"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation" - H. H. Munro (Saki)

If you bookmark links and don't blog them, they multiply like coathangers in a closet.  Time to clean out a month's worth...

If the legendary romance of hopping railroad trains appeals to you (or to your child), browse the photo gallery at the top of this Reddit thread.

An article in Detroit News emphasizes that computers in cars can be wirelessly hacked.  "Markey cited studies showing hackers can get into the controls of some popular vehicles, 'causing them to suddenly accelerate, turn, kill the brakes, activate the horn, control the headlights, and modify the speedometer and gas gauge readings...'"  Jalopnik provides an example of a 14-year-old doing so using equipment he bought for $15 at Radio Shack.

"...16-year-old Maxwell Marion Morton of Jeannette, Pa., fatally shot 16-year-old Ryan Mangan in the face before taking a photo with Mangan’s body and uploading it to Snapchat..."

An op-ed piece at Jezebel asserts that "Adults should not be drinking milk."  

Nissan has demonstrated a glow-in-the-dark body paint for cars.   Video at the link.

An elephant with an elastic ribbon illustrates Samuel Butler's adage that "All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it."

Technology is significantly changing the experience of consuming marijuana.  "While refining marijuana requires skill, caution, and an elaborate setup, concentrates will likely prevail. They’re simply a more economic THC-delivery system."

The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore really REALLY loves thundersnow.

Diane Rehm, host of a nationally-broadcast NPR program, adds her remarkable voice to the right-to-die debate after her husband, unable to get medical assistance to die, starved himself to death.  “I feel the way that John had to die was just totally inexcusable,” Rehm said in a long interview in her office. “It was not right.”


The image at right is a graphic portrayal of an analysis of 1.3 trillion hands of Texas hold-em poker.  Details at the link, where the process is interactive.

Divers are retrieving a historic typeface from the bottom of the Thames, where it was dumped a century ago.

A carnivorous plant has been identified in 40-million-year-old amber.  It had not developed digestive enzymes, relying instead on a symbiotic relationship with an insect.

A hoard of thousands of gold coins in in different denominations has been found in the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel.

Video of a man sliding down a mountain on his butt while being chased by his snowmobile.

From the Boston Globe, a gallery of 35 photos of the record snowfall in New England.

Oliver Sacks has written an article about his discovery that his ocular melanoma is metastatic and therefore terminal:

"I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.  This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future."

Rebuttal of the claim that climate-change data was falsified.

While in jail, a man punches himself in the face to get black eyes in attempt to claim that he was beaten by police; his self attack is captured on video.

A lucid explanation of the Roswell incident.

An article about a planned upgrade of the Panama Canal.  And a reminder that when you sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the canal, you are traveling east, not west (a good pub-quiz question).

A "lost Sherlock Holmes story" has been found.  It's not all that great, but enthusiasts will want to read it (fulltext at the link).

A man looking at watches in a Goodwill store in Arizona paid $6 for one that he was able to sell for $35,000.

Full sunlight provides about 10,000 lux of illumination.  Human eyes can see in light as dim as 1 lux.  Cats = 0.125 lux.  Tarsiers = .001 lux (and shame on people who photograph them with flash illumination).  A BBC article lists three creatures with even more sensitive eyes (able to see at illumination levels of .000063 lux).

Some people object to their neighbors putting up Little Free Libraries.  "Americans with Little Free Libraries are acting in that venerable tradition. Those exploiting overly broad laws to urge that they be torn down are a national disgrace."

Here's a good website:  Old and Interesting.  Go look for yourself.

I find John Oliver's sense of humor to be sometimes annoying, but one can't deny the power of some of his arguments, especially this discussion of how American judges are elected.

The graph at right depicts penis size based on 15,000 measurements of men around the world.  It's an awkward depiction; I think if the data were regraphed, it would be more understandable as a bell-shaped curve.  And when the article states that "In reality, only 2.28% of the male population have an abnormally small penis... and the same percentage an unusually large one," that's because "normality" is defined in that way - to include 95% of the population.  More discussion here.

Deep injection of wastewater causes earthquakes.

A useful webpage from the University of Minnesota discusses how to prevent and how to treat a frozen septic system.

In an embarrassing attempt to get better positioning for postseason play, two high-school girls basketball teams tried to lose a game, missing free throws on purpose, failed to cross the half-court line in time, even pointed out to the officials that they were violating the 3-second rule in the lane.  Both schools were banned from the playoffs.

Here is the full-text lyrics of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.  I didn't know there was a 100th verse: "No more bottles of beer on the wall, no more bottles of beer.
Go to the store and buy some more, 99 bottles of beer on the wall."  (p.s. there is some movie where a character (Chevy Chase?) gets revenge on a bus or van driver by teaching the children about this song.  Does anyone remember the name of that movie?)

Hakim Emmanuel, an amateur bowler in Brockton, Massachusetts, rolled a perfect 900 series.  Video of his final frame at the link.

