Gwen Ifill (1955-2016)

Gwendolyn L. "Gwen" Ifill...  was an American Peabody Award-winning journalist, television newscaster, and author. She was the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and co-anchor and co-managing editor, with Judy Woodruff, of PBS NewsHour, both of which air on PBS. Ifill was a political analyst and moderated the 2004 and 2008 American vice-presidential debates.

Dead way too early at age 61 of endometrial cancer.  She was a brilliant and remarkably well-informed lady who represented the best of broadcast journalism.

From the company that used to offer "the friendly skies"

United Continental Holdings Inc will become the first big U.S. airline to limit low-fare customers to one carry-on bag that fits under a seat... 

United, the No. 3 U.S. airline by passengers carried, said customers who bought its cheapest fares would not be assigned seats until the day of departure, meaning people on the same ticket may be split apart.

United will also prohibit these travelers from carrying on bags that can only fit in overhead bins, and they will not accrue miles toward elite status.

The company expects the moves to add $4.8 billion to its annual operating income by 2020, although the figure does not include rising wages.  Fare initiatives such as "basic economy" will account for $1 billion of this, as more customers pay to check bags or select higher fares that give them two "free" carry-ons.

The classic rolling carry-on, of course, does not fit under a seat.  More at Reuters.

Tropical moth seen in Wisconsin

Just down Bascom Hill from Spalding’s lab, squeezed between Birge Hall and University Avenue, is UW–Madison’s renowned Botanical Garden, a flower-filled teaching and research space where the Wisconsin botanist breaks from the routine of academic research and teaching to engage in his pastime of observing “pretty things with wings.”

On a sojourn to the garden last month, Spalding saw and photographed “a handsome moth” he suspected was rare. What he did not know then was that his sighting was the first recorded observation in Wisconsin of the White-tipped Black moth, a tropical species whose natural range typically does not extend much farther north than Florida and the Texas coast...

Ferge was skeptical of Spalding’s find at first and inquired if anything tropical had been recently transplanted in the garden. But garden Director Mohammad Fayyaz checked the garden records and noted that planting tropical species in Wisconsin in October is, at best, a losing proposition...

This year, there have been sightings of the White-tipped Black moth in Oklahoma, where it made news for being that far north of its host range, and also in Illinois. 

Further details at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  With a tip of the blogging cap to reader The Weaving One, for sending me the link.

Classic Whiskas commercial

YouTube link.

Posted for anyone who has a "cat lady" in their family.

Queen Elizabeth's secret

"The passing of Elizabeth I on March 24, 1603, revealed that the ring she wore most of her adult life opened : inside were the portraits of herself and her mother Anne Boleyn beheaded in 1536 by her father King Henry VIII. Elizabeth had kept the contents of the ring a secret."

Via My Ear Trumpet Has Been Struck By Lightning.

Raymond Chandler cameo

The embedded image is a screencap from Double Indemnity.

"Moving beyond short stories, Chandler began to write novels. His first was The Big Sleep, published by Knopf and establishing detective Phillip Marlowe as a noir figure. Williams says, “[Phillip Marlowe] was a step forward from the characters of the pulp stories – a fully realized man rather than a vehicle for action.” What differentiated Chandler works from his peers James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett was the focus on character and setting and less on mystery and plot. Also Chandler’s narrative was in the first person which would later prove to be a strength for noir. Williams calls these elements “the key to his success.” Chandler wrote several novels, most of them featuring detective Marlowe. The biography goes into detail about The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window, The Lady in the Lake, The Long Goodbye and others. Most of his novels were initially flops. His first publisher Knopf neglected to market them well, didn’t see Chandler’s true potential. In the end Chandler’s stories proved to have legs in Hollywood and beyond."

From Out of the Past, which has a review of a biography of Raymond Chandler.

Schoolgirl, 1940

May 1940. Southington, Connecticut. "Schoolgirl studying." Medium format negative by Fenno Jacobs for the Office of War Information.  

Found at Shorpy.

The Armistice Day blizzard

On November 11, some Minnesotans remember the "Armistice Day blizzard."

The fall of 1940 was a warm one. The war in Europe was front-page news. In Minnesota, the Gophers football team was number one in the nation again. With gardens still yielding vegetables well into October, winter seemed far away. By midday November 11, some areas of southeast Minnesota topped 60 degrees, but a huge storm was just to the west...

