Is the world a wonderful place?

A Fry and Laurie exchange from Jeeves and Wooster.

From Dickens and Poe, via My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck by Lightning.

How to grow immense pumpkins

Excerpts from an article at the Telegraph:

The groundwork for a big pumpkin starts in February with a planting hole lavished with a minimum of one ton of well-rotted horse manure and the sourcing of “thoroughbred” seed from the internet. The best seed will cost from £5-£50 a pop...

As the plant grows, remove all but one pumpkin fruit so all the energy gathered by the leaves is focused on the development of one super-fruit....

When your chosen pumpkin reaches the size of a football, set the fruit on a 4in bed of straw to protect the skin from stones in the soil and spread the pumpkin’s weight as it swells...

Water is by far the most important influence on a potential prize-winner, accounting for a fluctuating 90 per cent of the weight. During dry weather, the leaves draw moisture out from the fruit to keep growing, which reduces the size of the pumpkin...

Early in the year, nitrogen-rich pelleted chicken manure is good for encouraging fast, leafy growth but when the days shorten, it’s time to switch to high-potash feeds to help fruit development. I use liquid tomato fertiliser – a can every other day...

Shade the skin with a screen during the day and keep it warm at night – it’s after dark that a pumpkin grows fastest. A polytunnel over the top is ideal, but if this is too high a price for pumpkin glory, second best are large, water-filled bottles placed around the fruit. These capture the warmth of the sun during the day and release it at night...

In honor of "Banned Book Week"

I've not read this book, but it sounds like it has an interesting plot (reminiscent of Never Let Me Go).  And an interesting reception by the public:

In 2009 the American Library Association (ALA) and the office for Intellectual Freedom named My Sister's Keeper the seventh most frequently challenged book in the US. Schools and Libraries attempted to ban the book for the following reasons: Sexism, Homosexuality, Sexual Explicity, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuitability to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide, Violence.

Via Libraryland.

The "Jayne Austen Book & Gun Club"

People having fun in a parade.

From Pages in Courier, via Look, even Ben's dancing!, via A Cream Tea and Loaded Mashed Potatoes, via My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck By Lightning.*

*(tumblrs tend to have such interesting names...)

Addendum:  Spellwight identified the paraders as participants in Dragon*Con.

Albino hummingbird

Photographed by teenager Marlin Shank at a park in Staunton, Virginia.  A large gallery of photos of the bird is posted at the website of Nature Friend magazine.  Via Neatorama.

You can buy this biscuit for about £1500 ($A2370)

But it won't taste good; it's old.  Very old.

The Sydney Morning Herald has the details.

Inkjet chip resetters

I knew that printers cheat you re ink usage, but I didn't know there was a workaround for the problem.  Here's a tip from Oregon Expat:

So, now we know we’re being scammed. And those of us with an environmental bent are also fairly pissed off about the waste. But what can we do, when the printer locks up due to the “out of ink” message?

We can reset the chip.

Ink cartridge chips are the latest tool used by printer manufacturers to make sure that customers can’t override the low ink warning. The tiny electronic chips monitor ink usage, or, in many cases, simply count pages. Once the predefined threshold of a chip is passed, it will lock up the printer. The warning cannot be overridden.

But it turns out that there is a whole community of irritated printer owners who do not like being scammed. They have started up companies catering to other irritated printer owners, and one of the things they do is take ink cartridges and reverse engineer the chips. Then they build inexpensive “chip resetters” that exist for one purpose only: to reset the chip’s page count or ink level to zero [zero "usage," presumably].

Details on how to do this are at the link.  You learn something every day.

The etymology of "coleslaw"

Coleslaw came to us from Dutch via American English.  Dutch kool means “cabbage” (cf. German Kohl, known to most as the family name of Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor of Germany, 1982-1998), while Dutch sla is the common colloquial form of salade “salad.”  Thus, the etymon is koolsla. 

It is unclear why the second element of coleslaw rhymes with haw, paw, raw, rather than with spa.  Words like spa are rare in Modern English; outside baa-baa, blah-blah-blah, bah and their ilk they are exotic borrowings (ah sounds more natural in the unstressed syllables of names like Sarah, Hannah, and so forth, including Monty Python’s Peckinpah).  The change from ah to aw may have been the result of the word’s domestication.  Or do we owe the shape of the vowel to the Midwesterners, in whose speech Shaw is indistinguishable from Shah?

From the Oxford University Press blog.

A Dane makes fun of Norwegian swimming rules

YouTube link. 

Anders Lund Madsen is a professional comedian.  These supplemental notes from the uploader/subtitler:

The reason i didn't translate "Stuper" and "grunt" is because Anders is using them in the Danish sentence, and that is why there is an "Er" in the end of "stup."

The rule really means, "don't swim if you don't know how deep the water is."

Brygge = A pier (hope that is right)
Stupebrett = A Tipper

"Dytt" or "dyt" is a Danish slang word, that means hump... But in Norway it means push...

Since I'm half German (and half Norwegian), I particularly liked these lines:

"Get some friends!"
"But I'm German!"
"Then go online!"

And for balance, here's the cast of a Norwegian television show (Uti Vår Hage) making fun of the Danish language.

Via Boing Boing.

Fresh Perspectives about People and the Web from Think Quarterly

Posted by Allison Mooney, Christina Park, and Caroline McCarthy, The Think Quarterly Team

There’s a lot of research, analysis and insights—from inside and outside Google—that we use in building our products and making decisions. To share what we’ve learned with our partners, we created Think Quarterly. It’s intended to be a snapshot of what Google and other industry leaders are talking about and inspired by right now.

Today we’re launching our second edition, the “People” issue, exploring the latest technologies connecting us and the big ideas driving society forward. It also includes some of the research and analysis that helps us shape our strategies.

For those who love data as much as we do, here are a few articles worth reading:

• “Following Generation Z,” in which Google research scientist Ed Chi details what he’s learned from monitoring the course of digital innovation and mapping patterns of digital technology use in the future

• “Predicting the Present,” by chief economist Hal Varian, about how publicly available search tools can help anyone gain valuable insights into the behavior of web users and predict what they might do next

• “Power to the People,” by Meg Pickard, anthropologist turned head of digital engagement at Guardian News and Media, about tracking the influence and power of online communities

• “From Cash to Contentment,” about the use of happiness as a measurable metric of success, with insights coming from Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz

Click here to read all the articles, and if you have a suggestion for our next issue please tell us here. We hope you enjoy (and +1) it!

