Horseplay

YouTube link.

Chess problem

From The Telegraph:

The puzzle above may seem hopeless for white, with just a King and four pawns remaining, but it is possible to draw and even win.

Scientists have constructed it in a way to confound a chess computer, which would normally consider that it is a win for black.  However an average chess-playing human should be able to see that a draw is possible.  A chess computer struggles because it looks like an impossible position, even though it is perfectly legal...

The first person who can demonstrate the solution legally will receive a bonus prize.

Both humans, computers and even quantum computers are invited to play the game and solutions should be emailed to puzzles@penroseinstitute.com.

Hospital waste

I can verify from personal experience that the following account is basically true:

This, however, isn’t a story of about the crippling price of medical supplies. This is about the high cost of medical supplies that hospitals throw away.

On a recent snowy day the warehouse’s 65-year-old proprietor, Elizabeth McLellan, gave an indignant accounting: She yanked a urinary catheter out of one bin. It’s unopened and has an expiration date of July 2018. “There’s no reason to get rid of this.” A box of 30 new feeding bags has an August 2019 expiration date. The same type sells on Amazon.com for $129.

That surgical stapler? It’s unopened. The same model sells online for $189. And McLellan simply shook her head over a set of a dozen long thin laparoscopic surgery instruments that some hospital discarded. Similar used tools can go for hundreds of dollars.

“There’s nothing wrong with these, nothing wrong with any of these,” she said.

Ten years ago, McLellan, a registered nurse, shocked to see what hospitals were tossing out, began asking them to give her their castoffs instead. In 2009 she launched Partners for World Health, a nonprofit that now has four warehouses throughout Maine. Today, she and hundreds of volunteers collect medical equipment and supplies from a network of hospitals and medical clinics, sort them and eventually ship containers full of them to countries like Greece, Syria and Uganda...

MedShare, a Georgia-based nonprofit more than 10 times the size of Partners, sent 156 containers of discarded medical supplies to developing countries last year, each one worth as much as $175,000...

McLellan started her nonprofit after watching patient rooms being cleaned out at Maine Medical Center, where she was a nurse administrator. When patients were discharged, hospital staff threw out everything, including unopened supplies. McLellan got permission from the hospital’s CEO to put out bins to save the discarded items.

A year and a half later, she’d gathered more than 11,000 pounds of supplies and equipment in her house. Today, Partners has three paid employees — McLellan is a volunteer — and an annual budget of $357,000, most of it from individual donations. Hundreds of volunteers pitch in. Similar nonprofits have sprung up around the country...

And those pallets of adult diapers stacked high on a shelf? He sells the same type at his pharmacy for $11.99 per package or more. Farren recalled one time they picked up about 100 unopened packages of diapers from the home of a patient who had died. “It was ridiculous,” he said.

Further details at Salon.

"Heelwork" demonstrated

YouTube link.

I remember teaching our dogs to "heel."  But heelwork at Cruft's annual show is a whole world different.

Here's the 2015 winner.

Via Neatorama, where there is also a video of the flyball competition.

Future presidential candidate ?

He says no.  But lots of people are discussing openly the possibility of the Democratic party nominating a non-politician for the office of President.

The underlying logic would be that the president needs to represent the people, but he/she doesn't need to be an expert on law, or war or economics or education.  The president has (or at least should have) a staff and aides to provide analysis and expert opinions.  The president meets with other foreign leaders with a major role in diplomacy, and needs to communicate effectively with Congress and the people.

Michael Moore was the first person I heard who advocated this change, speaking just a week after Donald Trump was elected:

Moore, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union show, said the leadership vacuum that will result from the departures of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would best be filled by a well-liked celebrity.

“Democrats would be better off if they ran Oprah [Winfrey] or Tom Hanks,” said Moore. “Why don’t we run beloved people? We have so many of them. The Republicans do this – they run [Ronald] Reagan and the Terminator [Arnold Schwarzenegger] and other people.”

Moore continued: “Why don’t we run somebody that the American people love and are really drawn to, and that are smart and have good politics and all that?” 

A CNN article discusses the possibility of Oprah Winfrey campaigning for the presidency.  There is also a relevant article in New Republic.

Other celebrities who might consider running for political office (not necessarily for the presidency) include Will Smith, Roseanne Barr, Angelina Jolie, Kanye West, and Mark Zuckerberg.

