Robert Jahn ~ I should have known better!

It was brought to my attention that this blog mentions Robert Jahn as a skeptic.  I had him on a list of people whose site needed a picture as well as a cleanup.  I gathered the names for that list from the Rational Skeptic Wiki Project that had a mix of skeptics and non-skeptics on it.  I went to Robert Jahn's Wikipedia page before he was brought to my attention and looked it over.  Not knowing who he is I thought he looked okay.  After I was told to look into his skeptical credentials further I looked at Google and really only found his academic webpage as well as the Wikipedia link.  Nothing enlightening.  Apparently there are several men named Robert Jahn so their pages were intermixed with the Jahn I am looking for.

So back to the Wikipedia page.  The person who asked me to look closer is someone who should know, Barry Karr, Executive Director of CSI.

Hopefully you are looking at Jahn's page right now, what you see here is badly referenced (see the flag at the top of the page asking for citations and cautioning viewers that the page has been written from a single source).  There is no picture, no personality, lots of red "dead links" this is what is called in Wiki language a "stub" page.  But skeptics also have badly maintained stub pages, and we have a whole list of people who need a picture.  So I'm learning nothing from just the quick glance.

Then I start reading his lead, the academics and prestigious schools just scream that this man is noteworthy.

Professor Robert G. Jahn is Dean Emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Science of Princeton University. He founded in 1961 the first American laboratory dedicated to the study of Electric propulsion for spacecraft and satellites, the Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton University, and directed it for more than three decades. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and has been chairman of the AIAA Electric Propulsion Technical Committee, associate editor of the AIAA Journal, and a member of the NASA Space Science and Technology Advisory Committee. He is vice President of the Society for Scientific Exploration and Chairman of the Board of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories consortium. He has been a long-term member of the Board of Directors of Hercules, Inc. and chairman of its Technology Committee, and a member and chairman of the Board of Trustees of Associated Universities, Inc. He has received the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award of the American Society for Engineering Education and an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Andrha University.

So if Mr and Mrs America sitting on their couch read what I read (just quickly) how can you sum this man up?  Is he a scientist worthy of being someone we need to have his Wiki back?  Or what?  What I said to myself was "damn, this man sounds awesome".


So I ask Barry, "what are you talking about, nothing on Google is coming up on this guy other than solid academic links or the Wikipedia page where he looks like a good solid scientist".  Barry's reply is "do a search for him on www.csi.org and see what you get.

Well that was an eye opener!  There I find that this man was involved in the Bem paranormal experiments, and not on the skeptical side.  I had just read Jame's Alcock's critique of Bem and friends, I had made a lot of notes of how I intend to post the write-up from SI into several Wikipedia pages.  In fact the March/April issue is sitting next to my laptop where I can glance down next to the bowl of cherry pits and see the title "Proof of ESP?  Not Quite." looking up at me.

Then taking a third look at Jahn's Wikipedia page, there is a lot of information that should have raised a flag, like the mention in the above paragraph that he is the Chairman of the Board of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories". Which I have never heard of (nor has Wikipedia as the link is a dead one) but that word Consciousness is just one of those "hum" kind of words.

Then later in the Wikipedia page we find this,

"With Brenda Dunne, Robert Jahn established the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab in 1979 following an undergraduate project to study the low-level psychokinetic effects on electronic random event generators. Over the last 25 years and more, Jahn and Dunne claim to have created a wealth of small-physical-scale, statistically significant results that suggest direct causal relationships between subjects' intention and otherwise random results."

Brenda Dunn goes to a dead page as well.   An eyebrow raiser to say the least.  They claim to have  found evidence that a subject can change a randomizing machine.  Just the word "psychokinetic" should have set off an alarm, but I didn't notice it. 

Then the clincher that I didn't notice until the third time reading the page. 

"Experiments under Jahn's purview also came to deal with Remote Viewing (RV) and other parapsychological matters. More than 30 papers were published in peer-reviewed journals. Statistical flaws were proposed by others in the parapsychological community regarding some results in a few specific experiments."

Well oh well oh.  

No hyperlinks to the paranormal words that might set off a light bulb and explain the terms.  Only one slight criticism from this source that does not have a URL link associated with it, from a paranormal journal. 

Critique of the Pear Remote-Viewing Experiments by George P. Hansen, Jessica Utts, and Betty Markwich, Journal of Parapsychology, Vol 56, No. 2, June 1992, pp 97-113.

What!

Here are the links to CSI articles I found once I checked on their site.


Back to the Future: Parapsychology and the Bem Affair - Jan 2011

A Mind at Play: An Interview with Martin Gardner - April 1998

A Korean Skeptic’s Report: New Ager-Occupied Territory - March 2000

What’s Going On At Temple University? - Oct 1998

Anomalous Cognition? A Second Perspective - August 2008

Tachyons and Other Nonentities - September 1994

Scientific Remote Viewing - June 1996

An Alien Taxonomy - June 1997

PEAR Lab Closes, Ending Decades of Psychic Research - June 2007

Barry Karr is correct, this man isn't unknown to us.  There are many articles written by skeptics devoted to informing the public about this man and his psychic research.  Wonderful.  But what about the rest of the world, I'm not saying that a high percentage of the 411 million hits to Wikipedia in the last 10 years ended up on Robert Jahn's page, but there it is for whoever wants to read it.  

Shame on us.  Why did we allow this to happen? I know what to look for, and I still missed all the red-flags.  And yes, you can make fun of me all you want, but the end result is the same.  Robert Jahn's Wikipedia page is in desperate need of a make-over.  

I've given you just a few of the links.  I've cleaned up the dead hyperlinks on the page as I couldn't stand to look at them anymore.  The discussion page has nothing except this "This article falls under the scope of WikiProject Paranormal, which aims to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to the paranormal and related topics on Wikipedia.".  Please people, lets get this taken care of. 

 

Two-headed python

A python with two heads seen in Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany. The animal is around one year old and approximately 50cm long. The snake is the second python known to be born with two heads, according to snake breeder Stefan Broghammer. 

A beautiful creature.   Photo credit EPA, via the Telegraph

Explaining the "14" and "88" memes

Excerpts from an article at Spiegel Online discussing subtle new neo-Nazi codes:

Openly Nazi symbols such as the swastika are banned in Germany, so neo-Nazis get around the law by using coded combinations of letter and numbers such as 14 and 88. A new book explains the meaning of such codes, and reveals that far-right style is becoming increasingly diverse and hard to spot...