Underwater lion

Lost for 1,600 years, the royal quarters of Cleopatra were discovered off the shores of Alexandria. A team of marine archaeologists, led by Frenchman, Franck Goddio, began excavating the ancient city in 1998. Historians believe the site was submerged by earthquakes and tidal waves, yet, astonishingly, several artifacts remained largely intact.

Update 2012:  The image, found at All That Is Interesting*, via The Ancient World, is unfortunately NOT of the Egyptian find.  A hat tip to an anonymous  reader who identified it as Neptune Memorial Reef, an underwater mausoleum of sorts for cremains.

The Atlanta-based company, Eternal Reefs, combines an individual's cremated remains with “eco-friendly cast concrete” to form what the company calls “reef balls.” There are reef ball sites off the coast of Fort Meyers and Miami, as well as Ocean City, New Jersey and Charleston, South Carolina. Loved ones of the deceased gather for a reef casting ceremony and can return to the reef site to dive, fish or examine the structure from a glass bottom boat.

*of the other sunken cities listed in that post, the Yonaguni-Jima site is probably a natural (not a man-made) feature.

Is GM's OnStar inappropriately watching you ?

This item comes from the Lew Rockwell site, so some will automatically dismiss it as "conspiracy theory."  But the facts themselves seem to be solid; the debate will be over the implications...

I believe that GM’s long-term goal is to see to it that not only every GM vehicle is equipped with a “black box” (technically, an Event Data Recorder, or EDR) but that all vehicles are so equipped – and every single driver in the United States – possibly the world – monitored whenever he or she is operating a motor vehicle.

There is big money in it: Automated tickets, jacked-up insurance fees for “speeders” and seat belt scofflaws – as well as “marketing opportunities” for GM’s “partners,” whom GM will provide all sorts of juicy tidbits about your life to – including where and when you shop, so that they can “target” their advertising your way...

I test-drive new cars each week to review them for my weekly car column. Part of my test drive includes running the car at a good clip “up the mountain” – a series of S turns that takes you up about 1,600 feet in elevation over the course of about two miles. One week not too long ago I was testing a GM vehicle. I took it up the mountain at a good clip – faster than the posted speed limit, to be sure. This apparently alarmed OnStar because as I reached the final curve and straightened the car out, all of a sudden the stereo cut out and a loud female voice replaced Van Halen: “Are you in need of EMS?” This startled me for a moment. Then I realized what had happened. The creepy OnStar unit was triggered by my speed (and the rapid change in altitude). It assumed I had wrecked the car- even though I promise all four wheels never left the pavement and were entirely under my control at all times. And it decided I needed “help.” I didn’t, so thanked the operator for her concern but noted to myself that here was proof positive that OnStar is Watching You.

I didn’t ask to be watched. I don’t want to be watched...

Now comes evidence – in the form of OnStar’s latest Terms of Service – that my instinctive paranoia was well-founded about where all this is going.

The TOS announces that OnStar – that is, General Motors – will henceforth collect data about your driving habits “… for any purpose, at any time … .” Previously, OnStar only kept track of data relevant to an accident, in the event of an accident.

Now it will keep track of everything, all the time.

The TOS attempts to soothe the immediately obvious concerns any half-awake person might have after reading the above by going on to state that “… following collection of such location and speed information identifiable to your Vehicle, it is shared only on an anonymized basis.” Except, of course, that such data is essentially useless when anonymized...

And to whom will the data be provided? TOS says “public safety or traffic services.” Translation: Insurance cartels and cops...

GM also will “share” details about your personal life with its “partners” in order to “… allow us, and our affiliates, your Vehicle Maker, and Vehicle dealers, to offer you new or additional products or services; and for other purposes.”

All without your consent – indeed, against your express wishes.

You can’t say no to OnStar – unless you say no to GM, period – and don’t buy a GM vehicle.

If your GM vehicle has Onstar, the TOS explicitly states that it will continue to record and collect your data even after you cancel your service. The only way to be sure Onstar isn’t watching you is to physically disable the system on your own – by cutting wires or just smashing the infernal thing...

The worst part, though, is not the insolence of GM. It is the indifference of the public. I doubt most GM vehicle owners will even bother to read the latest TOS and the few that do either won’t comprehend or care what about what’s been put on the table.

Addendum: A hat tip to BJN, who found that as a result of recent bad publicity, GM is now revising the terms of service and at least will not continue to record data after the user cancels the service.

Janus meets Sonic the Hedgehog

Frank and Louie... has two mouths, two noses and three eyes. He turned 12 years old this month, setting the record for "longest surviving Janus cat," according to Guinness World Records. Frank and Louie has a case of craniofacial duplication, an extremely rare congenital condition... Frank and Louie was born on September 8, 1999 and was adopted by a woman who lives near Worcester, Massachusetts. Picture: REUTERS/David Niles

This was one of the Telegraph "pictures of the day."  The last time I posted a report about this anomaly was almost three years ago; this time I decided to read more about the biology involved.  These excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on diprosopus (literally "two" + "face"):

Although classically considered conjoined twinning (which it resembles), this anomaly is not normally due to the fusion or incomplete separation of two embryos. It is the result of a protein called sonic hedgehog homolog (SHH)...

Among other things, the SHH protein governs the width of facial features. In excess it leads to widening of facial features and to duplication of facial structures. The greater the widening, the more of the structures are duplicated, often in a mirror image form...

Most human infants with diprosopus are stillborn. Known instances of humans with diprosopus surviving for longer than minutes to hours past birth are very rare; only a few are recorded...

And a final tidbit for the "grammar Nazis."  Note this cat is named "Frank and Louie," so a grammatically correct sentence actually begins "Frank and Louie was born..."

Poor little girl

The one topic that I try to consciously avoid in TYWKIWDBI is "celebrity news."  I consider such material to be trivial and uninteresting.  Much or most of it is probably inaccurate as well, possibly including this item from e+  I'm posting this only because the content has implications for discussions of education and religion.

