Guantanamo detention facility = $900,000 per year. Per inmate.

As reported by Reuters, via MSN:

The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner.

By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say...

The huge cost of running the prison and judicial complex stem from its offshore location at a 45-square-mile U.S. Naval Base on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Because ties between the two countries are almost nonexistent, almost everything for the facilities has to be ferried in from outside.

When the military tribunals are in session, everyone from judges and lawyers to observers and media have to fly into Guantanamo on military aircraft. Food, construction materials and other goods are shipped in from outside, experts say.

But despite the high cost of the camp, and despite the fact that Republicans traditionally demand belt-tightening by the federal government, a Republican aide with the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee said there was little point in asking if the price was worth it because "there isn't an alternative at the moment."..

Among current inmates, nine have been charged with crimes or convicted, 24 are considered eligible for possible prosecution, 86 have been cleared for transfer or release and 47 are considered too dangerous for release but are not facing prosecution. ..

General John Kelly, the head of Southern Command, which is responsible for Guantanamo, told a House of Representatives panel in March that he needed some $170 million to improve the facilities for troops stationed at the base as part of detention operations. Kelly said the living conditions were "pretty questionable" and told the panel, "We need to take care of our troops."

Your tax money at work.

"Makeup" nylons during WWII

Silk or nylon stockings were in extremely short supply by the summer of 1942... Most women had to find ingenious methods of dressing their legs. These pictures show a woman drawing in the seam-line on “Makeup” stockings with a device made from a screw driver handle, bicycle leg clip, and an eyebrow pencil, 1942. (source: Bettman/Corbis)

From The Vintage Thimble, via good girls finish last.

Bathing in the Middle Ages

Yes, they did bathe.  An article at Medievalists explains:

There are stories of how people didn’t bathe in the Middle Ages – for example, St Fintan of Clonenagh was said to take a bath only once a year, just before Easter, for twenty-four years. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxons believed that the Vikings were overly concerned with cleanliness since they took a bath once a week.  On the other hand, we can also see many literary references and works of art depicting people taking baths, and noting that it was part of daily activity...

Some famous bathing sites had their own rules. In 1336, Pietro de Tussignano formulated twelve rules for those coming to the Italian town at Burmi, which lies near Switzerland, to get the healing effects of its bath. They include that the person should beforehand not to have too much sexual intercourse nor have abstained from it, and that he should also enter the bath with an empty stomach (if they had to have food it could only two spoons of raisins with a little wine). You could only pour the water over your head if you were clean-shaven, otherwise your hairs might impede the effects of the water. The person should take the baths for fifteen days, spending up to an hour a day getting washed, but if all goes well, the bather will benefit for over six months with improved health...

Royalty throughout Europe often entertained guests with baths, often trying to impress each other with how luxurious they could make it. This tradition even goes back to the Carolingians - Einhard says that Charlemagne loved taking baths, and that “he would invite not only his sons to bathe with him, but his nobles and friends as well, and occasionally even a crowd of attendants and bodyguards, so that sometimes a hundred men or more would be in the water together.”

...public baths were very common throughout Europe. By the thirteenth-century one could find over 32 bathhouses in Paris; Alexander Neckham, who lived in that city a century earlier, says that he would be awakened in the mornings by people crying in the streets that ‘that baths are hot!” In Southwark, the town on the opposite side of the Thames River from London, a person could choose from 18 hot baths. Even smaller towns would have bathhouses, often connected with the local bakery – the baths could make use of the heat coming from their ovens to help heat their water...

German bath etchings from the fifteenth century often feature the town bathhouse, with a long row of bathing couples eating a meal naked in bathtubs, often several to a tub, with other couples seen smiling in beds in the mid-distance.”

More at the link.

Everyone in Catalonia is invited...

... to purchase tickets to the Escapade Theatre Company's presentation of Mack The Knife (the musical):

"A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Greed, Corruption, and Murder: A Modern Story For Our Times."

"Escapade presents its completely updated version of the classic story of Mack the Knife, the violent gang leader who steals Polly Peachum away from her parents and sets in motion a compelling tale of love and crime in London’s underworld.

Set in London in 2014, William V is about to be crowned, the electric chair is back, prostitution is legal, riots are a common occurrence and the police force is openly known to be corrupt. Times are so hard that entrepreneur JJ Peachum makes a living out of selling begging licences and costumes to the poor, so that they can earn an “honest” living on the dangerous streets of London."