How conservative was Ronald Reagan?  Compared to 10 of today's Republican presidential hopefuls - not very.  He would only be in 5th place.

Some parents try to treat their children's autism by "giving the children enemas, using a dangerous industrial solution used for bleaching wood pulp... Miracle Mineral Solution is the brainchild of Jim Humble, who quit the Church of Scientology to form the Genesis II Church of Health & Healing in order to promote his “miracle” cure..."

"Strawpedoing" (image left) is how students guzzle beer without creating a vacuum in the bottle.  It looks  like the straw is coming out his nose, but it's just bent at his lips,

A record drought is drying up the water reservoir for São Paulo.

"Kalaripayattu is considered to be the oldest fighting system, and the urumi — a flexible whip-like sword — is its most difficult weapon to master. An urumi wielder requires great agility and knowledge of the weapon simply to avoid self-injury." (video at the link)

A freshman basketball player for Florida State scored 30 points in the final 4:38 of a game.  "Rathan-Mayes scored 26 consecutive Florida State points without missing a shot."  His team still lost.

A police officer does not always have to show you his identification.   Exceptions include if it would jeopardize an investigation, hinder a police function, or if safety is involved.

In 2004 the New Jersey State Department of Environmental Protection initiated a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Corporation for $8.9 billion in damages for the contamination and loss of use of more than 1,500 acres of wetlands, marshes, meadows and waters.  The suit has been quietly settled by the state for around $250 million. Also "If the settlement is completed, it is possible that some or even none of the money would go toward environmental costs in the Exxon case: An appropriations law in New Jersey allows money beyond the first $50 million collected in such cases in the current fiscal year to go toward balancing the state budget."

LARP is "live action role playing."

The United States may have an oversupply of people with PhDs.  "...only one in five PhDs in science, engineering and health end up with faculty teaching or research positions within five years of completing their degrees." One reason: postdocs are cheap labor for research labs.

A discussion thread asks truck drivers "what town or city do you refuse to stop in?"

If you are ordering airline tickets online for international travel, read this link about how to secure lower fares.

Video of 80-year-old Natalie Trayling giving a remarkable 30-minute impromptu performance on a library piano of a piece of music she made up on the spot.

A photo gallery of regrettable tattoos.

"St. Pauli pinkelt zurück."  Video explains how the application of superhydophobic materials to walls causes streams of urine to rebound onto the malefactor.

How women have used cannabis in years past to ease childbirth, to treat swollen breasts, for migraine, and for menstrual pain (Queen Victoria in the latter category).

The United States' policy of birthright citizenship encourages "maternity tourism" by Chinese women.

Use this site to "play with gravity."  Each click generates a center of gravity that affects the moving points.  Gravity sites close together will coalesce.  If all the moving points coalesce in the gravity site, it "explodes."

The top image is a modern reworking of a classic Normal Rockwell painting.

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A Siberian linkdump

The aerial photo above is of an immense geoglyph, thought to represent a moose.  Scientists there claim it is the oldest one in the world (c. 4,000 B.C.), based on analysis of lithic chipping in the area.  It was an immense project: "Initial fieldwork found simple techniques were used to create the moose, with turf and earth 10-metres-wide dug out to make its shape before being filled with stones. 'The figure would initially have looked white and slightly shiny against the green grass background,' he said.

 What is believed to be the "last" western Siberian crane ("snow crane") has arrived in Iran completing its 6,000 km migration successfully for the seventh consecutive year.  There used to be two others in this population, but over the years they have been shot.  There are still some eastern Siberian snow cranes.


A three-year-old girl and her dog survived alone for 11 days in the Siberian taiga, eating berries and drinking river water.  A separate article praises the mongrel dog, which finally left her and went for help.

Siberian scientists (and residents) are concerned about flooding resulting from climate change as the permafrost disappears. "The process of warming in Siberia goes faster than elsewhere; it is not just hypothesis, there is data and observational evidence to prove it. Siberia is warming faster than any other place in the world," Mr Meleshko told the The Siberian Times.

YouTube video of a Siberian throat-singer.

Photos of a man going swimming at in "Oymyakon, the coldest inhabited settlement in the world. The air temperature as he swam had dipped to minus 60C. " 

"A 26 year old Siberian woman is facing 15 years in jail after strangling a man with her bra after he refused to lend her money for a drinking binge."

A Siberian firm located in a city above the Arctic Circle offers pizzas delivered by drone. "Yulia Ignatova, 25, said: 'Syktyvkar became one step closer to Futurama today, hurray! I was there and ate pizza. The pizza was delivered in just 20 minutes, while usually it takes about an hour or even longer.'"

This restaurant will shatter your preconceived notions of Siberian life and cuisine:

"European, Japanese, Soviet, Russian home style cuisine... Whether you want a meal with friends, to enjoy a live rock, Irish or country band, watch live sports at any time of the day or night, or hold that key business lunch, Beerman & Grill offers all these possibilities, and more besides."

It's not Milliways (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) (but you can see it from there).

Readers who would like to share other interesting links about Siberia are welcome to post them in the Comments section of this post.