According to Weiss, the number 14 is a reference to the so-called "14 Words," a phrase coined by the American white separatist David Lane ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"). The meaning behind "88" -- often found in conjunction with 14 -- is slightly more complicated. Here, the number eight stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet, forming "HH" -- an abbreviation for "Heil Hitler," a phrase which is banned in Germany. Similarly, the number 28 signifies "BH," standing for "Blood and Honour," a far-right network that was banned in Germany in 2000.



The secret code numbers can be found "everywhere," says Weiss, including on license plates, tattoos and on signs at football games. "There are fans who travel 400 kilometers (250 miles) to a game just to hold up the four numbers that form 1488," he says...

The increasingly diverse image of right-wing extremists mean that neo-Nazis can often blend in at left-wing demonstrations or in a sports stadium, Weiss explains. "The problem is that many of these people no longer stand out."

More at the link.

Wikileaks commercial

YouTube link.

Trapped bubbles in a frozen lake

Not a rare phenomenon for those of us who live "up north," but nicely photographed by Emmanuel Coupe and posted at National Geographic.

Utah "rock monster"

Credit Shelly Pollock/National Geographic, via Dark Roasted Blend.

A Barnum display becomes commonplace

The top image is a carte de visite from the 1860s of Phebe Dunn,"supposedly one of Barnum's "fat ladies" at his American Museum. She is 17 in this photo, according to the back, and 407 lbs." People of that era paid money to look at her as a human anomaly.

In the lower image, "Fairgoers play a carnival game at the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar, California."

I'll defer commentary.  Res ipse loquitur.

Top photo credit gormer, via Historical Indulgences.  Lower photo Reuters.

Fungible? Fusillade? Futon? Furbelow?

What word was being scratched on the car?  I guess we'll never know.

Found at Criggo, which has lots of these, including the ones below:

Magnets can improve blood flow

I was totally gobsmacked to see an article on this topic at Physics Buzz.  Here are some excerpts:

Blood, like the motor oil in a car’s engine, has an ideal viscosity, or thickness, that keeps the body’s circulatory system running smoothly. When a person’s blood is too viscous (too thick and sticky) his or her blood vessels build up more plaque leading to a greater risk of heart attack. Finding a way to decrease the blood’s viscosity, by taking aspirin for example, reduces those risks. The problem with aspirin, though, is that it may cause as much harm as it does help.

Rongjia Tao, chair of the Department of Physics at Temple University, and his former student have found a mechanical alternative to aspirin to thin highly viscous blood.

“It’s quite simple,” Tao said of the technique. He uses a magnetic field to rearrange a person’s red blood cells, streamlining blood that is too thick. A magnetic field of 1.3 Tesla (about the same as an MRI – magnetic resonance imaging - machine) applied to blood for about one minute can reduce its viscosity by 20 to 30 percent....



Huang and Tao tested the technique on human blood samples acquired from Temple University... A huge magnet, weighing near a thousand pounds, created a magnetic field that was applied to the sample with the magnetic field pointed in the blood flow direction.

When applied, the magnetic field polarizes the red blood cells causing them to link together in short chains. Because the field is aligned to the blood flow direction, the chains also form in the same direction, streamlining the movement of the blood. Additionally, because the chains are larger than the single blood cells, they tend to flow down the center of the tube reducing the friction against the walls of the blood vessels. The combined effects reduce the viscosity of the blood, helping it to flow more freely...

Just like in an MRI, the magnet Tao and Huang used does not have the ionizing radiation, like that found in CT scans, which can be harmful to the body. The technique also does not interfere with the normal oxygen delivery and waste removal function of the red blood cells, the researchers said, and is not dependent on blood type.

Tao is still doing research on the technique and hopes that clinical trials will soon follow.  

How they are reportedly able to polarize the nonmagnetic iron in hemoglobin is beyond my understanding, but my greater concern is that reports like this will be misused by those who claim that conventional magnets placed near the body provide health benefits.  (Or maybe they do... ?)

Addendum:  A hat tip to Mama Bean, who found a discussion of this research at Science-Based Medicine. 

"You have just been poisoned"

This iconic glass from Episode 15 of The Prisoner was posted at Neatorama, but is not available in the Neatoshop.  However, you can make one of your own by following the etching instructions at Make Projects.

"U.S. to Throw More Money at Central America's Drug War"

At a regional conference this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged almost $300 million to the governments of Central America during 2011 to aid in their efforts to oppose cartels and others involved in the region’s violent, illegal drug trade. The new assistance package is almost a 15 percent increase from last year’s aid. [Clinton did not offer details] on exactly how the money should or would be used, but it seems safe to assume most will be spent on police and military operations.

Fortunately we have lots of extra money we don't need for other purposes.
Text and title from Truthdig. Photo:U.S. Embassy New Zealand.

He was the second U.S. president to be photographed.

Born before Independence in 1767, photographed at age 78 in 1845.  Those who don't recognize him will find his identity at Historical Indulgences.

And the first one to be photographed was... (see the comments)

Choosing between "...ize" and "...ise"

Explained at DCBlog:

The -ize spelling was preferred by classical scholars, especially in the 16th century, for verbs which came into English from Greek and Latin, and that etymological argument has fostered the use of z ever since. The USA and Canada adopted it from the outset. And the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary opted for it, at the end of the 19th century, partly on etymological grounds (a z is used in Greek and Latin) and partly on phonological grounds (that the letter better reflects the sound)...

So where did the -ise alternatives come from? Some of the words such as baptize) were spelled with both an s and a z from their earliest days in Middle English. The trend to spell all such verbs with s began when verbs came into English with increasing frequency from French, where the suffix was -iser. A verb of this kind borrowed directly from French, it was argued, should be spelled with -ise, to reflect that source. Some felt it important to maintain a spelling link between related words, such as analyse and analyst. And during the 19th century, this usage grew.

The problem, of course, is that it is often unclear whether a verb has come into English from French or from Latin. Confusion led 19th-century printers to try to sort it out, and they did this by imposing a uniform rule for all such verbs where alternatives exist...