In the orchestra you may be able to spot a tall Norwegian-appearing young man playing the tenor saxophone.  That will be my cousin Karl, a resident of Barcelona for the past couple decades, a teacher, and a jazz enthusiast. 

"Cheekini" explained

Cheekini: A style of women’s underwear with moderate coverage in front and on the sides and a raised cut in the rear that covers some but not all of the buttock cheeks.

The style sometimes appears, with minor variations, under different names: boykini panties, boyleg briefs, hipster panties, booty shorts. All are marketed as comfortable, panty-line-less alternatives to thong underwear.

I first discovered cheekini on the Victoria’s Secret website, but the term is neither original nor exclusive to that retailer. JC Penney sells cheekini panties under its Flirtitude label; it also sells visually similar boykini panties and hipster panties.

There's more information about cheekinis at Fritinancy, which also offers this evocative alternative term for thongs:  "butt floss."

Image from Victoria's Secret.

Atmospheric CO2 levels

Carbon dioxide is the most important long-lived global warming gas, and once it is emitted by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil, a single CO2 molecule can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years...

By drilling for ice cores and analyzing the air bubbles, scientists have found that, at no point during at least the past 800,000 years have atmospheric CO2 levels been as high as they are now...

For a 2009 study, published in the journal Science, scientists analyzed shells in deep sea sediments to estimate past CO2 levels, and found that CO2 levels have not been as high as they are now for at least the past 10 to 15 million years, during the Miocene epoch.

Text from Climate Central, via On Weather.  While it's possible that there may have been transient spikes in the remote past not sampled in ice-core type data, there is no arguing about the direction of the present trend (Keeling curve at top) or the departure from historic norms.

How zombie worms eat bones

Spread throughout the world's oceans, zombie worms are quite adept at making the bones of whales and other large marine animals look like Swiss cheese.    

But these worms don't have any mouthparts with which to gnaw the holes. So how do they do it? A study published in the May 1 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that rather than being "bone-drilling" worms, they're actually "bone-dissolving" worms: The worms’ skin produces acid in large quantities to break down bones.

From Live Science, via Mad as a Marine Biologist. Photo:Martin Tresguerres et al / Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"Gaki No Tsukai Wall of Boxes"

YouTube link.

Naki'o has four prosthetic legs

Naki’o is a mixed-breed dog with four prosthetic leg devices. Naki’o lost all four feet to frostbite when he was abandoned as a puppy in a foreclosed home. He now lives in Colorado Springs, happily.

There are a couple additional photos at the Reuters source, via NPR.

It's only a dead body

The uncle of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev arrived in Massachusetts on Sunday to arrange for his burial, saying he understands that "no one wants to associate their names with such evil events."..

Funeral director Peter Stefan said he hasn't been able to find a cemetery in Massachusetts willing to take the body. He said he plans to ask the city of Cambridge, where Tsarnaev lived, to provide a burial plot, and if Cambridge turns him down, he will seek help from state officials...

[Cambridge city manager Robert] Healy says it would not be in the best interest of the city to execute a deed for a plot at Cambridge Cemetery... He said the families who have loved ones interred at the cemetery also deserve to have their deceased family members rest in peace. He said other federal agencies should take the lead in the burial...

Tsarni told reporters that he is arranging for Tsarnaev's burial because religion and tradition call for his nephew to be buried. He would like him buried in Massachusetts because he's lived in the state for the last decade, he said. "I'm dealing with logistics. A dead person must be buried," he said.

Stefan said he has received calls from people criticizing him and calling him "un-American" for being willing to handle Tamerlan Tsarnaev's funeral."We take an oath to do this. Can I pick and choose? No. Can I separate the sins from the sinners? No," he said. "We are burying a dead body. That's what we do."

A half dozen protesters gathered outside the funeral home Sunday holding signs and American flags and chanting "USA!" One sign read: "Do not bury him on U.S. soil." Several people drove by the funeral home earlier Sunday and yelled, including one man who shouted, "Throw him off a boat like Osama bin Laden!"

And from the comments at Huffington Post:

This %$^#^ does not deserve to buried on US soil. I'm surprised his family is even trying, if he does end up being buried here, his grave will be desecrated on a regular basis, and I can't say I blame whoever would do it.

