Several weeks' worth of links

These have accumulated since before the blogcation.  I have to get rid of them, or else they will multiply in their folders like coathangers in the closet.

In an emergency, cats can receive transfusions of dog blood.  "It may sound wacky, but it's science. Cats don't have antibodies that reject dogs' blood, so a transfusion may buy enough time for the cat to regenerate its own red blood cells. But only one transfusion can be done because a second dose of dog blood will be the death of the cat."

An upcoming book details how a call girl operation was instrumental in the Watergate investigation.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation publishes bicycle maps of Minnesota.

Those who are sick and tired of repeatedly being urged to "support the troops" will want to read this Salon op-ed piece.  Those who aren't, won't.  (After the piece was published, the author received death threats.)

How to get rid of drain flies.

The state of Texas plans to convert some roads from pavement to gravel.

Those who do not live with a cell phone constantly in our hands will appreciate the
viewpoint this woman has on her life.

A list of famous people who play Dungeons and Dragons (Stephen King, Matt Damon, Jon Stewart, Billy Crystal...).

Women are buying and selling positive pregnancy tests on Craigslist.  It doesn't take much imagination to guess how they are used.

The melting of the Norwegian glaciers continues to yield amazing artifacts, including an Iron Age pullover sweater.

A list of ten hidden treasures that haven't been found yet.  If you find one, you have to split it with me. (Although I suspect some have been found in the past, not reported publicly, and served to establish a family's fortune).

Side-by-side video comparison of the train ride from London to Brighton in 1913, 1983, and 2013.

A lengthy discussion of CrossFit training and its relationship to American militarism.

How debt collection has "morphed into a predatory system... for well-financed, out-of-town companies that turned $500 delinquencies into $5,000 debts — then foreclosed on homes when families couldn’t pay."  Here's the Reddit commentary thread.

Ulysses for Dummies boils the unreadable book down to a series of 18 cartoon panels - which are still uninteresting.

The etymology of the word aloof is complicated and interesting (for those interested in etymologies).

Five imgur images explain how to moonwalk.

Humorous airplane announcements by pilots and stewardesses.

A graphic of the world's oldest trees.

Photos depicting the dystopian legacy of 9/11.

Forbes reports that despite the financial crisis five years ago, the richest Americans are now richer than they ever were.

NASA is recruiting volunteers to study the effects of microgravity. "Successful candidates will stay in a tilted bed 24 hours a day as part of the 70-day project, where they can play computer games, surf the internet or watch TV."

So far, in 2013, more Americans have been killed by toddlers than by terrorists.  "In the first part of this year, 11 people were killed by children aged three to six years old — more than the four people killed at the Boston Marathon bombing."

Maryland has no natural lakes.  Virginia has only two.  (Minnesota has over 11,000 - but that's another story).

"Jerk cats love knocking sh*t over."

Photos of Gunther von Hagens' plastination models of human anatomy.  They seem even more dramatic than the original ones years ago.  Note: this link shows dissected human genitals.

Photos of a dog with severe gingival hyperplasia.  Note: many readers will find the images quite disturbing.

"A small-town Midwestern dealership in Pierce, Nebraska sold Chevrolets to local families and first-time buyers for 50 years until its husband and wife team finally closed their doors seventeen years ago. Since then, a staggering inventory of 500 surviving cars, new & used, have been stored away, undriven for decades."  A photoessay at the link shows the cars before they were auctioned to the public.

Mermithidae parasites of spiders are awesome.

Cashel Man is the world's oldest bog body.

A family raises a cute little baby bunny rabbit, then releases it to join its mommy. A neighborhood hawk has other ideas.

During their explorations for oil, Exxon used deepwater sonic mapping techniques in shallow water, killing a hundred whales.

Samuel Clemens' creation of the "Mark Twain" name was not a simple matter of overhearing riverboat captains.

A series of "vanishing area puzzles."

Photos from the UW Arboretum and the neighborhood this past week.

Linkdump

A further update from Krebs on Security on skimming devices and fake PIN pads installed at gas station gas pumps.

And from PC Magazine's Security Watch a reminder to never plug your phone into a charger you don't own (as for example at a hotel):  "Any current iPhone is vulnerable to this attack. The only defense is a very simple rule: don't plug your phone into a charger you don't own. If you do, you could find your supposedly-secure iOS device totally owned by malware."

An awesome gallery of 42 photographs of glasswing butterflies.

A column at Scientific American encourages Americans to abandon traditional grass lawns in favor of other plantings.

From the archives of British Pathe, ten tragedies caught on news film.

As a result of climate change, ticks are devastating moose populations.  "They can send a moose to its death, with up to 150,000 dining on every calf, cow and bull in certain parts of the Granite State, wildlife biologists estimate. There was a time when eggs laid in this age-old cycle perished on winter snow. But that hasn’t happened lately in New Hampshire... As the number of ticks explodes, moose have disappeared by the thousands in areas where they were most abundant. Many of those still alive are eerily thin, with rib cages visible through ragged skin. They are mere shadows of themselves, zombies with antlers."

It is NOT true that there are testicle-eating fish in the waters of Scandinavia.

A former Vogue editor has written a book about "size zero" model...

On another shoot I was chatting to one of the top Australian models..."My flatmate is a 'fit model', so she's in hospital on a drip a lot of the time." A fit model is one who is used in the top designer ateliers, or workrooms, and is the body around which the clothes are designed. That the ideal body shape used as a starting point for a collection should be a female on the brink of hospitalisation from starvation is frightening.

A gallery of over 50 photos of a shoe store that was closed up and left alone for 40 years.

A column at Salon offers "Eight signs the rich have way too much money."

As the conflict rages in Syria, Syrian-Americans sometimes find themselves at odds with one another. "Sectarian identity is a large part of Syrians, and it gets imported to America," he said. "Anti-Assad is just a code word for Sunni, for people who don't like to speak about it."

People in California pray at a tree that is "weeping God's tears."  Scientists say it is aphid excrement.

The Museum of Sex has a detailed description of the internal anatomy of the clitoris.

