"Where's Wanda?"

I've just finished watching this eight-part series streaming on Apple TV, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The storyline is quite straightforward: a young woman goes missing and her family are convinced that she was kidnapped by someone nearby, so they start investigating everyone in the neighborhood, in the process uncovering all sorts of odd and illegal behavior.  

I think the series is properly categorized as "black comedy," combining true comedy with dark elements of murder and endangered-animal trafficking.  The cast were all new to me, but presumably well known to continental viewers: "International Emmy Award nominee Heike Makatsch (“Love Actually”), German Comedy Award winner Axel Stein (“The Vault”), multiple award-winning actress Lea Drinda ("The Gryphon”), newcomer Leo Simon, entrepreneur, actress and author Nikeata Thompson (“How to Dad”), presenter and actress Palina Rojinski (“Welcome to Germany”), Kostja Ullmann (“My Blind Date With Life”) and rising star Harriet Herbig-Matten (“Maxton Hall”)."  All of them are excellent in their character portrayals.

Because of my German-as-a-second-language background, I enjoyed leaving the audio set up as the original German with English subtitles.  And I was pleased to note that in the closing moments of the eighth and final episode, just 15 seconds before the end credits started to roll, there was a totally unexpected out-of-the-blue plot twist which undoubtedly foreshadows a second season.  A quick search revealed that a second season has not yet been announced; presumably the creators are waiting to see the response to this first season in order to secure funding, but with a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, I should think a second season is guaranteed.

A modern-day land grab

I own some vacant land in northern Minnesota - not fancy lakeshore, just woods and scrub brush with some wetlands - inherited from my father forty years ago.  I sometimes go up in the summer to hike and clear some trails.  Some years I lease out the property to local deer hunters for the autumn.

And every year I get letters offering to buy the property.  These don't come from local residents, who can find much better land to build on, or from hunters who prefer to lease rather than buy.  The offers come from people in Alabama, Arizona, Montana etc - always with a ridiculous lowball offer.   The senders of these letters harvest public records which show ownership and tax-assessed value, and they try to find owners who are either ignorant or desperate for money.

This year one of the letters, from "Land for Heroes" at a Boston address, was different - it asked me to "join their mission to help U.S. military families needing assistance."  "If we can buy your property for cash, we will donate in your name an additional 10% of the purchase price to one of our chosen charities."  Enclosed with the cover letter was a real estate purchase agreement offering me less than a third of the tax-assessed value (which in turn is typically is less than retail value).

I'm always offended by these letters because I think of the widows and elderly demented owners who will fall victim to the offers, but this year I'm also totally pissed off that the offer is cloaked in the guise of fake patriotism.  I spent 30+ years working in the Veterans Administration, and I view crap like this as being a distant relative to stolen valor.

I'm not calling this a scam per se.  It is presumably a valid offer to pay real cash for real property.  But it's sleazy and I hope these people step on a thousand lego blocks in their bare feet.

The musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause.

Excerpts from an article in The New York Times:

The syndrome refers to a constellation of conditions and symptoms that become more prevalent during perimenopause and beyond, including joint pain, frozen shoulder, a loss of muscle mass and bone density, and worsening osteoarthritis, among other things. Research suggests that more than half of menopausal women may experience musculoskeletal symptoms, some of which are severe enough to be debilitating — yet health care providers often dismiss them as unavoidable parts of aging...

Starting in the menopause transition, women become more sedentary as a result of pain. The less they move, the less they are able to move — and the more frail they become, both in terms of cardiovascular health and in their muscles and bones. This puts them at a greater risk for falls and fractures, and often makes both surgery and recovery more challenging...

While a large body of scientific evidence suggests estrogen helps to keep bones robust and protect against osteoporosis, we don’t yet have the data to say for sure whether, or to what extent, the loss of estrogen is responsible for muscle and joint pain...

Several clinicians told the Times that, anecdotally, patients who start taking hormone therapy for approved conditions such as hot flashes or night sweats also report a decrease in muscle and joint pain and discomfort.

“We know that there are many things for which estrogen started early is beneficial,” Dr. Singer said. But, she added, “we just need to be careful not to jump too far ahead before there’s data there.”

As always there is more at the source link.