World usage varies. -ize is the overall preference in North America; -ise in Australia. Usage in the UK is mixed, with -ise beating -ize in a ratio of 3:2... Some publishers these days are adopting a more relaxed attitude: they don't mind which authors use, as long as they are consistent.

Via Sentence First.

Sand sculpture

Six feet tall, photographed at Harrison Hot Springs in 2005 by loyless. 

Via This is My Stomping Ground.

Famous political MISquotes

These quotations were never spoken, at least in the way they are commonly cited, by these famous persons.  Each one is explained in some detail in a post at the Christian Science Monitor.

10. "I can see Russia from my house!" – Sarah Palin

9. 'I invented the Internet.' – Al Gore

8. 'First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win.' - Mohandas Gandhi

7. "Let them eat cake." - Marie Antoinette

6. "Et tu, Brute?" - Julius Caesar



5. "I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people." –Dan Quayle

4. "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." – Josef Stalin

3. "The ends justify the means." – Niccolò Machiavelli

2. "To get rich is glorious." – Deng Xiaoping

1. "I am a jelly doughnut!" – John F. Kennedy

A bird call that sounds like an insect call

YouTube link.

"Listen as Macaulay Library Audio Archivist Martha Fischer describes her experience hearing the song of a White-rumped Sandpiper on its high arctic breeding grounds."

Via A London Salmagundi.

As much as $18,000,000,000 "missing" in Iraq

From a story posted at Al Jazeera:

Osama al-Nujaifi, the Iraqi parliament speaker, has told Al Jazeera that the amount of Iraqi money unaccounted for by the US is $18.7bn - three times more than the reported $6.6bn... "Iraq's development fund has lost around $18bn of Iraqi money in these operations - their location is unknown. Also missing are the documents of expenditure...

The Bush administration flew in a total of $20bn in cash into the country in 2004. This was money that had come from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets. Officials in Iraq were supposed to give out the money to Iraqi ministries and US contractors, intended for the reconstruction of the country...

The Los Angeles Times reported last week that Iraqi officials argue that the US government was supposed to safeguard the stash under a 2004 legal agreement it signed with Iraq, hence making Washington responsible for the cash that has disappeared.

Pentagon officials have contended for the last six years that they could account for the money if given enough time to track down the records. The US has audited the money three times, but has still not been able to say exactly where it went...

"Safeguarding the money was up to the Americans ... after the invasion, provisional authority here was run by the American military.

"Piles and piles of shrink-wrapped US dollars came here, but the cash coming in is not the important part - it is what happened to it after [it got here].

"There are no documents to indicate who got it, where it was spent and what was ever built from it."

I think I can hear General Smedley Butler chuckling in the background...

Portraits on Wikipedia

Part of the "We got your Wiki Back" project.

A large part of what makes a Wiki page engaging is the use of pictures on the page.  By profession I am a portrait photographer (I specialize in people who don't want their pictures taken, usually the very young and the old and cranky).  Portraits on Wikipedia fits right into that skill set. 

Lets just go to the category American Skeptics for a quick look at how we are doing with photographing our spokes people.  Remember you can access this page by just going to a skeptic's page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and under Categories you should see this link.  If you don't see the link then it probably needs to be added and you can see my other blog on how to add that.  At the moment we only have 93 people listed on this page, something tells me we are a bit behind. See this blog about how to add a category.

Looking over this list I'm really surprised how many I've "tagged" with my pictures.  Some are the main image, others are somewhere else in the page like Hal Bidlack "relaxing" on the stage at TAM8 while some nameless "psychic" tries to discover who is missing a kidney.  (there is no accident that she is missing from this picture as well as her name in this blog) Same picture and reference is on Derek Colanduno's page. 

Brian Dunning, Harriett Hall and several others have pictures from the IIG 10th anniversary party up where they received awards for their contributions.  When I do this kind of post I'm able to link back to the IIG page for a bit more publicity.  They are also mentioned on the IIG page.  We are small fish in the ocean that is Wikipedia, we need to use our resources (each other) to become mainstream and linking to each other is a way to do that.

George Hrab has a great picture of him wearing a balloon hat.  Mark Edward took my camera away from me when we were at the Drinking Skeptically party at TAM7 and snapped it.  Tim Farley is the person who wrote this page and asked if I might have any images of Hrab, I searched my library and found this one.  In fact I think this was one of the first I've posted.  Again a plug for the JREF with this picture reference.

I've talked about Yau-Man Chan's picture in another blog, but want to mention it again.  This man is famous for his ping-pong skills and his two Survivor shows.  Only in our little world is he known as a skeptic. But now someone who might be looking him up for other reasons is going to come across this adorable picture with the JREF Pigasus.  Another hit for the JREF.  And someday when SkeptiCalCon gets enough notoriety this will link to their page with free publicity.

Here's an interesting image that I uploaded for Power Balance Bracelet, it was taken during the test done by Dominique Dawes and IIG.   I hyperlinked to the IIG under the picture and also in the article itself. I know people are clicking on the hyperlink because I am watching the IIG's "stats" page and can see where the hits come from.  You might notice on Dawes page that there is also a reference to the IIG and Power Balance that I left there some months ago.

Ray Hyman, Barry Beyerstein, James Alcock and Wallace Sampson all get linked together through this picture and it gets a quick mention of the Skeptic's Toolbox as well.  (The toolbox is in very bad need of a page, I just haven't managed to get to it yet). Most of these men are in bad need of a new picture for their site, so don't wait for me.  Barry's daughter is going to upload some images for me someday soon and I'll post them when she does. 

Several are missing pictures, Dr. Dean Edell and Elizabeth Loftus are just a couple.  Then again I'm sure Roger Ebert is wishing he didn't have a picture up, check this out?  Is there an award for worst Wiki portrait? 

The Robert Lancaster picture has a funny story behind it.  When I'm going out with my camera I usually have a picture goal I'm hoping to get.  At TAM6 I had heard that RSL was going to be attending, and I'm a big fan of his www.stopsylvia.com site.  My photo goal for TAM6 was to get a picture of me shaking his hand.  My friend Paulina Mejia took this image, you can't see me because when Tim Farley wrote Robert's page he asked me if I had a picture, I cropped out my mug and this is what we were left with.  The photo was taken pre-stroke.

Here's a great example of guerrilla skepticism on Harold Camping's page.  I managed to put up a picture of the IIG at the rapture party on May 21, 2011. (click on the image to read the signs) And a great quote from American Atheists while I was at it.  Use your resources.

