A top new model. Male model.

... 19-year old Andrej Pejic is not your usual male model as you can see from these pictures showing his two starring turns on the catwalk this past week for Jean Paul Gaultier.

The gorgeous blonde Veronica Lake ringer in gold and furs at Gaultier's menswear show? Pejic. The beautiful hourglass bride at the finale of Gaultier's haute couture show in Paris, resplendent in ruffled tulle and feather headdress? Pejic again.

More at the Telegraph.

Some tips about online shopping

Most people who shop online are aware of these things, but a Slate article provides a nice summary:

In its most brazen form, it works like this: Retailers read the cookies kept on your browser or glean information from your past purchase history when you are logged into a site. That gives them a sense of what you search for and buy, how much you paid for it, and whether you might be willing and able to spend more. They alter their prices or offers accordingly...

Sellers of time-sensitive, highly price-variable goods (think airline tickets, hotel rooms, or car rentals) do it all the time, somewhat openly. If you have ever had the annoying experience of buying a plane ticket through a portal like Kayak, then seeing the final price jump $10 or $40 at check out, you have probably found yourself on the receiving end of dynamic pricing...

This August, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company that helps Capital One determine what credit-card deals to offer customers when they land at the site. The deals change depending not on any credit-rating or salary information given to the firm by the customer—just on information skimmed off of their computer before the page loads. More recently, bloggers caught the bank offering different deals to users using different browsers...

Researchers conducted a 1,500-person survey and found about two in three respondents did not know it is legal "for an online store to charge different people different prices at the same time of day." About 70 percent did not realize it is also legal for bricks-and-mortar stores to do so. But yes, as long as stores do not discriminate based on age, sex, location, or a few other characteristics, stores can price as capriciously as they want.

More at the link.

"Microcosmos"

"A collection of images taken with scanning electron microscopes (SEM) has been pieced together by London-based science author, Brandon Broll, into a book titled Microcosmos."

Top: "a wood or heathland ant, Formica fusca, holding a microchip."
Bottom: "a clutch of unidentified butterfly eggs on a raspberry plant. These eggs have already hatched."

Several dozen more images are in a gallery at The Telegraph.

Credit: Science Photo Library/Barcroft Media 

Why you shouldn't believe low inflation numbers

From an article in the Wall Street Journal:

... the official inflation numbers should be taken with a fistful of salt. Over the past 30 years, the federal government has made a lot of changes to the way it calculates inflation. It's taken place under presidents of both parties...

... if we still calculated inflation the way we did when Jimmy Carter was president, the official inflation figures would look about as bad as they did when ... Jimmy Carter was president. According to Mr. Williams's calculations, if we counted inflation under the old system the official rate wouldn't be 1.5%. It would be closer to 10%...

Under the official calculations, if steak prices boom, the government just assumes you buy cheaper hamburger instead. Presto—no inflation!

Or consider the case of Apple computers... The cheapest Mac laptop today costs $999. A few years ago, it also cost $999. So the price is the same, right?  Ha. Not according Uncle Sam. Using a piece of chicanery called "hedonics," Uncle Sam calls this a price cut. His reasoning? You're getting more for the money. Today's $999 Mac is lighter, fancier and faster than last year's $999 Mac. So the government calculates that the "real" price has actually fallen..

... look at raw materials. Around the world prices are skyrocketing, from copper to cocoa. The United Nations Food Price Index has just hit a new record high. Oil's back near $90 a barrel. Wheat prices have nearly doubled since last summer... Sooner or later this is going to show up in your supermarket, or at the mall, in higher prices...

We are flooding the world with extra dollars. The Fed simply invents as many as it likes. In the past couple of years, to try to keep the economy out of a tailspin, it has more than doubled the size of the so-called monetary base...

The first argument - about unreliable inflation data - was explained at more length in an article in Harper's, which I highlighted at this link.  Highly recommended reading for those interested in this subject matter.

Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty

Last January this film was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the Academy Awards.  Does well in fullscreen viewing.

"The rich are different from you and me"

The title is a slightly abbreviated misquotation from the short story "The Rich Boy" (1926), by fellow-Minnesotan F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand."

A good example is given in yesterday's Wall Street Journal account of the divorce of a fund manager:

* The couple owned six homes–including a $4 million home in Rancho Santa Fe and a penthouse in Manhattan–and had two more under construction. The total value of the homes was more than $40 million...

* Mr. Brandes owned 10 Ferraris (valued at more than $4.4 million) and an “extremely long driveway” to race sports cars, dirt bikes and ATVs.

* She had gambling bills of as much as $30,000 a month.

* Mr. Brandes paid Elton John somewhere from $1 million to $1.5 million to perform at his wedding when he remarried in 2006. He paid Christina Aguilera $1 million to perform at a Halloween party...

While the investments generated about $154,881 a month, she said she needed more, citing her clothing budget ($70,000 a year), art spending and gambling bills. Her support increased to $500,000 a month, or $6 million...

She may indeed be entitled to far more than she has already received, since his monthly income is reported to be more than $16 million.

Yet hearing someone say that $6 million a year isn’t enough to live on shows just how removed the economy of the rich has become from the rest of the country...

And today the Telegraph features a story about how "wealth inequality" is under discussion at the Davos summit:

“The increase in inequality is the most serious challenge for the world,” Min Zhu, a special adviser at the International Monetary Fund and a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, told delegates at the Davos gathering...

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University, also warned that inequality “exacerbates political instability”...

Mr Zhu said raising taxes on the rich would not address the core of the problem. “It’s not just about tax, we need to go further. We need to look back at how and where this wealth is being created,” he said...

Mountain climbing in China

The still photo shows one of the stairways at Hua Shan.  I've previously posted a photo of the gondolas and the plank walk.   This morning I also found a video, which includes one stair segment even worse than the one above (think not just vertical but almost convex), and - at the four minute mark - video of the plank walk.  Not for the faint of heart.

Commodity price inflation

I've written about this topic a number of times in the blog, but  two interesting articles just appeared this week.  One in the Wall Street Journal explains how the increases jump across categories:

It's getting pricier to throw some ribs and burgers on the grill. And you can blame the surging price of corn. That's because much of the corn grown in the U.S. is used as animal feed. And "we're using $6 corn to feed hogs right now," up from about $4 last year... So if you "want barbecue ribs," he adds, "you're going to have an extra $10 attached to it."...

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization's monthly Food Price Index, which monitors the monthly change in a basket of commodities including meat, dairy and sugar, rose for the sixth straight month in December to its highest level since 1990....

In some cases, prices may not rise, but you will see fewer discounts or get less for your money. For instance, because of sugar prices' 30-year high in late December, packages are expected to shrink to a four-pound bag, from a five-pound bag, Mr. Swanson says. "You're getting 20% less" for the same price, he says....

Cotton futures prices skyrocketed 92% in 2010, thanks to growing demand as well as floods in Pakistan and heavy rains in China that damaged crops... Retail prices of jeans are expected to increase this year by 4.3%, socks 2.7%, sweatshirts and sweatpants 2.4%, polo shirts 2% and T-shirts 1.8%, according to industry group Cotton Inc.

Mens' clothes, in particular, are expected to get a bigger price bump because more of the garments contain cotton (compared with apparel for women and children) and they're a heavier weight with a higher cotton content....

And an article at the Guardian suggests that it's not just bad weather and increased demand that increases commodity prices. There is also pressure generated by speculators:

The same banks, hedge funds and financiers whose speculation on the global money markets caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis are thought to be causing food prices to yo-yo and inflate. The charge against them is that by taking advantage of the deregulation of global commodity markets they are making billions from speculating on food...