New technology for stealing your car

"At about 9 pm a stranger knocked on the door then pulled out this small metal thing and held it up to the door for awhile before seemingly giving up and placing it back in his pocket. He looked nervous which in turn has made both of us very nervous and we cannot for the life of us figure out what he's pointing at the door. Worth noting in the video it's clearly not a phone."

Useful but disjointed discussion at the whatisthisthing subreddit.  I may have blogged about this before but can't find the link right now.  

Just A Car Guy may have better information.

Math puzzle

Explanatory diagram here, and some disjointed discussion here.

Blood-red water in the mountains of Peru

The embedded image is a screencap from a title gif at The New York Times.

For thousands of years, the glaciers were replenished with ice in the winter. But they have shrunk by more than 40 percent since 1968, uncovering rocks that, when exposed to the elements, can trigger chemical reactions that leach toxic metals into the water and turn it acidic...

Deglaciation above Lake Shallap, the headwaters of Shallap River, has exposed more than 380 acres of the Chicama Formation, which is rich in pyrite, an iron sulfide. As meltwater trickles across the rocks, the pyrite transforms into iron hydroxide and sulfuric acid, a corrosive chemical that releases heavy metals from the rock into the meltwater, Dr. Loayza said.

Pure water has a neutral pH of 7; Lake Shallap now has a pH of less than 4, nearly as acidic as vinegar. It also contains lead, manganese, iron and zinc at levels that surpass environmental quality standards...

This process is causing major problems for fish, wildlife, vegetation, and humans living downhill from the drainage.  I wonder if similar events occurred during the centuries of Inca rule of this region.  The image of what appears to be blood cascading down from some mountain sites might have had a profound effect of native theology.

The source link has a long discussion of the situation and lots of photos.

Stem cell transplants for dogs

Excerpts from the transcript of an As It Happens podcast:

A couple in Nova Scotia are desperately seeking a match for their five year old Goldendoodle Lucy, who was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma. Her life expectancy is between six months and a year with standard treatments like chemotherapy. But Stéphanie Gauvin and Tim MacIsaac are saving up for treatment in Washington State, which includes a stem cell transplant and immunotherapy for Lucy. That could cost as much as a hundred thousand dollars. Fortunately, their pet insurance will cover most of it but what they really need now is a stem cell match.

This story was added to the podcast to assist the dog owners in their quest to find a biocompatible stem cell donor.  But I have questions about the appropriateness of the situation.  

I am gobsmacked that pet insurance would pay huge $$ for a stem cell transplant.  I think pet health insurance should pay for immunizations, dental cleanings, blood tests, medications, and minor surgery.  When coverage is extended to something like this, the result inevitably must raise the cost of pet insurance for everyone in the program, perhaps pricing such out of the budget of modest-income owners.  If owners want something like this for life extension on a pet, perhaps a GoFundMe appeal could be set up to supplement the basic health insurance.  Seeking opinions from readers on this.  

Nunavik sled dog slaughter

Excerpts from the transcript of an As It Happens podcast:

Later this month, the Federal Government will apologize for the mass slaughter of Inuit sled dogs in the 1950s and 1960s. More than a thousand dogs were shot and killed by the RCMP, employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and other government officials across Nunavik, the Inuit region of northern Quebec...

PITA AATAMI: We've tried to look into why they decided to start shooting the dogs there was never a clear answer, but there was always questions about safety and that some children had been mauled and killed by sled dogs. But these are not pets, these Eskimos sled dogs, they were used for their livelihood. Some could be very mean. And so at the same time, the stories when I started hearing about these killings, I was starting to ask, why did they shoot your dogs? They couldn't go back to their camps. They couldn't go back to their trap lines. They couldn't do anything anymore. So, then one woman that really caught my attention was a lady from [inaudible], which is next door to [inaudible]. She was talking about that when her husband's dogs were shot. They were living in a shack and they would just stare out the window, looking out the window. Couldn't go hunting any more. Couldn't go get any more wood from the tree line, Couldn't go get their ice, couldn't go out hunting anymore. It's like he lost a part of his life. So she was crying when she told us this, that the pain that people went through. And I had one lady as well from [inaudible] that talked about wanting to, telling the police, please save me one dog. They had nine dogs. And the policeman didn't listen to that lady, even though she said, leave me one dog. We're going to still need dogs. But the policeman didn't listen, shot all the dogs. Their livelihood was taken away. It's like they had to be in the community. Now they couldn't go out, do their hunting. Only a few people at that time could afford snow machines. And the snow machines that they were coming out were not reliable, were not reliable at all. So people still prefer the dogs to the skidoo at that time. And at a skidoo can get lost. But a dog can never get lost, even if they're going through a storm, they always bring them home no matter what. So they knew [inaudible] and that they were our livelihood. That was part of who we are.