The Beatles were introduced to marijuana by Bob Dylan. "The Beatles didn't fall immediately under the spell of marijuana, but after a few months, according to John, they were "smoking it for breakfast," "Let's have a laugh" soon became their code line for "Let's have some marijuana."

Brief video depicts an impressive karate move.

Rattlesnakes (and other snakes) are important parameters in limiting the spread of Lyme disease by ticks.

Fruit juice may be worse for children than soda pop.  "A book from the 1920s on feeding children by L Emmett Holt says that you should give toddlers just one to four tablespoons (15-60ml) of fresh orange or peach juice. Compare this with today's 200ml children's juice boxes, which contain about 17g sugar, the equivalent of more than four teaspoons. The biggest problem with juice, as far as Lustig is concerned, is the lack of fibre."

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone tackles the college loan scandal.  "It's complicated. But throw off the mystery and what you'll uncover is a shameful and oppressive outrage that for years now has been systematically perpetrated against a generation of young adults... our university-tuition system really is exploitative and unfair, designed primarily to benefit two major actors [colleges/universities and the government]."

A sea snail hatched and grew under the skin of a little boy's knee.

Got a ceiling fan?  Put some colored tape on it and then turn it on.

In response to the question "What is a "dirty little (or big) secret" about an industry that you have worked in, that people outside the industry really ought to know?," a long discussion thread at Reddit details the workings of the funeral industry and how it exploits the consumer.

Photos at the top:  The caterpillar of the common Cabbage White butterfly is the only Midwestern butterfly larva that can be considered an agricultural pest.  So nobody raises them - except me.  I removed several from my wife's broccoli plants (which have dark green leaves) and put them in a container with some wilted iceberg lettuce (which was pale green), and was startled to see the multicolored frass in the container.  Next year I'm going to throw in some red cabbage and see how artistic the result will be.

Eastern Tailed-Blue (and a linkdump)

After a fist fight, a soccer referee stabbed a player to death.  So the player's friends and family "rushed into the field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body.  Local news media say the spectators also decapitated Silva and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field."

Use this link to find out what words you can spell with your telephone number.

If you have a few minutes, read the post at Neatorama about North Sentinel Island - "the forbidden island" - whose inhabitants "are members of a hunter-gatherer tribe that has lived on the island for 65,000 years."  The Indian government protects these people by not allowing visitors to access the island.

In 1989 a passenger airliner crashed in Niger.  Families of the victims have created a stunning memorial in the desert.

A Reddit thread discusses "What is a book that once you finished, you just sat there in awe of what you just read?"  The most-upvoted entries are not surprising.

For homeowners:  three simple air-conditioner maintenance things-to-do.

An explanation of how swallowing parasites might help patients minimize the effects of auto-immune diseases like multiple sclerosis.

How polluters can "game the system" of carbon credits.

Video of cliff-diving monkeys (doing so obviously just for the joy of it).

"Researchers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga decided to poll and interview non-believers to find out what kind of people abandon religious faith and why. Based on this research, the project authors were able to divide non-believers into six basic categories."

Telephone area code 321 in Florida received those numbers because they are the final digits in the countdown of a space launch.

Video of the Northern Lights, filmed in Scandinavia.

A Calvin and Hobbes documentary is coming to movie theaters and video-on-demand.

An instructable shows how to quickly create a mini-cake by stacking three doughnuts and covering them with frosting.

Possibly the worst ceremonial opening pitch of a baseball game.  Ever.

You can read the transcript of the astronauts of Apollo 10 discussing who among them was responsible for the fecal turd found floating through the air of the spacecraft.

The fastest lawn mower in the world is a Honda version that goes from 0 to 60 mph in four seconds.

Moose are dying in Minnesota.  "The population has nosedived in recent years, dropping to about a third of what it was in 2009. In the past year alone, their numbers plummeted 35 percent, leaving only about 2,700 moose. That’s a mortality rate unseen anywhere else in North America—in fact, in other parts of the continent, moose are thriving. But something, or a combination of somethings, is threatening to wipe out moose from the North Woods in less than a decade, if the current decline continues unabated."

I like this new pope.  "When Pope Francis embarked Monday morning for Brazil, where he will take an official week-long tour, he raised eyebrows around the world by carrying his own bag up the stairs to his flight out of Rome... Francis is seeking to demonstrate humility and a closer connection to regular Catholics, as well as signaling to other Vatican officials that they could stand to behave a bit less like royalty and more like priests."

Browse the 1963 Sears Toy Book (and be amazed at the prices).

Ten beautiful medieval maps.

Text and video about a young woman who vacationed in Peru and wound up with maggots in her brain.  "Rochelle said she remembered walking through a swarm of flies when in Peru and a fly had got inside her ear. But once she had shooed it away she thought nothing more of it."

How to make your own ice-cream sandwiches.

Jill Harness has created for Mental Floss a compilation of 62 of the world's most beautiful libraries.

Find out what names people in the Middle Ages gave to their dogs and cats.

The word "shitstorm" has an antonym.  I'll save you the click:  "candystorm."

You can make your own fabric softener at home.

Thumb drives are not eternal.  Lifehacker discusses how to minimize the chances of crucial data loss.

Few people know that "harpaxophilia" means "sexual arousal from being robbed or burglarized. The word comes from the Greek word ἅρπαξ, harpax, “robber” and -philia, “love”.

"Shave 'em dry" is a very rude song from the 1930s.   Audio and text at the link, both of which are totally NSFW.

Collectors Weekly offers a history of paper dolls.

Photo: The Eastern Tailed-Blue is a common butterfly in the Upper Midwest, one of about a dozen types in the Blues subfamily.   I photographed this fresh and strikingly pretty one this afternoon at Badger Prairie Park in Verona, Wisconsin.

Screencaps from "The Lion in Winter"

Data from the Mars Rover mission indicates that the radiation dose received by future astronauts is a challenging obstacle to overcome.

A proof-of-concept demonstration shows that your iPhone could be hacked by using someone else's charger.

A sequence of still photos shows what happened when a car drove over a steel rod (no gore, but the positioning of the rod is suggestive).


