Rest in peace, Robin Williams

YouTube link.

 One of the greatest actors of our time, dead way too soon.

"He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die."

The Faulkner Glossary contains both local Mississippi dialect words and the "highfalutin" words of conventional English used by the author.

A compilation of Bible verses Christians tend to ignore.

Jury nullification explained. "You declare the defendant "not guilty" regardless of the evidence and let him walk free, "nullifying" the unjust or unfair law... the right to nullify is given to us by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, the same part of the Bill of Rights that gives us the right to trial by jury.

From the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, an examination of the ecosystem inside hollow oak trees.

Contrary to established practice (and conventional wisdom), colon carcinoma with mets to the liver may be best managed by transplanting a new liver.

Six out of every ten patients who received a new liver were still alive five years later. This is more than ten times the rate elsewise expected for colorectal cancer patients with liver metastases.

The website of Oxford Dictionaries asks "How do you pronounce scone?" (to rhyme with cone or to rhyme with con?)


A mother left her 4-year-old son in the car while she went into a store for five minutes.  Nothing happened to him.  But a lot happened to her.

It saddens me to report the cyberdeath of the Cynical-C blog.  After ten years of blogging, Chris wrote his goodbye post several months ago.  I was hoping he might experience a change of heart, but apparently the DNR status was irrevocable.  Farewells and condolences are in the second post down.  On the upside, Chris has left the blog up and there is a huge archive, accessible via the "tags" in the right sidebar.

The Washington Post has an interesting recurring column for grammar geeks.

There is a peat bog in the Congo that is the size of England.  No bog bodies so far, because it isn't being harvested.  But it is important for the implications on the physics of carbon cycling.

A layman's guide to chlorine.

Video of a couple in a truck that gets hit by lightning (still image screencap at left).  They were trapped in the vehicle with the fumes because the doors wouldn't open.  No deaths, but oofda...

"...a pair of male brown bears at a zoo in Croatia have been engaging in oral sex--and lots of it..."  Explanation, discussion of fellation among animals (with safe-for-work images) at Huffington Post.

Meta for the day:  A list of lists of lists.

Guidelines for exercise by survivors of polio.  Post-polio Health International has a variety of excellent resources.

There are many variants of bikinis - microkinis, tankinis, trikinis, pubikinis, skirtinis, etc., and Wikipedia has pages for each of them.

Simple repetition can transform speech into song.  Click on these two sound demos at Rob's Webstek.

There is a special trick needed to eat tremoços (explained at Oregon Expat).

When you read about how the U.S. Postal Service is a money-losing operation, it is crucial to understand that the organization is required by law to continue ridiculous activities like subsidizing certain shipments to Alaska.  "The 12-pack of Coke alone cost the Postal Service $21 to get here."

There are a variety of toilet seats with enhanced functions in common use worldwide, but unfamiliar to Americans.

Why tap water is better than bottled water.

"An end-of-life doula is someone who is trained to comfort and support someone who is dying. In other words, just as a birth doula accompanies a baby into this world, an end-of-life doula accompanies a person out of this world. I wanted to become one."

A link to the Twin Cities Unicycle Club.

A theory that there is a secret anagram hidden in the movie "Skyfall" -

The key anagram is the cryptic message Silva sends to M shortly before all mayhem breaks loose: “THINK ON YOUR SINS.” The language is so highly stylized that I was certain, from the time the words appeared on the screen of M’s laptop, that there was a message hidden within.

(spoilers at the link for those who haven't seen the movie)

More than you ever needed to know about golf tees.

An awesome yellow jacket nest.

Solar energy is making quantum leaps forward, at least in Australia; "The impact has been so profound, and wholesale prices pushed down so low, that few coal generators in Australia made a profit last year. Hardly any are making a profit this year. State-owned generators like Stanwell are specifically blaming rooftop solar."

A humorous photoessay on why birth control exists.

