Chimeric apple

Jim Arbury, fruit superintendent at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, said it was probably the 'result of a random genetic mutation'. 'This is known as a chimera where one of the first two cells has developed differently giving rise to one half of the apple being different,' he said.

'It is unlikely to be a stable mutation but it is worth checking next year to see if it recurs. There are instances of some striped apples and pears where the mutation remains stable including one striped pear in the collection at Wisley called Pysanka.'

Via J-Walk.

Addendum:  see also this chimeric Campanula blossom

Saxon insets

Interesting photo found in the very interesting Flickr photostream of Tina Manthorpe. Described as follows: "Saxon pieces let into the tower at Harmston, possibly originally little wind-eyes."

vindauga (="wind-eye") is part of the etymology of "window." I don't have time to trace this further this morning. I wonder what functional purpose the little holes served. They seem to be too small for arrow-slits. Just for ventilation? For viewing the countryside?

Via Suddenly.

Grain harvest in Kashmir

A woman carries a bundle of crops in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir, where agriculture is the main source of income for most people.

She is certainly well-dressed for a farm worker. Perhaps that is the standard in that part of the world? I don't know, but I'm impressed.

Surprising quantities of water on the moon!

Data from three spacecraft, including India's Chandrayaan probe, shows that very fine films of H2O coat the particles that make up the lunar dirt...

The rock and soil samples returned by the Apollo missions were found to be ever so slightly "damp" when examined in the laboratory, but scientists could never rule out the possibility that the water in the samples got in only after they were hauled back to Earth.

Now a remote sensing instrument on Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to lunar orbit, has confirmed that there is a real H2O signal at the Moon.

Two other satellites to look at the Moon - the US Deep Impact probe and the US-European Cassini spacecraft - back up Chandrayaan.

Both collected their Moon data long before Chandrayaan was even launched (in the case of Cassini, 10 years ago), but the significance of what they saw is only now being realised.

Here's how much:

"If you had a cubic metre of lunar soil, you could squeeze it and get out a litre of water," explained US moon researcher Larry Taylor...

They call that a "tiny" amount, but it seems like a lot to me, since I grew up believing the moon was absolutely dry and sterile. Initial speculation is that it could be hydrolyzed for fuel rather than harvested for consumption.

Sydney dust storm

A composite of all the pictures on the Web today.

Language quiz

As a teaser for a new book ("The Wonder of Whiffling"), the Guardian today has posted a quiz about exotic words in the English language. Here are the ten questions; to access the answers you'll need to visit the link.

1. What does broggle – coined in 1653 – mean?

2. What is the job of a fottie?

3. How was a pimple referred to in Tudor-Stuart days?

4. What are you doing if you are snoaching (coined in 1387)?

5. What is a clitherer?

6. What 15th-century term means a hornless cow - and thus, a fool?

7. What might you be doing if you were snirtling?

8. How would you have been described in the 16th century if you were a dandy?

9. What is blepharospasm?

10. What might you have been doing in the 16th century if you “felt as if a cat had kitten’d in one’s mouth”?

I knew one and guessed three. It's quite reminiscent of the game "Balderdash."

Cell phones without signals - the new movie cliche

If nothing else, one has to admire the endurance of the person who sat through over 60 of these movies to create this montage.

Alternate meanings for common words

Found deep in my files, these are selections from a contest run many years ago (? 2002) by the Washington Post, asking readers to create alternate meanings for common words.

1. coffee, n. the person upon whom one coughs.

2. flabbergasted, adj. appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained

3. abdicate, v. to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. esplanade, v. to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. willy-nilly, adj. impotent.

6. negligent, adj. absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. lymph, v. to walk with a lisp.

8. gargoyle, n. olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. flatulence, n. emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. balderdash, n. a rapidly receding hairline.

11. testicle, n. a humorous question on an exam.

12. rectitude, n. the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n. a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. oyster, n. a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

I don't understand how "Frisbeetarianism" found its way to the winner's circle. It appears to be a neologism (reminiscent of George Carlin if my memory serves me), rather than a new definition for an already-existing word.

