From a gallery of similar photographs by Bing Wright, posted at This is Colossal.
19 December 2016
"Human population through time"
"It took 200,000 years for our human population to reach 1 billion—and only 200 years to reach 7 billion."
An interesting visualization by the staff at the American Museum of Natural History.
Finland will test giving people a free "basic income"
Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. For laid-off workers from Nokia, simply collecting a guaranteed unemployment check often presents a better financial proposition than taking a leap with a start-up in Finland, where a shaky technology industry is trying to find its footing again.
Now, the Finnish government is exploring how to change that calculus, initiating an experiment in a form of social welfare: universal basic income. Early next year, the government plans to randomly select roughly 2,000 unemployed people — from white-collar coders to blue-collar construction workers. It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income...The answers — to be determined over a two-year trial — could shape social welfare policy far beyond Nordic terrain. In communities around the world, officials are exploring basic income as a way to lessen the vulnerabilities of working people exposed to the vagaries of global trade and automation. While basic income is still an emerging idea, one far from being deployed on a large scale, the growing experimentation underscores the deep need to find effective means to alleviate the perils of globalization...Universal basic income is a catchall phrase that describes a range of proposals, but they generally share one feature: All people in society get a regular check from the government — regardless of their income or whether they work. These funds are supposed to guarantee food and shelter, enabling people to pursue their own betterment while contributing to society...A Silicon Valley start-up incubator, Y Combinator, is preparing a pilot project in Oakland, Calif., in which 100 families will receive unconditional cash grants ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 a month. Voters in Switzerland recently rejected a basic-income scheme, but the French Senate approved a trial. Experiments are being readied in Canada and the Netherlands. The Indian government has been studying basic income as a means of alleviating poverty...Strikingly, basic income is being championed across the ideological spectrum...“Some people think basic income will solve every problem under the sun, and some people think it’s from the hand of Satan and will destroy our work ethic,” says Olli Kangas, who oversees research at Kela, a Finnish government agency that administers many social welfare programs. “I’m hoping we can create some knowledge on this issue.”
From an interesting long read at The New York Times. I scanned the article for the use of the word "inflation" and didn't see that aspect discussed.
The Third Man theme. And fake penicillin.
Here played by the composer and original instrumentalist. After the release of The Third Man in 1950, this song was #1 in the United States for three months, until it was displaced by Nat King Cole singing "Mona Lisa." It certainly must be the best-known piece of zither music ever created.
Via UncertainTimes. Reposted from 2008 (!) to update the video and add this relevant history from the Christmas 2016 issue of the British Medical Journal:
In April 1946, in the bleak aftermath of the second world war, American and British intelligence services arrested seven men and three women in Berlin on charges of manufacture, possession, and sale of fake penicillin. A former German army private was the alleged chief of the fake drug ring that included ‘Two former GIs in love with frauleins and an American doctor with a passion for fine cameras…who got at least $13 000 [about $170 000 (£130 000; €160 000) today] in cash from one Berlin druggist for penicillin."..
Penicillin was scarce but much sought after as an innovative cure of bacterial infections, and it became a currency in post-war Europe. The Times reported from Berlin “There is great illicit demand for penicillin here for the treatment of venereal diseases. Supplies are strictly controlled by the British and American authorities, being reserved for the treatment of their soldiers, and secondarily for the treatment of German women likely to spread disease. Otherwise supplies are not available.”
More at the link. Quite interesting.There is also evidence of illegal penicillin trade in post-war Vienna. Zane Grey Todd was head of criminal investigation in the American sector. His obituary tells us that “His most dangerous case involved two American medical officers who were stealing and selling penicillin on the black market, aided by a former Miss Austria, with whom they were living.” That Todd may have been a key source for Greene is suggested by a tributary clue in the film—Martins gives a cultural talk on the American author Zane Grey.
Anna walks out of Holly's life
I saw this image on a Twitter post by Roger Ebert, and it took me a while to recall the name of the movie...
Does anyone know if this is a famous street in Vienna?
The Third Man is perhaps better known for its musical theme than for its plot (note how excited the women are to be listening to the music).
Reposted from 2011 to replace the video, which was taken down. This one will probably be taken down soon.
Do heads of government age more quickly?
That's the question asked in this Christmas' issue of the British Medical Journal.
We assembled data on elected and runner-up candidates for national elections occurring in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, using online sources including Wikipedia and national lists of leaders..Details at the link. Photo source lost.
The sample included 540 candidates: 279 winners and 261 runners-up who never served. A total of 380 candidates were deceased by 9 September 2015. Candidates who served as a head of government lived 4.4 (95% confidence interval 2.1 to 6.6) fewer years after their last election than did candidates who never served (17.8 v 13.4 years after last election; adjusted difference 2.7 (0.6 to 4.8) years). In Cox proportional hazards analysis, which considered all candidates (alive or deceased), the mortality hazard for elected candidates relative to runners-up was 1.23 (1.00 to 1.52).