It was only a matter of time before Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes started ramping up daughter Suri's involvement with Tom's controversial belief system, Scientology, and last week, the five-year-old enrolled at a school which uses the teachings of the ‘cult's' founder, L Ron Hubbard, in its lessons.

The New Leadership Academy in chic Calabasas, California - a school established and funded by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, who have never confirmed nor denied that they are Scientologists - boasts many Scientologist teachers, and uses a teaching system called ‘Study Technology', coupled with days of fasting and lessons far removed from traditional maths, science or languages...

"Instead of learning basic words and maths, Suri and the other children will learn how to rid themselves of engrams - that is, past memories that block learning and understanding," a former Scientologist told Woman's Day. Adding, "Everything is so different."

And Suri will also take lessons in learning to build and interact with robots, as robotics are considered a major part of the ‘religion'...

With one of the core Scientology beliefs centred around the idea that an alien galactic overlord called Xenu was responsible for creating humanity and the earth as we know it today, pupils at the New Leadership Academy are taught lessons to prepare them for eventual alien contact.

"The kids are on a special diet that includes low-carb lunches and even days of fasting," the ex-Scientologist told the magazine. "And the lessons are steps towards the eventual ‘revelation' that we are all descended from aliens."

More at the link.  Image credit WENN.

Trying on the new Dynamic Views from Blogger

Posted by Alison Powell, Google Research Team

As you may have noticed, the Google Research blog looks a lot different today. That’s because we—along with a few other Google blogs—are trying out a new set of Blogger templates called Dynamic Views.

Launched today, Dynamic Views is a unique browsing experience that makes it easier and faster for readers to explore blogs in interactive ways. We’re using the Magazine view, but you can also preview this blog in any of the other six new views by using the view selection bar at the top left of the screen.



We’re eager to hear what you think about the new Dynamic Views. You can submit feedback using the “Send feedback” link on the bottom right of this page.

If you like what you see here, and we hope you do, we encourage you to try out the new look(s) on your own blog—read the Blogger Buzz post for more info.

Every picture tells a story

You will of course have noticed the piano bench embedded in the ceiling.

Frat party?  Tornado?  Vandalism?

None of the above.  The answer is at the Telegraph.

Photo credit Julio Cortez.

The U.S. state capitals

YouTube link. 

A supercut of movie scenes.   A little fudging in some instances, but the words are there.  I continue to wonder what databases people use to find these snippets of dialogue.

Via Neatorama and Laughing Squid.

Want something NEW for dinner?

Mrs. Damon Runyon (wife of the famous newspaperman/writer) recommended this combination of "premium frankfurters (simply simmer 5 to 8 minutes and serve immediately)" with creamed diced carrots in onion cups, parsley potatoes, citrus salad, and butterscotch pudding.

I need to be excused for a moment.

This ad reminded me of James Lileks' Regrettable Foods.  Found at Vintage Ads, via Sloth Unleashed.

Addendum:  As discussed in the comments to this post, here is a photo of lima beans in jello ("featured in Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, 1974"):

Music CDs are so yesterday...

Techland says "it's time to kiss them goodbye"...

It's not something you think about most days. In fact, it's almost taken for granted: The compact disc's days as a viable medium for music are nearly over...

Netflix recently hiked the price of its per-month combo streaming and DVD rental fee from $10 to $16. Consumers—mostly those with no sense of what they were (and still are) getting, value-wise—freaked out. But the writing's on the wall: DVD rentals are on the way out, unlimited streaming... is the way forward...

And as DVD demand bottoms out, so will optical-media manufacturing plants. It's the sort of inverse compound interest that piles up at the crossing of thresholds—never neat and tidy or precisely predictable in terms of timelines, but we're well past the event horizon here and simply waiting out the protracted death spin. 

In fact for some, the moment's already arrived. Auto manufacturer Ford admitted a few months ago that it would drop CD players from its fleet of vehicles entirely, switching over to—what else?—a USB-based audio interface. 

If you want to resell your CDs, it may be best to start now.  Remember what happened to the "value" of your old VCR tapes...

"Everybody out for a pass"

From today's Wall Street Journal online:

Buffalo may have won the early prize for the innovation of the year—one that is playing a leading role in the team's surprising early-season breakout. You can call it the "stack," the "bunch," or maybe even the "spread scrunch..."

For nearly the entire game Sunday, the Bills had four wide receivers on the field, and often used five. (A traditional NFL alignment consists of two wide receivers.) They also sometimes lined up their tight ends as wide receivers and flung their running backs off to the corners.


At first glance, these formations look much like the spread offense that's popular in college football. But in practical terms, they're not necessarily all that alike...

Essentially, the players are setting a pick, the way a basketball player might. Picks are normally against the rules in the NFL, but there is one loophole: When a pick happens because of the simple design of the passing routes, it's not illegal. 

When I was a kid playing touch football in the yard after school, the standard "play" was "everyone out for a pass." More re the NFL version at the link.

Photo credit nfl.com/rewind

"100% pure orange juice"

The phrasing on the label is clearly awkward (presumably they mean it's a mixture of orange juice concentrate and unconcentrated orange juice).  But as I pondered the photo, I also began to wonder whether the other phrase - "100% pure" - is grammatically correct or not.

My dictionary defines "pure" is defined as "free from anything of a different, inferior, or contaminating kind," unmodified, homogeneous, absolute, untainted, virgin, etc.  With that understanding, is "pure" an absolute term, like "unique," and is "100% pure" unnecessarily redundant?  Can something be 90% pure? 40% pure?

This is certainly not important.  It's the sort of stuff that English majors, wordfreaks, and copyeditors like to puzzle over. 

Found at Video Martyr, a blog featuring posts about ephemera and urban archaeology.

Addendum: And a hat tip to Max, who found this related item at Consumerist:

Even though it says "not from concentrate," it probably sat in a large vat for up to year with all the oxygen removed from it. This allows it to be preserved and dispensed all year-round. Taking out all the O2 also gets rid of all the flavor. So the juice makers have to add the flavors back in using preformulated recipes full of chemicals called "flavor packs."

"Rich people pay most of the taxes in this country"

From the Wall Street Journal:

We are often reminded these days that the top 1% of earners in America pay about 40% of the nations federal income taxes–nearly double the share they paid in 1980...

