Word lengths in crossword puzzles

I found this interesting because I keep an ongoing record of how long it takes me to solve the daily crossword puzzle (I use the free one in the Los Angeles Times).

Although the graph is entitled "Average word length for NYTimes Crossword answers, 1994-2017," it should more properly be described as "entry length," since quite a few of the answers on the late-in-the-week puzzles are multiple-word entries.

I found this graph at the Data Is Beautiful subreddit, where the discussion thread has some interesting observations about the software puzzlemakers use in their craft.

FWIW, my worst time on a Thursday puzzle this past year occurred in one this past December which required entering the following "words" -

sentildeor
becircumflexte
soupccedillaon
uumlautber

- which came from the following clues:

Terragona title, in detail?
Arles animal, in detail?
Toulouse trace, in detail?
Augsburg above, in detail?

Fiendish.

Halophilic bacteria on ancient parchments

The purple spots on the manuscript above can be blamed on halophilic marine organisms, even though the scroll had not been near the sea.

...the spots are similar to ones that mar parchments made of animal skins all over the world, said Luciana Migliore, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Rome Tor Vergata...

The goatskin scroll, which dates to A.D. 1244, has purple dots all along its margins, and the first and last pages are entirely obscured by the mystery pigment. Migliore's team sampled a few millimeter-size bits of the scroll that had already flaked off...

The genetics told a two-stage story of damage: First, salt-loving, or halophilic, bacteria colonized the parchment. Next, salt-tolerant microbes, particularly the Gammaproteobacteria, took over. What shocked Migliore is that so many of these microbes were marine or aquatic.

But when they took into account how skin scrolls were made, the discovery made sense, Migliore said. The first step after removing the hide from an animal was to bathe the skin in a sea-salt bath to help preserve it, she said. This bath would have killed off most microbes that eat away at flesh — but it also introduced salt-loving and salt-tolerant marine bacteria...

Eventually, though, those salt eaters would have seen their supply run out and died off. Their corpses, Migliore said, provided a whole new source of food for the next phase of bacterial colonization. The Gammaproteobacteria moved in and ate not only the dead halophilic bacteria but also the fine collagen matrix of the goatskin parchment. This caused parts of the parchment to flake off, lost forever.

Salt curing is one thing that skin parchments around the world have in common...

You learn something every day.  More details about this at Live Science.

Photo credit: G. Vendittozzi.

"Alt-Jesus"

From a discussion thread at the Political Humor subreddit.

How to place a security freeze on your credit

From Krebs on Security:

If you’ve been paying attention in recent years, you might have noticed that just about everyone is losing your personal data. Even if you haven’t noticed (or maybe you just haven’t actually received a breach notice), I’m here to tell you that if you’re an American, your basic personal data is already for sale. What follows is a primer on what you can do to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft as a result of all this data (s)pillage...

If your response to this breachapalooza is to do what each of the breached organizations suggest — to take them up on one or two years’ worth of free credit monitoring services — you might sleep better at night but you will probably not be any more protected against crooks stealing your identity. As I discussed at length in this primer, credit monitoring services aren’t really built to prevent ID theft. The most you can hope for from a credit monitoring service is that they give you a heads up when ID theft does happen, and then help you through the often labyrinthine process of getting the credit bureaus and/or creditors to remove the fraudulent activity and to fix your credit score. 

In short, if you have already been victimized by identity theft (fraud involving existing credit or debit cards is not identity theft), it might be worth paying for these credit monitoring and repair services (although more than likely, you are already eligible for free coverage thanks to a recent breach at any one of dozens of companies that have lost your information over the past year). Otherwise, I’d strongly advise you to consider freezing your credit file at the major credit bureaus...

Q: What is a security freeze?

A: A security freeze essentially blocks any potential creditors from being able to view or “pull” your credit file, unless you affirmatively unfreeze or thaw your file beforehand. With a freeze in place on your credit file, ID thieves can apply for credit in your name all they want, but they will not succeed in getting new lines of credit in your name because few if any creditors will extend that credit without first being able to gauge how risky it is to loan to you (i.e., view your credit file).

Continued at the link, which I strongly recommend reading.   Those recommendations were posted several months ago, but it wasn't until yesterday that I got around to implementing them.  I used the links in the article to contact Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion.  After a couple hours of clicking and the expenditure of $10 per site, I was able to freeze my credit files.

Reposted from 2016 because of the recent cyberattack and massive security breach at Equifax.

ARkStorm

Residents of the west coast might want to download and/or browse a publication by the U.S. Geological Survey detailing the possible complications of a catastrophic weather event designated as ARkStorm.

This document summarizes the next major public project for MHDP, a winter storm scenario called ARkStorm (for Atmospheric River 1,000). Experts have designed a large, scientifically realistic meteorological event followed by an examination of the secondary hazards (for example, landslides and flooding), physical damages to the built environment, and social and economic consequences. The hypothetical storm depicted here would strike the U.S. West Coast and be similar to the intense California winter storms of 1861 and 1862 that left the central valley of California impassible. The storm is estimated to produce precipitation that in many places exceeds levels only experienced on average once every 500 to 1,000 years.