"Traditionalists" who cringe at the thought of celebrities invading politics might do well to remember that (IIRC) one of the concepts of the Founding Fathers was that state and national legislators should be ordinary people who could put aside their hammers and plowshares and travel to the capitol to manage the country, then return to their work (although they themselves were elite aristocrats).

Photo credit Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, via.

"Deconstructing" a house

It's not the same as "demolishing" the house:

Deconstruction... entails taking a house apart, piece by piece, down to the foundation. The majority of what is removed from a house via deconstruction can be recycled or reused. Everything removed from the house and donated to a qualified 501(c)3 charity can be claimed by the property owners on their taxes as a donation at fair market value...

The deconstruction appraiser determines what materials can be salvaged and estimates the value of the donations. As the process unfolds, the appraiser prepares a report that lists every component to be donated and its fair market value; completes IRS Form 8283 for the donor valuing the material (the nonprofit recipients complete the form, too); ensures that the donor has the required documentation to claim full benefits from the donation, and stands behind all this if the IRS has any questions about the donation. The deconstruction company dismantles the house, sorts the materials and transports them to centers for recycling or resale...

Deconstruction costs more than conventional demolition because the materials need to be carefully removed and preserved in usable condition. Stahl says demolition might cost $8,000 to $11,000 for a typical house and take up to a week to complete. Deconstructing the same house might cost as much as $24,000, she says, and take two weeks...

Generally speaking, Smith says, “85 to 90 percent of a house can be recycled or repurposed. About the only things that cannot yet be salvaged or repurposed are drywall, rotted materials and broken pieces of ceramic tile or marble.”

What typically can be salvaged? The list is long: hardwood flooring, carpeting, interior lumber, beams, cabinets, appliances, molding and trim, doors, switch plates, light fixtures, ceiling fans, mantels, bathroom vanities, toilets, mirrors, tubs, shower surrounds, granite and laminate countertops, sinks, windows, vent covers, shelving, insulation, heat pumps, hot-water heaters, air-conditioning units, washers and dryers, screens, siding, slate roofing and sub-roofing, flagstone, bricks and decking.

Kudos to people who do this rather than bulldoze the old house.  More information, and a gallery of photos, at the Washington Post. (embedded photo cropped for size).

Tick bites can cause meat allergy

Not a connection one would logically derive a priori:

People living in tick-endemic areas around the world are being warned of an increasingly prevalent, potentially life-threatening side effect to being bitten: developing a severe allergy to meat.

The link between tick bites and meat allergies was first described in 2007, and has since been confirmed around the world.

Sufferers of “tick-induced mammalian meat allergy” will experience a delayed reaction of between two and 10 hours after eating red meat. Almost invariably, they are found to have been bitten by a tick – sometimes as much as six months before.

Although most cases of tick bites of humans are uneventful, some immune systems are sensitive to proteins in the parasite’s saliva and become intolerant of red meat and, in some cases, derivatives such as dairy and gelatine. Poultry and seafood can be tolerated, but many sufferers choose to avoid meat entirely.

Cases of the emergent allergy have been reported in Europe, Asia, Central America and Africa, but it is most prevalent – and on the rise – in parts of Australia and the United States where ticks are endemic and host populations are booming.

Further details at The Guardian.

Health care reform

From the archives of The New Yorker.

How Americans will greet extraterrestrials

Via the PoliticalHumor subreddit.

Morelia viridis (green tree python)

Photo credit: Riau Images/Barcroft Images, via The Guardian.

Ahmadinejad's advice to Trump

I have previously posted a number of articles about former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who I think is a more complex character than the monomaniacal ogre portrayed by some Western media. When I last heard of him, he was a university professor.  Now he has established a Twitter account, and a Guardian article suggests that "it’s only a matter of days before we see him mention @realDonaldTrump, potentially sparking a clash of two of the world’s most famous rabble rousers."

He has already written an open letter to Donald Trump.  Herewith some excerpts:

To: His Excellency, Mr. Donald John Trump

The president of the United States of America

Hello there.

 

Your Excellency has been elected, in the recent US election, as the president of the country. It can be inferred from the political and media atmosphere in the US that the result of the election has been despite the status quo, and beyond the will and prediction of the governing body and the main system behind the scene of the US political stage...

