Obesity in the United States - a growing problem

We all know that Americans tend to be overweight, but to appreciate the extent of the problem you need to view the data at The State of Obesity.

At the top image I've embedded a screencap, but at the link the map and graph are interactive - for example, you can mouse over a state to highlight its individual line on the graph.  They all go up, but note the degree of change:  in 2013 the least obese state is more obese than the most obese state was in 1990. 

The next thing you can do (at the original link) is access the timeline at the bottom and click back.  If you go as far as 1990, you will see this national map:

If this change had happened between say 1880 and 2013, one might just brush it off as "this modern world," but 1990 was not that long ago - within the lifetime of virtually every reader here.  The criteria haven't changed - just our dietary habits and our sedentary behavior.  It's sad and somewhat scary in terms of the public health (and finance) implications.  And I'm sure this phenomenon isn't limited to the U.S.

Elections in Alberta and Britain

"Canada’s appetite for political change was demonstrated by the surprising win of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Alberta’s elections, which ended 44 years of the same government... The election reflects the choice by Albertans (and Canadians more broadly) to reject what they have been told about their economy’s dependence on oil and gas..."

"The future of the licence fee is in doubt after David Cameron appointed one of the BBC's biggest critics as Culture Secretary in a move that will be seen as an effective declaration of war on the corporation." 

I don't have a knowledge base that would allow me to comment on either of these apparently momentous election results.  Instead I'll open up the comment thread for this post to those readers directly impacted, and ask for insight (and polite debate) over the implications of both election outcomes.

Table tennis "point of the century"

YouTube link.

Ma Long vs. Fang Bo at the 2015 Table Tennis World Championships in China

A new right-wing strategy - sue the government and its employees

The view from the left, as expressed in an op-ed piece in Salon:

"...within that narrow anti-government focus of low taxes is their extreme hostility to government regulations.

So now we see the conservative movement... considering the idea of flooding the courts with frivolous suits.

Scientology besieged the IRS with 200 lawsuits from the church and more than 2,300 lawsuits on behalf of individual parishioners in every jurisdiction in the country, “overwhelming government lawyers, running up fantastic expenses, and causing an immense amount of havoc inside the IRS.” ... That is what Murray wants to do to agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

If conservatives follow the Scientology strategy to the letter, they will file lawsuits against individual federal employees as well, making their lives miserable and putting them into personal financial jeopardy...

There are a lot of anti-government billions out there just waiting to be put to such good purpose.

Murray’s book is being met with rapturous anticipation among the right wingers.  This may be the big “new idea” they’ve been waiting for. Fighting regulations is the new organizing concept that’s really animating the conservative intelligentsia in this age of GOP congressional dominance. The idea of a tyrannical president issuing orders to executive agencies, as if that constitutes a coup, is a powerful motivating narrative for the red-meat crowd...

Of course, if a Republican becomes president, the whole idea becomes moot. The billionaires would withdraw to their counting rooms to add up their profits while the GOP executive makes their job unnecessary. The fact that they are contemplating this assault through the legal system is an admission that they don’t really believe they’ll have the political power to do this any time soon.

More at the link.

Divertimento

A gif of a thirsty cow operating a pump handle.

A report on the 38th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.  "Since late 2011, Feyer has finished over 95 percent of the New York Times puzzles in less than six minutes. He polishes off 88 percent of the Saturday puzzles — the hardest of the week — in less than five minutes."

If you fold a Bank of England 10-pound note just right and tilt it, you can create a HappyQueen/Sad Queen.

"It was a bizarre finish to the world’s longest maritime pursuit, one that began in the icy waters off Antarctica last Dec. 17, and ended on April 6, practically on the equator, near the tiny islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, some 19,000 km away. Reports suggest that the captain of the Thunder—a notorious pirate fishing vessel that had changed its name and flag at least three times in recent years—deliberately scuttled his vessel, although he claims he was hit by a passing cargo ship. It makes little difference. The activists from the Sea Shepherd Society had made their point: that they were willing to go to the very ends of the Earth to protect the Patagonian toothfish."