"Preinstalled ransomware"
That's the term that has been suggested regarding proposed legislation in South Carolina:
People buying computers in South Carolina would be limited in their access to porn online under newly proposed legislation.
A bill pre-filed this month by state Rep. Bill Chumley would require sellers to install digital blocking capabilities on computers and other devices that access the internet to prevent the viewing of obscene content...
Both sellers and buyers could get around the limitation, for a fee. The bill would fine manufacturers that sell a device without the blocking system, but they could opt out by paying $20 per device sold. Buyers could also verify their age and pay $20 to remove the filter...
16 December 2016
Albrecht Dürer's amazing magic square
This "magic square" was incorporated by Dürer in his engraving "Melencolia I" (full image below)
In recreational mathematics, a magic square is a n × n square grid - where n is the number of rows (or columns) - filled with distinct positive integers in the range of [1.. n2] such that the sum of the integers in each row, column or diagonal equals a same value...Very cool.
The order-4 magic square Albrecht Dürer immortalized in his 1514 engraving Melencolia I, referred to above, is believed to be the first seen in European art. It is very similar to Yang Hui's square, which was created in China about 250 years before Dürer's time. The sum 34 can be found in the rows, columns, diagonals, each of the quadrants, the center four squares, and the corner squares (of the 4×4 as well as the four contained 3×3 grids). This sum can also be found in the four outer numbers clockwise from the corners (3+8+14+9) and likewise the four counter-clockwise (the locations of four queens in the two solutions of the 4 queens puzzle), the two sets of four symmetrical numbers (2+8+9+15 and 3+5+12+14), the sum of the middle two entries of the two outer columns and rows (5+9+8+12 and 3+2+15+14), and in four kite or cross shaped quartets (3+5+11+15, 2+10+8+14, 3+9+7+15, and 2+6+12+14). The two numbers in the middle of the bottom row give the date of the engraving: 1514. The numbers 1 and 4 at either side of the date correspond respectively to the letters "A" and "D," which are the initials of the artist.
41,667% daily value of a vitamin
Part of the label for a bottle of vitamin B12 tablets.
I'm a bit puzzled. If the once-a-day tablet represents 417 times the recommended dose, does that mean the manufacturer assumes that everyone taking it is deficient in intrinsic factor? Does the "daily value" only apply to intravenous administration? If that's the case, shouldn't the 2500 micrograms then become the recommended "daily value" for oral intake?
I suppose I could look this up, but I thought it would be faster to ask here, because some reader will know the answer. Thanks in advance.
"Person from Porlock" explained
The person from Porlock was an unwelcome visitor to Samuel Taylor Coleridge during his composition of the poem Kubla Khan in 1797. Coleridge claimed to have perceived the entire course of the poem in a dream (possibly an opium-induced haze), but was interrupted by this visitor from Porlock while in the process of writing it. Kubla Khan, only 54 lines long, was never completed. Thus "Person from Porlock", "Man from Porlock", or just "Porlock" are literary allusions to unwanted intruders who disrupt inspired creativity.Posted because I encountered the term while reading Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in which "the title character saves the world, in part by time-travelling from the present day to distract Coleridge from properly remembering his dream; if Coleridge had completed the poem an alien ghost would have 'encoded' certain information within the completed work that would have allowed him to make repairs to his spaceship in the past at the cost of wiping out all life on Earth."
Trump's election as "the biggest fuck you ever recorded"
The words accompanying this Alex Jones-sponsored video are taken from a speech given back in October by filmmaker Michael Moore, who was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. Long viewed as a spokesperson for liberal progressive views ("Moore's written and cinematic works criticize topics such as globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, President-elect Donald Trump, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism...), Moore was roundly panned for his public predictions that Trump would win the election.
Here are some excerpts from the text accompanying this brief (four and a half minute) video:
MICHAEL MOORE: I know a lot of people in Michigan that are planning to vote for Trump and they don't necessarily like him that much, and they don't necessarily agree with him. They're not racist or rednecks, they're actually pretty decent people, and so after talking to a number of them I wanted to write this:The fulltext is at the YouTube link. For liberal Democrats, these are painful words to read or to hear in the video. Moore does qualify his comments with "whether Trump means it or not," to acknowledge the
'Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of Ford Motor executives and said, "if you close these factories as you're planning to do in Detroit and build them in Mexico, I'm going to put a 35% tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody's going to buy them."
It was an amazing thing to see. No politician, Republican or Democrat, had ever said anything like that to these executives, and it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- the "Brexit" states.
