Flagellate erythema after eating shiitake mushrooms

This week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine offered this example of "shiitake dermatitis" on the back of a 72-year-old man.  The condition can occur after eating raw or undercooked shiitake mushrooms (there are a few other possible etiologies of patterns like this, discussed at the link, but the history was diagnostic).  

His symptoms were treated with topical steroids and oral antihistamines; the inflammation resolved with some residual hyperpigmentation.  The brief case report does not indicate whether some of the erythema was a dermographia from scratching the pruritis.

Fascinating case.  I've never seen or heard of anything like this before.  You learn something every day.  

A "phobias workshop"

Laugh out loud funny.

Reposted from 2021.  I wish they could have extended this sketch another five minutes.

Tilted-room sketches by Shaun Micallef

YouTube link.

A sketch from The Micallef P(r)ogram(me).  And if you like that one, here's more:

YouTube link.

Reposted from 2013 because after checking all the news online, I needed a laugh.

White grouse

From a gallery of "comedy wildlife photos" at Gizmodo.

Austin City Limits pilot episode, 1974

"The deliberate lack of production slickness plus attention to audio detail pleased even the notoriously TV-shy Nelson. Lead Marketer Ken Waggoner, and Austin City Limits creator Bill Arhos pitched the pilot to PBS as part of its 1975 pledge drive. The show's success as a fundraiser was enough for Arhos to get Austin City Limits green-lighted as a series."

In 1974 I was living just three hours away, in Dallas.  I was already a big Willie Nelson fan, but my job would probably have prevented me from attending this performance, had I known about it.  Glad I can enjoy it vicariously now.

Hotter summers in the northern hemisphere

Res ipsa loquitur.  If you need textual explanation, it's at The New York Times.

High school girl punished for dancing

"A high school senior in Louisiana was stripped of her student government president title and scholarship opportunities after a video circulating on social media showed the 17-year-old girl dancing with friends at a party last week.

Kaylee Timonet, a senior at Walker high school, was seen dancing at a private homecoming afterparty on 30 September, behind a friend who was twerking. Earlier this week, the school principal said he would revoke her leadership role and assistance in scholarship applications.

“They basically told me that I should be ashamed of myself,” Timonet told a local news outlet. “That I wasn’t basically following God’s ideals, which made me cry even more.”...

“I just started crying hysterically,” Timonet said. “I was really, really upset because student government is the best thing that happened to me during high school.”

The mother, who was present at the event, added that the student body paid for the private venue at the Livingston Parish Country Club, as well as for the DJs performance.

“They were just having fun,” Timonet’s mother said. “She should not be questioned or spoken about faith at all. It’s a public school, not a private school.”

If anyone finds a GoFundMe link for a college scholarship for this young lady, please let us know.

Addendum:  A hat tip to readers for followup information posted in the comments.

How to impress fans and terrify opponents. Not.

YouTube link.

Via Neatorama.

Reposted from 2014 as a reminder of the Minnesota Gophers' performance yesterday against Michigan. 

"Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" performed on Benjamin Franklin's glass harmonica

A special treat for Christmas eve for the TYWKIWDBI family. The song will be familiar, the instrument not. This is a glass harmonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin. Sounds are produced by placing damp fingers on glass vessels in the same way that one might do at a dinner party; here the vessels continuously rotate, so the fingers can just be touched to the glass.

In Franklin's version, 37 bowls were mounted horizontally nested on an iron spindle. The whole spindle turned by means of a foot-operated treadle. The sound was produced by touching the rims of the bowls with moistened fingers. Rims were painted different colors according to the pitch of the note... With the Franklin design it is possible to play ten glasses simultaneously if desired, a technique that is very difficult if not impossible to execute using upright goblets. Franklin also advocated the use of a small amount of powdered chalk on the fingers which helped produce a clear tone in the same way rosin is applied to the bows of string instruments.

Before you listen to the music, please note this cautionary bit:

The instrument's popularity did not last far beyond the 18th century. Some claim this was due to strange rumors that using the instrument caused both musicians and their listeners to go mad... One example of fear from playing the glass harmonica was noted by a German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung where it is stated that "the armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation.

Enjoy.

Reposted from 2008 (!) to add this performance of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor:

Crank up the sound when you watch this; share it with someone else in the room.

Today (10/6) is Mad Hatter Day

Explained here:

Mad Hatter Day is 10/6. The date was chosen from the illustrations by John Tenniel in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, wherein the Mad Hatter is always seen wearing a hat bearing a slip of paper with the notation "In this style 10/6". We take this as inspiration to behave in the style of the Mad Hatter on 10/6 (which is October 6 here, although in Britain Mad  Hatter Day occurs on June 10...but I digress...)