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"Beware the fury of a patient man." - John Dryden

The photo above is of the parking entrance at the Estonian State Opera in Tallinn.   The batons are also visible on Google Street View.  Clever - although I'm not sure why in the first photo they seem to be in series rather than in parallel.

If you enjoy eating it, be aware that it is possible to be poisoned by black licorice - "It contains glycyrrhizin, which causes the candy to taste sweet. The ingredient is made from licorice root, consumption of which can prompt the kidneys to release too much potassium, disrupting cardiac function and sometimes causing palpitations. Glycyrrhizin is not present in red licorice or in some licorice-flavored candy that uses a sweetener other than licorice root."

The right is abandoning Sarah Palin.  Her recent speech was described thusly in the National Review: “The foreordained culmination of a slow and unseemly descent into farce."

An article explains how women can sell their used underpants for cash. "...more than half of those who participated in our survey only averaged between $50 – $100 a week, with those earning between $100 – $150 making up about 20%."

If for some reason you need taser-resistant clothing, buy a fencing jacket (video at the link).

Michelle Obama's lack of a headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia was not a fashion glitch; it was intended as a deliberate snub of Saudi policy.


Several pix of the remarkable geography of Monemvasia, Greece.  Embedded photo at right cropped for size from the original panoramic view here.  Other pix here and here.

A clever way to cut a bell pepper.

Criminals in Britain are plundering ATMs by flooding them with flammable gas (acetylene and oxygen) and then exploding them.  "The combined take of almost £250,000, or about $375,000, was the group’s biggest score in a single night yet. Their MO, using cheap, common, and legal gas, was nearly impossible to trace, and they left precious little forensic evidence for the police. To stop the rampage, there was little Britain’s banks could do."

Andrew Sullivan is retiring from The Dish.  The first of several farewell posts is here.

Bloomberg Business explains "The Economics of being a U.S. ambassador."  "Just filling the flower vases for the embassy in London is very expensive.”

What do British nuclear engineers eat? Mouse over this for the answer:  Fission chips!!

There is no such thing as nacho cheese.

Sea lion pups are starving off the coast of California.

The Telegraph has a gallery of photos of extreme body modifications from a show in Caracas.

The map at the left shows which states are best and worst in terms of children receiving the full set of recommended vaccines (darker color = better).

A brief video explains how to clean copper cookware with salt and vinegar.

Anti-circumcision activists have developed techniques and tools for reversing circumcision.

A New Mexico toddler outdid the Walmart kid from last month.  The 3-year-old removed his mother's gun from her purse and wounded both his parents with one shot. "Police believe the shooting to be accidental."

Hotels can now track towels to find out if you are stealing them.  Microchips can now detect when a towel enters an elevator or goes out the door.  The data is currently used mostly for inventory control/restocking rather than for prosecution.

The history of quotation marks.

Many herbal supplements sold by national retailers contained none of the advertised product or were contaminated with other material.  We are shocked, shocked.

The airline advertising on this escalator is either egregriously badly placed or is just photoshopped (via Neatorama).

If you're tired of TSA horror stories, don't read this one.

You can't make things like this up.  "A shopper buying a pot of fruit at Tesco was asked for ID - because it could ferment and turn into alcohol... Miss Lancaster, from Plymouth, Devon, sent an email and was told a new policy meant "fruit will be age verified in case natural fermentation takes place".  A clever way to prevent children from buying fruit.

Bald eagles in Florida are being accidentally poisoned.  The carcasses of pets euthanized with phenobarbital were being dumped in locations where the eagles scavenged them.

A nice article at BoingBoing lists and discusses the best adventure books for children written in the 1960s.  Many adults who missed their chance then would like to read their way through this list now that they have the leisure time to do so.

Phthiria relativitae was a species of bee fly.  The name is pronounced \theory o’relativity\.

You really don't need to know that sometimes gastroenterologists find cockroaches during screening colonoscopy.

A list of the 86 Best Picture Academy Award winners.  With pix, data, and commentary.

The Morning Glory pool at Yellowstone National Park looks like this now:

Which seems spectacular - until you realize that in 1966 it looked like this:

The coloration change reflects in part an alteration in the microbial flora as a result of temperature change in the water, which may have resulted from tourists throwing coins and other debris into the pool.

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A blizzard (of links) for you

"Molten gold was poured down his throat."  Modern forensic pathologists reproduce the death of a Spanish governor of colonial Ecuador in 1599.  They suggest that the reports of his bowels bursting may have been the result of steam generated by the procedure.

How to fold a shirt in two seconds.

Religious and ethnic affiliations of terrorists.  It's not as simple as some media outlets try to lead you to believe.

A lymphoproliferative (tumor-causing) virus is now widespread in wild turkeys.   It's not contagious to humans, but you shouldn't eat the birds.

Norwegian firefighters show you the wrong way to put out a car fire.   Do not aim a stream of high-pressure water at an angle that will push the car down a hill toward houses (video at the link).