Michael Stackpole's portrait is linked to the Dragon Con page more publicity for a skeptical event, good job.

Here is one that needs a new portrait, Greg Epstein 

And now a list of people who are missing their profile picture.
Claude Allegre, Farrell Till, George Abell, Isidor Sauers,  Robert Sheaffer, Stanislaw Burzynski, Andrew Weil, Stephen Barrett, Bart Bok, Chris French, Drauzio Varella. Eddie Tabash, James Oberg, Jerome Clark, Kendrick Frazier, Linda Howe, Michael Goudeau, Sanal Edamaruku, Sherwin Nuland, Phillp Klass, Dean Radin, Robert Priddy, Victor Stenger, Curtis Peebles, Donna Kossy,  Gerald Glaskin, Terence Hines.

James Moseley Not sure about this guy, I found him on the Rational Skepticism Project Page, I'm sure someone will let me know. 

Really sad pages here, I had to take a look at them again as I linked them to Wikipedia, and we really have our work cut out for us.  This list is long, but the list of people missing are even longer.  Please, if you know of people to add to this list let me know here and then others can see and help out.

How to post a picture on a site.  It isn't as easy as you might think, you don't just upload it from somewhere on the Internet.

First you have to open an account on WikiCommons.  Then you go to the "upload" page.  Follow the instructions and hopefully you will be left with a .jpg file that can be stored for someone writing a page, or for you to upload that very minute.

It will ask you for categories, I'm not sure how to find these categories, so I just start typing in the word skeptic and it usually gives me several choices.  I "add" all that pertain to the person.

How to actually edit a picture onto a Wikipedia site.  Place your courser on the WP page you want the picture to appear.

Select the 5th image from the left side of this image.  (The rectangle photo)

A box will appear.  In the "Insert File" you are going to place the file name of the image that was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

In the lower box is where you write your caption.

When done the edit may look like this below.  You can see that the | is in-between each area.  You do not have to have the picture size in your edit.

If you want your image to appear on the left or center side of the WP page, you can add the word, "left" or "center" to this edit.  Make sure you have a | before and after the word.

[[Image:Four Founding IIG.jpg|thumb|250px|Four founding members of the IIG, James Underdown, Brian Hart, Milton Timmons & Sherri Andrews, celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the IIG, August 21, 2010]]

The 250px is where you change the size of the picture.  Play around with different numbers in here and keep hitting "preview" on the page you are inserting the picture in.  Look at what the result is and see if you should raise or lower that number.   This writing is the name of your uploaded picture. Four Founding IIG.jpg Do not change anything, otherwise your image will not load. 

This writing Four founding members of the IIG, James Underdown, Brian Hart, Milton Timmons & Sherri Andrews, celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the IIG, August 21, 2010 is what you want to appear under the image.  You can [[ hyperlink ]] to other Wiki pages even in this area.  Which is what I have done on several pictures I referenced above.  See Ya-Man's picture with Pigasus.

I have quite a few pictures just sitting in the Common's area waiting for a page to be made.  This TAM9 I'm photographing everybody separately for their future Wiki picture, you never know who will need it next.  

Get Shooting!

p.s. Here is my Wiki Commons page with all the pictures I've uploaded.

A branded hand

This Daguerreotype was taken by Southworth Aug. 1845 it is a copy of Captain Jonathan Walker’s hand as branded by the U.S. Marshall of the Dist. of Florida for having helped 7 men to obtain ‘Life Liberty, and Happiness.’…

The brand is “S.S.” for “Slave Stealer”.

Text and image from The Daguerreian Society, via Historical Indulgences.

Actors of Hollywood's "Golden Age"

That era being defined as extending from the end of silent movies until the early 1960s.  This montage was created by Peter Schneider and posted at Vimeo.

Plagiarizing a plagiarized paper

In those cases I was alerted to plagiarism by the sudden appearance, in a paper that is otherwise a morass of grammatical errors, of a series of flawless sentences with complicated structures. The correct use of a semicolon is a big red flag for me. As is the use—and often misuse—of specialized jargon or technical language that I’ve not discussed with them in class. Then I type those sentences into Google, and they all wind up being smoking-gun cases of plagiarism. My favorite case this semester was plagiarism within plagiarism. When I informed this student that I suspected her paper was plagiarized, she said to me, “I got my paper from one of the students who was in your class last semester. How was I to know that she had plagiarized?” Which indicated to me, along with a number of the other email responses I got from students, that many of them don’t even know what plagiarism is.

I'm also saddened by the instructor's observation that "the correct use of a semicolon" is an indicator that a college student might not have written it...

From an interview of a philosophy instructor in New York, posted at The New Inquiry, via The Dish.

Addendum: I liked this comment from reader .\\axxx re his experience with high-school science students:

"When the phrase "A white dwarf, also called a degenerate dwarf, is a small star composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter." occurred in multiple papers, and I pointed out that it was just a copy-paste from Wikipedia, one student got quite angry, saying they hadn't copy-pasted, they had printed it out then typed it in again!"

It's "E. E. Cummings," not "e. e. cummings"

After I "discovered" E. E. Cummings as a collegiate English major, I was so enthralled that for some years thereafter all my typed letters home were done without uppercase letters.  I believe I justified it as "increasing my typing speed" but in fact it was more likely an affectation.  An article at the Grand Valley State University website extensively explains Cummings did not extend his lower case typography to his name:

"...it must be said once and for all that his name should be written and printed with the usual capital letters in their usual places: "E. E. Cummings.''.. in his letters he most frequently used the uppercase form, with his signature at the bottom in caps [above]... We hereby proclaim it to be so, and we hope the dismal lowercase custom will disappear from the face of the earth."

A bicycle with mirror wheels

Yes, we know it's unrideable.  It's an art installation by Olafur Eliasson. 

Photo posted by thezu, via A London Salmagundi and Dinosaurs and Robots (which has more information on the artist and exhibit).

An interactive light studio for hearing-impaired children

As reported by ABC News:

P.S. 347 is the city's only public school for kids who are deaf, hard of hearing or the children of deaf parents. In their interactive light studio, however, the sense of hearing is not needed to have fun... The lights in the room react to sound. Not just any sound, but also the pitch of the sound. For the deaf kids, it makes sound visible...

