"The Landlord's Game"

This game from the 1920s is a precursor and a direct inspiration for the famous game of Monopoly.

Magie designed the game to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood.

More at Wikipedia and the links there.

A tip of the hat to reader mikemonaco for alerting me to this link.

200 classic movies

Posted (thankfully on a single page) at Buzzfeed.  I've seen 135 of them.  Some of you will have seen even more.  Who will wind up with bragging rights?

Keep on the lookout for a Chinese chicken cup

Next time you're at an auction or estate sale, or in a thrift shop, pay attention to the porcelain offerings.

A rare wine cup fired in the imperial kilns of China's Ming dynasty more than 500 years ago has been sold in Hong Kong for HK$281.2m (£21.7m), making it one of the most expensive Chinese cultural relics ever auctioned.

The tiny porcelain cup from the Chenghua period, dating from 1465 to 1487, is painted with cocks, hens and chicks, and is known simply as a "chicken cup". It is considered one of the most sought-after items in Chinese art, held in a reverence equivalent to that of the jewelled Fabergé eggs of tsarist Russia.

More details at The Guardian.

Power hitters master the masters

Once again (for the 40th year in a row), my invitation to participate in the Masters golf tournament must have been lost in the mail.   So I'll just blog this table from a Wall Street Journal article.

In 2002, after long-driving players like Tiger Woods began carding record-low scores, officials at Augusta National decided to lengthen the course in an effort to make it more difficult.  What has happened, however, is that the added length seems to have given a comparative advantage to the long drivers.

The table at right shows Masters' winners for about 20 years (excluding Tiger), and how they ranked among all pros in terms of putting efficienncy and driving distance.

Before 2002, short game skills were paramount, but in recent years winners have shown higher ranks in driving than in putting.

This is a complex issue involving not just course design but equipment design.  There are studies I don't think I have blogged that indicate that a longer drive - even when it winds up in the first or second cut of the rough - results in better scores than shorter drives that remain in the fairway.

HTTPS websites have not been/may not be secure

Troubling news from an AP article posted today in the StarTribune:

An alarming lapse in Internet security has exposed millions of passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive bits of information to potential theft by computer hackers who may have been secretly exploiting the problem before its discovery.

The breakdown revealed this week affects the encryption technology that is supposed to protect online accounts for emails, instant messaging and a wide range of electronic commerce.

Security researchers who uncovered the threat, known as "Heartbleed," are particularly worried about the breach because it went undetected for more than two years...

"This still means that the little lock icon (HTTPS) we all trusted to keep our passwords, personal emails, and credit cards safe, was actually making all that private information accessible to anyone who knew about the exploit," Tumblr said. "This might be a good day to call in sick and take some time to change your passwords everywhere — especially your high-security services like email, file storage, and banking, which may have been compromised by this bug."

More at the link and undoubtedly at many other sites on the web today.  Knowledgeable readers are encouraged to offer comments (or other relevant links).

Addendum:  A hat tip to reader Mel V. for providing a link to a CNET article entitled "How to Protect Yourself from the 'Heartbleed' Bug."

Realgar

Specimen from Heritage Auctions.

Its name comes from the Arabic rahj al-ġār (رهج الغار, "powder of the mine"), via Catalan and Medieval Latin, and its earliest record in English is in the 1390s...

Realgar, orpiment, and arsenopyrite provide nearly all the world's supply of arsenic as a byproduct of smelting concentrates derived from these ores...

Realgar is poisonous. The ancient Greeks, who called it "sandaracha", knew that it was poisonous. It was used to poison rats in medieval Spain and in 16th century England.

Another specimen here.

There's another meaning for "muggles"

"Muggles" is the title of a recording by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra, recorded in Chicago on December 7, 1928.

The title refers to the use of the word "muggles" as a slang term for marijuana amongst jazz musicians of the 1920s and 1930s. Armstrong was an enthusiastic user of marijuana, which was legal in most American states at the time.

J. K. Rowling has indicated that she was unaware of this prior use of the term:

I was looking for a word that suggested both foolishness and loveability. The word 'mug' came to mind, for somebody gullible, and then I softened it. I think 'muggle' sounds quite cuddly. I didn't know that the word 'muggle' had been used as drug slang at that point... ah well.

New rules for Monopoly

From an AP article in the StarTribune:

No rent collection while in jail, double the dough for landing on Go and clean out Free Parking if your luck takes you there are among five made-up Monopoly rules Facebook fans voted in for future editions of the board game.

Several thousand people weighed in on "house rules" over 10 days of recent debate and a year after Hasbro Inc. added a cat token and retired the iron in a similar online stunt aimed at keeping the 79-year-old game fresh...

The winning house rule for landing on Go means players get 400 Monopoly dollars instead of the official 200. As for Free Parking, official rules call for absolutely nothing to happen when a player lands there. Under the house rule, any taxes and fees collected are thrown into the middle for a lucky someone who lands on that corner square.

Rounding out the five winners are players must travel around the board one full time before they can begin buying properties, and collecting 500 bucks for rolling double ones.

Photo credit Steven Senne, Associated Press.

Remarkable, award-winning animation

YouTube link.