Republicans say the high share is due to our overly progressive tax structure and growing programs for the rest of the non-taxpaying Americans. Democrats, to the extent that they even concede the number, argue that it’s because the rich now make all the money.

Who’s right? An article in the Economist states the answer quite simply: “In America the income share of the rich has grown faster than the share of taxes paid.” Data from the Tax Foundation bears this out. Between 1987 and 2008, the share of income controlled by the top 1% grew to 20% from 12%. That signals a total share growth of 67%. During the same period, their share of taxes went to 28% from 24%, suggesting share growth of 17%. In other words, the top 1% share of income grew nearly five times faster than their share of taxes.

As The Economist points out, this same dynamic is true in much of the developed world, as globalization showers larger rewards on winners...

The reason behind the 40% number doesn’t answer the larger question of whether it’s “fair” to tax the rich more.

Dubstep

YouTube link. 

Via everywhere.

"The soldier lays a honey trap"

Modern readers of espionage novels (or viewers of such movies) will know the term "honeypot/honeytrap" as referring to a sexual seduction (also relevant to real life).  The term meant something quite different a century ago, as shown by this illustration from a 1916 book entitled "Europa's Fairy Tales."

The image accompanies "The Cinder-Maid" -

...when Cinder-Maid went to the ball the Prince would dance with none but her; and when midnight came round she fled as before. But the Prince, hoping to prevent her running away, had ordered the soldiers at the foot of the stair-case to pour out honey on the stairs so that her shoes would stick in it. But Cinder-Maid leaped from stair to stair and got away just in time, calling out as the soldiers tried to follow her...

They later try to trap her with tar (which also fails).  I also found it interesting that in this version of the Cinderella tale, when the wicked sisters can't get the shoes on their feet, they cut off their toes and heels (!!!) -

And when the herald came to the house of Cinder-Maid's father the eldest of her two step-sisters tried on the golden shoe. But it was much too small for her, as it was for every other lady that had tried it up to that time; but she went up into her room and with a sharp knife cut off one of her toes and part of her heel, and then fitted her foot into the shoe...

The Prince discovers the deception -

And the Prince looked down and saw the blood streaming from her shoe and then he knew that this was not his true bride, and he rode back to the house of Cinder-Maid's father; and then the second sister tried her chance; but when she found that her foot wouldn't fit the shoe she did the same as her sister...

This is a nice reminder that modern versions of fairy tales have been extensively modified (read "cleaned up"/Bowdlerized) from their original content.

If you like fairy tales, this is an excellent book.  Be sure to take read the informative end notes as well. 

"Fall asleep an hundred years"

This interesting illustration is reportedly from this book, although I couldn't locate it there.

Via A Polar Bear's Tale.

"Tofu" license plate banned

Whitney Calk innocently (or perhaps not) requested a vanity license plate from the state of Tennessee, one that read “ILVTOFU.” But her personalized plate reflecting her fondness for bean curds was rejected on the grounds of "vulgarity.” 

Via Language Log, which offers this interesting additional info:

Little did those who protest that their request for an ILVTOFU vanity plate has no sexual implications realize that in China, the homeland of tofu, this seemingly innocuous comestible has definite erotic connotations in certain circumstances.

Chī dòufu 吃豆腐 may mean simply "eat tofu," but it often is used to refer to a man flirting or taking liberties with a woman. Mó (mó) dòufu 摩(磨)豆腐 literally means "rub / scrape / stroke (grind) tofu," but it may also signify touching a woman's breasts or other sensitive parts, and frequently is used to signify mutual clitoral stimulation by lesbians.

The horror of Cordyceps

Last year I wrote a post about Cordyceps (including a video narrated by David Attenborough).  The fungus fascinates me.

This Carolina leaf-roller (Camptonotus carolinensis) has succumbed to an infection by a species of Cordyceps, a genus of entomopathogenic fungi. Cordyceps are well-known for inducing changes in insect behaviour, making them climb plants before they die. When the fruiting bodies burst forth from the insect, this high position helps spread the fungal spores to new victims.

Photo by myriorama, via Electric Orchids and Titam et le Sirop d'Erable.

An open thread on Jon Huntsman

I've been thoroughly disenchanted with the Republican slate of candidates for President.  It is endlessly frustrating for me to be disappointed with Obama, but not to have a reasonablew alternative choice.  I like some of Ron Paul's ideas, but not the total package.  Some of the others I find beneath contempt, but I am pondering Jon Huntsman as a possible candidate.

I first blogged about Huntsman in May of 2009, when Obama chose him as the U.S. Ambassador to China, because I was so surprised/delighted to learn of the selection of an ambassador who is fluent in the language of the country he/she is going to.

After that I lost track of him.   I haven't considered watching televised pseudo-"debates" to be a productive use of time.   I did find what appears to be his campaign website. And here are some excerpts from an article by Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic:

Jon Huntsman won't win the GOP nomination, or so pundits assure us. But he is getting press attention anyway because he decided to start telling his fellow Republicans truths that they don't want to hear. In quick succession, he trumpeted his belief in evolution, said climate change is caused by humans, and insisted that it was essential to raise the debt ceiling. Says James Fallows, "I'm relieved to see someone in the party trying to pull it back from the abyss." (Me too.) Andrew Sullivan goes even farther. "Huntsman has a prophetic role in this campaign if he chooses to adopt it: the truth-teller," he writes. "His chances are so slim, he loses nothing by speaking this candidly."

In a Vogue spread on the former Utah governor, Jacob Weisberg gives the fullest articulation of why so many journalists are covering a campaign that, by their own estimation, almost certainly won't succeed: "Huntsman looks like a protest candidate -- less a figure of the current Republican Zeitgeist than a canny challenger to his party's orthodoxy. But his lack of traction thus far doesn't feel exactly like failure," he writes. "Running from behind brings a freedom to speak one's mind, which can affect the political conversation for the better. Like Eugene McCarthy in 1968, Bruce Babbitt in 1988, and John McCain in 2000, Huntsman seems already to have become a media darling -- a thinking person's candidate whose candor shines a light on the evasions of his rivals, even if it fails to change the outcome of the race."

More at the link.  I don't have enough insight to offer a personal opinion, but readers of this blog run the gamut from the far right to the far left, and many of you are way more geared toward national politics, so I'd be delighted to hear what some of you guys think.