Google Streetview tackles Loch Ness - around, across, and under the water.

Entering the afterlife as compost.  "Scientists a­gree that hu­man be­ings can be com­post­ed. Al­read­y count­less farms across the coun­try, in­clud­ing at least a third of Washington state’s dairy farms, com­post the bod­ies of dead live­stock."

For the English majors out there, a brief review of the childhood of T. S. Eliot.  "He’s been labeled anti-Semitic and elitist, as well as a religious nut, an abusive husband, a cuckold and a prig. Some of these accusations are, at least partly, true: “How unpleasant to know Mr. Eliot!” as he himself once wrote. And yet the same man could be wholly admirable — generous, loyal, immensely kind."

"A 65-year-old woman with stage IV breast cancer presented after being denied authorization to perform a banking transaction because her fingerprints were unrecognizable..."  (because of a chemo-induced hand-foot syndrome)

Success as a Scrabble player may be genetically determined rather than learned: "For the same basic reason that basketball players tend to be tall, a more likely explanation is that people high in working memory and visuospatial reasoning abilities are people who tend to get into, and persist at, playing SCRABBLE: because it gives them an advantage in the game. This explanation fits with what behavioral geneticists call gene-environment correlation, which is the idea that our genetic makeup influences our experiences."

Video of thousands of crabs migrating as a pyramidal cluster, rather than spread out on the seafloor.

For Grammar Geeks only - details about the fine points of the use of apostrophes.

Tesla's new battery will allow homeowners to perform "peak load shaving" - storing power for later use instead of giving the power back to the utilities.

Fantasy Grounds, one of the leading virtual tabletop platforms, now offers officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons content from Wizards of the Coast. Available through Steam, the software can allow players to virtually recreate the 5th edition D&D tabletop experience complete with dice rolling, 2D maps and a play experience completely controlled by a dungeon master.

An octopus chasing a crab in open water.

Planning a trip to Ecuador?  Take along lots of $2 bills.

"...as Princeton historian Kevin Kruse details in a new book, “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America,” our country’s religious slogans owe more to corporate campaigns than they do to grassroots work.

The set locations of over 2,000 films mapped.   (unfortunately requires multiple zooms before the dots become interactive)

"Just as entertainment has now been time-shifted thanks to the DVR, there are similar efforts underway to time-shift the educational experience, making course content available on-demand, any time you want, any place you want, on any device you want. This is either the greatest thing that has happened in the history of education or, conversely, just another way for predominantly white, high-income, college-educated elites to maintain their dominance via technology."

A detailed report on the world's largest diamond heist. (with a hat tip to reader Aleksejs)

Excellent garbage bag prank.

The Telegraph offers "the hardest spelling, grammar, maths and logic questions we've published." At the link is also the answer to the infamous "When is Cheryl's birthday?" question.

The unexpected result of pouring liquid aluminum into a watermelon.

A variety of suggestions regarding creating a butterfly-friendly garden.

A history of the C-section in medieval times.

"While the belief that prolonged close-up activities like reading and playing computer games cause short sightedness (myopia) is popularly held, new research indicates that a deficiency of sunlight is the true culprit... Our hypothesis that the mechanism of the effect of light was mediated by retinal dopamine."

"The Mystery of the Leaping Fish"- "This short silent film from 1916 is a thinly veiled parody of the Sherlock Holmes series. Douglas Fairbanks stars as Coke Ennyday, a "Scientific Detective" with a cocaine habit. The film was released in 1916, a year before the Harrison Act that regulated narcotics came into force."  Full-length (26 minute) video embedded at the link.

Video of a dog practicing for the hammer throw.

Fifty-two Alfred Hitchcock films, ranked accoding to someone's opinion.

Video of a castanet master.

"A middle school student in northwest New Mexico says she was sent to the principal's office and asked if she sold drugs or was involved with a gang after she wore her rosary to school."

A fox living in Chernobyl - "he could barely scramble eggs before the meltdown, but now he can make himself a quintuple decker sausage sandwich like a scavenging boss."

