Our Halloween decoration this year

Minimalistic, but totally effective.  As soon as the trick-or-treat official hours began at 4:30, a bunch of kids began to gather around the balloon.  They were waving to friends and parents to "look at this," and they certainly didn't need the explanatory note on the grate, which says "WE ALL FLOAT DOWN HERE, GEORGIE."  (cultural reference)

I watched from a window in the house as neighbors went by, taking photos of the balloon, taking videos of the balloon, and getting down on all fours to peer into the grate.

Next year I'd like to print a big photo of Pennywise to put at the bottom of the stormwater chamber.  Ideally, I'd like to put a speaker down there to talk to people from the house and ask for Help! and "please reach down through the grating..."  Not sure how to do that.

The joy of the bronze medalist

It has been known for years that athletes who win bronze medals are happier than those who win silver.  When I encountered the photo above, I decided to look up the source.  Found this in Scientific American:

To scientifically investigate this question, the researchers took video footage of the 1992 summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Specifically, they recorded the medal ceremonies and showed them to undergraduate students, as well as footage from the athletic competitions immediately following announcements of the winners. They asked them to rate the happiness displayed by each of the medalists on a 10-point scale, with 1 being “agony” and 10 being “ecstasy.”

On average, the silver medalists scored a 4.8, and the bronze medalists scored a 7.1 immediately following the announcement. Later in the day, at the medal ceremony, the silver medalists scored a 4.3 on the happiness scale, while the bronze medalists scored 5.7. Statistical analyses proved that both immediately after winning, as well as later at the medal ceremony, bronze medalists were visibly happier than the silver medalists...

Altogether, they found that thirteen of the fourteen gold medal winners smiled immediately after they completed their winning match, while eighteen of the twenty-six bronze medalists smiled. However, none of the silver medalists smiled immediately after their match ended. More interestingly, the facial expression that were recorded among silver medal winners ranged from sadness (43%) to contempt (14%) to nothing (29%). This means that it wasn't just that the silver medal winners were less happy than gold medalists; instead, as Matsumoto and Willingham write, "those who displayed something displayed discrete, negative emotions."

Photo via.

"Angel shots" explained

I didn't know about these because I don't go into women's restrooms in nightclubs.

Bars lately are coming up with secret codes to help customers signal, privately, when they need help if they're getting harassed or feeling unsafe on a bad date.

At one Tampa restaurant, that code was the Angel shot. Depending on how the shot was ordered (neat, on the rocks, with lime), the bartender would know the person needs a ride home, a walk to their car, or a secret call to the police. Women receive the intel about the secret-code drink order via a discreet sign in the restroom.

You learn something every day.  More information at the link.

Tzotz

YouTube link.

English language time machine

Merriam-Webster has reconfigured their database so that you can now look up all the words that were invented (or recorded) in any given year.  I found the following words were invented the year I was born:

anabolic steroid
audiology
bite-size
buzzword
Caesar salad
cafe au lait spot
cardiac catheterization
circuitry
clinical trial
crawl space
crown molding
decubitus ulcer
dental technician
deoxyribonuclease
digital computer
expiration date...

- and on an on for several hundred entries.  Try their Time Traveler.  The database sorts the words year-by-year back through the 1500s, and by centuries for entries with origins older than that.

Earliest I've ever voted

I'm guessing I saved myself 1-2 hours compared to going to City Hall on November 6.

The "financial toxicity" of a cancer diagnosis

Excerpts from an article published in this month's edition of the American Journal of Medicine:

Approximately 15.5 million Americans have a history of cancer, with an estimated 1,688,780 new cases and 609,640 deaths annually. With 87% of diagnoses occurring in persons ≥50 years of age, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States. Cancer's financial burden is often substantial during treatment phases and often worsens with improving prognoses.

With 6.5% of direct costs among nonelderly persons alone involving out-of-pocket payments, over half of all persons with cancer experienced house repossession, bankruptcy, loss of independence, and relationship breakdowns. Additionally, 40%-85% of cancer patients stop working during initial treatment, with absences ranging up to 6 months. Deductibles and copayments for treatment, supportive care, and nonmedical or indirect costs (eg, travel, caregiver time, and lost productivity) may be financially devastating even with healthcare coverage.

At year₊₂, 42.4% depleted their entire life's assets, with higher adjusted odds associated with worsening cancer, requirement of continued treatment, demographic and socioeconomic factors (ie, female, Medicaid, uninsured, retired, increasing age, income, and household size), and clinical characteristics (ie, current smoker, worse self-reported health, hypertension, diabetes, lung disease) (P<.05); average losses were $92,098. At year₊₄, financial insolvency extended to 38.2%, with several consistent socioeconomic, cancer-related, and clinical characteristics remaining significant predictors of complete asset depletion.

The American Journal of Medicine is peer-reviewed and is one of the most highly respected medical publications in the United States.  

The distribution of West Nile virus in the United States

Looks like it should be called West of the Mississippi virus.  The distribution varies from year to year; the map shown is for the most recent dataset (2016).  More info and other maps here.

"Gaslighting" explained

YouTube link.

