From The Onion...

Source.  Another news story is ‘I Messed Up At Work Again,’ Crestfallen Michael Waltz Texts Wife, National Geographic Editorial Staff."

Hiking the Iditarod

"A Minnesotan following a famous sled dog path was the first woman to arrive on foot Saturday night in the human-powered version of the race across interior Alaska.

Pulling a sled packed with 55 pounds of gear, Kari Gibbons hiked into Nome after a little more than 27 days navigating the Alaska wilderness to win the Iditarod Trail Invitational 1000." [1000 miles]

The story continues at the StarTribune [gift link].

Addendum:  Found an artile about bicycling the Iditarod (in winter).  Hot tip:

"The day before the race was spent cutting all the food into bite sizes (you can’t bite into a frozen candy bar and have a pleasant experience), assigning pockets for spare batteries, inhaler, toilet paper, chamois cream, eye drops, and everything that needs to be kept close to your body so it won’t freeze solid, and keeping an eye on the forecast..."

Pallets of American alcohol returned from Canada

There are multiple reports confirming this activity.  This image via a Boycott USA -UK Facebook thread.  It previously was posted in a BuyCanadian subreddit thread, where the long discussion makes note of the fact that these products are shipped to retailers in Canada on consignment, and the costs of return shipment have to be eaten by the manufacturer.

Here's my protest:

When I moved from Texas to Kentucky, I switched my favorite recreational beverage from tequila to bourbon.  Now, 40+ years later, I'm switching to Canadian whiskey.  Turns out I like the taste better, so it's a win-win for me.

Posting this to ask readers' advice as to whether there are any low-priced Canadian wines that are readily available in the U.S.  

"The Beaverton" is Canada's "The Onion"

Homepage.

These demons are all possessive

Via.

Ocean currents visualized

Very cool five-minute animation if you can view fullscreen on desktop rather than phone.  Interesting how the Pacific equatorial current smashes into the Galapagos.  Wish they had shown the Southern Ocean in some detail.  Via Miss Cellania, where there is also a humorous photo of Riley and Albert.

Scalpers selling appointments for drivers' licenses

"Scalpers have been known to buy and resell hot tickets for big-name music acts or sporting events, like Taylor Swift concerts and the Super Bowl. In Florida, some were using the same tactics for a less glamorous pass: a driver’s license appointment in Miami-Dade County.

The county tax collector’s office announced on Monday that it had “uncovered a network of appointment scalpers” benefiting from access to motor vehicles offices by “hoarding free appointments and reselling them for a profit.”

The scalpers found so far have not been punished, because the practice was not illegal, but there is already an effort to change that and make it a civil offense...

The scalpers booked the appointments by using bots and fake accounts, and then resold the appointments for $25 to $250, the office said...

Residents have been forced to book their appointments online weeks or months away, only to stand in lines that often wind out the office doors when they arrive."

More information at The New York Times [gift link].

Try to guess the purpose of this table design

Described at the WhatIsThisThing subreddit as "A table with a slightly recessed top with a depressed surface near one end. Found at a thrift store, the table is about 25” tall, 3’ long and 18” wide.  The table appears to be made of painted beechwood while the surface is stained wood. The depressed area makes me think the table is made for sorting or is intended for some sort of game."  

Image cropped to highlight the object, which many of us have seen without knowing so.

Stories from a used book store owner

A very nice, well-appointed lady spends about an hour browsing the stock, including the locked cases. After building a rather formidable stack of unrelated books worth over $3,500 (including some very scarce Mark Twain first editions), I couldn't resist asking:
What do you collect?
Oh nothing, but I will purchase these.
(My curiosity getting the better of me) A gift?
No. I am going to use them to decorate my daughter's bathroom.
(Silly me! I failed to notice that the books were all various shades of green. This is a good thing, since the books will soon be color-coordinated with the mold).
Let me help you carry these out to your car.