"Heat bursts" are local weather phenomena that result in surface temperatures suddenly rising 20 degrees in a matter of hours (with links to NOAA and to a video).

The "Number of the Beast" may not be 666.  It might instead be 616.

The ancient Egyptians obtained workable iron by harvesting fallen meteorites.

The odds of heads vs. tails on a coin flip may not necessarily be exactly 50:50. "it’s closer to 51/49, biased toward whatever side was up when the coin was thrown into the air."  And the difference is reported to be more dramatic with a coin spin rather than a flip.

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did leave a note explaining why he did it.  He said the bombings were "retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims "collateral damage" in the same way Muslims have been in the American-led wars. "When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims," Tsarnaev wrote."

The gender gap in Congress illustrated.

An Angkor Wat-type lost city has been discovered in the Cambodian jungle.

The movie "Groundhog Day" can be viewed as a "Buddhist classic."

The FBI is still looking for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.  It's been 38 years.  Why don't they give up?  What's the point?

"The federal government will intervene in the sugar market for the first time in more than a decade, spending up to $38 million in an effort to forestall a later bailout of sugar producers... “Record-breaking yields of sugar crops and a global surplus have driven down U.S. sugar prices, and USDA is required to act to stabilize the domestic market,” the USDA said in a statement."

A week from today, someone in India will transmit the world's last telegram.

The city of Detroit continues to implode. "40% of its street lights are out of order, and it has 78,000 abandoned and blighted structures, of which 38,000 are considered dangerous buildings. Those buildings account for a large proportion of the 12,000 fires Detroit has every year."

"Chetham’s Library, UK’s oldest public library, was built in 1421 as a college (it was a library from 1653). One of the original doors from that school, seen here, holds a round (and charming) secret: a cat flap! Mice were unwelcome, of course, in a library..."

A musical show on Russian television features four nude male dancers wearing (only) two hats each.

A French title designer has created a video tribute to the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

Video footage of an 8-foot long oarfish, filmed by an ROV.

Ten videos of flights of starlings.

What does billion-year-old water taste like? "What jumps out at you first is the saltiness. Because of the reactions between the water and the rock, it is extremely salty. It is more viscous than tap water. It has the consistency of a very light maple syrup. It doesn't have color when it comes out, but as soon as it comes into contact with oxygen it turns an orangy color because the minerals in it begin to form — especially the iron."  It reportedly tastes terrible.

A good Reddit discussion thread about the old Savings and Loan crisis, and how the ratings services (Moody's, Standard and Poors) accepted money in exchange for giving financial instruments high ratings.

Not all pearls are round (especially freshwater ones).  But why are the round ones round?

Video of an automated underground bicycle parking system in Japan.

Maggots cleaning a bear skeleton.

A map of New York's Lower East Side, showing the incredible number of bars it has in the 1880s (as many as 18 on the two sides of one block of one street).

In 1776, John Adams wrote to his wife "“the Second of July, 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.”  Not the Fourth of July, mind you - the Second of July.  Explained at the link.

At the 2:58 mark of Hey Jude, you can hear Paul McCartney mutter "fucking hell" when he makes a mistake on the piano. More details re all of the Beatles works at What Goes On.

I suppose the apotheosis of the concept of population control must be the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

"Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense."

A hat tip to Dan for that one, and to E for this next: High voltage cable inspection (video of a daunting profession).

And finally, a photo of skull-shaped snapdragon seed pods (credit Laajala, via The Presurfer):

Monarch eggs on milkweed

In Russia someone built an outhouse/loo on top of the opening of an abandoned mineshaft.  Intrepid explorers found that adit and explored it, discovering an icicle-decorated mine beneath (dozens of photos at the link).

Who invented the "high five" victory slap currently so common in many sports?  It dates back to the 1970s.

If your travels take you to or through South Dakota, you can visit the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary.

An interesting article in the Los Angeles Times describes what it's like to be an agricultural  field worker:  "Americans don't want to do the fieldwork. They'll go over and make hamburgers for $8 an hour with no insurance, no nothing, when they can make more money here," Teixeira said. "I don't care if you pay $20 an hour, they'll come here one or two days, and they're gone. It's a mind-set: They think fieldwork is below them."

More  before-and-after faces of meth.

The officer in charge of the Air Force's sexual assault prevention program has been arrested for alleged sexual assault.

The dark side of home schooling."  The Christian home school subculture isn't a children-first movement. It is, for all intents and purposes, an ideology-first movement. There is a massive, well-oiled machine of ideology that is churning out soldiers for the culture war."

Not that it would ever happen, but just in case: "do not talk to the FBI without your lawyer present. If Harvey’s decades long experience is any indication, chances are that the agents will politely decline to interview you if you and your attorney insist on creating an accurate record of an FBI interrogation."

A man describes what it was like to be swallowed by a hippopotamus: " It was as if I had suddenly gone blind and deaf.  I was aware that my legs were surrounded by water, but my top half was almost dry. I seemed to be trapped in something slimy. There was a terrible, sulphurous smell, like rotten eggs, and a tremendous pressure against my chest. My arms were trapped but I managed to free one hand and felt around – my palm passed through the wiry bristles of the hippo's snout. It was only then that I realised I was underwater, trapped up to my waist in his mouth.

A list of people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy AND Tony awards.  It's a short list with only 11 names. (Who would have thought John Gielgud won a Grammy?)

The superprivileged, pampered world of air travel for congressmen: "At Washington’s Reagan National Airport, they have their own special parking spaces—right up close to the terminal—that they don’t even have to pay for. As Bloomberg Television’s Hans Nichols reports, this perk costs the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority $738,760 in foregone revenue... The airlines allow lawmakers the special privilege of simultaneously booking themselves on multiple flights, so that if they are late or their flight is canceled, they’re guaranteed a spot on the next one."  And more.  Remember, they don't live in the same world you live in.

Closed-captioning glasses allow people who are deaf or hearing-impaired to enjoy movies in theaters. "They also come with audio tracks that describe the action on the screen for blind people."