The term is much in the news recently, applied frequently to the political realm.  I've looked it up a number of times in the past and decided I would only remember it if I created a blogpost.

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's belief.

The term originates in the systematic psychological manipulation of a victim by her husband in the 1938 stage play Gaslight, known as Angel Street in the United States, and the film adaptations released in 1940 and 1944. In the story, a husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment and insisting that she is mistaken, remembering things incorrectly, or delusional when she points out these changes. The original title stems from the dimming of the gas lights in the house that happened when the husband was using the gas lights in the flat above while searching for the jewels belonging to a woman whom he had murdered. The wife correctly notices the dimming lights and discusses it with her husband, but he insists that she merely imagined a change in the level of illumination.

The term "gaslighting" has been used colloquially since the 1960s to describe efforts to manipulate someone's perception of reality...

"Crooked toe disorder" in chicks

Details on the condition and its treatment at Hobby Farms (photo via):

Crooked toe is a poultry foot disorder characterized by one or more toes curving sideways. It can affect one or both feet, and the curve can vary from very gentle to pronounced and acute. Because of this curvature, the afflicted chick stands and walks on the side of these toes...

Crooked toe is benign at best and bothersome at its worst. Left untreated, crooked toe does not cause crippling or even limping. The chick simply becomes accustomed to its toes being curled sideways and compensates. As an adult, it might encounter difficulty digging and might not be able to perch due to the way the toe joints align...

The soft tissues in a chick’s foot are still growing and developing and, when braced in a chick bootie, crooked toes usually straighten well and remain corrected. To construct a chick bootie, you’ll need the following...

Your chick will not like its new footwear. It might squawk and protest. It might dash around its brooder like a tottering ragdoll. It might even sit on its hindquarters, feet up, glaring at you. Don’t worry. Within an hour or two (sometimes a little longer for particularly headstrong chicks), your baby will be walking around with its new shoes. Keep the chick booties on for two to three days, changing the outer tape as needed to keep it clean...

You learn something every day.

Where Americans vote (and don't vote...)

From the Washington Post, where there is more information and more charts.

"Area of refuge"

Spotted while visiting a show at a local hotel.  This was a featureless dead-end area on the main floor, adjacent to a set of elevators.  I had to look up the term:

An area of refuge is a location in a building designed to hold occupants during a fire or other emergency, when evacuation may not be safe or possible. Occupants can wait there until rescued or relieved by firefighters. This can apply to the following:

• any persons who cannot access a safe escape route
• any persons assisting another person who is prevented from escaping
• patients in a hospital
• sick people
• people with disabilities
• old people
• very young children or infants
• medical personnel who may be operating on a patient at the time of the emergency
• operators in a critical facility whose function must not be interrupted (such as nuclear power station, a key military fortification, or a high security prison)

It's still a bit vague as to how this area is safer than any other, or how the implementation works.  I suppose the existence of such designated spots tells first responders where to look for persons needing help.  [relevant information from two architects in the Comments]

Tronie

Study of a Young Woman (also known as Portrait of a Young Woman, or Girl with a Veil) is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.

The sitter is depicted as having a homely face... with a small nose and thin lips. The lack of idealised beauty has led to a general belief that this work was painted on commission, although it is possible that the model was Vermeer's daughter. The artist probably used a live model but, as with Girl with a Pearl Earring, did not create the work as a portrait, but as a tronie, a Dutch word meaning "visage" or "expression", a type of Dutch 17th-century picture appreciated for its "unusual costumes, intriguing physiognomies, suggestion of personality, and demonstration of artistic skill". The picture encourages the viewer to be curious about the young woman's thoughts, feelings, or character, something typical in many of Vermeer's paintings. 

More at the two links.

An environmental disaster, ongoing for 14 years

"An oil spill that has been quietly leaking millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico has gone unplugged for so long that it now verges on becoming one of the worst offshore disasters in U.S. history.

Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan. Many of the wells have not been capped, and federal officials estimate that the spill could continue through this century...

The Taylor Energy spill is largely unknown outside Louisiana because of the company’s effort to keep it secret in the hopes of protecting its reputation and proprietary information, according to a lawsuit that forced the company to reveal its cleanup plan. The spill was hidden for six years before environmental watchdog groups stumbled on oil slicks while monitoring the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster a few miles north...

It would take another three years before the government revealed an even deeper truth. Taylor Energy had been playing down the severity of the spill. An Associated Press investigation in 2015 determined that it was about 20 times worse than the company had reported. Taylor Energy had argued that the leak was two gallons per day; the Coast Guard finally said it was 84 gallons or more.

“There’s a fine for not reporting, but none for underreporting,” Amos said.

Nearly a decade after the oil platform went down, the government determined that the actual level of oil leaking into the Gulf was between one and 55 barrels per day. Now, the new estimate dwarfs that: up to 700 barrels per day. Each barrel contains 42 gallons."

Preserved in an anaerobic environment

"The world’s oldest intact shipwreck, complete with mast, rudders and rowing benches, has been found at the bottom of the Black Sea where it has been lying for more than 2,400 years."