"They can begin to develop some kind of awareness; awareness of how sound can affect things, how it can affect people... In the future, P.S. 347 hopes to expand the technology of turning sound into light for more classroom applications.

95-year-old woman in wheelchair has to remove her adult diaper for a TSA inspection

Here's a summary of the story, from the Northwest Florida Daily News:

Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.

Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search...

Weber’s mother entered the airport’s security checkpoint in a wheelchair because she was not stable enough to walk through, Weber said... She said her mother was first pulled aside into a glass-partitioned area and patted down. Then she was taken to another room to protect her privacy during a more extensive search, Weber said...

She said security personnel then came out and told her they would need for her mother to remove her Depends diaper because it was soiled and was impeding their search.

Weber wheeled her mother into a bathroom, removed her diaper and returned. Her mother did not have another clean diaper with her, Weber said.

I have a 92-year-old mother, somewhat impaired, who is reluctant to make a final plane trip to see her 93-year-old sister because of the hassles of air travel.  Reports like this one totally enrage me.  I know the counterargument, elucidated in the article by a TSA spokesman:

Koshetz said the procedures are the same for everyone to ensure national security. “TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability,” she said.

It's the same mindless logic that punishes children for having an aspirin at school or requires a grizzled octagenarian to show an I.D. in order to purchase a bottle of wine.  Americans are increasingly being forced - and conditioned - to accept the pronouncements of bureaucrats without question.

Via Reddit, where the story has garnered over a thousand comments.

Exclaves vs. enclaves in the Northwest Angle

Geography enthusiasts are familiar with the anomaly known as the Northwest Angle, the most northerly point in Minnesota.

The Northwest Angle owes its existence to Benjamin Franklin, US Minister Plenipotentiary at the negotiations for the Treaty of Paris (1783). Franklin’s efforts won British acceptance for the US-British border to extend “from the most northwesternmost point” (sic) of the Lake of the Woods to the Boundary Waters (i.e. towards the east), and from that point due west to the Mississippi.

As the negotiators in Paris used the faulty Mitchell Map (which showed the Mississippi mistakenly extending too far north beyond its actual source at Lake Ithasca), such a line could not be drawn. Therefore, after the 49th parallel had been agreed as the line dividing American and British possessions west of Lake of the Woods, in 1818 a line was drawn due south from that northwesternmost point towards the 49th parallel. Hence the 90-degree upward bend in that border, creating, as the handful of locals call it, ‘The Angle’. 

The interesting article in the Strange Maps blog at Big Think points out that there is a second anomalous area - Elm Point.

Point Roberts and the Northwest Angle are not the only border anomalies on the 49th parallel. A much smaller American exclave exists only a few feet from the aforementioned 90-degree bend... The 49th-parallel line skirts Buffalo Point’s southern shore... the peninsula to the south of the line is US soil, cut off from its main territory by American water and Canadian land. Unlike Point Roberts, this much smaller peninsula is uninhabited. The actual border, visible on Google Maps as a line cut clear through the pine forest, is a mere 3,400 feet long... This box-shaped border anomaly is known as Elm Point. It is part of Roseau County in Minnesota, unlike Northwest Angle, which is part of Lake of the Woods County...

 The article goes on to describe even smaller discrepancies, but I'd like to shift the focus from the geography to the definition of the terms "exclave" and "enclave." 

Exclaves are territories legally part of a country but not physically attached to them. Enclaves are territories entirely contained within another country. While both categories often overlap, they are not the same. Lesotho is an enclave within South Africa, but not an exclave of another country. The territories mentioned here are exclaves of the US, but not enclaved within Canada (as they have access to the US over water).

You learn something every day.

Map credit: Ruland Kolen

A Pinkerton detective with lead gloves

ca. 1875, [extremely tall Pinkerton detective with lead gloves] via Deadly Intent: Crime and Punishment Photographs from the Burns Archive, Stanley B. Burns and Sara Cleary-Burns

I found this at Historical Indulgences.  After musing about that bizarre mustache (?perhaps the photo was touched up to hide his identity?), I began to wonder about the lead gloves.  1875 would have been the year xrays were discovered, but one doesn't expect the Pinkerton detectives to be employing that technology.  I think I found the answer when I ran across "sap gloves" -

Leather sap gloves are also known as “weighted gloves” or “lead gloves” and have been in use by law enforcement agents and security personnel for a number of years.  The glove seems to share a common history with brass knuckles. 

It cannot be exactly pinpointed when man began to cover his hand with leather for combat protection purposes; records show that the Greeks used a gloved called a cestus in combat competitions which is the equivalent of boxing today where knocking out the opponent was the objective.  The glove was basically leather thongs that were wrapped around the hand, the wrist and a good portion of the lower arm. 

The Romans took this concept further and added metal parts like metal plates and spikes.  The competition also became more lethal, with gladiators using them to fight to the death.

While the brass knuckle evolved into a more damaging equipment with its solid brass construction, the sap glove is comprised of leather and powdered lead or steel. 

A leather sap glove may look like an ordinary looking glove or have a more distinctive look. While other synthetic materials have been utilized, leather is commonly used.  There are purposely made pouches that contain either molded  lead clay, powdered steel, lead, or lead shot which covers the knuckle area and depending on the model also the back fingers,  back of the hand as well as the palm.

More at the link.

An amazing chemical anagram

The names of 30 elements -

hydrogen + zirconium + tin + oxygen + rhenium + platinum +
tellurium + terbium + nobelium + chromium + iron + cobalt +
carbon + aluminum + ruthenium + silicon + ytterbium + hafnium +
sodium + selenium + cerium + manganese + osmium + uranium +
nickel + praseodymium + erbium + vanadium + thallium + plutonium

- can be anagrammed to form a different group of 30 elements:

nitrogen + zinc + rhodium + helium + argon + neptunium +
beryllium + bromine + lutetium + boron + calcium + thorium +
niobium + lanthanum + mercury + fluorine + bismuth + actinium +
silver + cesium + neodymium + magnesium + xenon + samarium +
scandium + europium + berkelium + palladium + antimony + thulium.