The Government of Quebec apologized for the slaughter in 2011 and gave former sled dog owners three million dollars in compensation. Ottawa hasn't offered any compensation until now.

This is all new to me, and I will defer to readers from Canada as to why this program was conducted back then.  The government claim of dangerous dogs sounds phony for such a widespread campaign.  To my cynical mind the slaughter of the dogs carries undertones of ethnic cleansing.

Comments and insights, please.

The world's largest bromeliad

Puya raimondii, also known as the Queen of the Andes (English), titanka and ilakuash (Quechua) or puya de Raimondi (Spanish), is the largest species of bromeliad, its inflorescences reaching up to 15 m (50 ft) in height. It is native to the high Andes of Bolivia and Peru...

The Queen of the Andes habit of semelparity, reproducing once and dying shortly afterwards, has evolved independently in very distantly related organisms. In plants this monocarpic strategy is quite common with annual and biennial plants being short lived examples, but it is a much rarer strategy for long-lived plants. Other species with unbranched rosettes like Puya raimondii have a predisposition to evolve this to use this lifestyle.

New word for me, so here's the wiki on semelparity:

Semelparity and iteroparity are two contrasting reproductive strategies available to living organisms. A species is considered semelparous if it is characterized by a single reproductive episode before death, and iteroparous if it is characterized by multiple reproductive cycles over the course of its lifetime. Iteroparity can be further divided into continuous iteroparity (primates, including humans and chimpanzees) and seasonal iteroparity (birds, dogs, etc.) Some botanists use the parallel terms monocarpy and polycarpy. (See also plietesials.)

In truly semelparous species, death after reproduction is part of an overall strategy that includes putting all available resources into maximizing reproduction, at the expense of future life... This distinction is also related to the difference between annual and perennial plants.

And the unexciting etymology of bromeliad: "one of a group of related plants indigenous to South America and the West Indies, from Modern Latin Bromeliaceæ, family name given by Linnæus, for Olaus Bromel (1639-1705), Swedish botanist."

Duct-taped banana sells for $6.2 million

As reported by Bloomberg:

Arguably the most famous artwork of the past decade has found a new buyer. Comedian, a sculpture by the artist Maurizio Cattelan, consisting of a piece of duct tape and a banana stuck to a wall, has sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby’s in New York after more than six minutes of fierce bidding. The buyer is China-born crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, the auction house confirmed.

In an interview with Bloomberg following the sale, Sun said he was considering paying with the cryptocurrency he founded, Tron (TRX), but failing that with Bitcoin, which hit a record $95,000 at the time of the auction. (The lot was the only one of the night for which Sotheby’s would accept payments in crypto.)

It’s also considered by many in the art world as a legitimate work of fine art. The New York Times’ Jason Farago wrote a lengthy defense of the piece, arguing that the work “is a sculpture, one that continues Mr. Cattelan’s decades-long reliance on suspension to make the obvious seem ridiculous and to deflate and defeat the pretensions of earlier art.” 

The buyer on Wednesday night was purchasing a certificate of authenticity that gave them the right to manifest the piece as an official artwork, though Sotheby’s says they’ll in fact also receive a banana and a roll of duct tape as a sort of starter kit. (The work also comes with a detailed instruction manual for how it should be presented.)...

Sun plans to display the Cattelan in his Hong Kong apartment, but unlike his paintings and sculpture, he adds, “it’s very easy to bring with me—that’s the beauty of it.” Sun says he’s willing to loan the work to “any serious players in the industry who want to borrow our artwork to display it anywhere. If Elon Musk wants it, I’ll let him put it on the spaceship to Mars,” Sun concludes. “The banana goes to Mars.”