Thousands of ducks funnelled into the Mississippi River Valley. Something had impelled them to fly, but in their excitement, Roloff and the other hunters missed the clue... One newspaper account called the storm "the winds of hell." Bice faced them alone. His partner took their boat to retrieve some ducks, but was swept helplessly to the next island. As the stranded hunter watched the storm grow more intense over the Mississippi River, the blizzard brought death to central Minnesota...

The central pressure was down around 29 inches of mercury and it doesn't get much stronger than that. It allowed moisture from the south to interact with this fresh Canadian air mass to the north and those two converged to produce this incredible intensification to the point where you really did have what you could call an inland hurricane."  ...The hunter's low-slung ducks boats were no match for 70 mph winds and five-foot waves. But if they stayed put, could they survive subzero wind chills? Hunters abandoned cherished guns and decoys...

On Tuesday, November 12, the "winds of hell" brought a deadly reckoning. The Armistice Day storm cut a 1,000-mile-wide path through the middle of the country. On Lake Michigan three freighters and two smaller boats sank, 66 sailors died. In Minnesota, 27 inches of snow fell at Collegeville, the Twin Cities recorded 16 inches. Twenty-foot snow drifts forced rescuers to use long probes to find missing cars. Passenger trains were snowbound. And along the Mississippi River, the first bodies of duck hunters were brought in...

Further details at the Minnesota Public Radio webpage.

Trailer for upcoming "Beauty and the Beast"

YouTube link.

I recommend clicking the "fullscreen" icon.

Divertimento

... because I (and probably many readers) need a "little diversion" right now...

The word "mom" is now often "used by young women to express admiration for another woman (who may or may not be an actual mom). It started out on social media, and you'll often find it in the replies or comments on Twitter or Instagram. It's even spread to network television."  The link also touches on the morphing of usage for "dad" and grandparents.

High-speed macro photography shows how a hummingbird's tongue works.  (It's not a simple siphon.)

Scuba-diving an abandoned mining pit in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

"Tussle-mussies" explained.  "“Some have flirting mirrors on them,” Deitsch says, “so a young women carrying a tussie-mussie could see who was behind her.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson tells about his early interaction with Carl Sagan.  "I already knew I wanted to become a scientist, but that afternoon I learned from Carl... the kind of person I wanted to become."

How the gear works on a reciprocating water sprinkler.  Amazingly clever and simple.  I never knew this.  And I will echo the top comment: "I can just hear the sound."

How to stop autoplay videos (detailed directions for Chrome, Firefox, and IE).  Ironically (?) there's one on the link.

“Paul clapped his hands close to the spider and the neuron fired, as expected. He then backed up a bit and clapped again, and again the neuron fired. Soon, we were standing outside the recording room, about 3-5 meters from the spider, laughing together, as the neuron continued to respond to our clapping. Based on everything they knew it shouldn't have been possible, but there it was..."

Adding weaponry to drones has major consequences:" Flying IEDs are not a game changer, but they add a level of difficulty to military operations, and they have the potential of making life for deployed troops even more perilous. The rationale of using flying IEDs is similar to using suicide bombers: They can ensure a charge explodes at the most opportune moment to cause the biggest effect. And drones provide non-state groups with airborne capabilities."

Stupid?  Or wanted more exercise?

7-year old: "I called 911, but first I slapped her with a piece of pizza."  Makes sense.  If someone doesn't respond to pizza...

"The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war" - Sidney J. Harris.

And the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath.

A flowchart to help you decide which off Edward deVere's plays to read.

Modern society has now progressed to the point that you can now purchase a motion-activated light in your toilet bowl...

...and Swedish fish flavored Oreo cookies. 

The people who found and uncovered the Arabia steamboat have a new project: "a four-month excavation of the Malta expected to start about a year from now. The current weather pattern is too wet to attempt a recovery this winter, the best time of year to dig to protect frail artifacts from summer heat and humidity."

The dangerous interaction of hurricanes and factory farms.  "The carcasses of several thousand drowned hogs and several million drowned chickens and turkeys were left behind. An incalculable amount of animal waste was carried toward the ocean. Along the way, it could be contaminating the groundwater for the many people who rely on wells in this part of the state, as well as threatening the delicate ecosystems of tidal estuaries and bays."

