Crumbling infrastructure

The winning sand sculpture at the 2019 Texas Sand Sculpture Festival, via.

"Prescription drug prices are out of control"

That's not news, of course.  But a longread at PhillyMag provides some insight into the bureaucracy and some ideas.

I’m on drugs for multiple sclerosis and have been since 2004. MS meds are what are called maintenance drugs, meaning you take them daily or weekly from the moment of diagnosis till death or untenable side effects do you part. They’re also some of the most jaw-droppingly expensive drugs on the market. Today, in 2019, the four different name-brand medications I’ve been prescribed at different points in my treatment list for between $75,816 and $98,899. Per year. Prices are indeed high. And they’re going up fast.

Like everyone else, I’d been hearing the drumbeat: The cost of prescription drugs was out of control. But because the insurance plans I’ve been on had decent-enough prescription drug coverage — my meds had generally cost me a co-pay in the $100-to-$150-per-month range — I’d been shielded from the issue. And a few years back, I discovered that if you ask, some drug manufacturers will actually pay your co-pays for you. So I was getting drugs that listed for a decent annual salary for the cost of my modest-by-comparison health-insurance premiums. I didn’t know who was paying how much of those prices — honestly, they seemed too absurd to be real. All I knew was that it wasn’t me.

But as I sat in the conference room for my company’s annual benefits presentation last December, I got a cold dose of reality — and became another of the millions of Americans incensed by the skyrocketing prices pharmaceutical companies charge for their products and the byzantine, competition-squelching health-care system that allows those prices to escalate unchecked...

Thanks to secret negotiations, the prices that pharmaceutical companies list are different from the prices for your insurance company, which are different from the prices for your pharmacy. America’s health-care system is the most expensive and pointlessly complicated in the world...

Fact 7: Nobody outside of this system knows what’s happening inside of it. And the fact that we know so little suggests that it’s in the best interests of all involved to keep quiet.

Fact 8: Pharmaceutical companies claim, rightly, that developing drugs is an expensive business, and that for every drug that eventually makes it to market, there are untold failures.

Fact 9: And yet we also know that pharmaceutical companies are some of the most profitable businesses on the planet...

Fact 10: As a result, everything happens in a black box, and as any NTSB investigator will tell you, nothing good comes out of black boxes. The whole system is a vicious circle of plausible deniability. In the face of criticism, any one entity in the supply chain can, and often will, point to the others and say, essentially, “Not it.”

Way more at PhillyMag.

Biologic needles

Scanning electron microscope images of a viper’s fang, the fang of a spider, and the stinger of a scorpion (b, c, d).  On the far left for comparison is a modern hypodermic needle.  Via.

"Notes on a Scandal" (trailer)

YouTube link.

 Judi Dench and Kate Blanchett, each at the top of their game - both of them nominated for Academy Awards for their performances in this film (Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress).  Also nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Original Score (Philip Glass).  And finally, the 2003 novel on which the movie was based was itself shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

The subject matter of the film will leave some viewers uncomfortable, but this is clearly a superb movie.  Available on Netflix etc, and on DVD at your local library,

Impressive craftsmanship of the seventh century

An Anglo-Saxon pendant found in Winfarthing, Norfolk and acquired by Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery has been voted the nation’s favourite acquisition of the year...

Discovered in December 2014 by a metal detectorist, the seventh-century gold and garnet pendant is the highlight of a trove of artefacts unearthed in Winfarthing, near Diss.

The excavation, carried out by Norfolk County Council’s Find Identification and Recording Service, found the grave to belong to an aristocratic Anglo-Saxon lady who died between AD 650-675 and was buried among some of her most valued possessions.

More information at Art Fund_.

The people who actually live by the border wall

Elliot Ross: "The singular most surprising thing going into this was seeing this core issue of building a wall as not this really divisive thing. Within the national discourse it is, but once you get to the borderland and meet the people who live with the border as a part of their daily life, across the board, rather than it being a divisive issue, it's one that brings people together in opposition. That was surprising to us.

From far right to far left, and for different reasons. The Republicans have very Republican reasons: They want to avoid federal overreach — and the government coming in and taking their land, using eminent domain for the border, is the definition of federal overreach.

For all the thousands of people that we met, we only met a handful who were pro construction of the wall, and that's something that is not really acknowledged. I feel like so much of this conversation is driven when anecdotes are needed from a very few select group of people, most of whom don’t even live in the borderland."

Photo credit: Eliot Moss

Port Jackson shark

The teeth of the Port Jackson shark are one of its most distinguishable feature. Unlike other sharks, its teeth are different in the front and back. The front teeth are small, sharp and pointed, while the back teeth are flat and blunt. These teeth function to hold and break, then crush and grind the shells of the mollusks and echinoderms upon which this species feeds...