There is a subreddit that collects chemical reaction gifs.  Put on your safety glasses before clicking.

After the Great French Wine Blight in the nineteenth century, the French wine industry was saved when surviving varieties were grafted onto rootstock from America.

The U.S. Golf Association has officially banned using a long putter anchored to the body (effective January 1, 2016).

Lobsters show no signs of aging.  If they get enough food and avoid parasites (and humans) they can theoretically live forever (and keep getting bigger as they continue to molt).

The health benefits of running may not apply to long-distance running.  "recent studies suggest the significant mortality benefits of running may diminish or disappear at mileage exceeding 30 miles a week and other, very small studies have shown elevated levels of coronary plaque in serial marathoners—a problem that rigorous exercise theoretically could cause."

In 1942 a British forest guard in Roopkund, India made an alarming discovery. Some 16,000 feet above sea level, at the bottom of a small valley, was a frozen lake absolutely full of skeletons. All the bodies dated from 850 A.D. - and they may have been killed by a hailstorm.  Details at Atlas Obscura.

"Police arrested a Disneyland employee on suspicion of putting a so-called dry ice bomb in a theme park trash can where it exploded."

"Cli-fi" refers to "climate fiction"- a sub-genre of sci-fi.

"Former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the US government’s use of torture under the Bush administration, is currently serving a 30 month sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania."  One of his letters to his attorney, published at The Dissenter, describes his life in a Federal prison, including an incident when prison officials tried to initiate a conflict between him an a Muslim prisoner.

Authorities stopped two speedboats carrying cocaine worth $500 million to the United States.

The Telegraph has a video of a flying electric bicycle (invented in the Czech Republic).

Photo:  There are many ways to mark the onset of summer.  At our house one of the metrics is the first appearance of eggs of the Monarch butterfly under the leaves of the milkweed in our garden.  These four eggs were harvested on June 1, and the little caterpillars are growing nicely.  Followup later...

Black swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) egg

To get rid of an earworm, select a task that uses your active memory. “Something we can do automatically like driving or walking means you are not using all of your cognitive resource, so there is plenty of space left for that internal jukebox to start playing... Verbal tasks like solving anagrams or reading a good novel seem to be very good at keeping earworms out."

You can now view a 4 billion pixel panoramic image of Mars taken by the Curiosity rover.

A gallery of scleral (eyeball) tattoos is not for the faint of heart.

Three hundred members of a German (flea) circus froze to death.

Britain's youngest grandparents are 29 years old.

How to enjoy America's national parks without strenuous hiking.

Examples of video shot with "a digital 3-axis gyro-stabilized handheld camera gimbal. The completely silent device weighs under 3.5 pounds bare and can be operated solo, or with the help of a second "gimbal" operator."

The Atlantic has a set of portraits of Jahrhundertmensch (centenarians).

A video explains how to make blueberry pancakes in which the blueberries are embedded and properly distributed.

"A transgender woman in South Florida faces charges of practicing cosmetic surgery without a license, after police say she injected an unwitting patient’s buttocks with a handful of unsafe substances, including tire mender Fix-A-Flat..."

Thermostatic mixing valves incorporated into bath tub faucets prevents scalding water (>120 degrees) from entering the bath.  These are now required by the Minnesota Plumbing Code.

Details about the recent discovery of thousands of Roman artifacts in London: 700 boxes of pottery fragments, 100 fragments of writing tablets, the largest quantity of Roman leather ever to have been found in the capital.

Re the Beatles' song "Get Back" - "Better known as a playful take on counterculture, starring the gender-bending Sweet Loretta Martin and the grass-smoking Jo-Jo, the song originally dealt with South Asian immigration to the United Kingdom... An early version of the song, known to bootleggers as “No Pakistanis,” began with Paul McCartney muttering, “Don’t dig no Pakistanis taking all the people’s jobs.”

A glossary of English language idioms derived from baseball.

"Green Dragon" is a nitrous-powered, marijuana-infused liquor.  "...alcohol absorbs through the digestive tract in a faster, much more predictable way than solid edibles--and so does whatever's dissolved in that alcohol. Hence the precision-infused Green Dragon."  On a related matter, a medical marijuana-hating assemblyman caught with marijuana gets charges dismissed.

23 photos of "unbelievable places."

Children as young as 10 years old are regularly sexting.  "One schoolteacher questioned said pupils are so pressured into sending naked photos to each other that they trawl the internet looking at child pornography to find suitable images.  Ms Barry said: "I was gobsmacked when I asked a class of 13-year-olds if they had ever sent naked pictures of themselves and not a single hand did not go up. "What is most worrying is the fact young people do not identify this as a problem. For them it is part and parcel of school life.

Results of the 2013 Webby Awards.

Re the photo (taken May 30): The alert came from my wife, who yelled "Stan, black swallowtail in the garden!"  We both hustled out, and there she was, hovering near the ground seeking a suitable location for her eggs.  For years we've been raising fennel for the specific purpose of attracting black swallowtails, but it hadn't emerged yet.  She visited the big clump of parsley, then chose to oviposit on a fresh shoot of Queen Anne's Lace, a weed which we tolerate but deadhead before it can reseed itself in the fall. 

I am... Batman !!

Mourning Cloaks (Nymphalis Antiopa) overwinter at our latitude, then emerge as harbingers of spring, typically before any other butterflies.  This fellow has some ragged edges on the trailing edge of his/her hindwing, suggesting successful escapes from bird beaks, or perhaps just the wear and tear of aging.  Basking in the sun on a porch railing is a typical warming behavior on a coolish spring day.  (closeup photos here)

"Rabbit Island", off the coast of Japan, is the site of an abandoned WWII poison gas production facility, but now it's home to hundreds of rabbits that thrive in a predator-free paradise.

A thread at Reddit addresses the question What is the "rule #1" in your profession or hobby? There are some amusing replies among the 14,000 responses.  In one of the emergency rooms at Parkland Hospital in Dallas in the 1970s, #1 on a list of posted rules was "Don't hurt yourself."  Rule #2 was "Don't yell at the nurses (See rule #1)."