(phone call - grownup)
I have a book I want to sell.
What is it?
It's by John Stainback. It's called "The Wayword Bus"
Who's the publisher?
I just said, John Stainback
He's the author, sort of. Let's try again, what does the copyright page say?
Where's that?
Sorry, I can't use it. Thanks for calling.

phone call...
I have a bunch of old books I want to sell on e-bay. Can you tell me what they are worth?
Why would I want to do that?
My friend said to call you and that you know a lot about books.
You are missing my point. Why should I waste my time helping you?
So I can know what reserve to put on my books.
I charge for appraisals.
Well this isn't an appraisal. I just want to know what they are worth.
Sorry, you will have to call someone else. Good luck!

(Woman mid-thirties, pondering a purchase)
I have never read a book this long. It would really have to be good for me to read this one (149 pps.).

(Woman, in her mid 30s)
Do you have the "Titanic" book?
No.
I'd like to read it.
Uh huh.
Did you know it's a true story, except for the romantic part?
(this is worse than I thought!)

You have a book I want, but it's $30. Would you take less? I just want to look at the pictures.

It's too hot in here! Why don't you turn on the air conditioning or something?
You could take off your sweater.

Have you read all these books?
Of course! I never sell a book without reading it first.
(Real long pause)
When do you watch TV?

Hi, are you hiring?
No. Not at this time.
I like books.
So do I.
I promise not to get in the way. I could just read or something.

Have you ever seen the Guggenheim Bible?
Yes.
Wow!

phone call...
Are you hiring?
No.
Good! Can I have your company's name?
Why?
I have to tell the Unemployment Department that I am looking for a job.
This is the Unemployment Department. Can I get your name?
(click)

phone call...
I have a rare book.
What do you have?
It's called Sea Wolf.
By London.
Yea.
What makes you think it's rare?
It's signed by him.
Is it a first edition?
Yea.
Who is the publisher?
Dell.
It's a paperback?
Yea.
What year was it published?
1976.
He must have been pretty old when he signed it.
Yea, he was.
I have to go now.
Do you want to buy it?
No.

(Customer fills out search card: 16 Chapels)
(me) Oh, you're after books on European Churches?
No, just books about the 16 Chapels.
16 Chapels?
Yea, you know the one with the big painting on the ceiling.
We will let you know what we find (once we stop convulsing).

There are more at the BookMine, which also has this interesting column.

Reposted from 2016 in order to end my blogging morning on a cheerful note.

An example of why many people detest ultraprocessed foods

The photo shows a Johnsonville brand sausage.  The discussion thread at the mildlyinfuriating subreddit thread suggests that these are probably plastic fibers rather than animal hair.

Black Medal of Honor recipient - a DEI beneficiary?

"The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address.

On Saturday, US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a “404” error message. The URL was also changed, with the word “medal” changed to “deimedal”.

Rogers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor by then president Richard Nixon in 1970, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base.

According to the West Virginia military hall of fame, Rogers was the highest-ranking African American to receive the medal. After his death in 1990, Rogers’s remains were buried at the Arlington national cemetery in Washington DC, and in 1999 a bridge in Fayette county, where Rogers was born, was renamed the Charles C Rogers Bridge..."

More information at The Guardian.

Addendum:  the alterations appear to have been reversed.

65th anniversary of The Day I Didn't Die

It was 1960.  I was flying from Minneapolis to Florida via Chicago for a spring vacation with a school classmate (on the left).  That was the era when you got dressed in your best clothes, and you walked out on the tarmac to climb the steps into the plane.  And you loaded up on some comic books for in-flight entertainment:

You can imagine the excitement for a Minnesota boy to get to go to Florida to visit family.  My dad took these photos, and on the back of one of them I found a message that I wrote several years later when my parents told me a little more backstory...

I suppose technically every day is the anniversary of a day one didn't die, but some of those days are more memorable than others.

Happy St. Urho's Day !!

"Saint Urho (Finnish: Pyhä Urho [ˈpyhæ ˈurho]) is a fictional saint of Finland, created and elaborated by Finnish Americans in Northern Minnesota in the 1950s, to celebrate their heritage and extend celebrations of Saint Patrick's Day. His celebration day is set to March 16, the day before the March 17 feast day of Saint Patrick...