When this process of "hedging" was tightly regulated, it worked well enough. The price of real food on the real world market was still set by the real forces of supply and demand. But all that changed in the mid-1990s. Then, following heavy lobbying by banks, hedge funds and free market politicians in the US and Britain, the regulations on commodity markets were steadily abolished. Contracts to buy and sell foods were turned into "derivatives" that could be bought and sold among traders who had nothing to do with agriculture. In effect a new, unreal market in "food speculation" was born...

...the markets are now heavily distorted by investment banks: "Let's say news comes about bad crops and rain somewhere. Normally the price would rise about $1 [a bushel]. [But] when you have a 70-80% speculative market it goes up $2-3 to account for the extra costs...

Last year, London hedge fund Armajaro bought 240,000 tonnes, or more than 7%, of the world's stocks of cocoa beans, helping to drive chocolate to its highest price in 33 years. Meanwhile, the price of coffee shot up 20% in just three days as a direct result of hedge funds betting on the price of coffee falling...

More at the link.  Sounds like the plot of a Frank Norris novel I read in college.

A mourning buckle

An interesting item from the Victoria and Albert:

Jewels commemorating the dead were widely worn during the 17th century. This mourning buckle contains panels of woven hair, decorated with an elaborate inscription in gold thread and a small enamelled skull, all set behind rock crystal. The inscription, partly in Latin, tells us that the piece commemorates Elizabeth Harman who died on 11 April 1698, aged 27.

I couldn't find a way to rotate the photo 90 degrees to orient it more "buckle-like," so it looks a bit odd.  The hair runs around the perimeter of the buckle, underneath the inscription.

Image fixed, with a hat tip to nolandda!

The River Thames - then and now

Excerpts from an article at The Telegraph about the return of wildlife to a newly-cleaned-up Thames:

It was near this spot in 1878 that more than 600 passengers on the steamship Princess Alice died when the pleasure boat sank in a collision. As they swam towards the safety of the shore, the passengers were overcome by the noxious cocktail of pollution in the water. In 1957, the pollution levels became so bad that the River Thames was declared biologically dead. The amount of oxygen in the water fell so low that no life could survive and the mud reeked of rotten eggs.

Fifty years later, the Thames has become a very different place. It teems with life: 125 species of fish swim beneath its surface while more than 400 species of invertebrates live in the mud, water and river banks. Waterfowl, waders and sea birds feed off the rich pickings in the water while seals, dolphins and even otters are regularly spotted between the river banks where it meanders through London...

Environmental officials now say the Thames is the cleanest it has been in more than 150 years and nearly 400 habitats have now been created to allow wildlife back into the river...

Much of the return of wildlife to the Thames has been due to improvements in water quality. Strict legislation now prevents industry from dumping polluted effluent into the river and its tributeries. Sewage from London and the surrounding area is now treated and then exported.

“Improving the water quality is only half of the battle though,” explains Antonia Scarr, a senior marine advisor with the Environment Agency. “We have had to create the habitats to allow the plants, fish and wildlife to move into...

Even on the smaller rivers and streams that feed into the Thames there is a transformation underway. In Greenwich and Lewisham, extensive work is underway to re-naturalise rivers that for decades have passed unnoticed beneath residents feet... The river Quaggy in Greenwich is one such example. In an area called Sutcliffe Park, the river passed though a culvert hidden beneath a large flat area that was used for football pitches. But in an attempt to restore the wildlife and rich biodiversity that once lived on the river, the Environment Agency opened up the culvert allowed the river to meander through the park.

More at the link. The painting is entitled The Thames by James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1876), via The Mariner's Revenge Song.

p.s. - I've entitled this post "The River Thames..." because I've seen the words used in that order in quite a few different places.  I think I've seen "The River Nile" (perhaps without uppercase r?), but never "The River Mississippi" or "The River Yukon."  Does anyone know what governs a convention like this?