A report in Discover suggests that female ejaculate squirted during orgasm is probably just urine.

"At least 42,000 gallons of oil has leaked into the Yellowstone River from a broken pipeline, leaving the Glendive city water supply smelling and tasting like petroleum."

A Florida police department was found to be using mug shot photographs of black men for target practice ("the technique is widely used and the pictures are vital for facial recognition drills.")

An interesting article in WaPo indicates that modern technology has the potential to render life-saving drugs cheaper by orders of magnitude through the creation of "biosimilar" drugs.  They do not report on the amount Big Pharma will spend to squash this.

Over a century ago someone left a .44-40 Winchester rifle leaning against a juniper tree in Nevada. It was just found, slightly the worse for exposure.  The photo at right shows why it was hard for the owner and subsequent passers-by to spot.

Rechargeable lithium batteries are dangerous as plane cargo because when packed in bulk they can ignite. "Shipments of rechargeable batteries on passenger planes are supposed to be limited to no more than a handful in one box... But a loophole lets shippers pack many small boxes in one shipment and get around the rules. Tens of thousands of the batteries may be packed into pallets or containers and loaded into the cargo holds of wide-body passenger planes.

Jamie Diamond, CEO of JPMorganChase, complains that the financial sector is facing crippling over-regulation. "In the old days," Dimon said, "you dealt with one regulator when you had an issue, maybe two. “Now it’s five or six. It makes it very difficult and very complicated. "You all should ask the question about how American that is. And how fair that is," he added. "And how complex that is for companies."  In other news, "JPMorgan Chase earned $4.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014, the company announced on Wednesday, down from a year ago, but capping what CEO Jamie Dimon called a record year for the biggest U.S. bank by assets."

The QI Elves report that a "typical breakfast" for George IV consisted of "2 pigeons; 3 steaks; 1 bottle wine; 1 glass champagne; 2 glasses port; 1 glass brandy; some laudanum."

The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven was recently pulled from bookstores after the author recanted his testimony and said “I did not die. I did not go to Heaven.”  I find it most interesting that the author's name is Malarkey.

There may be two planets the size of Earth "hiding" in our solar system.

By 2016 the richest 1% of people in the world will own more than the other 99% combined.  They have already seen their share of global wealth increase from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014.

If you are in your car in a traffic jam on an icy interstate highway, the last thing you want to see in your rear-view mirror is an 18-wheeler jackknifing behind you and sliding toward your car.  This is a terrifying video (safe for work etc); I'm impressed by the calmness of the driver photographing the incident.  His blinking emergency flashers add a surreal soundscape to the video.

Public Domain Review offers a well-written extensive article about Lord Byron (left, in Albanian dress), Polidori, and the birth of the modern vampire story.

An op-ed piece at Vice's Motherboard is entitled "The Most Anti-Science Congress in Recent History is Now in Session." "That explicit brand of denial is prominent in the party’s new Senate leadership. Many of the men—and they are all men—who are now stationed in the nation’s most influential science posts each exhibit views that can be considered science-illiterate at best, and at worst, outright hostile to modern scientific inquiry."

A man in Vermont has found his niche in life as an icicle farmer.

"Vajacial" is a portmanteau word meaning "facial for the vagina."  It involves "some steaming and applying some vitamins and egg white."

"A U.S. billionaire who made his fortune betting against sub-prime mortgage securities has told Americans to lower their expectations so they have 'less things' in life. Jeff Greene made his remarks after flying into Switzerland on a private jet with his 19-year younger wife, Mei Sze, children and two nannies."  Gag me with a spoon.

The Claas Xerion 3300 VC Octopus Ditch Bank Mower is an impressive machine for destroying butterfly habitat.

An article in the Telegraph explains that the "cowgirl" sexual position is the one most likely to result in a man breaking his penis.

"A New Jersey teacher said he was charged nearly $9,000 after he showed a cut middle finger to a hospital emergency room aide... $8,200 for the emergency room visit, $180 for the shot, $242 for the bandage and $8 for the ointment, plus hundreds of dollars for the nurse practitioner."

Video highlights of an NBA player scoring 37 points in one quarter of a basketball game.

If you don't like basketball, take at look at this remarkable hockey goal (performed at an exhibition).  I believe it's referred to as a "Michigan", named after this classic goal in 2007 and lots of young hockey players can do them.

Four bears in New Hampshire have died from an overdose of chocolate.   A hunter had put down 90 pounds of chocolate and doughnuts as bait.

U.S. chocolate manufacturer Hershey apparently has difficulty competing with the makers of Cadbury Creme Eggs, Maltesers, Kit Kats and Yorkie bars.  So Hershey is suing the importers of those products.

A Reddit thread discusses Edward Snowden's claim that iPhones and other smart phones have spyware that allows the government to monitor the user.

The Koch brothers are budgeting almost $900,000,000 to influence upcoming U.S. elections.

Which day of the week is named in the most song titles? (hint: it's not Thursday).