According to the original "Ode to St. Urho" written by Gene McCavic and Richard Mattson, St. Urho was supposed to have cast "tose 'Rogs" (those frogs) out of Finland by the power of his loud voice, which he obtained by drinking "feelia sour" (sour whole milk) and eating "kala mojakka" (fish soup)... The legend now states that St. Urho drove away grasshoppers (rather than frogs) from Finland using the incantation "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä helveteen!" ("Grasshopper, grasshopper, go from hence to Hell!"), thus saving the Finnish grape crops."

With a tip of the blogging cap to Meg Lindberg for bringing this to my attention.

A period should signify a full stop

The news as it was written for the newscaster:

“Good evening, I’m Ken Bastida; Dana is off tonight.

He was murdered and then set on fire while celebrating his birthday. The body of Jimmy Frezshi was found by firefighters on Monroe Street…"

The result when read off the teleprompter:

“Good evening, I’m Ken Bastida. Dana is off tonight; he was murdered and then set on fire while celebrating his birthday.

The body of Jimmy Frezshi was found by firefighters on Monroe Street…"

Reposted from 2009 to add this example from the BBC:

 

Listen again... "This is BBC World News.  I'm Jonathan Charles, kept hidden for almost two decades and forced to bear children."

Reposted from 2018 because I needed a laugh today.

"My wife asked me why I spoke so softly in our house..."

I told her I was concerned that someone might be listening.

She laughed.

I laughed.

Siri laughed.

Alexa laughed.

Reposted from 2022 to add the following from Ars Technica:

"In an email sent to customers today, Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally and, therefore, avoid sending voice recordings to Amazon’s cloud. Amazon apparently sent the email to users with “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” enabled on their Echo. Starting on March 28, recordings of everything command spoken to the Alexa living in Echo speakers and smart displays will automatically be sent to Amazon and processed in the cloud.

Details at the link.

Sonic weapon used on peaceful protestors

As reported by AP News:

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbian officials denied Sunday that the country’s security forces used a military-grade sonic weapon to disperse and scare protesters at a huge anti-government rally in the capital.

Opposition officials and Serbian rights groups claimed that the widely banned acoustic weapon that emits a targeted beam to temporarily incapacitate people was used during the protest Saturday. They say they will file charges with the European Court of Human Rights and domestic courts against those who ordered the attack.

Serbia has not denied that it has the acoustic device in its arsenal.

At least 100,000 people descended on Belgrade on Saturday for a mass rally seen as a culmination of months-long protests against Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic and his government.

The rally was part of a nationwide anti-corruption movement that erupted after a concrete canopy collapsed at a train station in Serbia’s north in November, killing 15 people...

Footage from the rally show people standing during 15 minutes of silence for the rail station disaster while suddenly experiencing a whooshing sound that immediately triggered panic and a brief stampede.

An Associated Press photographer at the scene said people started scrambling for cover, leaving the middle of the downtown street almost empty as they started falling over each other.

Those exposed to the weapon experience sharp ear pain, disorientation and panic, military experts say. Prolonged exposure can cause eardrum ruptures and irreversible hearing damage. 

The "sonic cannon" is an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device).  Discussion at the woahdude subreddit included a link to this video on how to defend oneself against acoustic weapons:

I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that the U.S. and other Western regimes have these weapons as well.

Addendum:  this from The Guardian:

"Vučić has cultivated Donald Trump, approving the construction of a Trump hotel in Belgrade, and on Thursday gave an interview to the US president’s son Don Jr, who echoed the Serbian government’s unsubstantiated claims that the protest movement was fuelled by foreign funding.

The younger Trump suggested the protests had been “weaponised … to incite, potentially, a revolution”, airing conspiracy theories about how the protests were organised and paid for."

Divertimento #197

An analysis of 50,000 punts in the NFL (2000-2018).  Begins with the Bears punting 10 times in one game (every time they had the ball).

Kratom is either a performance-enhancing herbal supplement or a lethal opioid.

"John Wayne’s racist comments, lack of World War II service resurface in heated Twitter debate."

A photo of a rhino with an "oxpecker Mohawk"

There is a beach in Thailand that nobody is allowed to touch.

