Places with "Saint" in their name

Found at Strange Maps/BigThink:

The data, collected from the databases of the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency by Polish infographic producers Biqdata, shows 20,808 such places across the continent...

France, now a beacon of 'laïcité' – the French version of secularism – in previous centuries prided itself on being 'la fille ainée de l'église' (the oldest daughter of the church). And its Christian heritage still shows in the sheer number of saintly place-names, from Saint-Denis and Saint-Cloud near Paris to Saint-Brieuc in Brittany and Saint-Laurent-du-Var in the Provence.

No less than 43% of the European total of 'Saint(e)' names occurs in France, with areas of higher density in Normandy, and the Loire and Rhône valleys. The north, northeast and southwest seem to have been less touched by holy topography.

Runner-up, by about half of the French total, is Spain. With 4,444 'San' or 'Santa' topographies, it represents 21.5% of the European total. But here the regional distribution is more skewed than in France, or any other country for that matter: most of Spain is actually fairly saint-name-free...

More at the link, including this list of patron saints and their causes:

Anne (French-Canadian voyageurs), Anthony of Padua (those seeking lost persons or items), Barbara (service personnel of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces), Bernardine of Siena (advertisers), Bernard of Menthon (skiers), Cajetan (the unemployed), Cassian of Imola (stenographers), Cecilia (musicians), Columbanus (motorcyclists), Drogo of Sebourg (coffee-house keepers), Elmo (pyrotechnicians, steeplejacks, chimneysweeps and anyone working at great heights), Fiacre (taxi drivers), Gummarus (lumberjacks), Joan of Arc (soldiers), John Bosco (editors), Joseph of Arimathea (funeral directors), Joseph of Cupertino (astronauts), Kateri (ecologists), Lidwina (ice skaters), Martha (dieticians), Mary Magdalene (hairdressers, pharmacists and prostitutes), Matthew (tax collectors and perfumers, among many others), Philip (pastry chefs), Solange (shepherdesses), Ursula (orphans), Valentine (beekeepers), Vitus (comedians), Wolbodo (students), Zita (waiters).

The glory that was Romanov

From a review by Anne Applebaum of two new books about the Romanovs:

Peter also created spectacles for the general public. On his return from a military victory against the Turks in 1696, he staged a Roman triumph in Moscow, which included statues of Mars and Hercules, and himself dressed in a black German coat and breeches, a costume that would have mystified his subjects. Catherine the Great toured her empire on a trip organized by Grigory Potemkin, her lover and chief adviser. (The journey would provide the origins of the phrase “Potemkin village.”) Her entourage included fourteen carriages and 124 sleighs; when the ice melted on the Dnieper, the royal party moved on to “seven luxurious barges, each with its own orchestra, library and drawing room, painted in gold and scarlet, decorated in gold and silk, manned by 3,000 oarsmen, crew and guards and serviced by 80 boats.” It was designed to impress, and it did. One observer compared it to Cleopatra’s fleet.

Via Harper's.

How to prepare for your hospital stay

IIRC, these guidelines were created in the 1980s by Dr. Barbara Phillips, Professor of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. They are probably still applicable today.

Trigger warning

From a list of objects that were mistaken for guns during shootings of civilians by police in the United States since 2001.

Wrench

Cordless drill

Water-hose nozzle

Flashlight

Shower rod

Cane

Broomstick

Hairbrush

Sunglasses

Bottle of cologne

Underwear

Tinfoil

Bottle of beer...

The list continues at Harper's.

The American voting process

Another article raises doubts about the technology - this time not about the electronic voting machines, but about the scanners that read paper ballots:

...in liberal Madison, a judge gave each Wisconsin county the option of doing a hand recount or not. Racine declined.

So Whitlock and her colleagues devised a simple work-around. They bought manual counters, mechanical hand clickers. They clicked away as each ballot slipped into the electronic scanner, tallying how many votes were for Clinton, Trump or blank — a so-called under­vote. They kept noticing their totals varied from the scanners. When Whitlock’s team saw the scanner miscount 15 votes in a 300-voter precinct in Elmwood Park, she politely asked officials to do a hand count of that precinct. That was an error rate of five percent in a contest, where statewide, Trump’s margin of victory was less than one percent. Whitlock’s request was swiftly denied...

“Three observers click counted votes. The Clinton and Trump counters clicked considerable more votes than a scanner counted,” said Rennert, wearily reading aloud the challenge. “I have no idea what you’re saying except you are requesting a hand count.”

Rennert put down the paper. She looked at the room, palms up, exasperated. She said nothing.

“Do you want to ask me if you don’t understand?” asked Whitlock.

“No,” Rennert tartly replied. “Is this the purpose of a hand count? Yes or No?”

“The purpose of a hand count is to get to the truth,” Whitlock replied.

“No,” Rennert said, her hands up like stop signs. “How much is it?”

“Three-hundred,” a worker said, referring to the number of ballots.

“I don’t care if it’s five,” Rennert declared. “I am not going to do a hand count for anybody.”
...

They shrugged at the fact that Michigan had Trump’s closest margin nationwide: just eleven thousand votes out of 4.8 million ballots cast. Some seventy-five thousand ballots did not show a vote for president, Michigan’s secre­tary of state office reported on its website.