Also at Public Domain review, a fulltext 1915 book of Russian fairytales (in English) (one illustration below).

About one link for every inch of snow falling on my old friends in the Boston area.  Stay safe, everyone.

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“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.” - Mark Twain

It may finally be possible to create an effective bedbug trap.  Two Canadian researchers have published a report identifying a "bedbug aggregation pheromone."

Stress has a useful function.  "The trees inside Biosphere 2 grew rapidly, more rapidly than they did outside of the dome, but they also fell over before reaching maturation... a lack of wind in Biosphere 2 caused a deficiency of stress wood... Without stress wood, a tree can grow quickly, but it cannot support itself fully."  (human long bones are similar)

Styleite has a review of eight state-of-the-art vibrators.

A gif of a home-made, simple, humane trap for mice and other small rodents.

The backstory details about the two-year-old toddler who shot and killed his mother at Walmart.  The grieving husband/father is angry at the public for using this incident to grandstand for gun control, noting that his late wife was an experienced and responsible gun owner.

Brain Pickings offers their list of the Best Children's Books of 2014.

How to season a cast iron skillet.  "The skillet you want is at least fifty years old, and right now it is probably sitting on a thrift store shelf or a yard sale table. Your first task is to locate it..."  (tip:  more fun than a thrift store search - find skillets at local auctions)

A video compilation of babies farting.

Eight "obituaries to remember," including "Chuck was the Director of Marketing for the Lund Cadillac Group. We are sure he would still want all to know that 0.9% financing is still available on all new 2008 Hummer H2’s."

Citing liability concerns, some cities are now severely limiting or prohibiting children from sliding on sleds in public parks.

"Dartmouth College has charged 64 students, many of them varsity athletes, with honor code violations following allegations of widespread cheating in a sports ethics class." 

Video of an impressive "dust devil" occurring amidst a crowd of people.  Fortunately nobody was injured.

A scale model of the solar system.

You've probably seen reports of the Paul-Revere-era time capsule recently discovered and opened by the staff at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Boston.com has a detailed report, including photos (recovered coins at right) and a video highlighting the careful work of the conservators.

A young man constructed a "suicide helmet" that simultaneous fired eight shotgun shells into his head.

The Atlantic has a gallery of photos from the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival.  Top image credit Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters.  Image below credit Reuters.

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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell

A British Pathe documentary "displays various 1920s underwear garments, with elements of dance and touches of a striptease, although the video is very much in good taste."

And speaking of underwear, how do you sit down when you're wearing a bustle?

"In the eyes of the law, pets are possessions and when US citizens die, they have the right to decide where they go... Connie Lay, of Aurora, Indiana, had a few possible plans laid out for her dog Bela at her death. One of them being the German Shepard be put down and her ashes put with hers... According to volunteers, she is a smart, well trained, sweet dog who deserves a home. But according to the attorney handling Lay's estate, that was not her owner's wishes...several people have offered to adopt Bela but Denmure says it's Lay's dog and the executor of her will has the authority to carry out her wishes."  (update: a tip of the blogging hat to reader Solange, who found that Bela is going to be transported to a sanctuary in Utah.)

The Royal Statistical Society Quiz for 2011 asked this question: "If Scotsman Adam equals American Andrew, and Canadian John equals twice New Zealander Edmund, then which Australian man equals Englishman Charles?"and this one:  "Explain the following linked sequences: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66, 96, ...  (and) 1, 4, 3, 11, 15, 13, 17, ...".  Answers for the entire quiz here.

An explanation of why the seasonally popular "Baby, it's cold outside" song can be viewed as a "date-rape holiday classic."  See also my previous post about the song.

An impressive video at Neatorama shows a horsehair worm emerging from a mantis.  If that interests you, take a look at my 2013 post showing a roundworm emerging from a spider and the two videos of parasites emerging from crickets - important because the parasites seem to have evolved [or been granted by a god...] the ability to control the behavior of their host so that their emergence occurs in water.

"1000 colours" is a puzzle in which each piece is an different color.  Time-lapse video of one being assembled at the link (via BoingBoing).

Everything you need to know about the winter solstice.

Cheerful story of the day - with video.  A chronically ill 17-year-old girl with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis is surprised by her father with a gift.

A detailed report from the BBC documents how a group of Australian Aboriginal people meet modern civilization for the first time. "They had been unaware of the arrival of Europeans on the continent, let alone cars - or even clothes." (hat tip to reader Charles Hargrove).

An op-ed piece at Salon asks whether the American public would allow the open-carry gun laws to be applied to radical Muslims or Hispanics.  "In other words, the Bill of Rights only applies to those whose intentions are “good.”

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse explains how to deal with junk mail.  I have one aunt who has been contributing to various conservative political groups and as a result now receives an average of 60 solicitations per day in her mail.  She wants to keep supporting Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, but is dismayed to sometimes find up to two hundred items in her mail in a day.  She has way more notepads and return address labels than she can ever use.