Aerial photos from around the world show the sharp demarcation between the homes of rich and poor people.

The important distinction between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism.

The history and usage of the phrase "enemy of the people.' "The expression enemy of the people dates to Imperial Rome. The Senate declared Emperor Nero a hostis publicus in 68 CE. Its direct translation is "public enemy"... The words ennemi du peuple were used extensively during the French Revolution. On 25 December 1793 Robespierre stated: "The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death".... Soviet Union... Cambodia... Albania... Nazi Germany... England... and Donald Trump.  "From his inauguration in January 2017 through October 15, 2019, Trump called the news media the "enemy of the people" 36 times on Twitter."

In major league there are now (1919) more foul balls than balls hit in play.

There is a subreddit devoted to insanepeopleFacebook entries.

A brief explanation of intermittent fasting.

Charles Dickens tried to place his wife in an asylum: "Over two decades of marriage, author Charles Dickens grew more popular and powerful, while his wife Catherine bore ten children. Charles apparently grew tired of Catherine, and blamed her for having ten children and also accused her of not taking good care of them. The couple separated after Dickens' affair with 18-year-old actress Ellen Ternan was revealed. Catherine was compelled to leave the family home with only one of her children. More details of the breakup were revealed when a caches of letters was discovered at Harvard University. The stories she told her neighbors portray Dickens as cruel as one of his literary villains."

"A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century."

An anti-vaxxer Texas legislator says he is not concerned about the rise of measles and other viral diseases because we no have antibiotics.

"Toledo voters passed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, a unique charter amendment that establishes the huge lake as a person and grants it the legal rights that a human being or corporation would have.  The final results weren’t even close, as it passed by a 61% to 39% margin."

A new and unusual disease in Africa is afflicting children.

"An ‘emotional support’ pit bull mauled a 5-year-old girl in an airport terminal."

"It's interesting growing up and learning that most adults are not smart."

A striking visual display showing the effect of mussels on cleaning the water in a stream.

A long longread about the history of arsenic poisoning.

Cows are fed magnets to collect metal particles they might ingest.  Cows also tend to face north...

An askscience subreddit thread discusses coronal mass ejections.

In defense of the funds expended on space exploration.

"At the height of the Empire, a select band of British people renounced Christianity and converted to Islam. These are the stories of three such pioneers, who defied Victorian norms at a time when Christianity was the bedrock of British identity."

The discovery of a human footprint in Chile from 15,600 yeas ago indicates settlement in Patagonia long before Clovis.

A graphic illustration of the popular perception of the ethnicity of Jesus Christ.

"Bill-wiping is not the hottest topic in ornithology, but curiosity has drawn the occasional researcher to the behavior over the years. Although they haven’t arrived at a definite, universal explanation, we can summarize their reports on the role of bill-wiping this way: It definitely acts like a napkin, probably as a file, and maybe even as a cologne spritzer."

"Should 11-year-old girls have to bear their rapists’ babies?" (2019 article)

A history of cannabis cuisine in British colonial India.

A poster from the BasketballsAreFlat society.

A history of contaminated water at the White House, and its possible role in the deaths of three American presidents.

"Public enemy No. 1 for corn and soybean farmers, the Palmer amaranth weed, has made new incursions into Minnesota by way of livestock feed. .. This is bad news for corn and soybean farmers, both because the weed grows and proliferates quickly and because it is resistant to multiple herbicides. It can grow up to 8 feet tall with a woody stem thick enough to damage farm equipment that tries to mow it down... The weed, which grows up to 3 inches a day and can produce a half-million seeds per plant..." (photo at the link)

"Last month, the Swiss unveiled a smart new banknote to stash in their wallets. The purple 1,000 franc bill was the latest in the Swiss National Bank (SNB) series to undergo a revamp. And this is no ordinary note, it’s one of the world’s most valuable banknotes, worth around 880 euros ($1,007, £764)... In Switzerland, cash remains the dominant payment method. Here, there’s an assumption everyone carries cash, even in an increasingly digital economy. Most don’t get caught out buying a sandwich or paying for a haircut when the card payment machine is out of order."

