Police officer, 1925, holding his portepee.

Perhaps someone can identify that object in his left hand that looks like a sex toy.

Photo from Réunion des musées nationaux via A London Salmagundi.

Addendum: The object has been identified by Seattle Sailor as a "portepee":

They were originally used to help retain the sword during combat but later evolved into a strictly ornamental device denoting rank. I can't see a sword in this picture, but they were also worn on daggers, which may be the case here.

Here's a photo from the German Imperia Automobile Corps illustrating portepees (and leather "frogs" on daggers:

The Prussian Automobile Corps authorized a distinctive portepee for wear with these daggers. These silver bullion strap portepees with red and black stripes are extremely rare and rarely seen.

I am recurrently surprised and delighted about how I can post questions about the most arcane topics on this blog and get an authoritative answer within hours.  Amazing.  Thank you.

99:1 doesn't always win

Magnolias do not require bees for pollination

"Magnolia is an ancient genus. Having evolved before bees appeared, the flowers developed to encourage pollination by beetles."  

Via Reddit.  For the embed photo, however, I've selected an image of pollen adhering to the facial hairs of a miner bee, by Alliec2007, via animals, animals, animals.

This part of the unemployment problem is not often talked about

Last week I wrote a post about how hard it was for southern farmers to find Americans willing and able to do field work.  Here are excerpts from a similar story, but this time it comes from the far north (Minnesota), and involves skilled work, not field work.

At a daylong jobs summit convened by Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday, frustrated business leaders gathered from all parts of the state to say they have hundreds of openings but can't find workers qualified to fill them. The skills gap persists even in the face of a state unemployment rate that stubbornly hangs around 7 percent...

As businesses adapt to a shifting economy, they leave behind a glut of unemployed workers from waning industries who are not qualified for the new jobs being created. Those workers increasingly can't afford or don't want to relocate and retraining can be expensive and out of reach.

Nathan Johnson, an administrator with Pioneer Care nursing home in Fergus Falls, said he could hire 15 licensed nurses today -- 40 percent of Pioneer's available nursing shifts, but he can't find qualified nurses...

Many of the unfilled jobs are in health care, but more are in vocational fields such as welding, metal work and precision machining, where jobs paying $20 an hour or more go unfilled.

Traci Tapani's metal fabrication company, Wyoming Machine in Stacy, recently published a job opening at what she thought was an attractive annual wage of $36,000.  Four weeks went by without a single applicant...

Some of the disconnect may stem from what business managers and even some educators say are overwhelming cultural and parental pressures to push children into a traditional liberal arts education where they can pursue white-collar professions...

"We need to start talking to our kids about these other jobs..."

Some of the best and brightest students I ever taught were not at a university, but rather at a technical college.  And I will guarantee that those guys and gals are thriving at high-pay jobs right now.

Calf rescued from canal. Be that guy.

YouTube link. 

Via Reddit.

They pimp their offspring for food

They scarf potato chips and whole bags of marshmallows late in the night, leaving behind trashed campsites and ruined tents. They break into stranger’s coolers and make off with watermelons. They carelessly turn on water spigots and leave them running...

They’re Assateague Island’s famous wild horses...

The horses have been mooching food for years, but their brazenness has grown worse in the past few, said Trish Kicklighter, the park’s superintendent. Some of Assateague’s 113 horses have become particularly fond of junk food and interact with people who bring it into the park. The horses beg. They pester. They even run a hustle that wouldn’t be out of place on a D.C. street corner.

“I didn’t believe it until I saw it,” Kicklighter said. “Two horses put their youngest, cutest pony in front of a car, and then the older horses went around to the windows to panhandle for food.”

It's actually a serious problem re the horses' health, and visitors' safety.  Further details at the Washington Post, where there is a photo gallery.

Miss Havisham, you're looking quite lovely today

I've seen several (of the several hundred) adaptations of Great Expectations, and have a mental image of Miss Havisham as an elderly spinster.  In the latest film version, the role is played by Helena Bonham Carter, who presents quite a different look for the character.