Port Jackson sharks have the ability to eat and breathe at the same time. This ability is unusual for sharks which mostly need to swim with their mouths open to force water over the gills. The Port Jackson shark can pump water into the first enlarged gill slit and out through the other four gill slits. By pumping water across the gills, the shark does not need to move to breathe. It can lie on the bottom for long periods of time...

It also does not pose any danger to humans. In October 2011 a man was 'bitten' by a Port Jackson shark at Elwood Beach near Melbourne. The bite did not pierce the skin and the man was able to swim away while the shark was latched on to his calf.

Image via

Difficult ethical conundrum... or not...

Some people enjoy pondering or discussing ethical conundrums.  "You can only save one person from drowning; should it be the mother or the young child?"  "Is it OK to kill X in order to prevent X from killing 4 innocent people?"  You've heard many others.  And the principle involved is the central theme behind Ursula LeGuin's classic The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. (highly recommended short story, BTW).

The cartoon panel embedded above poses a theoretical question.  You can view the second panel of the cartoon at Jobsanger.

Related:  Toddler solves the "trolley problem"

Reposted from 2017 to embed the video suggested by Nolandda in his comment:

YouTube link.

Interesting graph of U.S. corn production (updated)

Excerpts from a Washington Post article:

Today, the United States is the largest producer and consumer of corn — and by a long shot. Corn is in the sodas Americans drink and the potato chips they snack on; it's in hamburgers and french fries, sauces and salad dressings, baked goods, breakfast cereals, virtually all poultry, and even most fish...

In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists discovered a way to boost corn production to a level that was previously unthinkable. They bred hybrid strains that had larger ears and could be grown closer together, which allowed farmers to produce a lot more corn without more land. The discovery, coupled with the introduction of new industrial fertilizers and more efficient farm tools, such as tractors, led to a thunderous rise in output...

[In the 1930s, when my mother cultivated her family's cornfields with horse-drawn equipment, she cross-cultivated - first traversing the field east-west, then north-south.  That's how far apart the corn plants were.]

The most incredible thing about the corn grown in America today is how little of it we actually eat. Less than 10 percent of the corn used in the United States is directly ingested by humans. The bulk is either turned into ethanol, for use as fuel, or fed to the hundreds of millions of animals we raise. Cows, chickens, pigs and even fish, which are fed pellets made largely of corn, eat several times the amount of the grain consumed by people each year...

Sweet corn is what Americans grill in the summer, and boil or bake during the rest of the year. It's eaten on the cob. It gets stuck in your teeth. And it accounts for only about 1 percent of the corn grown in America...

Flint corn, which has a soft center and harder outer shell, is what most people know as popcorn...

And then there's dent corn, a.k.a. field corn, the most important kinds. It accounts for the vast majority of corn grown in America today..

This morning an article at Accuweather is entitled Trouble could be brewing for farmers in the US Corn Belt.

Corn planting is behind schedule in the United States because of the weather in four of the top six states for corn production -- and that situation is not expected to improve when the latest Crop Progress report is issued Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), according to an AccuWeather analysis.

Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana and South Dakota are the four states significantly behind schedule and expected to remain that way, according to AccuWeather meteorologists who have been analyzing the data. Those four states combined produce nearly 40% of the corn in the U.S. If the weather continues a wet pattern through late May, consumer prices could go up this summer...

By this time of year, 43% of corn crops would already be planted in Illinois, according to the five-year average provided by the USDA. However, just 9% has been planted so far. Iowa averages 26% of crops planted at this point, and 21% has been planted so far.

Three of the other top corn producers are lagging behind this season so far. Minnesota (2% of corn crops planted by now compared to its five-year average of 24%), Indiana (2% compared to 17%) and South Dakota (0% compared to 17%) are also well off pace.

And note that based on the Washington Post article, a significant rise in corn prices will affect a broad array of products.

Addendum: A map from Paul Douglas' weather blog -

Addendum #2 (June):
The map above was for early May.  The one below depicts precipitation for the months of April and May, described not only as extreme but "biblical" in extent:

Here in Madison in early June I returned from an out-of-town errand yesterday, driving past farm fields that not only are not showing growth, but often had not even been planted.

Topsoil moisture is extremely high, and the question arises as to whether when farmers are able to get into their fields, will the late start mean they won't even be able to plant corn?

Fried egg jellyfish

Or Phacellophora camtschatica, if that's easier to remember.  Image via.