Extensive flooding results. In many cases flooding overwhelms the state’s flood-protection system, which is typically designed to resist 100- to 200-year runoffs. The Central Valley experiences hypothetical flooding 300 miles long and 20 or more miles wide. Serious flooding also occurs in Orange County, Los Angeles County, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay area, and other coastal communities. Windspeeds in some places reach 125 miles per hour, hurricane-force winds. Across wider areas of the state, winds reach 60 miles per hour. Hundreds of landslides damage roads, highways, and homes. Property damage exceeds $300 billion, most from flooding. Demand surge (an increase in labor rates and other repair costs after major natural disasters) could increase property losses by 20 percent. Agricultural losses and other costs to repair lifelines, dewater (drain) flooded islands, and repair damage from landslides, brings the total direct property loss to nearly $400 billion, of which $20 to $30 billion would be recoverable through public and commercial insurance. Power, water, sewer, and other lifelines experience damage that takes weeks or months to restore. Flooding evacuation could involve 1.5 million residents in the inland region and delta counties. Business interruption costs reach $325 billion in addition to the $400 billion property repair costs, meaning that an ARkStorm could cost on the order of $725 billion, which is nearly 3 times the loss deemed to be realistic by the ShakeOut authors for a severe southern California earthquake, an event with roughly the same annual occurrence probability.  

Summary here; full pdf at the previous link.

Caption contest

Flamingos being sheltered in the men's room at the Miami Metrozoo.

From an interesting article at NPR detailing how zoos cope with hurricanes.

Autocorrect?

"Rookie Kareem Hunt, after fumbling on his first NFL carry, scored three times and set an NFL mark: Hunt’s 239 yards in his pro debut were a record since the 1970 merger."

There are several copyeditors who read TYWKIWDBI.   I wonder if the above passage resulted from an autocorrect in a word-processing program or whether some style manuals would insist on this usage of "were." 

If I were writing the sentence, my mind would place an unspoken (total of) before the 239 and change the verb to "was a record..."

DINKs

DINK is an acronym that stands for "Dual Income, No Kids." It describes a couple who both work and do not have children.

DINKER means "Dual (or Double) Income & No Kids Early Retirement."

DINKY means "Double Income, No Kids Yet."

GINK means "Green Inclinations, No Kids" - referring those who choose not to have children for environmental reasons.

Image cropped for size from the original at imgur.

Saluting a dying colleague

MIDDLETOWN, CT — The Middletown Police Department is mourning the loss of beloved K-9 Hunter, who was euthanized on Friday. Hunter was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of liver cancer.

Some additional details at the Middletown Patch.

Translucent squid

YouTube link.

 As shared on Laughing Squid, the Ocean Exploration Trust’s Nautilus science vessel recently recorded a gorgeous cockatoo squid in the wild. Also known, for obvious reasons, as a “glass squid,” the animal is almost totally translucent, but gets the former, colorful name from the crown of dark, stubby tentacles atop its mantle, which resembles the crest of a cockatoo.

Via Atlas Obscura.

How to sign expletives

This five-minute video features a dozen people demonstrating "bad words" in ASL.

Birdstrike survivor

This newly-eclosed male Monarch was nectaring in our garden yesterday when a presumably naive bird clipped off his wingtips in an attack.  We brought him back in to our screenporch overnight and let him solarize on a screen for the morning hours, but this afternoon he was unable to sustain flight.

I have seen elderly butterflies with greater % wing loss from wear and tear be able to fly reasonably well, but there may be some crucial mechanical disadvantage to losing the wingtips.

Divertimento #133

The fifth gifdump.

Orange juice will break a balloon.  You learn something every day.

You otter be in a band.

Breaking up hard candy.

Skyscraper observation deck tilts for a better view.

Cleaning a bus seat.

Meet the hammerhead slug (the world's largest flatworm).

A naturally-occurring waterslide

Use a rolling pin to press pastry into a cup.

This is the game of "tag" on a professional level.

Beached octopus thanks its rescuer.

Ksenia Parkhatskaya, an amazing solo jazz dancer.

Ten-hour timelapse of an Amish barn-raising.

Sand art in a bottle.

Steel mill SCARY malfunction.

Interesting skateboard trick.

Not happy with what's in the box...

Mini-tornado caught on security cam.

Realistic model of Titanic sinking.

Amazing jump by a dog.

Unusual ice hockey goal.

Weissenberg Effect occurs with non-Newtonian fluids.

Impressive hostage-taking costume.

Rescuing baby bears from a dumpster.

Pets at the pool.  And more pets at the pool.

5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.  Each piece a different color.

Don't use your nachos and beer to catch a foul ball.  Just don't.

Papercraft.

I can lift you, but you can't lift me.

You don't want to know how your luggage is handled (or not handled).

Situational awareness in this father at a road rally.

Drugs?  Or just extreme stupidity?

There is a tumblr devoted to GIFs of processes.

Suicide prevention (unconventional).

How to mow around a post.

Pranking a young fisherman.

One reason I don't watch soccer.

Bicycle lights.

Bioluminescent plankton in a globe (commercially available).

Musical chairs as a training aid.

Fun with magnets.

Fire ants.

It's been nice, but I really must be going...

Beetle battle.

Kids having fun at a riverbank (and no, there aren't any crocodiles).

Puppy meets stairs.

Little girl gets a surprise gift.

"Dramatic re-enactment of my first options trade."

The pix are from a gallery of 30 photographs showing how Rob Arnold collected 35 bags of microplastics at Tregantle Beach (Cornwall) in one day.

Baby's body stolen before burial

A mother who campaigned for more than 40 years to find out what happened to her dead baby’s remains has found out his coffin was buried without a body inside.

Lydia Reid, 68, was given a court order for the exhumation of the grave of her son Gary, who died at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh in July 1975 aged seven days old. But no human remains were found.

The exhumation was performed by forensic anthropologist Prof Dame Sue Black, who found only a hat, a shawl, a cross and a name tag that had spelled Gary’s name incorrectly.

Reid, who played a leading role in the Scottish campaign to uncover the unlawful retention of dead children’s body parts for research, said the news was “devastating”.

Full story at The Guardian.

Small craft warning on the Interstate

A highway east of Houston last week.  Via.