AND...  if you replace the elements with their atomic numbers -

1 + 40 + 50 + 8 + 75 + 78 +
52 + 65 + 102 + 24 + 26 + 27 +
6 + 13 + 44 + 14 + 70 + 72 +
11 + 34 + 58 + 25 + 76 + 92 +
28 + 59 + 68 + 23 + 81 + 94
=
7 + 30 + 45 + 2 + 18 + 93 +
4 + 35 + 71 + 5 + 20 + 90 +
41 + 57 + 80 + 9 + 83 + 89 +
47 + 55 + 60 + 12 + 54 + 62 +
21 + 63 + 97 + 46 + 51 + 69
[= 1416]

- the two groups are still equal.

From a group of "Anagrammy Winners" composed by Mike Keith.  (See his anagram of Poe's "The Raven.")

Via Not Exactly Rocket Science. 

Atocha treasure still being recovered

This emerald ring is estimated to be worth $500,000.

The gold ring has a rectangular cut estimated at 10 karats. It's believed to be from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha that sank off the Florida Keys during a 1622 hurricane. Divers from Mel Fisher's Treasures found the ring Thursday about 35 miles from Key West.

A spokesperson said the ring's estimated value is based on the stone's 2.7- by 2.5-centimeter size and the value of other emeralds from Atocha.

Mel Fisher's website is here.

Via Carolina Naturally.

"Keep your hands low..."

Via meme4U.

Childhood disorders and paternal age

Excerpts from a WSJ article reviewing older data suggesting that children of older fathers may be more prone to a variety of problems:

As women increasingly pursue careers and take advantage of fertility treatments to postpone childbirth into their 30s and 40s, they do place their offspring at risk for countless disorders and diseases. This occurs, however, not because of the woman's age but because women in their 30s... tend to couple off with older men...

Older fathers made headlines several years ago when researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine reported that a man over 40 is almost six times as likely as a man under 30 to father an autistic child. Since then, research has shown that a man's chances of fathering offspring with schizophrenia double when he hits 40 and triple at age 50. The incidence of bipolarity, epilepsy, prostate cancer and breast cancer also increases in children born to men approaching 40. Both dwarfism and Marfan syndrome (a disorder of the connective tissue) have been linked to older fathers...



Women are born with somewhere between one million and two million eggs, 75% of which are depleted by puberty. Eggs die daily—which may sound bleak—but those that endure contain an original genetic component that was created at the very start of a woman's life.

Sperm, by contrast, are more fly-by-night. After each ejaculation, a man regenerates millions of new sperm cells, and with each cellular replication, the chances rise of an error in genetic coding...

More at the Wall Street Journal link.

Meet the Skeptics! Podcast

Part of the "We Got your Wiki Back" project.

Podcasts that interview or feature our skeptical spokespeople are a wonderful citation.  (Actually I don't know what Wikipedia's policy is on podcasts and I'm not sure I want to know) I quote from them occasionally and cite them on websites.  I understand that podcasts aren't academic sources, but they are actual interviews, they are media and other people can follow the links and listen in so they can be cited.

I have stated before that we are a very small group of fish (us skeptics) in the big scary world.  We need to use the best resources we have, US.  Comment on blogs, share links with each other, support your skeptic meetups and listen to podcasts.  

I had never heard of podcasting until I was on the Amaz!ing Adventure: North to Alaska with some kind of Apple pod (can't remember which one) in 2007.  I met the Lacey's on that JREF cruise and Don Lacey told me all about these things.  What a life changer that was.

Now adays I have really limited my subscriptions, but I still frequent a select few.  One of the new ones that I have found is Christopher Brown's "Meet the Skeptics" where he selects a new person each week to interview, his format of about 30 minutes allows for quite a discussion.  I'm not here to plug just Chris's podcast, as there are a bunch of great ones out there. This shouldn't be a task, select a podcast you really enjoy. 

I think that we do have to be careful what is quoted, if the podcast is an interview then you should be okay.  But if the reference you want to quote is an opinion like you would read in a blog, then probably not good to quote.  I hope you understand the difference.

For example if Jay Novella from The Skeptics Guide to the Universe is talking about a news article he read and giving his opinion, then that is like quoting from a blog.  But if Matthew Baxter is interviewing Michael Shermer on Warning: Radio podcast and Dr. Shermer talks about his experiences as the editor of his magazine, then that is quotable.  Get it?

Anyway, if while you are listening to a podcast you hear an interesting quote come from the interviewee, jot it down.  That might make an excellent quote on their Wikipedia page.  The edit is really quick to do.

Here's what it looks like when it is in correct citation form.

[[The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe]] interviews Mark Edward about his career at TAM7 [[JREF]], Mark decides to hold an impromptu seance for [[Michael Jackson]]. {{cite web|url=http://theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=219 |title=Skeptic's Guide to the Universe; Skeptic's Guide to the Universe #219 09/28/2009|publisher=SGU |date=2009-09-28 |accessdate=2011-2-07}} 

"At TAM7 June 2009,The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe interviews Mark Edward about his career, during which Mark holds an impromptu séance for Michael Jackson.^[21]"

 AND

Interviewed on Christopher Brown's "Meet the Skeptics!" podcast, Mark Edward states "When people want answers, there's always someone willing to sell them one."{{cite web|url=http://meettheskeptics.libsyn.com/mts-meet-mark-edward |title=MTS: Meet Mark Edward|publisher=Christopher Brown |date=2011-06-22 |accessdate=2011-06-22}}

"Interviewed on Christopher Brown's "Meet the Skeptics!" podcast, Mark Edward states "When people want answers, there's always someone willing to sell them one."^[10]" 

Maybe this looks intimidating to the newer editors.  I'll break this down somewhat for you.  

Lets use Chris's podcast as an example.  When you are going to be posting a citation like this, go to somewhere you know it is done correctly and copy the reference from the "edit" page.  Then paste the edit somewhere you can work on it.  I keep a word document that I use as a scratch page for just this purpose. 

The means that you are going to cite something that you want to appear as a reference at the bottom of the article (like a footnote).  You have to have the at the beginning and you have to finish the citation with   This is HTML and if you are missing any part of these symbols or letters, your citation won't work.  

The next part {{cite web|url=http://meettheskeptics.libsyn.com/mts-meet-mark-edward   Is where you paste in the URL for the podcast.

Next is the title of the podcast.   |title=MTS: Meet Mark Edward  Make sure you have that little line in the front.  

Next who is publishing the podcast |publisher=Christopher Brown  I suppose you could put the name of the podcast, like Skeptics Guide to the Universe or The New England Skeptical Society.  