"The archive [of Gabriel Garcia Marquez] includes manuscript drafts of published and unpublished works, research material, photographs, scrapbooks, correspondence, clippings, notebooks, screenplays, printed material, ephemera, and an audio recording of García Márquez’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. It was bought by the University of Texas for US$2.2 million.  The searchable, online archive features almost 30,000 items, so it’s easy to get lost in there."  And its free to use.

"Combining both brains and brawn, orcas have been known to kill sharks in surprisingly complicated ways. Some will drive their prey to the surface and then karate chop them with overhead tail swipes. Others seem to have worked out that they can hold sharks upside-down to induce a paralytic state called tonic immobility. Orcas can kill the fastest species (makos) and the largest (whale sharks). And when they encounter great whites, a few recorded cases suggest that these encounters end very badly for the sharks."

A Reddit thread discusses education in India following a report that 19 teenagers in India committed suicide after a softwar error botched their exam results.

Photos and videos of Freddie Mercury and his cats.

A story about Walt Disney's housekeeper.

"I dug through the privacy settings for the five biggest consumer tech companies and picked a few of the most egregious defaults you should consider changing. These links will take you directly to what to tap, click and toggle for Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple."

"Italian police have arrested 34 people allegedly involved in a "bone-breaking" medical insurance scam in Palermo, Sicily.  The perpetrators allegedly broke people's limbs and staged road accidents in exchange for part of their insurance payout... The victims were anaesthetised with drugs and had their limbs held on blocks of stone or cement, which were hit with bags of weights or large rocks... Among those arrested are doctors and physiotherapists who allegedly filed false medical reports, and a lawyer who filed the insurance claims."

Don't wear mirrored glasses when you play poker.

"TIL light bulbs in the New York City subway system screw in "backwards" (i.e. with left-handed threads) so people won't steal them to use at home."

A list of works of fiction involving time travel.

"Cleopatra was born ~2,500 years after the Great Pyramid at Giza was built, and ~2,000 years before the first lunar landing. That fact means that Cleopatra is closer to our present time than to the times of Ancient Egypt's early dynastic past."

A suprising lot of things happen when you check "I am not a robot."

Escalators can be designed to be curved.

How to evaluate and grade sea glass.

If you're wondering about the workload and pay for Pat Sajak and Vanna White...

The smearing of Ilhan Omar (2019 article but probably still relevant)

Some Antarctic icebergs are green because they are heavily laden with iron.  "Writing Jan. 10 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Ocean, Warren and his colleagues report that the marine ice at the bottom of the Amery Ice Shelf has 500 times more iron than the glacial ice above. This iron comes from the rocks under the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which are ground into a fine powder as glaciers move over them."  This iron gets delivered to phytoplankton in the ocean that need it for nutrition.

A treasure trove of Cambrian fossils has been discovered in China: "The creatures are so well preserved in the fossils that the soft tissues of their bodies, including the muscles, guts, eyes, gills, mouths and other openings are all still visible. The 4,351 separate fossils excavated so far represent 101 species, 53 of them new."

A longread about cast iron skilets and the misconceptions about them.

"Meaning ‘atlas’ or ‘sheet of the world’ in Latin, the Mappa Mundi is an incredibly detailed 1.59m-long by 1.34m-wide map depicting the history, geography and religious understanding of the known world from the point of view of 13th-Century European scholars."

“We can be proud to say that, for the first time in 400 years, Manneken Pis is not peeing out fresh drinking water. The municipality is now intent on inspecting all the centrally located fountains to avoid similar waste.”

A complete list of the winners of the Costa Book Award.

A photograph of scalping survivor Robert McGee.

How to make leech traps.

"Researchers in Israel say they have developed such malware to draw attention to serious security weaknesses in critical medical imaging equipment used for diagnosing conditions and the networks that transmit those images — vulnerabilities that could have potentially life-altering consequences if unaddressed.  The malware they created would let attackers automatically add realistic, malignant-seeming growths to CT or MRI scans before radiologists and doctors examine them. Or it could remove real cancerous nodules and lesions without detection, leading to misdiagnosis and possibly a failure to treat patients who need critical and timely care."