Lungs

The manipulated image is a top-down view of human lungs with the cosmic clouds represented by the blanket over the person's body on the right and the CT table cushion on the left. Fung digitally removed the rest.

Via Physics Buzz.

Rooftop sled ride - Russian style

Dissatisfaction with President Obama

Excerpts from a column by Michael Brenner at HuffPo:

Wall Street's takeover of the Obama administration is now complete. The mega-banks and their corporate allies control every economic policy position of consequence. Mr. Obama has moved rapidly since the November debacle to install business people where it counts most. Mr.William Daley from JP Morgan Chase as White House Chief of Staff. Mr. Gene Sperling from the Goldman Sachs payroll to be director of the National Economic Council. Eileen Rominger from Goldman Sachs named director of the SEC's Investment Management division...

Mr. Obama last week obediently recited the Chamber of Commerce's liturgy about governmental regulation being the cause of what ails the American economy in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. This public oath of allegiance signaled his now admitted complicity with those who supposedly had been his opponents...

He chose this path. It conforms to his behavior from the very start of his presidency. It was a newly-elected Obama who hand-picked Geithner and Summers. Who installed as his right-hand man Rahm Emanuel from the board of scandal-ridden Freddie Mac and deal-maker at Dresdner Kleinwort. Who declared at a press conference on the eve of his inauguration that he would not seek to repeal the Bush tax cuts but rather let them drain Treasury revenues until they expired, which of course he has conspired to prevent. Who met clandestinely with Big Pharma to cut a secret deal that ruled out the government's bargaining on drug prices. Who met clandestinely with health industry giants to cut a secret deal that ruled out the public option...

In short, all the evidence is that an old-school "moderate" Republican occupies the White House...

Mumblety-peg

The term "Mumblety-peg" came from the practice of putting a peg of about 2 or 3 inches into the ground. The loser of the game had to take it out with his teeth. Mumbletypeg was very popular as a schoolyard game in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, but with increased concern over child safety the game has declined in popularity...

Mumblety peg is generally played between two people with the aid of a pocket knife. In one version of the game, two opponents stand opposite one another with their feet shoulder-width apart. The first player then takes the knife and throws it to "stick" in the ground as near his own foot as possible. The second player then repeats the process. Whichever player "sticks" the knife closest to his own foot wins the game.

If a player "sticks" the knife in his own foot, he wins the game by default...

Photo reproduction of 1922 magazine page via Centuries of Advice & Advertisement.

Addendum:  Rules here, courtesy of Doc Rock.

Sunday smörgåsbord

It's been about six weeks since I've done a smörgåsbord to clear out my stack of links, so there's lots to offer this morning.  While writing this up I discovered, sadly, that several links have already undergone linkrot; I need to do this at shorter intervals.  I wish I could feature some of these as full-scale posts, but there just isn't enough time in the world.  (With the Packers-Bears game just hours away, it seems appropriate for the header photo to use a selection of cheeses.)

At any given time there are 500,000,000 empty parking spaces in the United States, for 250,000,000 cars. ""Only in the last 5-10 years have we been giving some thought to whether there should be an abundance of free parking," said Chester. "Ninety-nine percent of automobile trips end in free parking and this has a major effect on people's choice of what means of transportation to take."

A large-scale investigation has revealed the extent to which medical patients, including Medicaid patients, are reselling their drugs to the public. "Often at no charge, the patients see a doctor, or several doctors, and come away with prescriptions for narcotic OxyContin and other pills they then sell to a dealer for as much as $1,000."... 65,000 Medicaid beneficiaries in New York and four other states had visited six or more doctors in fiscal 2006 and 2007 to acquire duplicate prescriptions for controlled substances.  The cost to Medicaid was $63 million for the drugs alone, excluding doctors' exams.

"A worshipper at a California mosque called frequently for violent jihad against the West.   This freaked out his fellow attendees so much that they took out a restraining order on him... and learned he was an informant planted by the FBI."