Some amazing plays happen in high school basketball games.  Here's an unusual buzzer-beater.

A lady recounts how dolphins saved her life and that of her pet dog.

At Google Images you can pull up hundreds of photos of "cat litter cake." (edible cake that looks like dirty cat litter).  Perhaps not safe for non-ailurophiles.

The Mnozil brass present a most unusual performance of "Lonely Boy."

Wikipedia has a listing of The 50 Greatest [animated] Cartoons.

An erotic statue from Pompeii is now being exhibited at the British Museum. "The sculpture is of the mythical half-goat, half-man Pan having sex with a nanny goat. The Times reports that the museum is determined to display the object in plain sight, rather than hidden behind a curtain or in a "museum secretum" – a restricted area for those aged over 14 in the Naples Museum."  Graphic photo at the link.

Some prisoners in Venezuela are sewing their mouths shut (or partially shut).  The reasons for this are explained at the Atlantic article.

The National Forensic League's website has a list of all the debate topics from 1939 to 2012-13.   I vividly remember spending weekends in empty schoolrooms debating federal aid to education, the Common Market, and Social Security/medical care.

A Reddit thread compiles suggestions of books that are better understood/enjoyed when read for a second, third, or fourth time.

For the home handyman: how to fill missing knockouts in electric boxes.  Also an explanation of combustion air vents, and preventing or correcting problems with them.

The world's most expensive car crash: a pileup of ten Ferraris and similar cars on their way to a supercar event in Hiroshima.

"Archaeologists surveying the construction site of the former City Hall in Rotterdam have unearthed a collection of 477 coins stuffed inside a 16th century shoe. The oldest coin in the hoard dates to 1472 and the most recent to 1592."

If you use a credit card and the clerk asks for your ZIP code, giving that information may subject you to unwanted sales mailings, or your data may be sold to a data broker.

A Texas homeowner threw gasoline on a snake and set it on fire.  The resulting karma-fueled fire burned down her home.

A supercut of rabbits in the movies.

Food may taste bad after you brush your teeth because surfactants in toothpaste interfere with receptors on your taste buds.

A GIF of a dog happily cavorting with a venetian blind.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails...

"...You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake in the middle of the night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

(from The Once and Future King)

Before President John F. Kennedy signed into legislation the Cuban trade embargo, he secured 1,200 Cuban cigars for himself.

A video at The Telegraph explains the "Trial of the Pyx," which confirms the value of British gold coins.  The procedure dates back to the 13th century.

The LunaCobra website specializes in body modification.  From the safety of your home or office you can view galleries of piercings, tongue splittings, implants and eyeball tattoos.

"How to land a plane if you are not a pilot."  One page of instructions.  Easy as pie.

And another one-page succinct summary:  the Cold War explained.  

Google Street View now includes hikes on the trails of the Grand Canyon.

The Budweiser 2013 Super Bowl ad should appeal to anyone who likes horses and the music of Stevie Nicks.

"In a nationwide study of 15,000 high school students, pot is now more popular among teens than cigarettes."

This LiveLeak video is from the dashcam of an automobile involved in a spectacular accident.  No gore, and they survived, but it is still startling as hell, and possibly NSFL if such things trouble you.  Discussed at Reddit.

The crime rate in New York City has plunged dramatically.  "In one remarkable day, Nov. 26, 2012, there was not a single murder, stabbing or shooting reported in the nation's largest city, possibly the only time that happened since New York was a small Dutch colony."  There is disagreement about why this is happening; theories are discussed at LiveScience.

A Swedish golfer on the Ladies European Tour was bitten by a black widow spider during a match.  As her leg started to swell and become painful, "she pulled a tee out of her pocket ("it was the only thing I had handy," she told Svensk Golf) and used it to cut open the wound so she could squeeze out the venom and keep it from spreading inside her body."  She finished her round with a 74. [hat tip to reader Eddie for this link]

In response to the modified female genitalia typically displayed in pornography, a "labia pride" movement has arisen to celebrate the diversity of normal human anatomy.  Details and links at Salon.

"Rob Samuels, Maker's Mark's chief operating officer, said Sunday that it is restoring the alcohol volume of its [bourbon] product to its historic level of 45 percent, or 90 proof. Last week, it said it was lowering the amount to 42 percent, or 84 proof, because of a supply shortage."

Homeowners who live in northern climates might want to read about the problems involved with having plumbing vents frosted shut.  "The plumbing code requires plumbing vents to terminate at least 12" above the surface of the roof to help prevent the vents from getting blocked with snow, but the higher the vent the greater the potential for getting blocked with frost."

A must read for every world soccer fan.  Match-fixing is rampant.  " there's plenty of other evidence, even recent evidence, that match-fixing is rampant in global soccer — but because the sheer extent of the allegations means that we can no longer delude ourselves about what's happening. This is what's happening: Soccer is fucked. Match-fixing is corroding the integrity of the game at every level... When the outcomes of matches are being dictated from the outside, though? You no longer have a game at that point. You have something else, a weird simulacrum, pro wrestling without the feather boas."

Here is a list of "every novel to reach the number one spot on Publishers Weekly annual bestsellers list" from 1913 to 2013.  I've only read about a dozen of them - but I've seen most of the movies.

Those interested in native plants might enjoy browsing the newsletters of the South Carolina Native Plant Society.   I was a member of the Kentucky Native Plant Society when I lived there.  Such groups often have excellent field trips.

Bicycle helmet laws are discussed in a Reddit thread which includes some interesting arguments ("reduced injuries comes about only because of reduced bike riding" "riders in automobiles would also be safer if they wore helmets.")

Video of a young man who juggles Rubik's Cubes - and solves the cubes while juggling them.

Another linkdump

Because I have to get away from the blog and finish my tax paperwork...

The best link of the day is probably Top Ten Medieval Articles of 2012.  Fascinating stuff about the dancing epidemic of 1518, medieval prostitution, the death of Richard the Lionhearted, the plants used in Viking gardens, and more.  The blurbs at the link are linked to the original articles.  I wish I could blog each in detail, but there's just no time...