Addendum: These thoughts from Andrew Sullivan's The Dish in November 2011:

The GOP is a religious and cultural force dominated by evangelicals, and fixated on total rejection of establishment or liberal ideas. Huntsman has acknowledged climate change, alone among the candidates. He has backed civil unions for gays, alone among the candidates. These two positions, in my view, all but dismissed him from the race from the get-go. His radical tax reform ideas are therefore ignored in favor of Herman Cain's. His energy policy is trumped by Perry's desire to turn the entire US into Texas (because Texas is about the only place he barely understands). And he worked for Barack Obama in China and speaks fluent Mandarin (not that I can tell whether he's fluent but he gives a good impression of it on TV). These are all culturally anathema to what the GOP now is.


When you realize this intelligent and capable two-term governor from the rock-ribbed Republican state of Utah, with deep domestic and foreign policy experience, has one tenth of the support of a pizza guy who emerged from motivational speaking and talk radio, and who admits he knows nothing about foreign policy and has never held elective office in his life ... well, you have the core reality of today's Ailes-led, resentment-fueled GOP.

The only hope is for Huntsman to keep at it, place a marker and wait...

More at the link.

Photo cropped from original at The Atlantic.

Second addendum - An excerpt from a January 2012 Time column by Joe Klein:

Huntsman is a conservative. He is pro-life (with no flip-flops), he imposed a flat tax in Utah (and would have a lower, flatter but still progressive federal income tax structure), he favors Paul Ryan-style entitlement reform, he is opposed to Dodd-Frank and other government schemes to over-regulate the business community (but he has a plan to break up the “too big to fail” banks). He knows a lot and communicates it easily. But he’s going nowhere in this primary. Others have suggested that he “offended” the Republican base by acknowledging his belief in evolution and man-made climate change. If so, the Republican base badly needed offending.

But Huntsman’s real sin is deeper than that: his is a vitriol-free candidacy. There is no gratuitous sliming of Barack Obama or his fellow Republican candidates. There is no spurious talk of “socialism.” He pays not the slightest heed to the various licks and chops that Rush Limbaugh has made into stations of the cross for Republican candidates. He is out-of-step with the anger that has overwhelmed his party and puts it at odds with the vast, sensible mainstream of this country. Because he has refused to engage in such carnival tactics–because he hasn’t had any oops! moments, extramarital affairs, lobbying deals with Freddie Mac or flip-flops–the media have largely ignored him. That makes us complicit in a national political calamity. But Republican voters have been complicit, too: a conservative party that doesn’t take Huntsman seriously as a candidate has truly lost its way.

The final addenda to this post (Huntsman has dropped out Jan 15).  First, from Salon:

But let’s not treat Huntsman as some kind of ultra-principled martyr. He’s an ambitious politician whose overall platform was far more conservative and tactically-driven than many realized. His economic program, for instance, was nothing short of radical — massive reductions for the super-wealthy and for corporations — and seemed tailor-made to win approval from the GOP’s supply-side wing. He also provided the most unqualified endorsement of Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to end Medicare as it now exists, was just as insistent as every other candidate that healthcare reform and the Dodd-Frank bank reform law be repealed, and sang the standard conservative tune on abortion, gay marriage, gun control and most other hot-button issues. Occasionally, he’d throw his media and non-Republican fans a bone, but he could be just as quick to reverse himself when he sensed an opportunity to make inroads with the right.

It wasn’t hard to see the strategy that was at work: Ride the “sane” image to a breakthrough showing in finicky, independent-friendly New Hampshire, then be positioned to win over suddenly curious national conservatives by saying, “Have you actually looked at my platform — I’m not the moderate you’ve heard I am.”

There are a couple of reasons why this strategy didn’t work...

And from the Telegraph:

Jon Huntsman’s campaign faced three problems. First, it started too late. Huntsman thought he could sit out the deeply religious Iowa caucus and concentrate his resources on New Hampshire instead. Big mistake. It cost him a lot of media attention...

Second, Huntsman never quite shook off the weirdo factor. He can be a tad Vulcan...

Huntsman’s third problem was the most significant for US politics watchers: he had no constituency. He ran as a moderate. On the one hand he was fiscally conservative, on the other he had some nice things to say about evolution and homosexuality...

There were simply not enough liberal Republicans to give the candidate anymore than 16.8 percent of the vote. Those folks who share his socially moderate instincts have either drifted to the Democrats or sit out the party as registered independents.

Keep calm and carry on

In November of 1965, during the game between Northfield Mount Hermon School and Deerfield Academy, Silliman Hall on the NMH campus caught fire. Even as Silliman Hall burned, the game went on.

Story at The Whig, via Black at WTF.

The government did NOT purchase $16 muffins

Just as you can't "unsee" something, once something gets into the blogosphere, it probably will never leave.  Such will be the case with the story that circulated earlier this week; here's the report via the Washington Post:

Where does a muffin cost more than $16?

At a government conference, it turns out.

They may run just over $2 at your average coffee shop, but the Justice Department paid seven to eight times as much at a gathering it held at the Capital Hilton in Washington. And on Tuesday, the muffins seemed well on their way to joining the Pentagon’s $600 toilet seat as symbols of wasteful spending...

The reaction was blistering — and bipartisan. “Sixteen-dollar muffins and $600,000 for event planning services are what make Americans cynical about government and why they are demanding change,’’ said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The Justice Department appears to be blind to the economic realities our country is facing. People are outraged, and rightly so.’’

People would be right to be outraged - if the story were true.  I was going to blog it too, but was too busy and just bookmarked it.  By the time I got back to it yesterday, I had found a followup article in Mother Jones indicating that there were no $16 muffins:

Is it really true? So I went to the DOJ Inspector General's website, got the report, and searched for "muffin." The following paragraph looks fairly impenetrable, but go ahead and plow through it anyway:

Considering the EOIR reported that at least 534 people received refreshments at its 2009 Legal Training Conference in Washington, D.C., it spent an average of $14.74 per attendee per day on food and beverages—just above the $14.72 JMD limit for refreshments. We credit the EOIR for implementing the following controls to reduce food and beverage costs: (1) it provided just refreshments and not full meals, (2) it ordered fewer refreshments than the total number of reported attendees, and (3) it received 15 gallons of coffee, 30 gallons of iced tea, and 200 pieces of fruit for free. However, many individual food and beverage items listed on conference invoices and paid by the EOIR were very costly. The EOIR spent $4,200 on 250 muffins and $2,880 on 300 cookies and brownies. By itemizing these costs, we determined that, with service and gratuity, muffins cost over $16 each and cookies and brownies cost almost $10 each.