That last omission is always suspicious. That’s because people tend to vote for the high-profile races if they vote at all. Maybe some of these 75,000 ballots had presidential votes, but they were not properly scanned. If a good number were from around Detroit, which went two-to-one for Clinton, maybe Trump did not win Michigan after all. Local election activists pointed to a 1950s state law that gave dis­cretion to election officials to examine and recount every paper ballot. But Thomas went on TV saying it would not be done. Detroit’s election director followed his cue, apologizing for the sorry state of voting in his city.

The longread is at Salon.

Tree cover in Europe

"High resolution map of all the forests of Europe. Color scheme goes from black as 0% forest to bright green as close to 100%, dense forest." (click to embiggify)

Via Boing Boing, where there is a link to additional maps (which can be purchased as posters).

Competitive eater

She consumed 501 wings in half an hour.

Consider appointing a "digital executor"

Excerpts from a article at Reuters:

In the not-so-olden days of a few years ago, relatives might have sifted through stacks of documents to sort out your affairs after you died. These days, much of your presence in this world is floating around in the cloud: email, online drives, social media. Even your financial accounts are probably paperless at this point.

To give your family access to your accounts after you die, you need to do some work in advance, leaving instructions in your will for everything from access to your Facebook page to how to redeem your cryptocurrency...

Passwords and logins may be all in your head, but they are not in anybody else’s. So do a full accounting of everywhere you might be digitally – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, bank accounts, 401(k) providers, bitcoin exchanges – and document how to get access...

In a traditional will, you name certain people to handle affairs if you pass away or are incapacitated. Same goes for digital property. This could very well be a different person than the one handling your financial or healthcare directives...

More at the link.

An early sign of spring

Signs of spring are latitude-dependent.  Up here in the still-frozen north (a two-week stretch with daily high temps below freezing) we are still ankle-deep in snow with another 4" due tonight.  My phenology calendar shows another week before we can expect the earliest robin to arrive.

But this morning our local Farm and Fleet had a newly-set-up and freshly-stocked rack of veggie seeds as a reminder that it won't be long...

High-school basketball story

YouTube link.

I think I probably posted the original story years ago but can't find it now.  Doesn't matter - there's enough backstory in this video to explain the signficance.

Muslims accused of planning to "infiltrate" the Minnesota Republican party

Two Minnesota Republican state lawmakers and a local GOP official are facing scrutiny after they reportedly shared a Facebook post accusing Muslims of preparing to “infiltrate” the party’s caucuses this month.

State Reps. Kathy Lohmer and Cindy Pugh, shared the post created by Dave Sina, chairman of the Fourth Congressional District GOP, this week, according to the Star Tribune. Sina has since taken it down, but not before the Star Tribune captured a screenshot. 

In the post, Sina said a friend of his had attended a caucus training session held at a mosque by the Muslim American Society. MAS is a nonpartisan organization that promotes civic engagement among American Muslims with local chapters across the U.S.

Sina claimed that Muslims are trying to “infiltrate our republican caucuses on Feb. 6” and that “they didn’t talk about the general election but I am sure they are ahead of us in that as well.”

More at the Huffington Post and the links.

Lobsters vs. crayfish

I found the above photo on The Guardian as a SkyPixel aerial photography competition winner.  The caption reads "A [lobster] farm in Tuy Hoa, Phu Yen province, central Vietnam."

The photo got me thinking about what defines a "lobster."  I couldn't imagine any of the bottom-dwelling lobsters I once enjoyed at the West Street Cafe having come from such floating farms.   As  I researched "lobster farming" I found video like this intriguing one:

YouTube link.

I thought "he calls them lobsters, I call them crayfish."  But perhaps I'm provincial and too restrictive in my vocabulary, since prawns and scampi are classified as lobsters.  Maybe it's the freshwater vs. seawater habitat that is the distinguishing characteristic.  No time to pursue it further.  Good photo and video.  You learn something every day.

About that federal budget

It was another crazy news week, so it's understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year - President Donald Trump's first full year in charge of the budget.

That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.

Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year.

Treasury mainly attributed the increase to the "fiscal outlook." The Congressional Budget Office was more blunt. In a report this week, the CBO said tax receipts are going to be lower because of the new tax law.

The uptick in borrowing is yet another complication in the heated debates in Congress over whether to spend more money on infrastructure, the military, disaster relief and other domestic programs. The deficit is already up significantly, even before Congress allots more money to any of these areas.

This is a bipartisan fuck-up.  We desperately need some adults in Washington.

A marble run incorporating a dozen antigravity mechanisms

YouTube link.

It's set up on a tilted table, which helps explain the sometimes puzzling physics.

Via everywhere.

Hookworm as a souvenir of your beach vacation

Hookworms infect 740 million people worldwide, mostly in poorer countries with subpar sanitation. But they can show up anywhere. The Dominican Republic certainly has them, as does most of Africa, South and Central America, and Asia. And until the early 20th century, large swaths of the United States had them too. In fact, parts of rural Alabama still play host to hookworms...

You’ll probably find plenty of information about the vaccines you should get (mostly hepatitis A and B, rabies, and yellow fever). There will be warnings about the dangers of dengue, schistosomiasis, and malaria. But you're unlikely to spot anything about hookworms.

This might be because you can’t actually prepare for hookworms before you go. As a traveler, all you can do is wear sandals on the beach, sit on towels, and wash off with soap and water after you touch sand. But if no one tells them in advance, the average person (from a non-hookworm-plagued country) won’t think to wear shoes on the beach. Most American seasides are free of hookworms, so we’re not trained to think about these things before we hit the waves.

More at Popular Science.