All 256 games of the last NFL season, ranked by watchability ("the best NFL games are close, high-scoring, meaningful, and have an unexpected result.")

A collection of about a dozen photos of necklaces made from human teeth - from a surprising variety of cultures.

In Russia, people were invited to be strapped inside a giant inflatable ball and rolled down a ski slope.  "The transparent plastic ball – known as a zorb – veered off course and sailed over a rock ledge in the rugged Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia. The ball picked up speed as it flew down the steep slope, rolling and bouncing. One man was killed and the other badly injured."  Video shows the ball rolling, but no gore.

A liquor store sets itself on fire. "...sunlight coming through the window turned the vodka bottles into a magnifying glass, slowly starting the cardboard on fire while a ceiling fan above fanned the flames."  Surveillance video at the link.

You probably don't want to know that "Vietnam was even more horrific than we thought."

An immense compilation of Ole and Lena jokes.

"An unidentified man who climbed a 375-foot radio tower fell to his death as the lightning rod he had grabbed after a slip bent and sent him plunging... Television footage showed the man leaning into the wind and taunting the crowd as he stood on the tower’s platform for about 90 minutes, though the crowd largely couldn’t hear him because of the wind. For a time he straddled a cone-shaped device topping the tower. Then he appeared to make a misstep as he attempted to move about the tiny platform. He grabbed the lightning rod on which he had hung his jacket, but the pole bent under his weight and the man, still gripping a reddish scarflike cloth in one hand, fell to his death."  (warning: death)

A new BMI calculator.  Under the new criteria, I'm slightly more normal than I used to be.

Because of military drills, members of an elite German batallion are experiencing unilateral gynecomastia.  "The constant slamming of the rifles against the left hand side of the chest is clearly a significant factor."

Right-wing rocker Ted Nugent accused of being a draft dodger.

Massages to induce G-spot orgasms are legal in California.  It's considered to be different from prostitution.

The nation of Zimbabwe now has only $217 in the bank.  It may need to print more.

"A Brazilian man has accused his wife of trying to kill him by putting poison in her vagina and inviting him to have oral sex with her."  And she confessed.  The source links are in Spanish.

Most internet surfers have already seen video of the Scottie pinwheel.  If you haven't, you should.

Linkdump

No sense trying to give this post a fancier title.  I noticed this morning that my "stuff for linkdump" bookmark folder has eight subfolders of twelve bookmarks each.  This is getting ridiculous.  There's too much stuff...

A comprehensive survey by 102 scientists of a forest in Panama revealed that the 6000-hectare forest was home to around 25,000 arthropod species.  Links and photos at the new National Geographic home for Not Exactly Rocket Science discuss the methodology and results of the survey.

An op-ed piece at the StarTribune echoes one of the controversial aspects of the gun control debate: "Warren Burger was a conservative Republican, appointed chief justice by President Richard Nixon in 1969. In a speech in 1992, six years after his retirement, Burger declared that "the Second Amendment doesn't guarantee the right to have firearms at all." In his view, the purpose of the Second Amendment was only "to ensure that the state armies' -- the militia -- would be maintained for the defense of the state."

In a remarkable video from the start of the 2012 baseball season [that's how old these bookmarks are], a Cincinnati Reds fan catches a home-run ball, and then while holding that ball in one hand, catches another home run ball hit by the very next batter.

"FedEx dropped off an iPad mini a dad got for his daughter for Christmas. UPS Grinch guy came and stole it. UPS denied the claim, until they realized the dad caught it all on tape."

Photograph of what happens when a bald eagle strikes an airplane (a C-130) at 300 mph (warning animal gore).

The "Christmas Quiz" at the Telegraph contained 40 TYWKIWDBI-style questions (with answers).

A thread of comments at Reddit is worthwhile reading for those of you who have a family member or loved one with dementia.

The "Pig-to-Table" project describes how a family undertakes the slaughter and consumption of a family-reared animal.

Museums and art galleries study the activity of their visitors - but not for security reasons. "Mr. Sikora watches where visitors stop, whether they talk or read, how much time they spend. He records his observations in a handheld computer, often viewing his subjects through the display cases or tiptoeing behind them to stay out of their line of sight. "Teenage daughter was with, but did not interact, sat on bench, then left," read his notes of one visit." 

The National Security Agency is building an immense spying facility. "Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”

 By grafting, you can create a plant that grows tomatoes above ground and potatoes below ground.

A list of the top posts of the year at Reddit.  Some remarkable links.

Secrets of a pickpocket.

The "50 best viral videos of 2012" (combined in one mashup).

Six famous cartoon beagles (without peeking, can you name any other than Snoopy? - remember specifically beagles, not dogs in general).

The increase in autism correlates with the increased sale of organic food.  Useful for discussions of correlation and causation.

"...between 1990 and 2010 Asian Americans have become far less Christian, on average. Meanwhile, the Republican party has become far more Christian in terms of its identity. Do you really require more than two sentences to infer from this what the outcome will be in terms of how Asian Americans will vote?

A photo gallery of creatures from the Mariana Trench.

A Reddit compilation of "free stuff on the internet that everyone should take advantage of."

Video of Hadji Ali, the famous "regurgitator."  The segment at the link "from Laurel and Hardy’s 1931 Spanish-language film Politiquerias, includes Ali’s famous closing stunt, in which he ingests both water and kerosene and then upchucks them variously onto an open flame."

More of this tomorrow.  Spring housecleaning for the blog, so to speak...

Weekend linkdump

Just a reminder that things I post in a linkdump should not be viewed as less worthy of attention than material getting a full post.  It's a mixture of things of interest only to a limited audience, or items with no pictures, or things so popular they aren't "TYWK", or stuff I want to store for perusing in detail or linking to later.  But mostly a linkdump allows me to get away from the computer.  Today to crank up the snowblower again, sadly...

The sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel is 666.

If you're opposed to Citizens United but don't know what to do about it, you could start by signing Al Franken's petition to call for a Constitutional amendment to overturn it.

If "Planet of the Apes" had been made in Minnesota.