Maybe there's a nice dog park in Boston where they can bury him. He gets buried, and the dogs have a headstone to use = WIN-WIN

Cremate him then put his ashes in a garbage truck!

Put him in a packing crate, tell the parents they have 7 days to come and get him or arrange for shipping back to Russia. After 7 days, burn the crate and scatter the ashes over cesspool. I have no idea where this as anyone's problem other than the parents or family.

Put a granade in his mouth and just pull the pin....no burial needed!!! 

So, where were all these comments for Adam Lanza, Wade Michel Page or Timothy McVeigh? I don't recall protests like this or calls to drop them into the ocean. What is the difference? I was a little young, but did we protest Bundy's burial like this? Or Gary Ridgeway's? Or John Wayne Gacy's? What makes Tamerlan so special? 

It's just a dead body.

Kissing booth

Posted at imgur;  source credit unknown.

Is Iraq also heading toward civil war?

We don't hear much about Iraq in the mainstream media these days.  Here are excerpts from a story at Truthdig, which may or may not be important:

After the deadliest month of political fighting in five years, Iraq appears to be sliding rapidly into a new civil war that “will be worse than Syria,” leaders say. The escalating violence has residents of Baghdad stocking up on rice, vegetables and other foods in case fighting or curfews prevent them from getting to shops. “It is wrong to say we are getting close to a civil war,” a senior Iraqi politician said. “The civil war has already started... 

“The crises in Iraq and Syria are now cross-infecting each other. The two-year-old uprising of the Sunni in Syria encouraged their compatriots in Iraq, who share a common frontier, to start their own protests...

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is floundering in its response. In dealing with the four-month-old protest movement by the Sunni Arabs, a fifth of Iraq’s population, who say they are treated as second-class citizens, he varies between denouncing them as terrorists and admitting that they have real grievances...

The Iraqi government depends on an alliance between the Shia and the Kurds who, before the US invasion of 2003, were oppressed by the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein.

Dome car, 1947

One of the most memorable adventures of my youth was a train trip from Minneapolis to Washington, D.C. (albeit not in a domed car).  It's too bad more children aren't afforded that opportunity; perhaps then Americans would have a greater appreciation of mass transit.

Information about the rise and decline of dome cars.

Photo from National Geographic's Found photoblog (a great site to browse).

Prophylactic thyroidectomy

After learning that all three of her children carried a gene that causes thyroid cancer, Joyce Walmer decided each child should have his or her thyroid removed...

It’s called MEN2A, a hereditary trait that carries with it a 100 percent chance of developing thyroid cancer. Walmer’s grandmother had the gene, and died from the disease. So did her uncle, who lost his fight with it at 28, and so did her father, whose life thyroid cancer claimed at 47. Walmer herself was diagnosed when she was 15.

Now 30, and living in South Beloit, Ill., Walmer knew there was a 50-percent chance she had passed MEN2A down to each of her children...

Walmer had bloodwork done on each child — 9-year-old Kiara, 5-year-old Robert and

2-year-old Lilliana — last August, testing that would tell her whether they carried the gene. The results confirmed what Walmer had feared: Each of her children carried MEN2A, and would eventually develop thyroid cancer.

“I expected one to carry it,” Walmer said. “But you never expect that you have three kids and all three have it.”..

Kiara, the oldest, had her surgery first, Robert went two weeks later, and Lilliana took her baby doll into surgery two weeks after that.

The surgeries went well — there were some complications with Kiara’s, and she was stuck in bed for 24 hours, but Robert and Lilliana were up and running around a few hours after theirs.

They aren’t quite out of the woods yet, though. Robert and Kiara had both already developed small amounts of the cancer...

The rest of the story is in the Wisconsin State Journal, with details about preventive surgery for other diseases, and about postoperative management.

Photo credit M.P. King.

Cheerful Russian dashcam footage

YouTube link.

Compilations of dashcam videos from Russian drivers are famous for their depiction of horrendous accidents, gore and carnage.  This 5-minute video shows the converse - people being nice to one another and to animals at risk.

Viewing this will probably bring a couple tears of happiness to your eyes...

Via Reddit. Music reportedly from The Cinematic Orchestra Arrival of the Birds and Transformation.