Photos from the Australian War Memorial

Studio portrait of a child dressed in military uniform

A papier-mache cow, used for milking demonstrations... being tied on to the luggage carrier of Mrs Mellor's car for transport to the farm

Private Francis Edmund Bilton, 5th Battalion. Note the cat curled up asleep

An observation balloon about to ascend

An accident on Savy Aerodrome during the German offensive

the identity of this striking-looking man is not known

Selections from the Flickr photostream of the Australian War Memorial. The set tends to emphasize the lighter, more upbeat aspects of the war experience.

About 100 more pix are available at the site. Larger versions of the photos are available at the individual links.

Flammable Swedish brassieres

The story comes from The Local (Sweden's news in English) -

“Our opinion is that the Swedish Armed Forces should have ordered good, flame-proof underwear,” Council spokesperson Paulina Rehbinder told The Local.

The women complained that the bras’ fasteners have a tendency to come undone when the women performed rigorous exercise, forcing the female soldiers to take off all of their equipment in order to refasten the brassieres.

In addition, the bras aren’t flame resistant and, once lit, can melt onto conscripts’ skin, the Göteborgs-Posten (GP) newspaper reports.

The idea that a brassiere would burst into flames during vigorous exercise immediately brought to my mind a passage in a book I'm reading by Werner Herzog. Describing his efforts to haul a ship over a mountain during the making of Fitzcarraldo...

"The first attempt to tow the ship did not go well, but at least we filmed the failure. After a few meters, the ship tipped and got hung up, and I heard the mighty steel cables in the winch creak strangely and emit unhealthy sounds. Finally one cable, as thick as a man's arm, snapped, having heated up internallly from the strain. It lay smoking on the ground. At the point of breakage I could see that the inner strands were glowing bright red..."

The simplest analogy that comes to mind is how a paperclip gets hot to the touch when you bend it back and forth. Could an underwired sports bra similarly overheat and catch fire during exercise?? It's a disconcerting thought, but my wife has disabused me of the idea, explaining that the positioning of the wire supports would not subject them to such stresses, which would more likely be borne by the conventional elastic components of the bra. The flammability of the bras in the report likely represents susceptibility during washing/drying or the application of external flames.

I couldn't find a suitable photo to accompany this post, although Googling various combinations of brassiere and fire produced some interesting results...

The Pied Piper was probably not a pedophile

Most people are familiar with the legend of the Pied Piper, but many don't know that it is based on a historical event.

The earliest written record is from the town chronicles in an entry from 1384 which states: "It is 10 years since our children left."

Although research has been conducted for centuries, no explanation for the historical event is agreed upon. In any case, the rats were first added to the story in a version from c. 1559 and are absent from earlier accounts.

Wikipedia has a compilation of theories regarding what really happened:

William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire suggests that the Pied Piper was a psychopathic paedophile…

A number of theories suggest that children died of some natural causes and that the Piper was a symbolic figure of Death....

Others have suggested that the children left the city to be part of a pilgrimage, a military campaign, or even a new Children's crusade…

The theory with the broadest support is that the children willingly abandoned their parents and Hamelin in order to become the founders of their own villages during the colonization of Eastern Europe… Added speculation on the migration is based on the idea that by the 13th century the area had too many people resulting in the oldest son owning all the land and power, leaving the rest as serfs…

It has also been suggested that one reason the emigration of the children was never documented was that the children were sold to a recruiter… selling off illegitimate children, orphans or other children the town could not support is the more likely explanation…offering rich rewards to those who were willing to move to the new lands. Thousands of young adults from Lower Saxony and Westphalia headed east.

A World Lit Only By Fire is an outstanding book, but the other theories about the piper seem more logical. More at the link.

The image is the oldest picture of the Pied Piper, copied from the glass window of the Market Church in Hamelin Germany (c.1300-1633), via Uncertain Times.

Politely confronting rude people

I was in first class, and we were on the tarmac waiting to take off. A woman, in about row 35 starting talking on her cellphone. No problem. Except she was speaking so loudly you could hear her all the way up front. Everyone started looking at each other and we were all thinking the same thing: Please keep your voice down.