A detailed post about the Triete meridian - "But there is (was!) also a system of local prime meridians, intended to serve the limited chonometric needs of the people in their surroundings. Their august presences have dissipated over time from having been essential local features and exemplars of the timekeepers’ art, until now they are little more than atrophied historical appendages, modest curiosities at best."

The MMR vaccine scare, and how is was manipulated.

Why you should never use two spaces after a period.  TYWKIWDBI still does, because of 50-year-old touch-typing reflexes I can't control.

The La Madeleine mammoth (carved on ivory) proves than early man coexisted with the animals.

Top image of a foraminifera (credit Spike Walker) from the Wellcome Awards, via Nag on the Lake.

In the title are the closing sentences from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (previously reviewed).

Listen to this remarkable story

YouTube link.

An NPR post tells the truly remarkable story of a woman who can only see things when they are in motion.  If you can't find the time to watch a three-and-a-half minute video, you can browse the nuggets of the story in seconds, but it's way better to hear the story in the woman's own voice.

"And then I think about it for a while and then I think 'Oh, well, at least I'm here.'"

When an elephant has to scratch his tummy...

Credit Armand Grobler/Barcroft Media.  One additional photo in the Telegraph picture gallery.

Rethinking golf as a team sport

In an effort to increase the popularity of golf among young players, the PGA is encouraging formats in which particpants compete as teams rather than as individuals.

Thus far, it seems to be working. From a small pilot program three years ago, PGA Junior League Golf this summer has attracted more than 18,000 players on 1,500 teams, according to the PGA. That's a long way from Little League baseball, which counts some two million U.S. participants aged 4 to 18, but the PGA believes Junior League Golf can reach 100,000 players in the next few years and continue to expand from there...

"Kids golf has lost ground to other sports mostly because the game hasn't yet understood how organized it needs to be," said Dan Van Horn, the founder of U.S. Kids Golf, the largest supplier of kids golf equipment. Van Horn has no direct involvement in Junior League, but likes what the PGA is doing. "Kids may love the sport, but what they've been missing is the social connection with other kids their age, the camaraderie," he said. As much of an individual game as golf is, that social aspect is the main appeal for most adults, too. 

I have to say that the most enjoyable golf I've ever played has been in team-type "scramble" or "best ball" formats, where everyone in a foursome tees off, then all four play their next shot from wherever the best ball of the first four landed.

Think you understand the difference between "inpatient" and "outpatient?" Think again.

From an eye-opening op-ed column in the Chicago Tribune's Business section:

If you find yourself in a hospital for more than a few hours, make sure you find out if you have been admitted for inpatient care or if you are merely considered an outpatient under what is called "observation care."

If you haven't been admitted to the hospital, the costs you may have to pay out of pocket for medical services and drugs could be considerable. You could also be denied Medicare coverage for follow-up nursing care.

Patients getting emergency department services, observation services, outpatient surgery, lab tests or X-rays, but for whom the doctor hasn't written an order of admission, are considered outpatients even if they spend the night. Even if you stay in the hospital for a few days, don't assume you have been admitted. Ask about your status!

Why are hospitals doing this? In November 2010, the American Hospital Association warned that changes in policy by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services "are causing hospitals to place patients in observation status for more than 48 hours instead of admitting them."

The most unpleasant surprise for non-admitted patients is the cost of drugs. Susan Jaffe of Kaiser Health News recently documented examples of patients charged much more for common drugs than they would have paid at a local pharmacy. A patient in Boca Raton, Fla., for instance, was charged $71 for a blood pressure pill for which her neighborhood pharmacy charges 16 cents...

Naturally, an emergency patient isn't thinking about hospital status. However, being an inpatient can mean significant savings to you. So you should ask your doctor to see that you are admitted. In addition, do not hesitate to ask your insurer for assistance in appeals if you believe that the bill you received is incorrect.

More at the source, where there are several relevant links to Medicare resources.  If you or any of your family are likely to be admitted to a hospital, it may be financially very important to you to understand the difference between "observation care" and "admission." I think understanding the details isn't necessary - just knowing that sleeping overnight in the hospital doesn't necessarily mean you're an "inpatient."