MasterCard and Visa will process donations for an organization that supports the KKK and which requires you to sign a statement confirming that you are a white racist.  But they will not process donations to Wikileaks.

Here's the study that shows airport backscanners cannot detect plastic explosives if they are formed to the body with tapered edges.

Ancient Peruvians ritually sacrificed children. Gruesome details at the link.

An essay at Mother Jones entitled "How the Oligarchs Took America" posits that "we are now a country run by rich people."

For those who don't live near New Jersey and are unfamiliar with the stereotype, this link has a picture of "guidos" and an explanation of their characteristics (about halfway down the discussion thread).

A bank has been implicated in a money-laundering scheme.  And not your everyday bank: "The ATMs are in Latin. Priests use a private entrance. A life-size portrait of Pope Benedict XVI hangs on the wall."  It's the Vatican bank.  And the moneylaundering was for the Mafia.

Allegations that tiny letters and numbers are hidden in the eyes of DaVinci's Mona Lisa.

The incredible backyard of an over-the-top M*A*S*H fan.

An article at the British Medical Journal discusses the medical implications of having red hair.  TL;DR conclusions: "... Red hair phenotype may confer an increased requirement for anaesthetics but is associated with no greater operative risk than the remainder of the population. It would seem that the reputation of people with red hair for having increased perioperative risk is without any basis in fact and should only be used as an excuse of last resort by surgeons defending problematic bleeding or recurrent hernias"

An apparent eight-legged moose ("moosipede, spidermoose") GIF.

About twenty journalism school professors sign a letter of support of Wikileaks. "...while we hold varying opinions of Wikileaks' methods and decisions, we all believe that in publishing diplomatic cables Wikileaks is engaging in journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment. Any prosecution of Wikileaks' staff for receiving, possessing or publishing classified materials will set a dangerous precedent for reporters in any publication or medium..."

Warning: brutally gruesome photo of bullfighting incident.

James Burke has a channel on YouTube through which it appears you can access the entire "Connections" series.

A long article explains the nuances of pubic hair removal, including the difference between a French wax and a Brazilian, explains "vajazzle," and asks why on God's green earth do 12-year-old girls feel a need to get bikini waxes? The answer seems to be “Virgin hair can be waxed so successfully that growth can be permanently stopped in just two to six sessions,” explains the web site for Wanda’s European Skin Care Center. “Save your child a lifetime of waxing … and put the money in the bank for her college education instead!”

An Aljazeera video examines the relationship between Hollywood filmmakers and the U.S. military.  "What does Hollywood get out of this 'deal with the devil'? Access to billions of dollars worth of military kit, from helicopters to aircraft carriers, enabling filmmakers to make bigger and more spectacular battle scenes, which in turn generate more box office revenue. Providing they accept the Pentagon's advice, even toe the party line and show the US military in a positive light."

A column at ScienceDaily discusses the new plant and fungal discoveries of 2010, including the world's longest known genome:  "...the largest genome of all living species so far -- found in Paris japonica, a subalpine plant endemic to Honshu, Japan. With a genome size of 152.23 picograms(9), its genome is 50 times the size of the human genome, and 15% larger than any other found so far -- it's so large that when stretched out it would be taller than the tower of Big Ben!"

The Washington Post details the revolving door intimacy between Washington lawmakers and the airport scanning industry -"About eight of every 10 registered lobbyists who work for scanner-technology companies previously held positions in the government or Congress, most commonly in the homeland security, aviation or intelligence fields..."

"Rubber rooms" were nicely explained in an episode of "This American Life" which I can't find at the moent, but this Chicago Sun-Times link explains "Roland Pierre was permanently removed from the classroom in 1997 after he was accused of sexually molesting a sixth-grade girl at a Brooklyn school. However, he must report daily to one of the system’s so-called “rubber rooms,” where teachers accused of wrongdoing or incompetence are assigned but do no work. Pierre has continued to receive full pay ­— $97, 101 — and fringe benefits, including health, pension and vacation, officials told the New York Post."