 

Welcoming this and hoping it will have an effect, I hereby share some points with you, whereas I’d tried in the past to convey some important matters to the two preceding presidents, via letters...

 

This letter is by no means political, in the common sense of the world; nonetheless, today it is from a human to another human. The letter is from a humane standpoint, rooted in interest toward and compassion for the American nation and other nations, and I expect your Excellency to read it from the same perspective, adopting a humane approach...

 

Your Excellency and I are, like other human beings, servants and creatures of The Only God, and have been created for an eternal life. God has not created us for enmity, hegemony and aggressiveness. People are all equal and in terms of possessing land, wealth, God-given opportunities and human rights, they’re alike. The true essence of human blossoms through monotheism, loving others and making endeavors toward the well-being and prosperity of others...

 

Having been elected the US president is a historic opportunity primarily for the elected person and secondly for the electorates and other nations. Although four years is a long period, but it ends quickly. The opportunity needs to be valued, and all its moments need to be used in the best way.

Those elected by nations and the rulers should never consider themselves being superior to people, or being their masters and dominant over people’s affairs. The rulers’ capacity is but to be humble toward the people, to serve them, and to follow up their demands...

What outcome has meddling in other’s affairs and military deployments to other regions and imposing thousands of US military, security and intelligence bases across the globe had, except for insecurity, war, division, killing and displacement of nations? Have the measures brought about anything beyond hatred and animosity toward US leaders, notoriety for the US people and imposition of military expenditures?

If all governments want to show behavior similar to the US administration, which visible horizon of peace and security will lie ahead of the human society? Isn’t it better to stop warmongering and not to interfere militarily in other regions of the world, in order to create an atmosphere of international understanding and to end the arms race, war and killing of people?...

 

If Your Excellency takes the initiative to remove the deadly arms race and stop the military presence and intervention in other regions, the annual killing and displacement of millions of human beings will be prevented. If so, hundreds of billions of dollars of global military and security costs will be reduced, to be spent in the health, education and welfare of nations, as well as in reducing the social gap and other problems, and to uproot insecurity.

Hasn’t the time come for all of us to believe that the human society needs human thought, justice and brotherhood more than arms and military power? Arrogance is a devilish deed and the root cause of all problems in the human society. Hasn’t the time come to change arms to pens, and to replace arrogance, discrimination and hatred with love, equality and brotherhood?..

Women depict God’s beauty and are God’s most beautiful and valuable gift. Respecting women and dignifying them, is a sign of magnanimity.

The great men of history have paid the highest level of respect to women and recognized their God-given capabilities. Women’s role in the life and perfection of human society is special and in the best and highest form. Women’s management in domains of science, society, culture, etc. has been among the most precise and excellent...

I pray to God The Merciful for all nations and also for the people of US glory, prosperity, peace, freedom, justice and welfare and for Your Excellency, success in performing the heavy duty of reforming the structure of the US system and in responding to people’s demand.

And peace on the righteous servants of God

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

In service of the Iranian nation

Fulltext (with English translation).  Photo credit Hamed Malekpour.

Related: Ahmadinejad's Christmas message.

"There IS graffiti on the wall" or "There ARE graffiti on the wall"

I encountered this sentence in a collegiate alumni magazine:

(1947) A Bulletin "agent" reports that graffiti have been scrawled on Claverly Hall: "Héloïse loves Abélard" on one corner, "Henry Tudor is insatiable" on another.

I know graffiti is a plural noun, but I use it as singular.  Am I in big trouble?  Apparently not...

In Italian the word graffiti is a plural noun and its singular form is graffito. Traditionally, the same distinction has been maintained in English, so that graffiti, being plural, would require a plural verb: the graffiti were all over the wall. By the same token, the singular would require a singular verb: there was a graffito on the wall. Today, these distinctions survive in some specialist fields such as archaeology but sound odd to most native speakers. The most common modern use is to treat graffiti as if it were a mass noun, similar to a word like writing, and not to use graffito at all. In this case, graffiti takes a singular verb, as in the graffiti was all over the wall. Such uses are now widely accepted as standard. A similar process is going on with other words such as agenda, data, and media.

The life of Apollonius

Apollonius of Tyana... was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Anatolia. He was an orator and philosopher around the time of Jesus, and was compared with Jesus of Nazareth by Christians in the 4th century and by other writers in modern times.