So did DOJ really pay $16 for muffins? Of course not. In fact, it's obvious that someone quite carefully calculated the amount they were allowed to spend and then gave the hotel a budget. The hotel agreed, but for some reason decided to divide up the charges into just a few categories instead of writing a detailed invoice for every single piece of food they provided. 

I also went to the pdf at the link, and I agree that the "muffin number" is a misinterpretation of the data.  You could also infer that from the aggregate cost of $14.74 per person per day for food; if the muffins were $16, then each conference attendant received only a muffin a day.

Kudos to Kevin Drum at Mother Jones for tracking down the source data.

Now we have to find something else to be outraged about.

Hummingbird smuggler caught with his pants down

Found at this link; I've been unable to extract any further details or source information from the site or from a TinEye image search.

I'm totally not sympathetic to wildlife smugglers, but one has to cringe when noting the placement of the contraband and all those pointy little beaks...

Addendum of apparently related info from finchwench: 

In 2010, French customs officers at the Rochambeau airport in Cayenne, French Guiana after noticing some suspicious bulges, conducted an intimate pat-down of a Dutch tourist and found some tiny parcels in some very personal space.

The guy with his shorts full of hummingbirds was reported to be a repeat offender; he was allegedly intercepted at the same airport with an accomplice and a cargo of 53 hummingbirds two years prior to this photographed encounter. I was unable to find record of the convict’s previous offence, but in the 2010 incident, he was fined €6000. The value of his catch was estimated to be between €10,400 and €13,200...

She reports that "the story precipitated from a private e-mail, sent by a customs officer, that was forwarded to some online orchid forum and a Yahoo! group (both in French language), and that was a year ago. Now, there are various "news" reports about this, not only in English, in which details of the story are misreported (e.g. The Daily Mail, AOL)."

Two types of YouTube comments, illustrated

Credit to joeythehobo for the screencap.

Anonymous (the movie)

A hat tip to Bub for alerting me to the upcoming (October 28) release of the movie "Anonymous." Those of you who are long-time readers of this blog may remember or have surmised that I am a proponent of the proposition that Edward de Vere was the true author of the works attributed to the "shakspere" guy in Stratford.

The movie is directed by Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012), who has said this re its development:

It's three characters. It's like Ben Jonson, who was a playwright then. William Shakespeare who was an actor. It's like the 17th Earl of Oxford who is the true author of all these plays. We see how, through these three people, it happens that all of these plays get credited to Shakespeare. I kind of found it as too much like Amadeus to me. It was about jealousy, about genius against end, so I proposed to make this a movie about political things, which is about succession. Succession, the monarchy, was absolute monarchy, and the most important political thing was who would be the next king. Then we incorporated that idea into that story line. It has all the elements of a Shakespeare play. It's about kings, queens, and princes. It's about illegitimate children, it's about incest, it's about all of these elements which Shakespeare plays have. And it's overall a tragedy. 

I suspect it will be a little "over the top," but perhaps it will introduce more of the general public to the doubts surrounding the Stratford man's authorship.

More about the Shakespeare authorship question some other time. Those who are interested in literature and history will be well rewarded by scanning this Wikipedia article on the Oxfordian theory, and then visiting the website of the Shakespeare-Oxford Society.

SGU24 ~ What were their Wikipedia Stats?

I'm sure after they get a extra long night of sleep the crew of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe‎ podcast will be evaluating their first ever 24-hour podcast extravaganza.  Steven Novella stated that their goal was to raise critical thinking levels with a dose of skepticism and science (I'm paraphrasing here).  They had a meter that they checked every so often that went from red to green.  I have no idea how they were measuring this gauge or if it was just a prop for the show, but what Novella is advocating is exactly what I have been blogging about for the last few months.

Increasing awareness of skepticism/critical thinking/science is good for society.  A win-win for everyone!

There are many ways to achieve this goal, the SGU felt it could help out our cause by staying awake for 24 hours and letting the world watch them do it.  Maybe it helped?  There were thousands of views, and tons of tweets everywhere. It certainly made people talk and engage with each other, thats all a good thing strengthening our community.  I managed to make it through about 4 hours on Friday night and about 3 hours before and after work on Saturday.

During the hours I watched I managed to get some quick Wikipedia editing done (as I noted in the comments of this blog) Dustin scored a couple great updates to Boiron‎ and  Oscillococcinum‎'s pages.  Lei finished up Vashti McCollum‎'s page, and I'm hoping others were editing away while listening also. I tweeted the Wikipedia edits as they were being finished on the SGU24 tweet, the JREF and Tim Farley re-tweeted a few times.  All good.  I didn't get any comments from the watchers or the SGU (as far as I know) who were following the tweets.  I'll try not to be cynical, but the chat room and the tweets seemed more concerned with the social aspect of the whole event (like how much bacon they could eat) and as I said, bringing us together is a good thing.  Personally I would have liked to see them suggest things for the community to do...write letters, tutor a child, sponsor a classroom... edit Wikipedia for skeptical content... you know things that really improve critical thinking. 

I believe that when someone is in the media's eye and the listener is not sure who they are, or wants to refresh their memory of the person, they are going to turn to the Internet to fill them in.  When typing in that name, usually within the first few hits they will see a link to a Wikipedia page (if that person is noteworthy enough to have a page).  For many reasons (people are familiar with Wikipedia, no popups, no virus, easy to use, neutral and usually sums up the person in a few paragraphs) most people will click on the Wikipedia link before they go to a "personal" website.  Maybe after reading the Wikipedia page they will follow the links to other websites.  I don't have access to their websites sats, but if they are curious about their hits from Wiki most webservices will tell them where they are receiving "referrals" from. 

I thought it might be interesting to see what kind of hits came in to the "skeptical spokespeople"'s Wikipedia pages for 9/23.  The site I'm using is something you can use also.  http://stats.grok.se/  There is a delay in recording the numbers and I might be premature blogging too early. The delay might be as much as a day, depending on time zones and maybe other things.  We can look at these same Wiki pages in a day or so and see that we can see.