Date |date=2011-06-22  I guess this is the date the show aired?  Or maybe when it was uploaded to the page you are referencing?  I'm not so sure and probably whatever is written on the page you are citing it from will tell you what is best.  The whole idea is that the reader will be able to find the podcast for themselves.  The date is in Year-Month-Day format. 

Then what day you accessed the URL page.  |accessdate=2011-06-22  Same date format.  Again this is showing the reader that on June 22, 2011 the URL was live and functioning.  

You have to tell the computer that you are done with the citation by using this close }}  Again if you are missing any of the symbols you will probably have a problem.  

When you are done pasting the link into the document you are editing then make sure you hit "preview" first and check it out the normal page.  If there is any red either in the blurb part or the reference area then something is wrong.  Check it over carefully and try and find the error.  

Remember you MUST put a reason for your edit, something like "added MTS podcast cite and quote" will do nicely.  Then add the page to your watchlist so you can see if someone changes your edit.  Then when you are sure it is correct, Publish.  

If you choose to just start with one podcast and work your way through the episodes one by one writing down quotes.  Then good job.  It would be easy to cite them quickly as you will have the citation saved and you just trade out the URL, title of the podcast and the dates.  This is a lot of work, but again it is work that needs to be done.   

We Got Your Wiki Back! ~ How To

So you've read my blog on why we need to have our spokespeople's backs.  Awesome, I hope you 'got it' and and wondering where to start.  As you can guess there is a ton of work to be done.  Throughout this blog you will see lots of ways you can help.

A visit to a site that is quickly growing to be one of my favorite resources on Wikipedia.  The page devoted to 93 American Skeptics.  There are pages for other countries too.  Now you and I know that 93 is an very low number.  We could probably just go through one of those Steve and Stephanie shirts that list 1,000 scientists named Steve or Stephanie who believe in Evolution and get a lot of  them on this page.  (seems like that would make an interesting blurb that could be copied/pasted on every one of those pages)  I've discussed a couple times how to add people to this list so I won't go into it again here.

The American Skeptics listed here may be a great starting point for anyone interested in the We Got Your Wiki Back! project.  Simply close your eyes and click and make that person your project for awhile until you feel it is better than what you started with.  I'm sure that many editors are going to need to collaborate to get these things right.

I also advocate that when you are editing a page you should approach that person and let them know you have updated that page.  I'm sure this isn't correct Wikipedia policy, but FaceBook and email make this so easy today that we should take advantage of it.

My reasons for doing so are these.

1.  They need to know we care.  They need to feel supported.  They need to know We Got Their Wiki Back!

2.  I approach nearly everyone (skeptical world) that I quote or edit.  I have never received a bad response, mostly it is just a thank you.  And several times they have been confused how they got a page in the first place, it just seemed to appear.  They don't know how to edit it (I explain they aren't allowed to edit their own page) or the power of having a Wiki page.

3. The best person to know if there is something incorrect on the page is The Person you are editing.  I'm not saying to hide unflattering things about the person, but many times there are errors with dates and names and are easily corrected.  Maybe they have some new research you can look into if they want to point you in that direction.

I hear this from time to time "So and so needs their own page" and they might be right.  There is a growing list of people who need their own pages.  I'm currently working on James Underdown (CFI West and IIG founder) followed by Barry Karr (CSICOP).  There is a lot of work involved when you start a page from the ground up.  I would not recommend it at all.  If you start it then you need to finish it.  It is heartbreaking and frustrating for the person who is getting the page if you just drop the ball and leave it unfinished.  The grief is not worth it unless you really are driven, have the necessary editing skills developed and can write the whole page from a neutral point of view.  These aren't Fan Pages we are making, but encyclopedia pages used for references.

Thought I would mention a comment from someone I know who recently discovered he had a really nice Wikipedia page.  This person had approached a group overseas about a project he wanted to do with them.  They wrote back and asked for more information about who he was.  This person told me that he said "check me out on Wikipedia" and when he said that he felt really good about it.  We have his Wiki Back!

We Got Your Wiki Back! Project

I'm proposing a sub-group of Guerrilla Skepticism activism.  I'm calling it the "We Got Your Wiki Back!" project.  I've written about this in this  blog about "having the backs" of our skeptical spokespeople.  I really think this is so important that I want to pitch this again to people.   It isn't exactly Guerrilla Skepticism, but it is an important part of the skeptical movement. Just hear me out. 

When Phil Plait or Brian Dunning are on TV, and Mr. and Mrs. America are flipping through TV channels, they might just pause long enough,  put the remote down and listen to the show.  When the commercial break happens they might say "Who does this wiseguy think he is?"  Where do you think our TV viewers are going to go to for information?

When they arrive on the Wikipedia page (and face it, that is where they are going to go) what are they going to learn? Google your favorite skeptical spokesperson and what links will you find?  For examples I chose Plait and Dunning, you can do the same with your person. 

For Phil Plait, I checked Google, the first two hits were Discover Magazine which publishes his column.  The third hit was Phil's Wikipedia page, the fourth link offered was for his actual blog "Bad Astronomy".

A search for Brian Dunning gives us the first two hits for his Skeptoid podcast site, then two links for his computer company (not likely Mr. & Mrs. are going to look at) and then his Wikipedia page.

Lets take Plaits page first.  I'm going to get kind of critical of the way this is presented, remember we need to look at it from the eyes of someone not in the skeptical movement, maybe only a science enthusiast who only thinks bad thoughts when they hear the term skepticism.

I'm reading Phil's page through right now as I type out this blog.  The 30 seconds it takes to read the beginning of his page sounds pretty impressive except I'm sure the TV viewers aren't going to have a clue what the "James Randi Educational Foundation" actually is and the page needs more "meat" right there in the beginning.  Maybe it should mention that he is a PhD and not just "He formerly worked at the physics and astronomy department at Sonoma State University." 

But overall it is a nice looking site, well organized and maintained.  An okay looking portrait and even a humorous picture further down that sums up what Phil's personal philosophy is all about.  (my picture and edit) That might grab Mr & Mrs A's attention?

Do we really need this "he resigned from his job to write Death from the Skies".  Resigned? Can't we come up with a better way of saying this?