As summarized by Bart D. Ehrman:

Even before he was born, it was known that he would be someone special. A supernatural being informed his mother the child she was to conceive would not be a mere mortal but would be divine. He was born miraculously, and he became an unusually precocious young man. As an adult he left home and went on an itinerant preaching ministry, urging his listeners to live, not for the material things of this world, but for what is spiritual. He gathered a number of disciples around him, who became convinced that his teachings were divinely inspired, in no small part because he himself was divine. He proved it to them by doing many miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. But at the end of his life he roused opposition, and his enemies delivered him over to the Roman authorities for judgment. Still, after he left this world, he returned to meet his followers in order to convince them that he was not really dead but lived on in the heavenly realm. Later some of his followers wrote books about him.

More at Wikipedia.

Photo credit Christian Vandendorpe.

Changing

From the archives of The New Yorker.

Divertimento #123

Video of a patient with severe Parkinson's Disease, before and after ingesting medical marijuana.  Impressive.

Fossilized trilobite eggs discovered.

"When [President] Roosevelt heard that a torpedo was zooming toward him, he asked to be moved with his wheelchair over to the railing so that he could see it. Fearing an assassination plot, the Iowa turned its guns toward the William D. Porter — however, the crisis ended when the torpedo finally detonated as it struck heavy waves created by the Iowa’s increased speed. Walter reportedly answered with a meek “We did it” when pressed. The entire crew was placed under arrest and sent to Bermuda to face trial — the first instance in U.S. Naval history that the entire crew of a ship had been arrested."

Intraoperative virtual reality may be useful in allowing lower doses of sedatives and hypnotics for surgery patients.

"Today saw the release of a new study from the Grantham Institute for Imperial College London and the Carbon Tracker Initiative. It argues that solar photovoltaics and [electric vehicles] together will kick fossil fuel’s ass, quickly. “Falling costs of electric vehicle and solar technology,” they conclude, “could halt growth in global demand for oil and coal from 2020.” That would be a pretty big deal."

Explanation of the floating dry-erase stick man.  Impress your friends.

"The 588th was the most highly decorated female unit in [the Soviet air force in WWII], flying 30,000 missions over the course of four years -- and dropping, in total, 23,000 tons of bombs on invading German armies. Its members, who ranged in age from 17 to 26, flew primarily at night, making do with planes that were -- per their plywood-and-canvas construction -- generally reserved for training and crop-dusting. They often operated in stealth mode, idling their engines as they neared their targets and then gliding their way to their bomb release points.

Myths about what does and doesn't constitute treason.

"På väg mot vaken såg vi älgen göra flera misslyckade försök att ta sig upp själv. Den klarade heller inte att knäcka isen och ta sig in till land på egen hand, så min sambo, Sigrid Sjösteen, började ivrigt hugga upp en ränna in till grundare vatten. Vi turades om att hugga i omkring 30 minuter innan älgen var i säkerhet på land." (saving a moose frozen in a lake)

About those little dots on your car windows.  "Most importantly, it acts to prevents ultraviolet sun rays from deteriorating the urethane sealant."  And "there’s another group of dots on the windshield right behind the rearview mirror. As shown in the clip below, these dots, called the “third visor frit,” are there to help block the sun as it beams in from between the two front sun-visors."

Collector's Weekly has an extensive article on the history of model railroading.

Everything you need to know (or not) about the baton or truncheon (also called a cosh, billystick, billy club, nightstick, sap, blackjack). "The one for daytime was called a day-stick and was 11 inches in length. Another baton, that was used at night, was 26 inches long and called a night-stick, which is the origin of the word "nightstick"."

Someone did a detailed analysis of the most recent Super Bowl (LI) and determined that the ball was in play for a total of 16 minutes and 4 seconds.  "There were 178 plays (including kickoffs, point-afters, spikes, etc) with the average play being only 5.47 seconds long."

Dragonfly wings kill bacteria.  "...the bacteria are essentially caught in one of those sinister traps of which movie villains are quite fond. If they don't move, the bacteria might survive. However, when they do move, shear forces pull on the EPSs, ripping the membrane apart. This results in a fatal leakage of cellular contents, which causes the cell to deflate like a balloon..."

How to make ice cream from snow.