This will be of interest only to readers in the United States.  Those of you from other countries probably don't have to worry about this kind of administrative b*llshit.

Addendum:  Reposted from 2012 to add these observations about the deceptive practice of "observation stays" -

Such patients generally have conditions less serious than those requiring admission, but they can remain in the hospital for days, on the same floor as admitted patients. Afterward, they potentially face greater out-of-pocket costs through Medicare and an inability to qualify for nursing home coverage...

...more than 10 percent of stays at [University of Wisconsin] Hospital are observation stays. Nearly 17 percent of the observation stays last more than 48 hours, which Medicare says is supposed to happen in “only rare and exceptional cases.”

Brown University researchers and others say the trend could be fueled by Medicare’s relatively recent fines against hospitals with too many readmissions, or admissions within 30 days of previous ones. If the first stay is an observation, an admission within 30 days won’t be penalized.

More details at the Wisconsin State Journal.

A young girl rescues her books from the rubble of mideast war

The girl is Palestinian, but she could have been Israeli, because, as the Kikuyu people in Kenya say, "When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."

The source for the image is a bit uncertain because it has been retweeted so often.  This from the Reddit thread: "The oldest source for the image I can find it from a Twitter account based in Kuwait called (according to Google translate) "Code 00965," that tweeted it on July 27. The other sources are all from after that. It looks like some Indian people who work in the oil industry picked it up, then it got retweeted by Buzzfeed India, which is where it was more broadly circulated before people started picking it up in image searches and whatnot."

Floodwaters in Switzerland

YouTube link.

te da gi po

Every year the Scrabble gods add new words to the 100,000+ already approved by the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.  This year dubstep, mixtape, hashtag, frenemy, sudoko, and chillax are representative of modern coinages now recognized for game use.  Quinzhee (a shelter hollowed out of a pile of snow) and qajaq are examples of more exotic fare. 

But the real excitement among players centers on the approval of te, da, gi, and po.  Such two-letter combinations can be the key to linking new words onto the board, especially for building high-scoring parallel arrangements.

Google Maps no longer offers "search nearby" function

I recently tried to find a certain type of business near a certain location and discovered that I could no longer use Google Maps for that purpose.  A quick search retrieved this confirmatory article:

Ironically, the [updated] maps appear to have become less customer friendly in one important regard: One of the features that Google maps took away on the left side was the "Search nearby" function. That has many users complaining.

The issue is that instead of showing users common places such as restaurants, cafes, pharmacies or post offices, the default Google Maps appears to be focused on people who are completely unfamiliar with the area. Google Maps now wants to show us photos of nearby tourist attractions...

Earlier today, I tried to find a coffee place to meet with a source. I typed in an address in the general area where I planned to go, figuring I'd hit the "search nearby" function afterward as I normally do. No such button was anywhere to be found. ..

Apparently, I'm not the only one who's frustrated with the "search nearby" function being taken away. SlashDot posted complaints about it about a month ago and more than 400 people posted comments on it in the Google Product Forum.

Google community manager Daniel posted a reply to those comments Feb. 20, saying there are two ways to do a nearby search now... [continued at the link]

Mayflies

A beautiful, delicate creature - and the epitome of "ephemera."

Mayflies spend the majority of their lives in an aquatic environment, emerging as a flying insect in the early summer:

The final moult of the naiad is not to the full adult form, but to a winged subimago that physically resembles the adult, but which is usually sexually immature. The subimagos are generally poor fliers, and typically lack the colouration patterns used to attract mates. The subimago eventually moults to the full adult, making mayflies the only insects where a winged form undergoes moulting.

They live for only a day or two. Some people are offended by the fact that when the mayflies emerge, they do so by the tens of millions, coating lakeside vegetation (and cabins and vehicles and anything in the riparian area), and offering game fish enough free nutrition from their dead bodies that fishing declines for a measureable period.

The photo enlarges to wallpaper with a click (photo credit me).

