Shipwreck may hold £2,600,000,000 treasure

When Mel Fisher found the Atocha treasure off the coast of Florida, the gold, silver and emeralds were valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Now a new treasure ship may have been located, and its cargo would exceed that of the Atocha by an order of magnitude. And it's not a pirate ship or a Spanish galleon - it appears to be a British tramp steamer!

Salvagers claim to have found the world's richest wreck – a British ship sunk by a Nazi submarine while laden with a £2.6 billion cargo that included gold, platinum and diamonds…

It says the merchant ship, which had a predominantly British crew, had left a European port, laden with goods for the US Treasury under the Lend-Lease scheme, whereby the American government gave material support to the Allied war effort in exchange for payments… it was intercepted by German U-boat U87 and sent to the bottom by two torpedoes in June 1942

... the Blue Baron's cargo included at least ten tons of gold bullion, 70 tons of platinum, one a half tons of industrial diamonds and 16 million carats of gem quality diamonds…

It is thought much of the treasure could be Russian, although part, including the diamonds, may have been British. "Both Britain and Russia transhipped large quantities of precious goods to the US to pay for their war effort. It would be unlikely the salvors would be able to keep it all. The real winners will be the lawyers. There is a marine lawyers' saying that treasure is trouble."

Sunday smörgåsbord

A murderer who cannibalized his victim is now on parole, and has a job as a restaurant food critic.

Everyone has seen the cute Ninja Cat video. Someone tried to reproduce it with his own cat, resulting in a not-so-stealth-cat video.

Three men have been arrested in Tennessee after they used an ax to cut off a dog's head, then skinned the dog and were eating it when the sheriff's deputy arrived. The leader of the group said told deputies he had "just carried out God's plan."

The Australian government has declared that identical twins are not related. This is bureaucracy at its best (which is why the item was blogged at Arbroath).

That bizarre knife attack on the children in the Belgian creche? Preliminary reports are that the perpetrator was painted like and emulating Heath Ledger's Joker character on the anniversary of Ledger's death. There are some very, very weird people on this planet.

delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol induces apoptosis in leukemic cells. Translation: the active ingredient in marijuana induces premature cell death in cancer cells.

A candidate for the "world's worst mother" has been charged with a felony after her 29-year-old son was found lying in his filth with maggots and flies, the bone protruding from the decubiti, and the legs fused together and fused to the bed.

Here is a panoramic photo that is 100 meters long, depicting people walking on a bridge in Berlin. You can scroll through it and see that there are some "interesting" looking people in Berlin... I believe the title "We're All Gonna Die" is just a "memento mori" reminder, not something more ominous.

A 17-year-old Argentine girl has already had 7 children. Duggars, watch out...

An immense compendium of common errors in the use of the English language.

Taking money from a collection plate is a childish prank. Taking millions of dollars to fund expensive homes and gambling trips to Las Vegas is another matter.

Cleaner air in the United States is threatening the tropical rain forests of the Amazon.

Josef Mengele may be responsible for an "astonishing number of twins" being born in a village in Brazil.

When the Titanic went down, many Britons died "because they were polite," while the Americans...

After the 1.5 million people gathered in the Washington Mall for Barack Obama's inauguration, Washington D.C. police reported that no one was arrested for any offenses. That's quite amazing, really. There is a superb photo gallery at Boston.com's The Big Picture.

Frogs are being eaten to extinction, with approximately a billion being consumed each year, including in school lunch cafeterias.

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to make your own haggis. Please don't show this to my wife...

It may be possible to test Galileo's eyes by doing DNA tests on his exhumed remains.

Wasps can be trained to detect chemicals, explosives, or whatever you want them to find. It's cheap and they can be trained quickly. They can pick up scents at concentrations as low as one part in a thousand billion, which is a hundred thousand times weaker that the concentrations detectable by commercial "electronic noses."

A photo gallery of abandoned planes.

An 80-year-old man saw drug dealers on his lawn. He got his gun and went out to confront them and scare them away. They shot him four times, once in the back, and he died. They were undercover policemen who had come on his property trying to bait drug offenders.

The secret of the sound from Stradivarius violins may lie in the fact that the wood was treated with certain chemicals, including "borax, fluorides, chromium and iron salts."

A re-enactor in a Civil War battle scene was shot when another re-enactor accidentally fired a .44-caliber ball from an 1860 Army Colt pistol that was supposed to be empty.

Former French president Jacques Chirac was mauled by Sumo. Sumo is a "clinically depressed poodle."

If you're going to camp out in Africa, make sure your sleeping tent is large, so the animals can see it at night. Don't be like stupid Rudy, who was trampled by a hippo...

(image credit here)

Florida bark scorpion with her babies

(image credit here)

Ciprofloxacin in the water

Remember my blog post "You're on antidepressants (whether you know it or not)"? Now a study from India revealed that a stream there had 21 different active pharmaceuticals, including enough ciprofloxacin each day to treat 90,000 people.

Some waterborne drugs also promote antibiotic-resistant germs, especially when — as in India — they are mixed with bacteria in human sewage. Before Larsson's team tested the water.., researchers largely attributed the source of drugs in water to their use, rather than their manufacture.

"Man boob" reduction surgery soaring

The number of men seeking corrective surgery for "man boobs", or "moobs" is expected to hit a record high, according to a new report.

New figures from the British Association of Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, due to be published on Monday, are reported to show the number of men opting for breast-reduction procedures last year rose by nearly half.

In the space of five years, the figure has increased from 22 operations in 2003 to 224 in 227.

I'll defer commentary, except to note that those who favor "universal health care" will need to decide whether/when/how we all will pay for such procedures.

