some volunteer groups that loan prom dresses to indigent girls. Kudos to the Aussies for this innovation.

More information on the Belmont Library here; photo from Treehugger.