The easiest way to get "six-pack abs" - updated

Via Reddit.

Apparently "defined abs" can be mimicked by using liposuction in a procedure called "abdominal etching."

Lots more information at Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.  Image cropped for size from the original.

The authors found an overall complication rate of 8.6 percent (206 patients). The most common complications were contour irregularities (71 patients), seroma formation (54 patients), hyperpigmentation (36 patients), asymmetry (18 patients), hypertrophic scar (15 patients), chronic induration (six patients), skin necrosis (four patients), and infection (two patients).  

Via Neatorama.

Using parking spaces as office spaces

From the BBC:

People have been posting images of themselves using the hashtag #WePark showing themselves working in car parking spaces in San Francisco. The group pays for the space and creates makeshift offices, using Wi-Fi from free internet zones or by using their mobile phones as hotspots. The movement has since spread further afield to France...

"We live in a very expensive real estate market. It's just so crazy to think the way we use our street is not reflective of that and so those parking spaces are just dirt cheap compared to all of the other real estate in San Francisco...

She said: "It was great. Everybody had access and were sitting there working. It was lovely. Someone brought doughnuts, a vase, flowers and a table cloth. I think it's going to be even more fun and advanced next time. You have 12 people working out of a space instead of a vehicle just sitting there doing nothing all day. It's a great use of space...

"Office spaces are expensive and here in France if your company is less than one year old, no one wants to rent you anything, even with warranties. But that's not the real problem, because working remotely is a perfect alternative. The other real problem is the cities that just don't do anything to reduce the polluting cars' activity."

Just to clarify - these people are not squatting in the space.  They are feeding the meter.   My crystal ball says that confrontations are inevitable when somebody driving in a car threatens these people because he/she can't find a vacant parking space near their office or shopping destination.  Interesting.

"Fish leather" explained

As reported by the BBC:

Ms Gunnsteinsdóttir is the sales manager of Icelandic company Atlantic Leather, which owns the only fish tannery in Europe. Overlooking a fjord on Iceland's remote north coast, since 1994 it has been processing the skins of salmon, perch, cod and wolffish.

The tanning process takes between three and four weeks, and 19 employees now produce 10,000 skins, or nearly a tonne, of fish leather a month. "The fish smell disappears in the early stages, then it smells like any other leather," adds Ms Gunnsteinsdóttir, who is the daughter of the founders.

The company gets all its fish from sustainable stocks, via Icelandic, Norwegian and Faroe Island fishing fleets, and unlike the worst examples in the global cow leather industry its tanning process is as environmentally friendly as possible...

Atlantic Leather also uses natural, non-polluting dyes. The price of its leather varies depending on the fish, but the salmon skins sell for $12 (£9) a square foot.

Now supplying top European fashion houses Jimmy Choo, Dior and Ferragamo, Ms Gunnsteinsdóttir says it is a misconception that fish leather must be delicate and easy to tear. "Fish leather's actually nine times stronger than lamb or cow leather of similar thickness," she says. "This is because the fibres in fish skin criss-cross rather than just up and down... it makes it much more durable leather for products that have to be really strong like shoes, belts and bags."

More at the link.  See also Ostrich leather.

Stained glass lamp

Looks familiar.  Credit artist Michael McLane, via Neatorama.

Youth sports: Norway vs. U.S.

Excerpts from an interesting read at The New York Times:

How did the United States become the world’s sports superpower while producing such a physically inactive population? What contribution, if any, did our sports ecosystem play in producing these seemingly opposite outcomes? And, has any nation figured out a more effective model?..

[Norway's] Children’s Rights in Sport is a document unlike any other in the world, a declaration that underpins its whole sports ecosystem. Introduced in 1987 and updated in 2007 by the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports, the eight-page statement describes the type of experience that every child in the country must be provided, from safe training environments to activities that facilitate friendships.

The statement places a high value on the voices of youth. Children “must be granted opportunities to participate in planning and execution of their own sport activities,” according to the document. They may “decide for themselves how much they would like to train,” and can even opt out of games if they just want to practice.

Want to transfer clubs in midseason? Go ahead, no penalty. Suit up with a rival club next week, if you wish.

Woah...  But there's more...

No national championships before age 13. No regional championships before age 11, or even publication of game scores or rankings...

But in the anything-goes world of youth sports, [the United States has] second-grade AAU national championships, $3,000-a-year club fees and hordes of unlicensed trainers ready to assist in the chase for playing time. Youth sports are now a $16 billion industry bankrolled by parents..

[In Norway] families don’t need to chase athletic scholarships because college, like health care for youth, is free.

Via Neatorama.