"Padding is the extra time airlines allow themselves to fly from A to B. Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations."

"When a young Taiwanese woman named He took herself to a hospital this week complaining of a swollen eye, she expected to be treated for a simple infection.  Instead, the 29-year-old and her doctor were horrified to discover four bees living under her eyelids, feasting on her tears."

What is Michael J. Fox's middle name?  (scroll down to "early life").

Three tips for making a better cake from a mix in a box.

Woman eats 86 ounces of mayonnaise in 3 minutes.

Butterflies puddling.

Embedded images from the The New Yorker Book of Dog Cartoons (Knopf, 1992).

A shout-out to As It Happens

I've been listening to As It Happens much more frequently ever since Trump launched his trade war against Canada.  For readers unfamiliar with the program, here are excerpts from the Wikipedia entry:

As It Happens is a Canadian interview show that airs on CBC Radio One in Canada and various public radio stations in the United States through Public Radio Exchange. Its 50th anniversary was celebrated on-air on November 16, 2018. It has been one of the most popular and acclaimed shows on CBC Radio.

The bulk of the program consists of a CBC journalist, currently Nil Köksal since 2022, conducting telephone interviews with newsmakers and other persons of interest. The other co-host, Chris Howden as of January 6, 2020, introduces the interviews and other segments... 

The show is broadcast each weekday from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. (half an hour later in Newfoundland) throughout Canada. It used to be widely accessible to much of the northern United States, but as the CBC switched its CBC Radio One from powerful AM signals in Eastern Canadian urban centres to FM stations, it became harder to receive CBC content further away from the border.

I download the podcasts to my phone and listen to them while running errands.  My introduction to the program actually began way back in 1997, when I presented a research paper on the role of sleep paralysis in literature and folklore at a national meeting in San Francisco.  In that lecture I mentioed the "old hag" phenomenon in Newfoundland.  Two evening later I was in my hotel room when the phone rang, and moments later I was being interviewed by then-host Michael Enright.

American listeners to NPR's All Things Considered will find themselves right at home with As It Happens.  The whimsical humor nicely offsets the grimmer realities of world news.  I invite readers to leave their own reviews in the comments.

Addendum:  One interesting segment several days ago was a report that some Canadian professional hockey games will now be simulcast on the radio in the Cree and Inuktitut languages, as well as the traditional English and French.  What was most interesting to me was that instead of adopting English words for concepts like "icing" and "cross-checking," they are going to create new words in their own language - demonstrating an admirable respect for ancient languages.

Piano stairs

 

The World's Deepest Trash Bin is part of the same VW ad campaign. 

Reposted from 2009.  I wonder how long these stairs remained in place and functional.  I found this brief history at ClassicFM.

"In 2009, creative advertising agency NORD DDB and car manufacturer Volkswagen noticed that the stairs at the Odenplan metro station in Stockholm, Sweden, were largely being ignored in favour of a neighbouring escalator.

Fuelled by the idea that having fun can “change behaviour for the better”, they set about finding ways to revolutionise the step experience, hoping to encourage more commuters to use the stairs by making it fun."

"Aibohphobia"

"The irrational fear of palindromes."

Via Language Log.  Reposted from 2010.

"Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology"

If someone had asked me a month ago to give an extemporaneous talk about the history of detective stories in the United States, I would have begun with Poe in the 1840s (Rue Morgue, Marie Roget, Purloined Letter), then switched to the other side of the pond for Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (1860s) and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales (1880s), before returning to the United States in the 1920s for noir and pulp fiction.

What this book taught me is that there was an enormous production of mystery writing in the United States well before Sherlock Holmes became popular.  The reason we are unfamiliar with it is that most of these publications were in American newspapers and magazines, and thus not codified into novels.  The editors of this anthology have combed through archives of American periodicals to tabulate and organize a surprising trove of material.

The several dozen stories are each brief (about 5-8 pages), as befits their original publication formats, and the content is occasionally rudimentary because this was a newly-emerging genre.  Policemen and detectives apply amazing modern technology (fingerprints), but also nonsensical ones (retrieving the image of a murderer from the retina of the victim).  A mysterious locked-room mystery is solved when someone notices a skylight.  And the malefactors when confronted with the exposure of their crime typically confess, and sometimes commit suicide in remorse for their wicked deed.