Mad Hatter Day began in Boulder, CO, in 1986, among some computer folk who had nothing better to do. It was immediately recognized as valuable because they caused less damage than if they'd been doing their jobs.

As I searched this topic on the 'net today, it was interesting to see how many observers misinterpret the 10/6 on his hat as being either a style number ("The Mad Hatter’s top hat, according to Lewis Carroll, was of the 10/6 style") or worse ("my birthdate (10/6) is on his hat although I think that is his hat size!"). The correct interpretation, of course, is that "the paper in the Mad Hatter's Hat was really an order to make a hat in the style shown, to cost ten shillings sixpence."

Reposted.

An updated, revised, hyperencabulator video

I posted the original encabulator video in 2011.  The Rockwell Retro Encabulator was posted several years ago.  Now this new version.  If you have difficulty following the text, try turning on subtitles.

"Dad, I raked the leaves"

Two examples of creative reimagining of an autumn chore.  Credit to Nikola Faller, via Kottke [third example at the link].

The trauma of school "shooter drills"

 "... nurses are telling us that they are walking away from situations where there are hyperrealistic active-shooter drills, and they themselves are traumatized by the experience. And they are watching the children be traumatized by the experience. They are telling us that they see preschool-age children go home and tell their parents that there was a shooter at school today. And they are telling us, in some situations, that they feel a gun-violence incident at their school, if it hasn’t already happened yet, feels inevitable. There is a lot of concern about the long-term and harmful psychological effects of hyperrealistic active-shooter drills, and that they are, in many instances, likely to be much more harmful in the long term than helpful in any kind of realistic scenario. And I think we need to understand what works before we widely implement something without understanding the long-term consequences...

So last year, there were 305 different shootings at a school. Two of them were deliberate attacks. The other 303 were a time when a gun was fired, and in that moment, students hear gunshots, teachers hear gunshots, the school goes into lockdown usually for hours, for 3, 4, 5, 6 hours. And because everyone heard that gunshot, they think that it is the real thing. They’re texting their parents, “I love you, goodbye.” But in reality, what we can see from data is that the most common situation to happen at a school is a fight that escalates.

There are more teenagers carrying weapons than there have been at previous points in history, and when there’s a conflict, these conflicts are turning into shootings. And the shooter almost always runs immediately, so there’s no threat at the school anymore. But we only have one plan for when a shot is fired, and that’s lockdown. On the other end, when there is a deliberate attack — there have been 230 of those since 1966 — they don’t all happen in the classroom."

The discussion continues at The New England Journal of Medicine (not behind a paywall).

Addendum:  Relevant new report - "Guns are seized in U.S. schools each day. The numbers are soaring."

Last school year, news reports identified more than 1,150 guns brought to K-12 campuses but seized before anyone fired them, according to an investigation by The Washington Post. That’s more than six guns each day, on average...

Littoral stress

Sunbathers on the beach at Rio de Janeiro.  From a gallery at The Atlantic. [credit Tercio Teixeira / AFP / Getty]

"Constitutional sheriffs"

"The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has nine Minnesota events planned in October. They’ll be led by Sheriff Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who is also a founder of an extremist group that played a role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. 

Mack gained notoriety after he was part of a lawsuit that successfully overturned a provision of the Brady Law in the 1990s.

Since then, Mack founded the constitutional sheriffs group and has traveled the country, recruiting law enforcement officers — particularly sheriffs and deputies — to join his movement. Their central tenet, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, is that the county sheriff is the ultimate legal authority and can refuse to enforce any law they consider unconstitutional. This idea has no basis in law and aligns with so-called sovereign citizens , an anti-government extremist movement that believes they are sovereign from the U.S.

The Oath Keepers recruit law enforcement and have gotten more media attention, but the constitutional sheriffs group has “arguably had more success infiltrating law enforcement,” according to the ADL. 

Mack’s group believes county sheriffs’ powers exceed those of any other authorities when they’re protecting Americans from foreign or domestic enemies. Mack has claimed sheriffs have the power to call out the militia to support them — the same logic employed by the Posse Comitatus, which the ADL calls a loosely organized, far-right, violent anti-government group that sprang out of the West Coast around 1970, peaked in the early 1980s and evolved into the sovereign citizen movement. 

The Posse Comitatus also believed county government reigned supreme and sheriffs could nullify laws. One of their members, Gordon Kahl, was involved in two fatal shootouts with law enforcement in 1983, one in North Dakota and later in Arkansas, where he was killed.

Mack refers to his supporters as his posse.

The constitutional sheriffs’ group has honored as a “sheriff of the year” Wisconsin sheriff David Clarke, Jr., who described Black Lives Matter as a hate group and claimed they would join with the terrorist group ISIS to destroy American society. 

More at the link.