Miss Havisham is an iconic character over here in Britain: an embittered spinster who sits in her mouldering mansion still wearing the wedding dress she wore when she was jilted at the altar; she has trained her adopted daughter Estella to break men’s hearts just as her heart was broken.

Bonham Carter co-stars opposite Ralph Fiennes as escaped convict Magwitch. Producer Stephen Woolley tells me the Oscar nominee is playing Miss Havisham at the same age she is in Dickens novel — previous incarnations by Charlotte Rampling, Anne Bancroft and, most memorably, Martita Hunt in David Lean’s version played her much older.

There is one additional photo at Deadline.   I never imagined I would get so old that Miss Havisham looks as appealing as Estella...

Because you're going to look it up anyway, Estella's part is played by Holliday Grainger (think Lucrezia in The Borgias)

Free at last

YouTube link. 

For 98 years, the 125-foot high Condit Dam in southeastern Washington State held back the White Salmon River, creating a serene lake, but choking off the waterway to salmon. Wednesday, in an historic effort, the dam was dramatically breached, and ecologists hope the increased flow of water will restore the waterway to fish and other aquatic organisms, as well as the birds and mammals that rely on them...

According to news reports, Portland-based PacifiCorp had decided that it was cheaper to source the dam's 14 megawatts elsewhere, rather than install expensive fish ladders and other improvements on the site, as would have been required for relicensing. According to the AP, the dam removal cost around $32 million, while the improvements would have cost $100 million...

Before the dam was demolished, biologists relocated salmon that were spawning below the structure, so their nests wouldn't be covered with silt.

Additional information at the National Geographic source, via The Presurfer and Neatorama.

Curious eyes of the "glass frog"

The "glass frogs" of Central and South American are remarkable for their translucent skin, but I find their eyes equally fascinating.  The photo above is from National Geographic Daily, and the one below from Animal Planet.

I can't tell whether that pattern is vascular, or just pigment.  It must provide some type of survival advantage, presumably for camouflage rather than mating or vision.  Perhaps someone knows...

p.s. - equally cool is the eye of the red-eyed tree frog.

Queen Victoria's bloomers sold

As reported by the BBC, the Forbes family have sold a pair of Queen Victoria's bloomers in an auction at Edinburgh:

A large pair of silk bloomers that belonged to Queen Victoria have sold for more than three times their original estimate. The undergarment, auctioned alongside hundreds of other royal artefacts, sold for £9,735.

Two pairs of silk stockings worn by Britain's longest serving monarch also went under the hammer in Edinburgh - one pair selling for more than £5,000.

They appear to be rather smaller than the "supersize" undergarments (waistline 74-105 inches) currently marked in the United States.

"In God We Trust" reaffirmed by Congress

From Dana Milbank's column in the Washington Post:

“In God We Trust” has been the nation’s official motto for 55 years, engraved on the currency and public buildings. There is no emerging movement to change that. But House Republicans chose to look beyond the absence of immediate threats and instead protect the motto against yet-unimagined threats in the future.

The legislation [“H.Con.Res 13 — Reaffirming ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the United States”] “provides Congress with the opportunity to renew its support of a principle that was venerated by the founders of this country, and by its presidents, on a bipartisan basis.”...

Milbank chastises the legislators for wasting time on this bill rather than addressing the economny and the national jobs problem.  He focuses on the Republicans, but of note the bill passed by a margin of 396 to 9.  

But I do agree with him on this observation:

Notably, the House majority saw no need to protect the nation’s other motto, the one from the Great Seal of the United States that also appears on currency: e pluribus unum.

The "kudzu bug"

YouTube link. 

Kudzu is an amazingly prolific invasive plant that has been devastating large areas of farmland, fields, and woods in the southern United States.  When it first arrived, it spread uncontrollably because it had no natural enemies.  Now, one has been found - a beetle that arrived as another accidental immigrant.

But the new arrival is a mixed blessing, because it also eats other legumes, including soybeans.  This video was prepared by entomologists at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Science.

Addendum:  Additional information in an article at the Wall Street Journal.