Officials in Wisconsin are studying techniques that will extract drinkable water from cow manure.  "The treatments can strain virtually all of the phosphorus and solids out of a large portion of the material, producing clear water and a concentrated fertilizer that could be sold."  The goal of course is not to procure more water, but to reconfigure the manure into separate water and solids to minimize environmental contamination.

Image of impressive Christmas wrap cropped for size from the original posted at imgur.

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"History is a set of lies agreed upon" - Napoleon

"The typical spices used in winter include nutmeg, cinnamon, clove and anise. These spices contain two groups of chemicals, the allylbenzenes and their isomers, the propenylbenzenes. It was suggested 40 years ago by Alexander Shulgin that these substances act as metabolic precursors of amphetamines...Humans may be exposed to amphetamines derived from these precursors in forno, the formation during baking and cooking, for example in the preparation of Lebkuchen, or Christmas gingerbread. It is possible that this may be responsible, in part, for uplifting our mood in winter. "

A set of two articles in Der Spiegel details the outrageous profits made by the human scum who act as traffickers for persons seeking asylum in Europe. "Jafir had insisted that the total fee for the trip to Italy -- €7,000 ($8,735) per person -- be paid in advance. Ahmad doesn't comment on the amount, which corresponds to at least two average annual salaries in prewar Syria... Ahmad and 126 other refugees boarded the vessel..."

The Motherboard at Vice explains that "erection vendors" in Peru are driving some amphibians toward extinction.  "Frog Juice, or Jugo de Rana, as it's referred to in Spanish, has been dubbed the Peruvian Viagra. It's a concoction that's believed to have strong medicinal powers with purported benefits including increased blood flow, lung function, and more poignantly, sexual stimulation."

The top song played in U.K. funerals is the Pythons' Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.  I posted the video six years ago; I suggest clicking that link and playing it while reading the rest of this linkdump. ("Always look on the bright side of death.  Just before you draw your terminal breath.")

An article (with video) at The Telegraph documents the changes that occur when a man adds ten non-diet Cokes a day to his diet.   In a month "the previously gym-toned Mr Prior put on two stone in weight, and saw his blood pressure rise to an unhealthy 145/96. He also reported strong cravings for more sugar, even though he was consuming 350g of sugar daily from his Coke intake alone."

YouTube link. 

So, you think you understand Putin's role in the situation in Ukraine?  What if someone said it was the West that was responsible for the escalation of hostilities?  "Europe and America did not understand the impact of these events, starting with the negotiations about Ukraine’s economic relations with the European Union and culminating in the demonstrations in Kiev. All these, and their impact, should have been the subject of a dialogue with Russia."  That's Henry Kissinger speaking.  The op-ed piece at Salon suggests "this is a non-Western nation drawing a line of resistance against the advance of Anglo-American neoliberalism across the planet."

Terminal lucidity is the subject of an interesting article in Scientific American.  The term refers to "The (re-)emergence of normal or unusually enhanced mental abilities in dull, unconscious, or mentally ill patients shortly before death, including considerable elevation of mood and spiritual affectation, or the ability to speak in a previously unusual spiritualized and elated manner."  For example " A 92-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease... hadn’t recognized her family for years, but the day before her death, she had a pleasantly bright conversation with them, recalling everyone’s name."  At one of the links in the article a reasonable postulate is that when the brain is dying, an inhibitory hemisphere or locus dies first, releasing normal function by memory cells that had previously been suppressed.

Big Agriculture doesn't want libraries to share seeds.

The largest known block of stone carved by humans weighed an incredible 1,650 tons.  It was created in about 27 B.C. but never used for construction. (via Neatorama).

In six years your IRA balance can go from $5,000 to $196,000,000.   But only if you know how to twist the intent of Congress to your personal advantage.

"A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence has emerged proving the validity of his claims."

As you watch the American collegiate football playoffs, take a moment to ponder this tweet by the quarterback for the Ohio State Buckeyes: "Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain't come to play SCHOOL classes are POINTLESS."

A gif of a German sport called headis.  Discussed at Reddit.

Vortices in swimming pools are way more complicated and interesting than you would expect (also via my old friends at Neatorama).  What you're really seeing is both ends of a "half-vortex ring."

YouTube link.

 Wikipedia is the number one "go-to" resource that saves me countless hours of searching. TYWKIWDBI supports Wikipedia; if you enjoy this blog, you should support them too.

Top image of Trapiche emeralds (Muzo, Colombia) via Minerals, Minerals, Minerals!  Time travel image via Mark's Scrapbook of Oddities and Treasures.  I am going to do a sign like that for our front yard next summer.

The way things are going, I may be able to return to regular daily blogging in about one more week.

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"I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it’s a complete mystery."

BoingBoing offers a comprehensive report entitled Everything you need to know about marijuana edibles.  "It’s important for individuals to develop an idea of how they personally metabolize any oral cannabis preparation, starting with a very small dose and remaining patient until it’s thoroughly metabolized over six hours, before taking more... individuals only having experience with the low-potency cannabis of the Seventies and Eighties can be unpleasantly overwhelmed when consuming today’s cannabis."