"Reykjavik City Council has announced its decision to switch off street lights in selected parts of the Icelandic capital to enable those in the city to enjoy the fantastic Northern Lights display..."

A woman made $20 in one hour by sitting outside and holding up a sign explaining that she needed money to buy make-up.

This man paints the pavement with water.  I thought it was ovaries and a uterus, but it's not.

"In operation from 1854 to 1941, the London Necropolis Railway was the spookiest, strangest train line in British history. It transported London’s dead south-west to Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, in Surrey, a cemetery that was built in tandem with the railway. At its peak, from 1894 to 1903, the train carried more than 2,000 bodies a year."

A long read about radical right-wing extremists in the United States.

A website that helps people turn their pets into "emotional support animals" so they can take them aboard airplanes and public transports.

This five-minute video shows a flash flood.

A "kung fu master" is accidentally debunked on live television when the host accidentally breaks some of the "solid" bricks.

A clever tennis ace (but with a foot fault...)

Monarch butterfly lovers should help eliminate swallow-wort plants.

A video of fossil-hunting in North Dakota.

How college football players use videos to improve their performance. "...there could be 20 plays of what an opponent does on first down, and 15 plays of what they do with one running back, no tight end and four wide receivers... Rallis, an Edina native, said he will watch four to five hours of film on his own time each day."

How to use cardboard to mulch a garden.

Clever url for a honey-wagon company.

How to cut string with your bare hands (or, more precisely, how to use string to cut itself.)

A clever gif illustrates how many years someone your age/sex will live (on average).

A girl and her duck.  Try not to laugh when he asks her "When did you first find out..."

A clever trick.  And another (even better) one.

"When struggling to hang a picture or mirror on a screw on the wall, push the spikes of a fork down over the screw, with the handle pointing up. Then slide the picture string down the fork down onto the screw. Then remove the fork."

Could the corpse of an astronaut generate life on a planet?

Short lifespan: adult mayflies emerge, mate, and die within 30 minutes.

Chicago Cubs' World Series victory predicted in a 1993 high school yearbook.

Magic trick using rubber bands.   Explained in this video.  Not quite the same as this QI rope-escape episode.

Photos from a gallery at the Washington Post of entries in the Nikon Small World photography competition.

This speech was given in 1992. Listen to it.

YouTube link.

Listen to the man.  He explains what happened yesterday.

Election day

So you want to write in a name on the ballot...

In most states that is not possible.

There are eight states where ballots won’t even have a space for write-ins. In 32 others, write-in candidates have to file with the state prior to the election to be counted as official candidates.

That means that even if a write-in candidate wins the popular vote — an extremely unlikely scenario — their votes won’t be counted if the candidate hasn’t pre-registered. States often throw these write-in votes for unregistered candidates into an “All others” category and don’t tally them up individually...

But that won’t stop tens of thousands of voters from supporting write-ins in 2016, whether on principle, or as an act of protest of the two major-party candidates. 

More at the Washington Post.

Xenia

Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, 1903

Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia... was the elder daughter and fourth child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia (née Princess Dagmar of Denmark) and the sister of Emperor Nicholas II... After the fall of the monarchy in February 1917 she fled Russia, eventually settling in the United Kingdom.

Image via Sloth Unleashed.

Quadriplegic treated with stem cells regains some motor function

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Keck Medical Center of USC today announced that a team of doctors became the first in California to inject an experimental treatment made from stem cells, AST-OPC1, into the damaged cervical spine of a recently paralyzed 21-year-old man as part of a multi-center clinical trial...

Two weeks after surgery, Kris began to show signs of improvement. Three months later, he's able to feed himself, use his cell phone, write his name, operate a motorized wheelchair and hug his friends and family. Improved sensation and movement in both arms and hands also makes it easier for Kris to care for himself, and to envision a life lived more independently. 

"As of 90 days post-treatment, Kris has gained significant improvement in his motor function, up to two spinal cord levels," said Dr. Liu.  "In Kris' case, two spinal cord levels means the difference between using your hands to brush your teeth, operate a computer or do other things you wouldn't otherwise be able to do, so having this level of functional independence cannot be overstated." 

More details here.