Remember our couple is looking to see who this guy is, they are trying to determine his credibility in science, is he a spokesman that they should respect?  Is he someone that most people discredit?  Is he on the fringe or mainstream?  They aren't wanting to put a lot of time into reading this page, they just want to sum Plait up quickly and decide if they should switch over to America's Got Talent or something.  

So generally not a bad site, I think he comes off pretty credible but not to the extent that he could.  Someone needs to spend some time spiffing Phil up. 

Now lets look at Brian Dunning's Wikipedia page.  First big problem is a search on Wikipedia  brings up this page.  Not "our" Brian Dunning.  Really confusing to our TV watchers, he is an Irish flautist (this BTW is a horribly written page, so look around at it a minute, the editor has not even linked the word "flautist" to a page so someone like me can know what that means)

Someone with more Wikipedia skill than I hold at the moment needs to work on the linking problem.  If you noticed on the "other Dunning" page they do have a hyperlink for Brian Dunning (Skeptic) that you can click on.  Here is the Real Brian Dunning.

The site is also clean and well organized.  You can see his smiling face looking all friendly like.  But it is missing a lot.  In Feb 2011 an editor posted that this site needs citations for verifications.  That usually means we need to find him mentioned in newspapers/magazines/journals things like that, and get them posted back on his site.  We need to have his back!  I posted on his Fan page on Facebook and his personal Facebook page that this needs to be done, but other than getting a few "likes" I haven't heard a thing. Crickets.

This is a serious problem.  If Mr & Mrs A are checking out this Dunning fellow are they going to find a flautist and be completely confused?  Probably.  IF they manage to find his page the first thing they will notice is that "flag" stating that the page needs more sourcing.  Maybe our couch potatoes will understand what that means, probably not.  Its most likely that they will think that Dunning isn't very creditable and change the channel.

We are not preaching to the choir here folks.  This is important work if we are to be taken seriously by the public.   We know who these people are, we know what they are "famous" for, but shame on us for not having their backs.  They are our spokespeople we are all on the same side.  Whether or not if you always agree with these people, they are our representatives as seen from the public eye.  We can't afford to be lazy about this, we need to pull out the dust rags and clean off the cobwebs.  Just because you haven't been to these pages doesn't mean that The World isn't visiting them.

We Got Your Wiki Back!

Antheraea polyphemus

I was absolutely delighted this week when a fellow member of the Southern Wisconsin Butterfly Association asked if I wanted to raise some early instars of Antheraea polyphemus, one of three giant silk moths that live in North America. 

The top photo shows a pair of first instars on their host plant (red oak).  The second photo gives an indication of the relatively fearsome defense mechanisms that the caterpillars use to protect themselves from predation.  They are nevertheless still susceptible to parasitic wasps, so hand-rearing in a protected environment greatly enhances their survival.

By next week they should be larger second instars and I should be able to get some better images.

King Ludwig II and Neuschwanstein

The Atlantic's In Focus segment features a gallery of 30 photos commemorating the 125th anniversary of the death of Ludwig II.

A hundred twenty-five years ago, Bavaria's "Maerchenkoenig" (or "Fairy-tale King") Ludwig II died under very mysterious circumstances at the age of 40, his body found floating in Lake Starnberg, south of Munich. Today, Ludwig remains famous for the castles he built and attempted to build, most notably Neuschwanstein Castle, perched high in the Alpine foothills... When his cabinet accused him of insanity, he was placed in custody after a brief showdown at Neuschwanstein Castle, and was taken to a castle next to Lake Starnberg. The following day, while out for a walk, Ludwig disappeared, his lifeless body discovered hours later.

AP Photo/Christof Stache.

More "bog butter" found

A recent report out of Ireland details the discovery of a small barrel of 5,000-year-old butter:

Joe explained "We were cutting turf and I found what looked like a huge piece of timber…We took it out with a spade and it turned out to be bog butter."... "It looked like a keg or an urn with two handles and a lid carved from a solid piece of wood."  The container has carving marks around the edges with a removable lid with handles and holes, possibly for carrying. The wooden vessel measures a foot in diameter and is almost two feet tall. The 100 pound container was buried seven-feet down.

Further details at Irish Central, and the Irish Times has a report of another similar discovery.  The butter may have been "piseogary" (or a "pishogue').

What faith-related short fiction can you recommend ?

After I wrote the post about the reading habits of TYWKIWDBI visitors, in which the average respondent reported reading 50 books a year, I received a number of interesting emails.  Among them was a request from a longtime friend who now attends Trinity Church in Boston.

Among the many things I do at Trinity Church is co-facilitate a reading group that we call Short Fiction on Faith. I advertise it as "the English class you always dreamed of...great literature, great discussion, no papers or tests." Short stories only, and we choose those with content that raise issues of faith and can stimulate discussion of those issues in our own lives.

The stories do not have to be overtly religious, certainly not necessarily Christian - we have read from just about any faith tradition I can think of. We have read stories from classics to contemporary, all the way from Chaucer (The Wife of Bath's Tale from Canterbury Tales) to current fiction from the New Yorker. I like to do a mix of classic and contemporary.

We have been going for 8 or 9 years, and have made our way through a bunch of anthologies and collections. For the past two years or so we have been selecting the stories individually... We have read quite a few Flannery O'Connor stories, and one of my favorite discoveries is "The Great Good Place" by Henry James.

In recent years the group has read selections by Alice Adams, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sholom Aleichem, Shalom Auslander, James Baldwin, Honore De Balzac, Raymond Carver, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Pearl Crayton, Alice Elliott Dark, Tim Gautreaux, Andre Gide, Graham Greene, Jim Grimsley, Heinrich Heine, Paul Horgan, Henry James, John L'Heureux, Yi Yun Li, N. Scott Momaday, H. L. Mencken, Flannery O'Connor , Reynolds Price, Philip Roth, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Leo Tolstoy, John Updike, David Foster Wallace, Edith Wharton, Tobias Wolfe, and Dwight Yates.

The group is currently on summer break, and the coordinators are requesting suggestions for further reading.  My own reading tends to favor nonfiction topics (evident in my recommended books category of this blog), so I may be able to offer them some science fiction stories that would be relevant, but for other short fiction, I'll turn to TYWKIWDBI visitors.

If you have recommendations for the Trinity Church reading group, please leave a message in the Comments with the author's name, the title of the work, and preferably with a sentence or two summarizing why the piece might interest them.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.