I'm not going to give the real numbers (don't want to turn this into a popularity contest, if you want to know how many hits a site gets, you can plug them into the Wikipedia article traffic statistics tool.  Everything is in percentage based on what is considered normal for Sept 2011.

SGU - +300%
Rebecca Watson - +216%
Steven Novella - +300%
Jamy Ian Swiss - +430%
Richard Saunders - +180%
George Hrab - +34%
Adam Savage - +152%
Tim Minchin - no increase (may be too early to look at his results)

Is this totally scientific? No.  Lots of things might be affecting these numbers.  But it is interesting.

I mention all this not just because I want more people to get involved in doing something to help out the skeptical cause by editing Wikipedia for skeptical content.  But because we need to make sure we have the backs of our skeptical spokespeople.  They represent us!  When people go to their pages, they will be exposed to other skeptical/science/critical thinking hyperlinks that they may follow and read.  They may also click on the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia page (the external links and further reading links).

This is a part of guerrilla skepticism and just plain common sense.  We need to make sure these pages are in order, well written, current, engaging and so on.  You can help, please help, there is so much that needs to be done.  Open a Wikipedia account, ask for help, read this blog for ideas, whatever it takes.  Just join the cause and help.

Note!
Our very own Karen Stollznow will be appearing on Anderson Cooper's talk show on October 10th.  She says that she was only one of several people all talking about the harm that psychics cause.  She didn't get to say a lot, but she is going to be our spokesperson for those few comments.  And when people google her (and you know they will) they will find that we have her skeptic back!

FYI this blog discusses the stats after the NBC Nightline "Beyond Belief" show that the JREF recently did. 

Tortoise skeleton

A really fascinating construction, when you think about it.

Image from Biomedical Ephemera, via A London Salmagundi.

Rick Perry campaign video

YouTube link. 

I do not support Rick Perry as a presidential candidate, but I wanted to post this video from his campaign to illustrate how high-quality production values can generate a really persuasive product.

On a related matter, Yglesias has taken issue with Perry's recent assertions re the importance of Israel's security to the United States:

I had a lot of problems with Rick Perry’s remarks on Israel today, but the most striking thing was his throwaway line that “Israel’s security is critical to America’s security.” He didn’t really explain why  that is, because like Benjamin Netanyahu’s contention that “America has no better friend than Israel”, it isn’t true.

The truth is that Israel is a very small country that simply isn’t very important. Israel contains no valuable natural resources, and it does no favors for the United States. 

Which is fine. There are lots of countries whose security isn’t crucial to the United States. Chile, for example. And yet we still enjoy a nice, healthy, state-to-state and society-to-society relationship with Chile. It’s not a slam on Chile to observe that Chilean security isn’t critical to American welfare... We can be friends with Chile, shake hands with Chilean leaders, enjoy their wines, etc. without saying that we need to take Chile’s side in every regional diplomatic dispute, subsidize the Chilean military, or have our politician run around the world making absurd claims about the centrality of Chilean security to our own security.

The link between Zionism and Evangelical Christianity was previously discussed in an article at Mother Jones.

"As it turns out..."

All of the Dilbert cartoons are here.

The inside of a bagworm's bag

I've posted before about the interesting biology of bagworms, but wanted to add these beautiful photos of the larger ones seen in Arizona. 

Photo credit to Brigette Zacharczenko, whose Caterpillarblog is a must vist for anyone with an interest in lepidoptera.

Eumorpha typhon

One of the large, beautiful, sphinx moth caterpillars.

From the Caterpillarblog.

"Johnson Circles"

If three hula hoops cover a common point, then a fourth hoop will cover their remaining intersections.

Found in the Futility Closet.  There is an explanation at Wolfram Mathworld.

Nationwide "nerd search" underway

As reported at Scientific American:

The latest in a series of castings I’ve seen this fall is a new competition-style game show that claims to define a new generation of nerdiness. ‘KING OF THE NERDS’ will aim to showcase the scientific passions and knowledge of contestants (men AND women) as they compete for cash prizes. The show comes from the producers of some massively successful game-show formats like Mythbusters and Amazing Race...

The show is looking for mathematicians, biologists, chemists, physicists, programmers, inventors, puzzle-masters, engineers, gamers, comic book fanatics, movie buffs, trekkies, techies, mensa members, chess masters and any other kind of intellectual-based geeks for contestants.  If you are a contender you’ll be asked to submit an audition video, and from there if you are selected you’ll be flown to LA to participate in the game (the search is nationwide).

It sounds like they want to emulate the outstanding UK program "Mastermind."

Sclerotic rings

I had never heard of these until today.

Sclerotic rings are rings of bone found in the eyes of several groups of vertebrate animals, except for mammals and crocodilians. They can be made up of single bones or small bones together. They are believed to have a role in supporting the eye, especially in animals whose eyes are not spherical, or which live underwater. Fossil sclerotic rings are known for a variety of extinct animals, including ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs, but are often not preserved.

A third image at Wikipedia illustrates that these rings were actually inside the eye, not just around the eye.   The top skull is from a leaf-tailed gecko, and the lower skeleton is of the appropriately named opthalmosaurus.

You learn something every day.

Via Scientific Illustration.

Stair safety rules

This isn't exactly "real."  It apparently comes from a book entitled "Sideways Stories from Wayside School."

But go ahead and post this sign at your school or place of work.

An 80' sailboat passes under a 65' bridge

YouTube link. 

The balls [apparently containing two tons of water] get swung out with an initial turn to port or stbd. The tendency then is for the roll to continue by itself, but is controlled by letting the bags out slowly with a line made off to each bag and running through necessary tackle to a cockpit winch.

Via Within the crainium.

"Supercommittee" members and defense spending

From an article at Salon:

Arizona's Republican Sen. Jon Kyl wasted little time. A member of the bipartisan congressional "supercommittee" charged with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions, he did his best to forestall even discussion of cuts to the Pentagon's budget. "When we had our first meeting the chairman asked, 'Well, what do we think about defense spending?' and I said, 'I'm off of the committee if we're gonna talk about further defense spending [cuts],'" he told the audience at a recent forum sponsored by several conservative think tanks...