You live here in Ohio, you know what I'm talking about. Whether Trump means it or not, is kind of irrelevant because he's saying the things to people who are hurting, and that's why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump. He is the human Molotov cocktail that they've been waiting for. The human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them...
So on November 8, the dispossessed will walk into the voting booth, be handed a ballot, close the curtain, and take that lever or felt pen or touchscreen and put a big fucking X in the box by the name of the man who has threatened to upend and overturn the very system that has ruined their lives: Donald J. Trump.
They see that the elite who ruined their lives hate Trump. Corporate America hates Trump. Wall Street hates Trump. The career politicians hate Trump. The media hates Trump, after they loved him and created him, and now hate.
Thank you media: the enemy of my enemy is who I'm voting for on November 8.
I've closed comments for this post. Please don't append them to other posts.
Related: Why rural voters no longer vote Democratic in Minnesota, and Trump launches war on unions.
"Misfortune for Monarchs"
A new scourge is attacking the milkweed plants that are essential to the survival of Monarchs:
But the menaced monarchs have another problem, the destructive oleander aphid (Aphis nerii). This bright, yellow insect, introduced from the Mediterranean area along with the oleander plant, has found milkweed to be an attractive food source. They form large colonies on milkweed stems and leaves that aspirate sap from the plants’ nutrient-transporting phloem, stunting or killing their host before it can provide sustenance for migrating monarchs and their larvae. This photo shows an aggressive colony of oleander aphids feeding on a first-year common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) near the coast of Massachusetts. For cultivators of monarch milkweed gardens, non-toxic insecticidal soaps are effective against the oleander aphid. However, the threatened monarch will likely need more help in order to survive.Photo credit Rob Sheridan, via the Earth Science Picture of the Day, with a tip of the blogging hat to reader David Laidlaw for bringing this to my attention.
14 December 2016
So you think you're pretty smart...
Try answering these questions from the Royal Statistical Society's Christmas Quiz for 2015:
1. Begin (5 points)
What might, in turn, be represented by a Buckeye, a Boxer, a Berkshire, a Brown, a Brahman, a Bengal, a Beveren, a Bearded, a Boa, a Brumby, a Boreray and (in 2016) a Barbary?
5. Out of Place (4 points)
(a) Explain why, compared with ‘sweet milk’, ‘little cut off’, ‘recooked’, ‘beautiful country’ and ‘tired’, ‘slice’ is out of place.
(b) Similarly, which one of ‘iron’, ‘little blackbird’, ‘black pine’, ‘musky’, ‘tears of Christ’ and ‘white savage’ is out of place?
7. www.capitals.table (6 points)
If Brussels=4, Santiago=17, Buenos Aires=18, Ottawa=20 and Brasilia=35, what is Canberra?
9. In the sky, on the lea (8 points)
What might have inspired whom to write the following, and where has a line been omitted?
“Nature, in tooth and claw,
In lands of palm, of blossom
That sparkled on the field
And on a simple village,
And drowned in yonder living
By hooded doctors.”
10. Diagram (6 points)
Explain the diagram, and give appropriate row and column labels.
Solutions (and more questions) at the link.
I'm eagerly awaiting the 2016 King William's College General Knowledge Paper for 2016-17. It should be published in The Guardian this coming week. (Here's last year's quiz.) (And the answers.)
1. Begin (5 points)
What might, in turn, be represented by a Buckeye, a Boxer, a Berkshire, a Brown, a Brahman, a Bengal, a Beveren, a Bearded, a Boa, a Brumby, a Boreray and (in 2016) a Barbary?
5. Out of Place (4 points)
(a) Explain why, compared with ‘sweet milk’, ‘little cut off’, ‘recooked’, ‘beautiful country’ and ‘tired’, ‘slice’ is out of place.
(b) Similarly, which one of ‘iron’, ‘little blackbird’, ‘black pine’, ‘musky’, ‘tears of Christ’ and ‘white savage’ is out of place?
7. www.capitals.table (6 points)
If Brussels=4, Santiago=17, Buenos Aires=18, Ottawa=20 and Brasilia=35, what is Canberra?
9. In the sky, on the lea (8 points)
What might have inspired whom to write the following, and where has a line been omitted?
“Nature, in tooth and claw,
In lands of palm, of blossom
That sparkled on the field
And on a simple village,
And drowned in yonder living
By hooded doctors.”
10. Diagram (6 points)
Explain the diagram, and give appropriate row and column labels.
Solutions (and more questions) at the link.
I'm eagerly awaiting the 2016 King William's College General Knowledge Paper for 2016-17. It should be published in The Guardian this coming week. (Here's last year's quiz.) (And the answers.)
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