A man walks into a dentist's office...

... and says, "Can you help me? I think I'm a moth."

The dentist tells him, "You don't need a dentist. You need a psychiatrist."

"Yes, I know," the man says.

The dentist asks, "So then why did you come in here?"

The man replies, "The light was on.”

The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca

That's the subtitle of A Land So Strange, by Andres Resendez. The other subtitle summarizes the story: "The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century." In 1528 about 300 Spaniards trying to reach Mexico were stranded on the western side of Florida near Tampa Bay. They travelled by foot and horse to the Panhandle area, eventually eating their horses to fend off starvation. They fashioned rafts and tried to sail westward along the Gulf, only to be ravished by storms, finally reaching the barrier islands near present-day Galveston. Further starvation winnowed the survivors down to three Spaniards and an African from Morocco. They proceeded naked and barefoot across south Texas and the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico, surviving by eating cactus, spiders, and "deer excrement." Eight years after leaving Florida they made contact with the Spaniards in the Mexico City area.

Cabeza de Vaca was a well-educated man who later wrote an account of his journey. Resendez has compiled that information along with other historic and archaeologic investigations into this book, which is an easy and well-illustrated read.

Map credit.

Illustrated blockbooks

Many thanks to Scribal Terror for their brief entry this morning about a fifteenth-century illustrated Apocalypse, which included a description of a blockbook:

Blockbooks of mid-fifteenth century Europe were often printed, not with a press, but by laying the sheet of paper over the inked block and rubbing the back of the paper with some rounded object (a "rubber" or "burnisher") to transfer the ink. (The technique will be familiar to many people who have done some introductory experiments in printing, perhaps in school art classes.) When you print this way, you can only print on one side of the sheet, since the rubbing of the "verso" would damage the printing on the "recto".... The blockbook technology was not, as you might imagine, an early stage of printing from which printing with moveable type evolved. In fact, the age of the blockbook in Europe was contemporary with the first two or three decades of printing from moveable type; most blockbooks are dated in the 1450's, 60's or 70's.

More details at the blockbook link above. And more images at the fascinating blog entitled BibliOdyssey, which I hope to explore and provide more links to in the future.

rice resonating with sound frequencies

I had posted this back in January with a link to what I believe is the original site, but their code was apparently defective, and the video didn't play well for some visitors to TYWKIWDBI. I've subsequently found a better copy on YouTube (embedded above).

The phenomenon is fascinating, and of course best appreciated with your computer's sound on on (and probably with dogs excluded from the room...)

Is "dwarf crime" really a growing problem?

Sounds like an Onion story, but this was published today in Ananova:

Thieves are robbing long-distance coaches by sneaking dwarves into the luggage holds in sports bags. Once inside, they slip out from their hiding places to rifle through the belongings of unsuspecting travellers. Then they take their loot back to their hiding place and wait to be collected by another gang member when the coach reaches its destination, reports The Sun.They have stolen thousands of pounds in cash, gems and other valuables in recent months. Swebus, which ferries thousands of Brits across Sweden, has been among coach firms targeted. A spokesman said: "We have had reports about several thefts by dwarves on the stretch between Vasteras and Stockholm. "We're thinking of installing video cameras."

A Stockholm Police spokesman said: "We are looking at our records to identify criminals of limited stature."

Please feel free to leave comments

I received an email today from a friend who indicated he had wanted to comment on one of the posts in TYWKIWDBI, but didn't want to create a "Blogger/Google account." That is not required.

To leave a comment, click on the "comment" feature below an entry; the webhost offers to let people sign in using their Blogger or Google identities, but it is not necessary to have or to create one. Just write your comments, then scroll down to "anonymous", check that, and click on the "publish comment" command.

I do "moderate" (screen) the comments, but that is only to delete spam, profanities, and inanities; I don't screen out conflicting opinions. Your comment should show up within a day (whenever I check the blog).

Roadkill can work both ways

Last week the Guardian (U.K.) reported that people were placing jam sandwiches, sausage rolls, or mince pies on the highway to lure deer onto the roadway. When the deer is struck, they then "dash out and cart the carcass off to be turned into venison steaks and added to game pies."

The Guardian piece cautions re the risk of a motorcyclist skidding on a jam sandwich (?), but fails to emphasize the danger to motorists of striking a deer - well illustrated in these photos of an accidental roadkill in Minnesota...

Tetris quilt

Interesting design for a backpack

Who would the world choose for President of the United States?

Since the entries this morning have an international flavor, I thought I would add this one. If people in other countries could choose the president of the U.S., whom would they elect? One website was created to address this question - appropriately called whowouldtheworldelect.com. When people click on a candidate's picture to "vote", the computer records what country they were in at the time, and compiles the data accordingly. As of this morning, there have been 108,000 votes cast, from 165 countries!

I invite readers to click on the link and either vote or just view the results. Before doing so, who do you think the world (at least the online world) would elect? Hint - it's not Hillary Clinton, although she dominates the voting from Croatia (??).

Nous sommes desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n’avons pas vote pour lui.

The Tom Bihn company placed these labels in tote bags it was selling in France. Originally created by the seamstresses and intended as a joke about the company's president, the French public interpreted it as a criticism of Jacques Chirac. Since it was an American company, it then hit the internet as a commentary on George Bush, and immediately went viral. The company cleverly responded by creating T-shirts with the label displayed on the chest; the resulting sales raised $18,480.00 for the Seattle Vet Center for their Homeless Vet Program.

If TYWKIWDBI were made of fabric, it would have this label

Hola!

The comment on the previous post from a viewer in Argentina reminded me that TYWKIWDBI is reaching a wider audience than the small circle of friends and family I envisioned when I created it three weeks ago. I've been monitoring traffic using Google Analytics, which tells me where visitors come from (but not who they are); so far this blog has been viewed in 31 of the United States plus Canada, the U.K., Greece, Pakistan, Argentina, Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Panamal, and Sweden. As a greeting to the newest reader, I'll decorate this post with a picture of Mar del Plata, which must have a lovely seaside.

The face of a child

This is a remarkable image. I would like to give credit to the photographer, but no data accompanied the image when I found it on Pizdaus.

Amazing ant colony

A remarkable 6-minute video depicting the structure and mechanics of a colony of leaf-cutting ants. (The investigators make a cement cast of the underground structure, then dig it out to see how the ants can make ventilation shafts where some air goes in and other shafts where carbon dioxide goes out). Posted this morning at Neatorama.

Odin's Castle

As long as I'm listing recommended websites tonight, I have to include Odin's Castle. It is far and away the best organized and most extensive accumulation of links about history that you can find anywhere. Recipient of many, many awards - richly deserved. If you have any interest in anything related to history, bookmark this site.