"A Girl Named Elastika" is stop-motion animation that has won a variety of prizes:

Jury, grand prize/ Very Short Int'l Film Fest. 2013, Paris
Audience award/ Prix de Court Pathé 2013, Lausanne
Best film for Children/ Animateka Fest.2013, Slovenia
Audience favorite animation short/ Palm Springs Int'l Shortfest
Special mention, Spirafilm Prize, Off-Courts Trouville 2013
Honor. mention/ BeFilm Festival 2013, New York

You'll see why.

The U.S. continues to f*** with Cuba

As reported by The Guardian:

In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a US government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba's communist government.

McSpedon and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit unsuspecting executives who would not be told of the company's ties to the US government.

McSpedon didn't work for the CIA. This was a program paid for and run by the US Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in US humanitarian aid...

Documents show the US government planned to build a subscriber base through "non-controversial content": news messages on soccer, music, and hurricane updates. Later when the network reached a critical mass of subscribers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, operators would introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize "smart mobs" — mass gatherings called at a moment's notice that might trigger a Cuban spring, or, as one USAid document put it, "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society."..

The program's legality is unclear: US law requires that any covert action by a federal agency must have a presidential authorization. Officials at USAid would not say who had approved the program or whether the White House was aware of it. McSpedon, the most senior official named in the documents obtained by the AP, is a mid-level manager who declined to comment.

USAid spokesman Matt Herrick said the agency is proud of its Cuba programs and noted that congressional investigators reviewed them last year and found them to be consistent with US law.

There's more at the link, and undoubtedly some other viewpoints elsewhere on the 'net this week.  Can some reader here offer a morally-defensible justification for this activity based on strategic necessities?  Personally, I'm so very, very, very tired of the U.S.' endless attempts to subvert the Cuban government.  These shenanigans go back for probably 50 years - and for what reason?  Is it just because Cuba has continued to maintain a form of governance of which we don't approve?  Do they provide any smidgen of a threat to the U.S. in any real way?  Or is this just an example of the U.S. f***ing with any country it wants to because it can?  I get so mad when I blog about stuff like this that I have to walk away from the computer to the back yard for a few minutes to calm down so I don't use language I shouldn't.

Now, somebody... please offer some explanation or justification.

Addendum:  There is commentary at The Dish on how ventures like this undermine the broader humanitarian goals of USAid (if such broader goals actually exist).

Also - a hat tip to reader misterjeff for a link to an incisive comment at Techdirt and for another related story at The//Intercept.

Still waiting for a comment or link to a contrary viewpoint supporting the activity...

Skydiver captures remarkable video of a meteorite

YouTube link.

This 8-minute video posted at Norway's NRK is quite a bit more detailed than the one-minute version being shown on most news channels. (audio in Norwegian, with subtitles)

Although Helstrup is still not completely convinced that it was indeed a meteorite that flew past him, the experts are in no doubt.

“It can’t be anything else. The shape is typical of meteorites – a fresh fracture surface on one side, while the other side is rounded,” said geologist Hans Amundsen.  He explained that the meteorite had been part of a larger stone that had exploded perhaps 20 kilometres above Helstrup.

Amundsen thinks he can make out coloured patches in the stone, and believes that in that case it may be a breccia – a common type of meteorite rock.

Addendum:  A tip of the hat to reader Adrian Morgan for finding extended commentary on the incident at Bad Astronomy.

"Monoculture" of dairy cattle in North America

Most people readers of this blog are aware of the shrinking diversity of major food crops across the world (rice, corn, wheat).

Throughout history, foods have ebbed and flowed in popularity and abundance, and few have even disappeared. Compared to historic records, 86% of apple varieties grown in the US alone are gone, for example... compared to pre-1900, about 75% of global farmed plant diversity is gone.

The same problem exists with cattle:

“People started using just a couple of breeds for whatever they’re doing – meat, milk, eggs or fibre – in order to get the same sized animals to fit on an assembly line for processing and transportation and – more importantly – to make them grow as quickly as possible,” explains Ryan Walker, marketing and communications manager at the US-based Livestock Conservancy. “Agriculture today is all a numbers game.”

In North America, for example, myriad cattle varieties used to be raised. Today, a single breed – Holstein Friesians – account for 90% of dairy cattle raised in the US, and another 4% are Jersey cattle. All other dairy breeds occupy the remaining 6% sliver.

This change was especially pronounced in the US, but it also took place (and is still taking place) around the world. Today, around 20% of the world’s 8,000 livestock breeds – which include a dozen animals ranging from cows to sheep to ducks to rabbits – are in danger of extinction.

More details at the BBC, where the focus of the article is on the importance of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Semicolon tattoos explained

From The Semicolon Movement:

"The semicolon is used when a sentence could have ended, but didn't"
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The Semicolon Movement
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The movement is for anyone who has ever self-harmed, has a personality disorder, or has tried to commit suicide. The semicolon is a sign of hope. Your sentence is not over yet, remember that.
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How it Works
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If you have ever harmed yourself, attempted suicide, or just want to support the cause, put a semicolon on your wrist or wherever you feel would mean the most. Every time you see it think of something that makes life worth living. 

Share your stories and photos at the link.

Heliox is better than castration

YouTube link.

How to escape from zip ties

Information you hope you never have to use.

From The Art of Manliness, via Boing Boing.