Why people should do things alone.  "...people consistently underestimate how much they will enjoy seeing a show, going to a museum, visiting a theater, or eating at a restaurant alone."

An entertaining 2007 German video about wind power.

Embedded photos from a remarkable and thought-provoking book of photographs, available online here.  "Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot (OVER) contains powerful and evocative images showing the ecological and social tragedies of humanity’s ballooning numbers and consumption. "

Cerbera odollam - the "suicide tree"

The plant, whose scientific name is Cerbera odollam, is as infamous as it is ubiquitous in Kerala, India, where it grows wild along the southwestern coast. The thin-branched, flowering tree bears a deadly harvest: a softball-sized fruit with seeds so toxic they can stop a heart. In the 19th century in Madagascar, where the tree is also found, thousands of people per year died after consuming the seed in “trials by ordeal” believed to determine whether they were guilty of witchcraft or other crimes. And a 2004 study found that it’s responsible for roughly a death per week in Kerala, most of them suicides. Researchers believe that more people have taken their own life using othalanga than any other plant in the world.

More information at the link, but I had to go to Wikipedia to find the pharmacologic basis of the toxicity:

The kernels of C. odollam contain cerberin, a potent cardenolide glycoside belonging to the cardiac glycoside family of toxins that includes digoxin. The poison blocks the calcium ion channels in heart muscle, causing disruption of the heart beat. This is most often fatal. Cerberin is difficult to detect in autopsies and its taste can be masked with strong spices. Therefore it is often used in homicide and suicide in India...

The seeds also have a long history as a poison in Madagascar. The poison was responsible for the death of 2% of the population (3000 people per year, 50,000 per generation) of the central province of Madagascar. The belief in the genuineness and accuracy of trial by ordeal using this poison was so strongly held among all, that innocent people suspected of an offense did not hesitate to subject themselves to it; some even showed eagerness to subject themselves to the test. On one occasion over 6000 people died in a single ordeal.

The toxin is therefore similar to the one incorporated into the bodies of Monarch butterfly caterpillars when they feed on milkweed.

And I'd bet it's been used for lots of murders.

Image credit: AFP via Getty Images, via the Washington Post.

"Two Worlds, One Sun"

As a thumbnail image, I thought this was a composite of two terrestrial sunsets.  At fullscreen the content of the captions was oddly satisfying.

A postulated ending for "Mad Men"

"Two years ago, Lindsey Green posted a theory that Don Draper is D.B. Cooper. Since then, nothing has happened on the show that blows her theory." 

If this isn't the true ending that will be screened two weeks from now, it should be.  Full details at the link and at BoingBoing (whence the image).

"Fat bloom" in chocolate

An article at Chemistry Matters explains that chocolate tastes better if it is kept in a refrigerator.

This is all to do with a phenomenon known as polymorphism, which is the ability for a solid to exist in more than one crystal structure. Each crystal structure is called a polymorph, and each polymorph has its own set of distinct properties. The main ingredient in chocolate, cocoa butter, has six polymorphs which can be distinguished between each other by measuring their melting points...

...at room temperature, the fatty molecules in polymorph V have enough energy to slowly (days/weeks scale) convert to polymorph VI. This transformation in in the crystal structure is facilitated by the vibrational energy stored in the molecules which allow the molecules to wriggle about and realign with each other. This can be stopped by keeping your chocolate in a cool, dark place...

Next the "fat bloom" is described

The change in crystal structure is usually accompanied by something called ‘fat bloom,’ which is where the chocolate begins to look dusty, and pale spots appear on the surface... It’s off putting, but still safe to eat. It happens because of partial melting in the solid which cases the fats within it to rise to the surface.

Fracking chemicals detected in drinking water

An analysis of drinking water sampled from three homes in Bradford County, Pa., revealed traces of a compound commonly found in Marcellus Shale drilling fluids, according to a study published on Monday.