Why British roads are called "metalled" when they have no metal.  "Gravel is known to have been used extensively in the construction of roads by soldiers of the Roman Empire, but a limestone-surfaced road, thought to date back to the Bronze Age, has been found in Britain. Applying gravel, or "metalling," has had two distinct usages in road surfacing. The term road metal refers to the broken stone or cinders used in the construction or repair of roads or railways, and is derived from the Latin metallum, which means both "mine" and "quarry". The term originally referred to the process of creating a gravel roadway.

Pie chart explains pyramids.

"The paternoster is kind of elevator that consist of a chain of open compartments that move up and down continuously through the vertical shaft of a building in a loop and without stopping. Passengers step into the moving compartments in the direction they wish to go and then hop off when the elevator reaches the desired floor. There is no stopping in between the floors, and passengers must remain alert and get their timing right or else get severed."

China is now the world's biggest producer of solar energy.

Read about Mohamed Bzeek, a foster father who takes in children with terminal illnesses.

"Now, Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for a bedridden 6-year-old foster girl with a rare brain defect. She’s blind and deaf. She has daily seizures. Her arms and legs are paralyzed. Bzeek, a quiet, devout Libyan-born Muslim who lives in Azusa, just wants her to know she’s not alone in this life. “I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” he said. “I’m always holding her, playing with her, touching her. … She has feelings. She has a soul. She’s a human being.”

Apeirophobia is fear of everlasting life.

UNIT 731 (2015) "A research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during the second Sino-Japanese War and WW2, who conducted human experiments and committed horrible war crimes. After the war, the U.S. government assisted in a coverup of their activities in exchange for the medical data they acquired."

"A Utah mother has received immense amounts of praise on social media for dressing up as a man to take her son to a "dads and doughnuts" event at his school... Kittrell said she became a single parent three years ago, and eventually asked her son if he wanted to take his grandfather to the event.  Her son told her no and that he wanted to take her because she was his mother and father."

An argument that the phrase "Dark Ages" is inappropriate.  "Far from being a stagnant dark age, as the first half of the Medieval Period (500-1000 AD) certainly was, the period from 1000 to 1500 AD actually saw the most impressive flowering of scientific inquiry and discovery since the time of the ancient Greeks, far eclipsing the Roman and Hellenic Eras in every respect."

The CIA has a Flickr account with a webpage with many albums of declassified maps.

The Bay of Bengal is dying.  "Many once-abundant species have all but disappeared.... Fish stocks have been decimated by methods that include cyanide poisoning. The region was once famous for its coral reefs; these have been ravaged by dynamite-fishing and climate-change induced bleaching. Yet the exploitation of these waters continues without check."

"Queen Elizabeth had her own “Watchers,” a network of agents who intercepted letters, cracked codes, and captured possible dissenters to protect the crown in secret. The queen’s network of spies formed the original surveillance state in the U.K., and she started it for good reason... When spying abroad, Dee signed each private letter to Elizabeth with the insignia “007”—a moniker that was later borrowed by Ian Fleming, writer of James Bond."

A mother saved her baby from a house fire by strapping him into a car seat and then dropping him from the second-story window.

  
"Soul-crushing facts about income inequality."

Why you shouldn't play dodgeball with a softball player.

"Technology can also allow people to access cars long after they’ve sold them, which is enough to leave any buyer uncomfortable."

"Hungry hungry humans."  A discussion thread suggested this was either a corporate team-building exercise, or a Mormon youth-group activity.

This Finnish resort bills itself as "the world's most enchanting Arctic resort."  I believe it.  Look at the photos and the videos.

"There have been rumblings regarding some sort of nuclear incident—or possibly incidents—in the Arctic over the last month. Multiple reports, some of them from official monitoring organizations, have reported iodine 131—a radioactive isotope often associated with nuclear fission—has been detected via air sampling stations throughout the region."

A waitress physically drags an unwanted guest from a restaurant. (this)

How to use a can of tuna to cook a dinner (clever, but I asked a friend who does long-distance hikes; he said he'd rather consume the oil than burn it)

This week's gifs:

• Trump signing an executive order. 
• "It was probably for the best that they didn't see it."
• The Trump handshakes.  A gallery of examples.   Trudeau uses his left arm to defeat the pull.
• A 10-million-gallon tank at the Georgia Aquarium.
• A beautiful retracting driveway gate.
• Which restroom to use???

This week's embedded images are winners of this year's Wellcome Image Awards, via Digg.  Info re subject matter and photographer/artist at the link.