The "Wind Map" depicts a live representation of wind direction and velocity in the United States.  It's beautiful because it's in constant motion, and I wish I could embed it, but here's a screencap:

If you own or live in a house, you should read (or bookmark) this column about water shut-off valves.  You may need to acceess yours in a hurry some day.

"Republican U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais, who opposes abortion rights, mutually agreed with wife to abort not once but twice."

The mysterious "bloop sound" that was once attributed to whales or unknown marine life, has now been ascribed to "icequakes."

A Wall Street Journal article explains how to make money selling mud as a beauty treatment.

Bdelliod rotifers have gone 80 million years without sex (longer than you), but still have managed to evolve into 400 species.

A brief history of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Someone is shooting and mutilating dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico.

Twenty nerdy science-joke cartoons. 

Everyone knows how wait staff in a restaurant can get back at you if you mistreat them.  Here is an discussion of what can happen if you are not nice to a hotel clerk.

The former editor of the OED "covertly deleted thousands of words because of their foreign origins and bizarrely blamed previous editors."

Godchecker is a website where you can look up information on 3,000 gods, including the one you believe in.

Are you Irish-Canadian or know someone who is?  Then you should bookmark "The Shamrock and the Maple Leaf, an exhibition of Irish-Canadian documentary heritage held by Library and Archives Canada. Here you will discover photographs, letters, books, music and other evidence of Ireland's vital influence on Canadian history and culture."

In 2005 "an Australian man built up so much static electricity in his clothes as he walked that he burned carpets, melted plastic and sparked a mass evacuation. Frank Clewer, of the western Victorian city of Warrnambool, was wearing a synthetic nylon jacket and a woollen shirt when he went for a job interview. As he walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the 40,000 volts of static electricity that had built up." [note: the veracity of this story has been questioned].

"Mexican waves are more likely to go clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, a researcher has claimed."

The director of renal transplantation at the University of Minnesota argues that people should be allowed to sell one of their kidneys.

Beer consumed in ancient Nubia contained a potent antibiotic (tetracycline), from contamination of the grain used in brewing the beer.

The marked answers on "bubble forms" on standardized tests can be analyzed "to catch students who hire proxies to take their SATs and teachers who change answers on their students’ high-stakes tests."  More on the subject here.

"Prison officials in the US state of Texas have abolished the traditional last meal request for inmates who are facing execution. The move came after a prisoner requested a huge meal then did not eat any of it, saying he was not hungry."

Canada's plastic $50 and $100 bills can melt. [maybe - see the Snopes article].

Bionic eye implants may offer progress in treating some forms of blindness.

For around $115,000, you get a 4-hour operation to install an antenna behind your eye, and a special pair of camera-equipped glasses that send signals to the antenna. The antenna is wired into your retina with around 60 electrodes, creating the equivalent of a 60-pixel display for your brain to interpret. The first users of the Argus II bionic eye report that they can see rough shapes and track the movement of objects, and slowly read large writing. The second bionic eye implant, the Bio-Retina developed by Nano Retina, is a whole lot more exciting. The Bio-Retina costs less — around the $60,000 mark — and instead of an external camera, the vision-restoring sensor is actually placed inside the eye, on top of the retina. The operation only takes 30 minutes and can be performed under local anesthetic.

All Zappo's employees can fly free on the company's private jets.

To better control prostitution, Zurich plans to approve "drive-in sex boxes." "The prostitutes who use the sex boxes will also have to take out medical insurance and buy a £26 licence in order to ply their trade. On top of that they will also have to feed five Swiss francs, about £3.30, into a roadside ticket machine each night when they clock on."

A new fish has been named after Barack Obama.  "Etheostoma Obama, is a relatively skinny orange and blue speckled fish topped by a brilliant fan-shaped fin, with bold orange stripes."

How to make "surprise balls" (a cool way to wrap up small gifts).

"An Eagle Mills, New York couple that lost their home to a fire last week, now has to pay $1,400 for the water used to combat the flames."

Some people claim to have become physically ill while watching the new Hobbit movie because of the unusual high-speed cinematography technique employed.

A Walk in the WorDs posted a list of linkdumps/linkfests.  By linking to his post, I'm promoting the process of "recursion."

A potentially rather valuable discussion thread at Reddit addresses the question "What is something you think everyone should have installed on their computer or laptop?"

Ever wanted to see the inside of a gold bullion vault?

It's now possible to search 15 years of the New York Times crossword puzzles, both for clues, and for their answers.  "Blog" for example, has been clued as a "post holder."

Helpful information for homeowners on how to prevent ice dams.

Impessive video: "After weeks of waiting, the filmakers witnessed 7.4 cubic km of ice crashing off the Ilulissat glacier in Greenland."  Related: watching meltwater rushing down a moulin.

A list of 80 real-life cheat codes.

"City buses across America increasingly have hidden microphones that track and record the conversations that take place on them..."

You can use Google Maps to look up mass animal deaths.

Historic photos from Cathedral Grove show how massive trees grew before humans arrived with saws. " Father's hollow trunk was so large that a person could walk erect inside it for 200 ft."

A possible answer to the D-Day pigeon riddle.

It's fairly commonplace to encounter videos of people solving scrambled Rubik's cubes blindfolder.  Here's one of a man solving an 8x8x8 Rubik's cube blindfolded.  The video is compressed from over an hour (about half of that study time) to show the entire process in about 7 minutes.

An article about flesh-eating beetles (dermestid beetles), with a video of their use in the laboratory.

"Brian Krebs reports on a terrifyingly real-seeming Point of Sale skimmer: a device that looks and feels just the thing you normally stick your credit-card into and then enter your pin into, which can print out a real-seeming receipt showing the transaction was approved by your bank. Instead, what this thing does is record your card number, PIN, and other information needed to replicate your card and use it to clean out your account."

A good (and presumably accurate) video explaining some misunderstandings in the public's understanding of the meaning of the terms "semi-automatic weapons" and "assault rifles."

How high can a tiger jump?  This high.

I enjoyed creating the embed image at the top, using the Pulp-O-Mizer, via Neatorama.