Note the purchase is not of the banana per se, but of the concept of a banana duct-taped to a wall.  The Guardian notes this:

The banana on auction was, according to the New York Times, bought earlier that day for just 35 cents from a fruit stand on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That means the fruit’s value increased 15m times over the space of just a few hours. But then the banana is not what has really been sold here. Instead it’s the idea behind it, which Cattelan once told the the Art Newspaper was a comment on the art market itself...

For his $6.24m – the artwork’s full price after buyers’ fees are added – Sun will receive the banana, a roll of duct tape, instructions on how to install the work – including information on how to replace the banana – and a certificate of authenticity. It’s this latter item that holds the work’s true value. Anybody can duct tape a banana to their wall, after all, but Sun can authentically exhibit such a thing as Cattelan’s conceptual piece of art.

I have conceded before that I am a total philistine when it comes to the art world.  And I fully understand that this is the guy's money and he can do whatever he wants with it, but the money could be applied to so many other things in the real world.  The fact that the super-ultra-rich can cavort like this in public basically making a parody of themselves just fills me with disgust.  The Nonsequitur comic expressed it this way:

And the fact that the buyer is a crypto billionaire immediately brought to mind this old Dilbert:

Pardon the rant (or not, I don't care).  I'm sick and tired of all this billionaire crap.

Close-up nature photos

I'm too busy right now to spend time blogging, but couldn't resist adding these two photos that were shortlisted for the Close-up Photographer of the Year competition.  Above: mites on the face of a Kloss's forest dragon.  Below: a basket star perched on a fan.  Details re both photos (and more photos) at The Atlantic.

Hurricane aftermath in a mountain forest

Posted for my family in Asheville, whose home avoided major damage, but whose community is devastated.

And I'll add this video of a lake covered with debris:

What happens to the ecosystem of a lake in that situation?  One would have to assume that there are no resources available to clean the lake by removing the debris, which will start to decay.  The light and oxygen levels in the water will be inadequate for aerobic life.  The stench will probably be incredible.  Recreation and tourism will be at a standstill for years.

Addendum:  Amazing improvement in the lake since I posted this, thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers.  See the video at the link in the comment by reader Marc B.

Bringing television to remote Amazonian villages

In recent years, solar projects have multiplied in remote communities in several Amazonian countries, mainly with funding from civil society organisations, helping to democratise electricity in off-grid areas of Latin America...

Tapiyawa Waurá’s new hut is still being built so his family has not moved in yet, but solar energy already charges mobile phones and powers appliances. He is in charge of school lunches, and takes a tucunaré fish, or peacock bass, out of a newly installed freezer. “Before, they had to go straight into the fire,” he says. “Now I can leave them here for longer.”

The freezer, mobile phones and spotlights are now among the community’s most used and valued equipment. Though the night sky is no longer as starry with the increase in artificial light, replacing solar panels [for] many generators has brought quiet and taken away the smell of burning fuel, say residents.

The telephone box in one corner of the village no longer works either. Almost everyone holds a mobile phone. This unlimited connection to the internet in a place where, until recently, there was little access and where language and traditional rituals are important, has brought with it some concerns among leaders. Still, they say that there is no turning back.

I can understand the benefits of having electricity available.  I frankly don't know what to think about television.

"What a wonderful world" (David Attenborough)

My rule of thumb: if it's a David Attenborough video, it's worth blogging.

BTW, if you've never used the "fullscreen" button on a YouTube video [lower right corner], now would be a good time to try it...

Here's a background on the lyrics:

"What a Wonderful World" is a song written by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in 1967...

The song gradually became something of a standard and reached a new level of popularity. In 1978, Armstrong's 1968 recording was featured in the closing scenes of the first series of BBC radio's cult hit, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and was repeated for BBC's 1981 TV series of the same. In 1988, Armstrong's recording was featured in the film Good Morning, Vietnam and was re-released as a single, hitting #32 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart in February 1988. The single charted at number one for the fortnight ending June 27, 1988 on the Australian chart

Via truthdig.

Reposted from 2012 (!) to insert the Louis Armstrong version:

Five minutes worth watching...

... if you have a love or fascination for the natural world.  This video from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute documents the discovery of a new species.  For those in a hurry, a written summary is available at Live Science.