The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, addresses a longstanding question about potential risks to underground drinking water from the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The authors suggested a chain of events by which the drilling chemical ended up in a homeowner’s water supply.

“This is the first case published with a complete story showing organic compounds attributed to shale gas development found in a homeowner’s well,” said Susan Brantley, one of the study’s authors and a geoscientist from Pennsylvania State University.

You couldn't ask for the results to be in a more scientifically rigorous publication.  An industry spokesman offered the expected meaningless rebuttal:

"...saying that it provided no proof that the chemical came from a nearby well."

More at the New York Times.

This is a "hollow heart" watermelon

Hollow heart can happen due to poor pollination causing the watermelon to develop cracks internally. Cutting a watermelon, affected with hollow heart, across the body will reveal a well defined structure that may surprise those who aren’t familiar with the condition. Hollow heart is not a disease and the internal cracking has no negative impact on the watermelon’s taste or quality, and is entirely safe to consume. 

Many more pix at Amusing Planet.

U.S. troops stealing millions of dollars

Charboneau contributed to thefts by U.S. military personnel of at least $15 million worth of fuel since the start of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And eventually she became one of at least 115 enlisted personnel and military officers convicted since 2005 of committing theft, bribery, and contract rigging crimes valued at $52 million during their deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a comprehensive tally of court records by the Center for Public Integrity...

Additional crimes by military personnel are still under investigation, and some court records remain partly under seal. The magnitude of additional losses from fraud, waste, and abuse by contractors, civilians, and allied foreign soldiers in Afghanistan has never been tallied, but officials probing such crimes say the total is in the billions of dollars... those who investigate and prosecute military wrongdoing say the convictions so far constitute a small portion of the crimes they think were committed by U.S. military personnel in the two countries...

So far, officers account for approximately four-fifths of the value of the fraud committed by military personnel in Iraq, while in Afghanistan, the ratio was flipped, with enlistees accounting for roughly the same portion, according to the Center’s tally. The reasons for the difference are unclear. But Sopko said he expects more officers to be investigated for misconduct in Afghanistan as the U.S. military mission there continues, so the ratio could change. Soldiers who had little or no prior criminal history, like Charboneau, say the circumstances of their deployments made stealing with impunity look easy, and so they made decisions that to their surprise eventually brought them prison sentences ranging from three months to more than 17 years...

More depressing reading at the Center for Public Integrity.

"Human-shaped" mushrooms

A newly discovered species of fungus with an uncanny resemblance to little humans has been found on the roadside in Norfolk.

With fleshy heads, arms and legs, the mushrooms, discovered by Jonathan Revett in Cockley Cley, Norfolk have just been classified as a new species... The mushrooms have been named as geastrum britannicum to reflect them being unique to the UK.

"Personalized pricing" of airline travel questioned

Airlines may price seats based on your ZIP code, your travel habits or your marital status — a practice Sen. Al Franken on Tuesday urged the U.S. Department of Transportation to further regulate.

The federal agency last year gave the airlines permission to use “personalized pricing,” which allows the industry to charge one consumer more than another for the same seat on the same flight based on collected personal information.

The rule, supported by the airline industry and business travel groups, prohibits companies from using consumer-provided information to discriminate against consumers based on “race, creed, color, sex, religious or political affiliation, disability or national origin,” according to the federal agency.

But, it is technically legal for airlines to use other types of information to tailor prices — or in Franken’s word, discriminate — based on consumers’ income level, marital status and trip purpose.

Franken noted in his letter, signed by four other Democratic senators, that business travelers with the same flying routine could be charged more based on habit. Likewise, Franken said, people living in high-income ZIP codes may get better fares to entice them to book more tickets, over consumers living in low-income neighborhoods.

A Colonial-era teething whistle

YouTube link.

The senior curator at Jamestown (Virginia) lucidly explains the significance of a "teething whistle" recovered at that site.  I presume the whistle feature was incorporated into the device for parental entertainment of the toddler, rather than from any expectation that the toddler would use it to summon/annoy his parents.

Via Colonial America and A Woodrunner's Diary.