Enough for the day.  I'll close with this photo (cropped from the original), entitled "My mom told me that our new power strip wasn't working... Came to find this...":

Miscellaneous links.

A 12-year-old boy in Texas has been ruled "too big to play PeeWee football."  He's six feet tall and weighs 300 pounds.  News video at the link.

Winners have been announced for the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

If you like TED talks, their website now has a listing for the 20 most-watched TED talks.

A WSJ article reports on the high salaries being offered to nannies for children. "A British staffing agency called Imperial Nannies cited a Russian client who wanted to poach a nanny from another family. Their salary offer: $200,000 a year."

"Rob McLeod of Calgary set a new quadruped world record in Denver, Colorado earlier this month when he threw a Frisbee 116.5 yards to quick-footed canine Davy Whippet."  Video at the link.

Superlinguo offers some guidelines on how to write (and translate) ERMAHGERD memes.

"Randy Lee Tenley, 44, of Kalispell, Montana was killed yesterday while reportedly attempting to stage a Bigfoot hoax. Tenley was walking on a highway wearing a hunter's ghillie suit, likely similar to the one seen here, when he was struck by two different vehicles driven by teenagers..."

"The leader of a far-right anti-semitic political party in Hungary, who was notorious for his incendiary comments against Jews, discovered that he's actually Jewish himself."   More details here.

Silver coins have been found on Mars.

An op-ed piece in the Journal of Medical Ethics asserts that pursuing aggressive but futile life-extending procedures on children in hopes of a miraculous recovery via divine intervention is ethically wrong.

If you have a seizure disorder that can be triggered by flashing images, do not wiggle your mouse violently back and forth above this website.

Some ATM skimmers are now so wafer-thin that they can be fitted entirely inside the card-insertion slot.  ATM users beware.  (for more re skimmes, search TYWKIWDBI).

"Women and children first" on a sinking ship is nonsense in real life.  "They studied 18 different maritime disasters, including 16 previously unstudied shipwrecks, between the 1850s and 2011...  the average survival rate across the 16 other unstudied wrecks was less than 30 per cent for women and closer to 40 per cent for men. And while children fared better than men onboard the Titanic, this wasn't the case in the majority of shipwrecks. "Children appear to have the lowest survival rate," write Elinder and Erixson."  Also: "The most stunning finding from the other shipwrecks is of course the low survival rate of women and children, but also the relatively high survival rate of crew members and captains." (Of course that doesn't prove that lack of chivalry is the driving factor).

An explanation of memory leaks with Firefox 15 (the problem that was plaguing my Mac before I finally installed more RAM).  Also here.

An article in the Paris Review discusses the prevalence of "coitus more ferarum" ("sex in the manner of beasts') in the television series Game of Thrones.  With photos that are marginally NSFW.

"In her book Big Sister, photographer Hana Jakrlova explores an internet sex club in Prague where the clients get to have sex for free as long as they agree to let their exploits be filmed and broadcast live across the web." 

For wordsmiths only, an interesting post at The Guardian looks at the different styles of cryptic puzzles.  (Jack Fitzgerald Kennedy becomes FLAGELLATED - clever!)

A Reddit discussion thread on the LIBOR scandal.

In a Guardian column, Glenn Greenwald notes that the media is becoming unreservedly and inappropriately obsequious with Obama: "But in exchange for such access, Lewis, unbeknownst to readers of his profile, had agreed to a journalistically corrupt practice - now banned by many large media outlets - whereby the only quotes he was permitted to use were ones the White House approved in advance. Unsurprisingly, the profile was pure hagiography that left Obama's most devoted media fans gushing with ecstacy.

How to make your own lapidary equipment, including a tumbler, a rock saw, and - most interesting - an elutriator which will allow you to reuse grit.

A video about the so-called "can-opener" bridge that removes the tops of trucks.

A quiz for you - you have five minutes to name all the letters in the Greek alphabet.  (I got 19.  You can do better than that).

For football junkies - a defensive player intercepts the snap between the center and the quarterback and returns it 76 yards for a touchdown.

A gene required for the regeneration of nerve cells has been identified.

Advice from a disabled woman to other disabled women on how to maintain one's femininity.

Video of an otter who jumps onto a fishing boat to escape killer whales (but calls out to her lost offspring).

In 2005 a documentary movie was made in which a homeless person was given $100,000 and followed to see what he did with it and with his life. 

Dillian Warden was fined $2,500 for urinating within view of the public even though it was on his own property (in his home's front yard).  Dillian Warden is 3 years old.

Israel has allowed medical marijuana use for the past seven years. "Unlike in the United States and much of Europe, the issue inspires almost no controversy among the government and the country's leadership. Even influential senior rabbis do not voice any opposition to its spread, and secular Israelis have a liberal attitude on marijuana."

A message to the Republicans who said they would move to Australia if Obama won.

Outtakes from the scene in which James Bond jumps over crocodiles in "Live and Let Die."

At Poemas del río Wang, a nice photoessay about the Georgian military road (which may have been used by Alexander the Great, and has been much used by the Russian military).

While fighting fires in Australia, a helicopter mistakenly drew up raw sewage rather than fresh water, and dumped it on the fire - and on the firefighters.

Did Jesus have long hair, or short hair?  It's not really "important," but it is interesting.

The first cheerleader in history was a male student at the University of Minnesota - in 1898.   And the first chant was ""Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-u-mah, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!"

Caterpillarblog presents a photoessay on entomophagy.  "I will save the “reasons why you should eat insects” post for another time – here I will give my reviews of the dishes I made, and how my students reacted! (they got extra credit points for trying every dish, which greatly enhanced enthusiasm)

General Petraeus and Paula Broadwell used a cybertrick to communicate their intimate messages secretly via e-mail.  "The trick has achieved notoriety as a tactic of terrorists who are rightly wary of espionage."  You can do it, too.  It's easy.

The (totally unrelated) photos are of pet beds, from a much larger group assembled at Marinni's often-fascinating LiveJournal.   They seem to be mostly dog beds (I guess cats tend to sleep mostly on human beds).  (Sources via the link).