This autumn in a garden outside the House of Commons in Westminster a gardener was employed to pull the leaves off the trees one by one.  Photo at right.

The Telegraph offers a comprehensive list of all the winners of the Man Booker Prize from 1969 to 2013.  Each one is accompanied by a thumbnail sketch, often with a link to a comprehensive review of the book.  I'm embarassed at how few of them I've read.

Naval war games in the Pacific Ocean threaten the lives of countless marine creatures.  "Through 2018, the Navy plans to use 260,000 explosives — some as heavy as 2,000 pounds — and emit high-frequency sonar for a total of 500,000 hours — including 60,000 hours of the most powerful sonar.

The population of Germany is falling; it is down by 2 million.  "Mr. Voigt has already supervised the demolition of 60 houses and 12 apartment blocs, strategically injecting grassy patches into once-dense complexes... In its most recent census, Germany discovered it had lost 1.5 million inhabitants. By 2060, experts say, the country could shrink by an additional 19 percent, to about 66 million.  Demographers say a similar future awaits other European countries, and the issue grows more pressing every day as Europe’s seemingly endless economic troubles accelerate the decline."

A dinosaur newly discovered in Argentina - Dreadnoughtus schrani - is the largest animal ever found (so far).  It weighed 65 tons (a Boeing 737 weights 50 tons).  The photo at left shows a toe bone.

A desert plant plant, Helianthemum squamatum, can derive up to 90% of its fluid requirements from crystallization water (hydrates) trapped in gypsum rock.  Discussed at Reddit.

The Belgian chocolate maker ISIS has decided to change its name.

One appears to be gray and the other yellow, but these two Xs are the same color:

A vaccine has been developed to prevent tick-borne Lyme borreliosis.  Commentary at Reddit.

The first "Knock, knock.  Who's there..." was written by Shakespeare:  "Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' th' name of Belzebub? . . . [Knock] Knock, knock! Who's there, in th' other devil's name?"  [Macbeth II:3, 1-8]

Those readers who have been following developments in the Antikyhthera mechanism will want to read about an update on the subject.  The date it was constructed to be used was 205 B.C. - earlier than previously thought.

Millennials are not interested in golf.  "Last year alone, some 400,000 people gave up the sport in the U.S., according to the National Golf Foundation. At least 160 golf courses closed down, which marked the eighth consecutive year of net closings around the country. Golfers played the lowest number of rounds since 1995."

Unusual horse for sale (image embedded right), via the always funny Bad Newspaper.

If you live in Europe and find an unusual object washed up on the beach, with the word "Tjipetir" written on it, you can read an explanation of it in the Washington Post.

The top (by Ali Akbari) and bottom (by Adam Williams) photos in this post are two of the 101 images presented in the 2014 International Landscape Photographer of the Year Competition.

Title quote (attributed to Charles M. Schulz), found at Mark's Scrapbook of Oddities and Treasures.

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"I AM NOT A COW. I AM PROFESSOR DUNBAR. PLEASE DO NOT KILL ME."

An article at the BBC explores why so many Americans live in mobile homes.  "Not everyone who lives in a trailer park is poor."  My father lived in one in Texas for many years .

The WildCat is an impressive robot developed by the U.S. Defense Department. Video at the link.

The "choking game" is "an activity popular among 9- to 16-year-old kids in which they strangle themselves or each other — sometimes at parties or sleepovers — to get a high. The most common reported age of death is 13, Alex’s age. Many kids like Alex — smart kids who do well in school and have loving families — regard the Choking Game as a legal and safe alternative to drugs; one popular nickname for this is the Good Kids’ High."

The Atlantic explains how close New York City is to a food crisis, if supplies from outside the city are disrupted by natural or manmade events: "New Yorkers rely chiefly on food from across the country, or the other side of the world. And to complicate matters, in recent decades the big companies that run these systems... keep much smaller inventories than in years past, sized to meet immediate demand under stable conditions—a strategy known as "just-in-time."

 Some medical facilities in the U.S. are now permitting patients to be visited by their pets. "In the end, officials decided that the benefits — comfort and reduced stress for patients — were more substantial than the risks. 

The Ancient History Encyclopedia has TMI for right now, but it is a good link to bookmark for reference and future browsing.  Its content is exactly what the name suggests.

The World Memory Championships are a remarkable test of human abilities.  Components of the competition include:

1. Names and faces: recall as many as possible in 15 minutes

2. Binary numbers: remember as many binary figures, which are made up of 0 and 1, in half an hour

3. One hour numbers: to memorise as many random digits in complete rows of 40 in one hour
4. Abstract images: recall the sequence of abstract images in as many rows as possible in 15 minutes
5. Speed numbers: remember random digits, in rows of 40, as quickly as possible in five minutes
6. Historic/future dates: recall as many years as possible and link them correctly to given fictional events in five minutes
7. One hour cards: remember as many separate decks of 52 playing cards as possible in one hour
8. Random words: recount as many random words, such as dog, vase, spoon, in 15 minutes
9. Spoken numbers: memorise as many single digits spoken aloud in one second intervals as possible
10. Speed cards: recall as single pack of 52 playing cards in the shortest possible time.
Additional details are available in an article in The Telegraph.