The Senate minority whip may be the most outspoken member of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction when it comes to the military budget, but the Democrats currently considering whether to cut the deficit via reductions in defense spending or programs like Medicare and Medicaid have received far more money from Pentagon contractors than Kyl or any of their Republican colleagues on the panel, according to an investigation by Alternet, with assistance from the Brave New Foundation and Salon.com.

Since 2007, Democrats on the supercommittee have received more than $1 million in defense industry donations, while contributions to the Republicans added up to only $321,000...

At the moment, before the panel makes any decisions, the Department of Defense faces a likely "cut" of around $350 billion in funds over the next decade under a plan proposed by the White House that became part of the debt ceiling agreement. However, as Salon contributor Winslow Wheeler and others have pointed out, those "cuts" are reductions in future spending increases -- not actual budget cuts in any normal sense...

For many years, top defense firms have divided work on weapons systems across multiple states in order to exert influence over Congress. The supercommittee is far from immune. As the Associated Press recently reported, the "six Republicans and six Democrats represent states where the biggest military contractors -- Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon Co. and Boeing Co. -- build missiles, aircraft, jet fighters and tanks while employing tens of thousands of workers."..

No member of the supercommittee, and no lawmaker in all of Washington, D.C., received more donations from Boeing than co-chair Patty Murray. Of the $3.2 million that the missile-maker dispersed to lawmakers in 2009-2010, the Washington Democrat received $85,860. That sum was $20,000 more than was donated to the next two largest congressional recipients of Boeing money combined, according to data from the Sunlight Foundation.

An analysis by Alternet further found that more than one-third of Murray's top 100 donors during the 2010 cycle were defense contractors that collectively signed $57.5 billion worth of deals with the Pentagon last year...

In addition to continued high levels of U.S. defense spending even in the event of sequestration, the Pentagon has, for the last year, also taken substantive countermeasures to shield its key contractors from future financial peril, including trips to Wall Street to lobby investors to bolster weapons-makers and brokering deals with Persian Gulf states to keep assembly lines active and coffers full.

Much more at the link.

100 years of style and dance

YouTube link. 

This video is probably not a "TYWK," because it has been posted so many places (2 million YouTube hits), but it's so well done that I thought I'd best add it to the blog here as well. 

Re "buying on the dips"

Some objective data on that advice, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

When the market is tanking, the bulls like to remind investors to "buy on the dips." But this strategy doesn't work as well as logic might suggest. Sure, it makes intuitive sense. The whole point of investing, after all, is to buy low and sell high. When prices take a sudden drop, the market gives you an immediate opportunity to buy low. Why not take it?..

Start with trying to define it. What is a "dip"? Is it a 2% decline in the value of a market index, or 5% or even more? Does a dip occur in a day, a week or longer? Because investors appear to go by gut instinct—if the market goes down enough to feel scary, that is a "dip"—the lack of a consistent definition makes it hard to determine whether buying on the dips is effective...



To see how buying the dips may work in practice, I asked William Bernstein, an investment manager at Efficient Frontier Advisors in Eastford, Conn., to look back over the past 10 years using the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, a common proxy for the U.S. stock market as a whole because it tracks the S&P 500 market average.

Had you bought the fund exactly 10 years ago, you would have paid $77.22 (adjusted for dividends). If you had bought every time the S&P 500 index closed down 2% in a day, you would have been able to capture 137 such dips—but your average purchase price on these days would have been $82.82. If you defined a dip as a 5% daily drop, you would have gotten 13 opportunities to buy "on the cheap"—but even those more drastic dips averaged out to a purchase price of $78.39. Again, you ended up paying more to buy on the dips than you did to get on board in the first place.

"It's very counterintuitive," Mr. Bernstein says. But a lump-sum investment at the beginning would have earned you an annual average total return of 3%. Buying on the 5% dips would have reduced your return by 0.1 percentage points annually, and buying on the 2% dips would have cut your gains by an annual average of 0.8%, he estimates...

Another issue: Buying low doesn't do you much good unless you also can sell high.

More at the link.

It's Getting Spooky In Here - Halloween Crafts Projects From The Best Free Craft Articles Contributors

Ghosts, goblins, and witches - oh, my!

Dracula's, mummies, and Frankensteins, too!

Watch out  - they might just get you!

If you LOVE Halloween fun like I do and love to decorate for Halloween then you'll love all the wonderful free Halloween articles, e-patterns, tutorials, graphics, stitcheries, craft projects and more from The Best Free Craft Articles blog contributors. Here they all are:

Please respect each artist or crafters Terms Of Use for their free article.

I hope you were inspired to create some monsters of your very own!

Ghosts, goblins, and witches - oh, my!

Paranomal Categories ~ SGU 24-Hour Show

Steven Novella and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe tonight begins a 24-Hour Podcasting Show.  He states that critical thinking is at an all time low (he even has a meter to prove it!)  He wants to try and raise the level of science and skepticism during the next 24-hours to at least the yellow level.  I'm challenging anyone listening the next 24-hours to listen in, and really DO SOMETHING to raise the level of critical thinking in the public.  Edit Wikipedia for skeptical content. 

Join me, sign into your Wikipedia account and help edit.  I'm going to be giving updates in the comment section of the edits I do tonight. 

Heres a great place to start...

I love the category function on Wikipedia.  I've talked a lot about this on earlier blogs about using the Skeptics by country page as a way of finding skeptic pages that badly need work.  Putting them in the category has been discussed as well.

As you know from reading the last few blogs, I'm on this kick to find more paranormal pages that are making claims like "medium XYZ has solved many missing person cases" and "the police call in ABC whenever they have a mystery to solve".  You know that kind of thing.  Then when you look at the citations you discover that the citation might not even be there, or is a bad cite (dead link, or links to the psychic's website ect...).

Well trolling around Wikipedia does give you all kinds of strange pages, but I thought why not just go to the psychic's pages from the category page that someone put them in?  Great idea.  I've collected a few of the category pages and pasted them for you below. Remember there might be a lot more, I just haven't found them yet. 


American Spiritual Mediums


Spiritual Mediums

People by Paranormal Abilities

Paranormal

Paranormal Stubs

Paranormal Investigators