She told the person she was speaking with to call her back. And then, in a really loud voice, she gave her cellphone number to the person she was on the phone with. I committed that number to memory. And then I waited about 10 seconds and called her cell.

When she answered, I told her she was being too loud and everyone on board the plane could hear every word of her conversation. And it wasn't that interesting.

She started screaming at me, demanding to know who I was. So I told her to look toward the front of the plane. I stood up and waved at her with a big smile on my face. She hung up, sat down and no one heard from her the rest of the flight.

Via Consumerist, where there is a long discussion thread.

Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent"

For those who love classic cinema, the website 1000 Frames of Hitchcock is a delightful resource. I previously used it to reduce "Lifeboat" to 9 frames. Now here is "Foreign Correspondent" in seven.

Prompted by a reminder at Uncertain Times.

Adding another ball to the juggling routine

It was one year ago today that I wrote a post describing Neatorama as a "highly recommended blog." Then in January of this year I reported that Neatorama had a new feature called the Upcoming Queue where anyone could post interesting material for possible inclusion in their blog. During the summer I began writing a number of items for the Queue that were subsequently published in the blog.

You can imagine my surprise (and delight) when an email arrived this past week inviting me to join Neatorama as an author. I pondered the pros and cons for at least several milliseconds before agreeing to accept the position - joining the eight other authors who generate the amazing material at the site.

I mention this now because there will of necessity be some secondary impacts upon TYWKIWDBI. When I was submitting material via their Upcoming Queue, I typically also blogged the item here, but now as a Neatorama author I can't in good conscience justify double-posting, so from now on I'll just post links here to direct those interested to the relevant material. The items I've posted so far this week include how to create Chinese marbled eggs, how aliens replied to the Arecibo message using crop circles, and some outrageously outre hairstyles.

Not posting such items at TYWKIWDBI will not be a problem, because there is such a huge world of material available for accumulator blogs like this one. The larger and more practical problem is the time commitment required. I can't add more hours to my blogging day (and night) without seriously infringing on other activities, so I will undoubtedly have to spend a little less time here as I work on the somewhat more polished material for Neatorama.

We'll see how it works out. I view life as a continuing adventure, and I do like to explore new areas. I'm confident that the quality of TYWKIWDBI won't be noticeably compromised.

Unimaginable courage

Camisea, 11 June, 1981:
"It was already dark when I was called to the medic's station in the big camp. Up on the plateau between the two rivers, woodsmen had been felling trees, barefoot as usual, and one of them had been bitten by a snake. Snakes had never been seen anywhere near chain saws, because the noise and the exhaust fumes drive the snakes deep into the jungle, but this man had suddenly been bitten twice in the foot. He had dropped his chain saw and just caught a glimpse of the snake before it disappeared into the underbrush; it was a chuchupe. Usually this snake's bite causes cardiac arrest and stops breathing in less than a minute, and cases in which a person has survived a bite longer than seven or eight minutes without treatment are almost unknown. Our camp with the doctor and the antivenom serum was twenty minutes away. The man, so I was told by someone who had been working next to him, had stood motionless for a few seconds, thinking hard. Then he had picked up the chain saw, which had stalled when it hit the ground, pulled the cord to start it, the way you pull an outboard motor, and had sawn off his foot above the ankle. I saw the man - his whole body was gray. He was alive, perfetly collected, and very calm. Before they took him to the doctor, the others had tied off his leg in three places with lianas: below his crotch, below his knee, and above the stump, and had twisted the lianas with sticks to make a tight tourniquet. They had stuck a kind of moss on the stump to stop the bleeding. I had a plane readied to fly him out to Lima the next day."

Blogged not because of the violence or the grotesqueness of the event, but because of my jaw-dropping admiration for this woodcutter and the courage it must have taken for him to face his imminent mortality and deal with it in such a dramatic fashion.

From Werner Herzog's Conquest of the Useless - his notebooks about the filming of Fitzcarraldo at the headwaters of the Amazon.