What you can catch if a walrus sneezes on you

... a 35-year old guy started feeling a pain in his eye and went to his doctor. The doctor looked under his eyelid and ... found - and removed - a single mite of the species Orthohalarachne attenuata... that normally is found in the nasal passages of fur seals, sea lions, and walruses. In seals, the mites can be both prevalent (as in almost every single seal has them) and abundant (as in more than 1000 mites per seal and in a few cases in one study, more than 2000!). These incredibly high infestations can cause problems for the seal's breathing, but can also do damage in the lungs and leave the seals susceptible to other infections, too. Transmission between seals occurs by -- sneezing on each other, of course. So, how did this young guy in California get a nasal mite in his eye? Turns out that two days before his first doctor's visit, he had visited Sea World - where he stood too close to some walruses and got sneezed on.

 Photo: Mike Kinsella.  Found at Parasite of the Day, via Not Exactly Rocket Science.  Original report at J. Parasitology.

A man is burned alive

I'm going to alter my normal formatting for this post to put this warning at the top, and embed the video below, in hopes that everyone will read this text before clicking (or not clicking) on the video.

The video comes from the Kyrgyzstan/Uzbekistan conflict area.  It is low-resolution (probably camera phone), but sufficiently clear to show a man being burned alive after having been soaked with some flammable fluid.  This event takes place in a street or plaza with a group of people standing by, watching, and seemingly cheering.

I'm not going to identify the Kyrgyz-or-Uzbek affiliations of either the perpetrators or the victim.  To my mind that's not the important take-away message.  I've tried to do a little reading (maps here) about the Kyrgyz/Uzbek conflict, but I can't hope to understand it well.  The knee-jerk explanation of events like these is that they are the result of "ethnic tensions," but I think we grossly oversimplify world geopolitics by using that phrase, because many of these wars/conflicts arise from simple economics, greed, political power moves, resource access etc., and although different ethnicities may be evident, they have probably coexisted for generations and have no reason to fight now until/unless some other trigger was activated.

In any case, the important thing to know about the video is that it is ruthlessly and disturbingly graphic.  Decide for yourself whether viewing such an event is appropriate for your mindset and your emotional well-being.

Video source link. Via Reddit, where there is a discussion thread.

The dark history of phosphorus matches

These red phosphorus matches were made by the Salvation Army as an attempt to provide an alternative to the more commonly available matches made with white or yellow phosphorus. Working with the vapors of white or yellow phosphorus caused deposits of phosphorus to build up in the workers jaw bones, killing the bone and resulting in its decomposing and falling apart. The affected bones would also give off a green glow as they were eaten away. Removal of the jaw bone could save the affected persons life, otherwise death from organ poisoning was the most likely result. This condition was common enough among workers in match factories that it became known as “Match Maker’s Leprosy” as well as “Phossy Jaw”.

 Found at Centuries of Advice and Entertainment, which has links for additional information.

Diego Garcia

From a photoessay of eighteen "strange military bases" posted at Popular Mechanics.  The controversies and history of the island are summarized at Wikipedia.  If I had to be stationed somewhere, I wouldn't mind a locale with a huge central tropical lagoon.

Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

I heard an excerpt of this today as background music in a video about Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated voyage to Antarctica, posted at Scribal Terror. It's a haunting melody; here's the full (17-minute) composition. You can play it while scrolling further down the blog.

I chose this version because I used to work for Indiana University (though not at the Music School).

Reposted from January of 2009.

Abraham Lincoln's suit and hat

The suit and hat worn by Lincoln on the night of his assassination. Photograph made by the Smithsonian, circa 1890. 

Credit John McNab, via Turn of the Century.

"Somewhere a dog barked"

Selections from an interesting essay by Rosencrans Baldwin at Slate:

Novelists can't resist including a dog barking in the distance. I've seen it happen across the spectrum—Jackie Collins, William Faulkner, and Chuck Palahniuk: "There was no more rain, just an eerie stillness, a deathly silence. Somewhere a dog barked mournfully." (American Star) "She did not answer for a time. The fireflies drifted; somewhere a dog barked, mellow sad, faraway." (Light in August) "This is such a fine neighborhood. I jump the fence to the next backyard and land on my head in somebody's rose bush. Somewhere a dog's barking." (Choke)

Having heard the dog's call, it seemed like I couldn't find a book without one. Not The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Not Shadow Country. Not Ulysses. Not Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men, or Monica Ali's Alentejo Blue, or Stephen King's It or Christine. Not Jodi Picoult's House Rules. If novelists share anything, it's a distant-dog impulse...

Look at (Pulitzer Prize-winning) To Kill a Mockingbird: "Ripe chinaberries drummed on the roof when the wind stirred, and the darkness was desolate with the barking of distant dogs." Look at (National Book Award winner) Let The Great World Spin: "The street throbbed around me. Nobody's fault but my own. The bark of a dog flew by." Indeed, look at Martin Amis in his latest novel, The Pregnant Widow: "Keith closed his eyes and searched for troubled dreams. The dogs in the valley barked. And the dogs in the village, not to be outdone, barked back."

More at the link.