"We apologize for the inconvenience..."

 
One of the enjoyable aspects of the "Occupy" movement is the variety of imaginative signs displayed at the protests.  This one in London, via The Guardian.

Puddinghead

...this is a beautifully made example of protective headwear worn by children in the early 19th century. Pudding caps or bumpers were padded hats commonly worn by small children learning to walk to protect their heads from any falls. It was thought that if children fell too frequently unprotected their brains would turn to a soft pudding-like consistency, hence the name "pudding cap." Children were often referred to as "little pudding heads" because of this belief.

Finally I understand the reason for the name of Mark Twain's character "Puddn'head Wilson" (perhaps the term was explained in the book - I don't know).

From the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, via A London Salmagundi.

Addendum:  BJN makes an excellent observation:

"Pudding" in England derives from small sausages, and even today the term applies to a wide range of foods, not just the creamy desserts that Americans refer to.

The entry at Victoria & Albert shows a pudding cap [~1775-1800] and describes the hat's name thus; "The nickname of ‘pudding’ comes from the padded roll’s similarity of shape and size to the type of sausage called ‘pudding’, a popular food still eaten today."

I think it's more likely that the idea of soft brains is a later Americanism and it's probably more of a humorous tongue-in-cheek use than a literal belief.

That makes complete sense to me.

And, for completeness, here's the relevant quote from the first chapter of Twain's book:

"Yes, sir, he's a dam fool. That's the way I put him up," said No. 5. "Anybody can think different that wants to, but those are my sentiments."

"I'm with you, gentlemen," said No. 6. "Perfect jackass -- yes, and it ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. If he ain't a pudd'nhead, I ain't no judge, that's all."

Mr. Wilson stood elected. The incident was told all over the town, and gravely discussed by everybody. Within a week he had lost his first name; Pudd'nhead took its place. In time he came to be liked, and well liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it stayed. That first day's verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to get it set aside, or even modified. The nickname soon ceased to carry any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was to continue to hold its place for twenty long years.

Obviously, by Twain's time (1893 for this book), in the U.S. the term was being used to refer to brain damage.

An ominous development in the financial world ?

I don't particularly like to read, much less blog about, articles written for the financial/investment world, because so much of it is unadulterated trash - hyping certain investments, pimping for gold, and mindless chart analysis.

But on Friday after the market closed, I read a bit about a firm called "MF Global."  There was more in a column yesterday in the New York Times:

Federal regulators have discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money has gone missing from MF Global in recent days, prompting an investigation into the brokerage firm, which is run by Jon S. Corzine, the former New Jersey governor...

Now, the inquiry threatens to tarnish further the reputation of Mr. Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs executive who had sought to revive his Wall Street career last year just a few months after being defeated for re-election as New Jersey’s governor...

MF Global was seen as having taken on an enormous amount of risk with little room for error given its size. By Friday evening, MF Global was under pressure to put up more money to support its trading positions, threatening to drain the firm’s remaining cash. The collapse of MF Global underscores the extent of investor anxiety over Europe’s debt crisis. Other financial institutions have been buffeted in recent months because of their holdings of debt issued by weak European countries...

There are implications that this could echo well beyond this specific firm, because the last major crash was triggered in part by hedge fund losses at Lehman Brothers.

If indeed there has been misappropriation of customer funds at MF, how many customers are going to withdraw their funds from other commodities accounts as well as from standard stock/bond brokers, after selling their holdings first? Especially after the frustrating decade-plus we have experienced in the financial markets, why shouldn’t people just move to direct ownership of Treasurys and into FDIC-insured bank deposits?

The story could hardly be worse. MF Global was not just any old futures firm. It was run by a stalwart of the Democratic establishment and the former leader of Goldman Sachs... A major “risk-off” move could be in the making.

In my world, BTW, a statement that something or someone is/was associated with Goldman Sachs is neither a compliment nor reassuring.  I'm not offering any recommendations about this incident or investments in general, and don't want to contribute to fearmongering.  Just want to encourage people to be alert and cautious.