The strength of the book is in the 20+ page introduction and in the intros to the various subsections.  I was surprised to learn how much I didn't know, and for that I am grateful.  For modern readers who want fascinating stories, I would suggest sticking with modern authors, but for the detective story enthusiast or scholar, this is a worthwhile read.

Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology (McFarland, 2008)

An entirely new genus, in the "daisy" family

This "wooly devil" is not just a new plant - it marks the discovery of an entire new genus of plants,  Quite a remarkable achievement.  Here are some excerpts from the PhytoKeys article:

"Here, we describe and illustrate a new monospecific genus of Compositae, Ovicula biradiata gen. et sp. nov., from the Chihuahuan Desert in Big Bend National Park, Texas. Ovicula biradiata is a very locally abundant, yet range-limited, spring annual herb found in coarse calcareous alluvium...

We also present detailed habitat information, high-resolution images captured using a dissecting microscope and scanning electron micrographs of vegetative and reproductive characters of Ovicula biradiata and related taxa...

The Chihuahuan Desert is the largest and most biologically diverse warm desert in North America... Eighty-nine plant species of conservation concern are found in the park...

These diminutive plants, observed during the peak of their growing season, were inconspicuous annuals, from less than one centimetre to 3–7 centimetres across, prostrate and densely white-woolly, matching the whitish colour of their calcareous gravel substrate... Here, we present morphological, micro-anatomical and molecular phylogenetic evidence that supports description of this plant as a new genus and species...

The generic name from Latin Ovis “sheep” and -cula (diminutive ending) references the dense woolly indumentum of this new plant. The name honours the desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsonii)... The specific epithet biradiata references the typically two conspicuous ray florets, occasionally three per head, positioned on opposing margins of the capitulum. A recommended common name for O. biradiata is “woolly devil”, in reference to the woolly indumentum, the proximity of populations to the locality known as Devil’s Den and the tendency for the ray florets to resemble horns."

Lots more details at the link, and a lay discussion at Smithsonian magazine, 

Find the invisible cow

The image is a screencap of a successful discovery of an invisible cow.

If you'd like to find one, you can search at this link.  Adjust your search according to the loudness of the "cow."  If you can find five cows you earn the ability to search for goats.

Provides minutes of fun.

Reposted from 2013.

"Parody inversion" explained

Via.  Reposted from 2019.

Canada goose fights off bald eagle

"Mervyn Sequeira, an Ontario photographer, was out with his family on a recent morning when they spotted a bald eagle descending towards a frozen lake.

Sensing a looming attack on unsuspecting prey, Sequeira scanned the landscape and saw a Canada goose, alone and vulnerable.

For the next 20 minutes, lens trained on the battle, Sequeira watched what he expected would be a lopsided fight with a grim coda.

Through bursts of his shutter, however, he captured a defiant goose fending off death.

“I’ve seen bald eagles take a lot of things, from ducks to muskrats. But this is the first time I’ve seen a bald eagle go in for something as big as a goose,” he said.

Despite multiple attacks by the eagle, the goose remained unbowed. The raptor, defeated, flew off."

Additional photos from the encounter are posted at The Guardian.

"Shut up !!"

An article in the New York Times * described "fans of good grammar" flocking to a showing of a movie on that topic.

They were attending the first New York screening of “Rebel With a Clause,” a new documentary about a woman who set up a “grammar table” in all 50 states for passers-by to stop and ask her about punctuation and past participles...

Before and after the screening, filmgoers bantered about whether to place a comma after the penultimate item in a list, discussed the appropriate usage of “lie” and “lay” and united in a shared reverence for language, ideas and the grammatical rules designed to give clarity to free expression...

What I took away from the article was a clever repartee to use when a prescriptivist insists that grammar rules are inflexible.

The film also offers instances of surprise, even for some who consider themselves grammatically sharp. On several occasions, Ms. Jovin clarifies a misconception about ending a sentence with a preposition.