Addendum:  Reposted from 2009 to add this awesome radar image of a massive emergence of mayflies along the Mississippi River valley near La Crosse, Wisconsin:

Image from the NOAA website, where there are also a dozen or so still images of the effects of the massive swarm on ground structures (especially those lit at night like gas stations).  The Star Tribune and other local newspapers also documented the phenomenon and noted that the masses of mayflies were responsible for a three-car accident on a local highway bridge, but note that the emergence is a favorable sign of local water quality:

By the 1980s, mayflies, stoneflies, caddis flies and even some species of fish had disappeared from the Mississippi River from the Twin Cities area all the way to Lake Pepin. But modern sewage treatment facilities and regulations on disposal of toxic chemicals have brought mayflies, and a healthy food chain, back to most waterways.

How to speak (Doric) Scottish

YouTube link.

This is the first of four videos posted by Catherine The Brave.  It will teach you why you would not want to have a moofae of mayvees, and will come in handy if you ever need to converse with John Farrier's ancestors.

"Zoo jeans" explained

A New Yorker column explores "sartorial slumming" -

It now appears, according to an article on the British Web site The Conversation, that jeans savaged by wild animals are a trend in designer sportswear. A Japanese denim brand had the bright idea, at least for raising its profile, of sewing indigo-dyed cotton fabric around rimless tires, sausage-shaped bolsters, and fat rubber balls, and throwing the objects to the inmates of the Kamine Zoo... When the fabric has been properly “distressed”—i.e., mauled—it is retrieved from the enclosures and made into trousers that are sold under the label Zoo Jeans...

Three pairs of the jeans were auctioned, on July 7th, at a benefit for the zoo. The bidding on “T-1,” a model “designed” by the tigers, reached twelve hundred dollars... The destination of the other jeans seems to be upscale department stores, although a buyer at Selfridges, in London, complained that the rips were “too sporadic.” ..

A writer on Hypebeast suggests duct-taping new jeans to the tires of your car before driving around the block. “Do a couple [of] donuts, burnouts, etc. … then rotate and repeat.”

More at the link. 

Photo credit  Clint Brewer/Splash News/Corbis.

French hospital will incorporate a wine bar

A hospital in south-central France has come up with an unconventional, not to mention extremely French, idea to try to improve the lives of terminally ill patients. It is to open a wine bar that will offer "medically supervised" wine tasting. The bar, which will open in September, will be located at the palliative care centre at the CHU Clermont-Ferrand hospital in Puy-de-Dôme, will be open to patients, their friends and relatives. 

More information at The Local, via Nothing to do with Arbroath.

I remember forty years ago when I lived in Texas several local hospitals, including the VA, had "medicinal alcohol" (gin, vodka, etc) in their formularies.  Any physician could prescribe it for any patient, but it was primarily prescribed to prevent alcoholics from going into withdrawal during a hospitalization (it's surprising how many sweet elderly ladies start getting agitated after several days of forced abstinence during an unexpected hospitalization).  

Medicinal alcohol was also an effective reward that might convince a patient wanting to leave against medical advice to stay another day or two.  The French venture seems to offer the alcohol in the social setting of a bar, which would confer additional advantages, especially to the terminally ill.  One wonders whether eventually medicinal marijuana will be similarly mainstreamed in hospital settings.

Actias luna

I found this big fellow hustling across the grass under a walnut tree.  He had apparently fallen or been dislodged from the foliage above.  He would have made a tasty meal for a bird, so I brought him home and placed him in a terrarium with some walnut leaves.

That same night he spun a cocoon.  This late in the summer I wondered if he was going to enter diapause until next spring, but the transformation to a moth required only about ten days, and one morning I walked out to our screen porch to find this handsome Actias luna (Luna moth) drying his new wings.  That evening he flew away over the treetops.

The complex structure of the antennae identified him as a male, superbly adapted to detect minute quantities of pheromones in the air and track them along their gradient to a female.

Sadly, this beautiful and magnificent creature will live only about one week.  It has no mouth parts and thus cannot feed, surviving only on energy stored during the caterpillar stage.  The moth is really just nature's way of making more caterpillars.