And I'll defer entering any image above; I think the term is self-explanatory, even for those not previously familiar with it. If you're still puzzled, see Google images.

The strength of democracy is peaceful transition

(found at Bits and Pieces)

Four-year-old accordion prodigy plays "Jambalaya"

Video from 1991, when Hunter Hayes been a "country music sensation" for 1/4 of his life.

Link found at Neatorama.

Another teacher wants to ban "Huckleberry Finn"

There's a delightful and insightful editorial at Lew Rockwell today, citing an L.A. Times article that quoted a teacher wondering "whether students should still read books that depict black men as ignorant, inarticulate, and uneducated." Herewith some excerpts from the editorial:

Twain’s novel hosts a character called Nigger Jim, and according to Foley, now that "Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States, novels that use the ‘N-word’ repeatedly need to go." (Note the English teacher’s dubious placement of the adverb.) That Twain may have named his character in accordance with a reality he was endeavoring to depict… That Twain may have said: "Our Civil War was a blot on our history, but not as great a blot as the buying and selling of Negro souls…"

But let’s leave Foley to his syllabus for now and turn to Mark Twain, who may or may not have said: "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." [He] was an equal opportunity offender... about Government, Science, Religion, Education, Greed, Piety, War, Language… Among those who might have found occasion to take offense (but who far more often found occasion to laugh) were the rich, poor, middle-class, Mormons, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, beggars, plutocrats, pundits, whites, blacks, conservatives, liberals, Germans, Irish, English, Native Americans, prudes, politicians, patriots, cannibals, missionaries, imperialists, children, lawyers, Sunday school teachers, educators, policemen, yokels, sophisticates, soldiers…

What burned Twain up was that smug, back-slapping, self-congratulatory nonsense we all submit to at one time or another regarding our perceived superiority – our superior intelligence, superior morality, superior species, superior education, superior genes, superior religion, superior flag. Twain simply wanted to remind us of our place. Not some of us – all of us. Not some races or religions or nationalities – all of them…

The new President has proven himself able to discuss race and religion in an intelligent, forthright, adult fashion. I suspect our high school students, whatever their race or religion, can manage that too. I suspect they are grown up enough to handle Huckleberry Finn, N-word and all, provided the same can be said for their parents and teachers.

People who live in glass houses...

The awesome capabilities of a tree harvester

Before you get all worked up about this, please note this machine is working a tree farm, not a rain forest, and the trees appear to be either pine or pulpwood. There will be time and occasions later to argue about paper production and carbon balance and climate change. For now, just note the incredible power and efficiency of this Finnish tree harvester.

This is how professionals cut trees. Another way to do it is to call your cousin Ralph who has a chainsaw and have him take a tree down. See below...

Tree vs. house

Tree wins. And note this isn't tornado damage; that tree was felled with a chainsaw.

Another reason to clean your attic

Last week it was a 139-year-old baseball card. Today it's railroad signs. A couple were renovating their attic and discovered that the "floorboards" were actually railway destination boards from the steam era.

"We know that many years ago a gentleman lived in the house, which dates back to 1895, who worked at the local Wolverton Works and would have had access to many of these destination boards."

So far the couple has sold eight of them for more than £2,000. They have 40 more.

I'm jealous, and not because of the money. Because it's hidden treasure, and I don't even collect railroad stuff. Blogged for my brother-in-law and his fellow railway enthusiasts.

Scenic Armenian ?monastery

I know nothing about the structure or the location pictured above, except that it apparently is somewhere in Armenia. It appears to be a collection of brick or stone buildings built on a rock outcrop above a deep valley. The outer walls of the outer buildings are almost flush with the rock wall in the style of ancient castles; at the far left of the picture is a larger opening that looks like a portico for a drawbridge. The outer wall-buildings have perhaps arrow-slits (balistraria), or perhaps just skinny windows.

Behind that a large building with certainly a cross on the top, and the building itself perhaps with a cross-shaped floor plan.

A fortified monastery? I don't know, but would love to find out more. The photo album at the original site has all text in what looks like Cyrillic alphabet, so I can't even begin to probe it (babelfish only yielded "multifaceted Armenia." In the past year TYWKIWDBI has had only one visitor from Armenia (from Yerevan), but perhaps someone else knows of this place or can find some information. Thanks in advance. Looks like an absolutely fascinating place that could probably tell some hair-raising stories if the walls could speak...

Original image credit here, via Uncertain Times.

Addendum: Further information and photos of this interesting monastery are in the followup post on Tatev.

Boy's invisible invention protects birds

A Canadian eighth-grader who loves birds was distressed to note a worldwide score of Glass Windows 500,000,000 - Birds 0. So he researched bird vision, found that birds can see ultraviolet colors that humans cannot see, and found a company that makes fluorescent ultraviolet paint for use in bowling alleys. He used this to create falcon-shaped decals which he placed on the windows of his family's cottage - after which, the birds stopped colliding with the windows.

Credit to the Reddit thread for noting that a similar product, called WindowAlert, is already on the market, raising the question of whether his "research" was a Google search. Others note that the images at the WindowAlert site suggest that their product is not invisible to human eyes; there is also the further consideration that if his product is invisible, how would the buyer find it inside the packaging without the assistance of a bird?

In the photo above he is holding the invisible decal. I, being human, of course don't see anything. If you see something that appears to be a nylon thong, then you must be a bird.

All kidding aside, kudos to the young man for his intellectual curiosity in the pursuit of a laudable goal (although the squirrels that eat birds that fall to the yard and deck beneath windows will not be happy...)

Look Around You - Water

Those familiar with the series can just click and enjoy. If it's a first encounter, don't give up until about 3 minutes into the video.