The Sahara desert is experiencing a "catastrophic collapse of its wildlife." "Of 14 species historically found in the Sahara, four are now extinct, and the rest are heading that way.... the region has lost the Bubal hartebeest (which is entirely extinct), the scimitar horned ornyx (extinct in the wild), the African wild dog and the African lion, while the dama gazelle, addax, leopard and the Saharan cheetah have been eliminated from 90 percent or more of their range."

The earth has vast resources of fresh water - underneath the oceans. "The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we've extracted from the Earth's sub-surface in the past century since 1900."

Some people think the U.S. and Canada should merge into one country.  "Such a merger makes perfect sense. No two countries on Earth are as socially and economically integrated as the U.S. and Canada... Truth be told, the merger of the U.S. and Canada is already well under way. As many as one in 10 Canadians (more than 3 million people) live full- or part-time in the U.S., and an estimated 1 million Americans live in Canada."

An op-ed piece at Salon argues that referring to every soldier as a "hero" cheapens the term.

FlirOne infrared cameras attach to a cellphone and can be utilized in a variety of ways to do your own home inspection looking for heat and water leaks.

The "jetway Jesus phenomenon" is a term flight attendants use to refer to passengers who get rides through airports in wheelchairs, then miraculously get up and walk.

Was Vincent Van Gogh murdered?  "And, anyway, what kind of a person, no matter how unbalanced, tries to kill himself with a shot to the midsection? And then, rather than finish himself off with a second shot, staggers a mile back to his room in agonizing pain from a bullet in his belly?"

Photos of vinyl hoarders and their hoards.

The first house in the United States to have electric lights was in Appleton, Wisconsin.  The homeowner operated a mill and set up a hydroelectric plant for the house.

A previously-unknown Shakespearean First Folio has been discovered in a French Jesuit library.

During WWI, tanks were designated "male" or "female."  The latter had machine guns.

"The former leader of a Christian ministry that promised to cure people "trapped in homosexuality" has revealed that he has married his gay partner."

"The two drugs have been declared equivalently miraculous. Tested side by side in six major trials, both prevent blindness in a common old-age affliction. Biologically, they are cousins. They’re even made by the same company. But one holds a clear price advantage. Avastin costs about $50 per injection.Lucentis costs about $2,000 per injection.  Doctors choose the more expensive drug more than half a million times every year, a choice that costs the Medicare program, the largest single customer, an extra $1 billion or more annually... Doctors and drugmakers profit when more-costly treatments are adopted... “Lucentis is Avastin — it’s the same damn molecule with a few cosmetic changes..."

The National Library of Norway is in the process of digitizing its entire holdings. "If you happen to be in Norway, as measured by your IP address, you will be able to access all 20th-century works, even those still under copyright. Non-copyrighted works from all time periods will be available for download. "

ELI5 explanation of why oil (and gasoline) prices have been plummeting

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The title of this linkdump is one of the penultimate lines from The Court of Tartary, a fantasy by T.P. Caravan first published in 1963. In the story, a professor of English literature "awakens" to find his mind is entrapped in the body of a cow, and the herd seems to be destined to the slaughterhouse.

"Edward Harrison Dunbar, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., L.L.D., member of the Modern Language Association and authority on eighteenth century literature, was not prepared for the situation in which he found himself: it had never been mentioned by any of the writers of the Age of Reason....

And even as he ran he wondered if he couldn't prove that Edward Young was the true author of the third book of Gulliver's Travels, because he knew that if he stopped thinking scholarly thoughts about the eighteenth century he would have to admit that he had turned into an animal. So as he ran he considered the evidence turned up by the publication of the Tickell papers and the discovery of Swift's old laundry lists and Night Thoughtsand the graveyard poets and Gray's Elegyand the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and he had to admit that he was an animal....

There was no point in approaching his difficulty through the scientific method: he knew no science. There was no help for him in metaphysics: he had cleared his mind of Kant. Nor could the classics aid him: he had read Ovid, of course, and the Golden Ass, but he didn't see how they bore on his problem. And — he hated to admit it — nobody in the eighteenth century seemed to have wondered what would happen to a scholar who woke up and found himself a cow. All right. That left only his own experience to fall back on. But, being a professor, he had never had any experiences..."

He decides to use his hoof to draw a triangle in the dust.  Then... if I've piqued your curiosity, you can read the full story in ten minutes fulltext online at Scribd.

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The photographs (found here, here, and here) embedded above in this weekend linkdump are of Prince's Island Park, located in the Bow River as it passes through Calgary.  The backside of the island abuts the community of Eau Claire, but its nicest feature is that the front of the island faces the delightful community of Sunnyside, a suburb of Calgary characterized by an uncommonly large number of intellectually sophisticated residents.

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