Deadspin asked readers to explain the unusual "side benefits" of certain jobs and professions.  The article itself and the comments below include some eye-openers.

An eight-year old New Zealand child was burned to death when he fell into a geothermal pool.

A photo gallery of cauliflower ears on rugby players.

In this video, a girl shows you how to throw a knife without rotating it during its flight.

Religion scholars discuss the Quran and the Bible with regard to allegations that passages in both of them promote violence and bloodshed.

The Innocence Blog reports on a man who spent 23 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit. "...under Wisconsin law he is eligible for only $25,000 in total  compensation."

Dark Roasted Blend has the list of its best posts for 2010.  I link to them less often than I should; you ought to peruse this list for items of interest.

On the other hand, I probably link to Glenn Greenwald's columns more often than I should.  In this one he examines the "merging" of journalism with government.

Instead of asking for "mother" and "father," new passport forms will ask for "parent one" and "parent two."

Bacteria actively consumed the methane gas escaping from he Deepwater Horizon well.  I don't understand how they can do this in the presumably short time it would take a bubble to reach the surface.

ScienceBlogs offers its candidates for the best science blogposts in 2010.  Absolutely some wonderful material here just waiting for you to read.

One of the most famous (notorious) college football games ever was referred to as "The Toilet Bowl."  You can read about it at Oregon Expat.

Authorities in South Korea buried one million pigs alive.

Here's a snarky (but funny) Twitter response to Sarah Palin.  And here's another one.  And a related (but not Palin-directed) tweet from Michael Moore.

Each year Der Spiegel presents a "pub quiz" which asks about some of the most unusual news items of the year.   Thanks to my role in preparing items for this blog, I got 13/16 right.  See how you do.

The Library of Congress has announced the 25 important films that will be added to the National Film Registry this year.  You will be quite (pleasantly) surprised at some of the entries.

You've probably heard that an IBM computer will be taking on Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a special episode of "Jeopardy."  A practice round has already been conducted (the computer won).  You can also read more about IBM's computer, Jeopardy questions, and the Wolfram/Alpha search engine at the Stephen Wolfram Blog.

The New York Times posts a proposed explanation of the dark matter of the universe: "My modest proposal is that the aliens are the cold dark matter that makes up 23 percent of the energy in the universe. Adept at cloaking themselves, they are invisible..."  This postulate comes from the "director of the Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory at M.I.T." (??)

An article in Asia Times reports on "Sodomy and Sufism" in Afghanistan, and how male pedophilia is deeply engrained in the culture there.

An ABC News investigation reports that "More than 1,000 young American women have been raped or sexually assaulted in the last decade while serving as Peace Corps volunteers in foreign countries."

A mansion in central France has just been opened to the public.  It was locked up when the owner died - a hundred years ago. "Louis Mantin, a wealthy gentleman from the town of Moulins, stipulated in his will that his house should be turned into a museum a century after his death."  Lots of garish furniture.

Many thousands of Indian "devadasi" girls are placed in their profession as a matter of "religion" - ("Stretching back for centuries, the original devadasi were trained in prayer, dance and music...) but nowadays it basically provides a forum for sexual exploitation by pedophiles.

Caligula's tomb may have been found.  (Or not).  Excavations are now beginning.

Wisconsin funeral homes are facing the economic realities of providing burials for paupers and unidentified persons.

The man who started The Big Picture at Boston.com is now moving on to The Atlantic.  I think that's a big coup for the latter venue.

And lastly a dynamic periodic table of elements.  You can mouse over individual entries, click on vertical columns, select metal and nonmetal groups, move a temperature slider to see states, and so forth.  Tabs go to even more specialized content.

Enough for today.  Now it's time for football.

Photo: Cheese market (Alkmaar, Holland)