To do so is actually perfectly correct, Ms. Jovin explains. “It is a grammatical myth that made its way into English via Latin, but English is a Germanic language,” she tells one table visitor who responds with a delighted “Shut up!”

I'll try that reply and see if anyone picks up on the intrinsic wry humor in it.

* note that in response to a reader complaint and a reader suggestion, I'm now trying to use "guest links" for articles I cite from the NYT.  Hope they work ok.  Max 10/month should not be a problem.  Not sure if such are available for other paywall sites I use

Signatures change

"I’ve been doing paperwork in Mexico City, signing thing after thing.

However, some doubt arose concerning my identity. The nine-year-old signature on my passport did not match the one I had been putting everywhere, on everything. I had mistakenly assumed we accepted the way a signature degrades over time, how it grows hastier, less sure of itself. The authorities didn’t accept this degradation, no, and requested an in-person appearance to re-sign all the things.

Here you must choose a signature and commit. A señor hovered over me as I tried to perform my name the way I once had—upright, tense, and contained. (Lately it had gone soupy.) He examined my new effort, compared with my nearly expired passport.

He pointed to the t. The horizontal line needed to be longer, so I lengthened it, and was thus recognized, by Mexico, to be myself."

 -- from an essay in Untitled Thought Project, via Harper's magazine.

Colorful "polar stratospheric clouds"

As reported by Spaceweather.com:

For the third day in a row, Arctic sky watchers are reporting a widespread outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds. "The colors are spectacular," says Ramune Sapailaite, who photographed the display over Gran, Norway..."The clouds were visible in the sky all day, but the colors really exploded just before sunset," says Sapailaite. "I took these pictures using my cellphone."

Widely considered to be the most beautiful clouds on Earth, polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are rare. Earth's stratosphere is very dry and, normally, it has no clouds at all. PSCs form when the temperature in the Arctic stratosphere drops to a staggeringly-low -85 C. Then, and only then, can widely-spaced water molecules begin to coalesce into tiny ice crystals. High-altitude sunlight shining through the crystals creates intense iridescent colors that rival auroras.

Related:  Fire rainbow and circumhorizotal arc.  There's probably additional information somewhere at Atmospheric Optics.

Some "15" puzzles are unsolvable

The example shown, posted on the puzzles subreddit, is on a watch.  What I remember are the old "analog" versions with small sliding wooden pieces in a frame.  I used to get great satisfaction as a child by solving scrambled puzzles.  What I learned this morning is that the puzzles date back way before my time:

The puzzle was "invented" by Noyes Palmer Chapman, a postmaster in Canastota, New York, who is said to have shown friends, as early as 1874, a precursor puzzle consisting of 16 numbered blocks that were to be put together in rows of four, each summing to 34 (see magic square)... The game became a craze in the U.S. in 1880...

Some later interest was fueled by [Sam] Loyd's offer of a $1,000 prize (equivalent to $34,996 in 2024) to anyone who could provide a solution for achieving a particular combination specified by Loyd, namely reversing the 14 and 15, which Loyd called the 14-15 puzzle. This is impossible, as had been shown over a decade earlier by Johnson & Story (1879), because it requires a transformation from an even to an odd permutation.

The Reddit thread confirms that the one illustrated is unsolvable, which is confirmed at the Wikipedia entry.  In fact, half of all initial states of the puzzle will be mathematically impossible to resolve.  To guarantee solvability, a puzzle would need to be manufactured with the pieces "solved" and then scrambled before distribution (or by asking the end-user to do so).  I'm glad all my childhood versions were solvable.

When you microwave an ice cube...

... the results are somewhat unexpected.

I had heard that solid ice does not respond to microwaves the way water does, so today while boiling some water for ramen, I also put in the (standard suburban) microwave one ice cube (with a paper towel to catch any meltwater).

The paper towel was unnecessary.  After 2 1/2 minutes the water in the measuring cup was in a full rolling boil, but the ice cube was ice cold.  There wasn't even a drop of water on the towel beneath.

Posting this so readers can use the info to win bar bets or impress your children at dinner.  Or perhaps next time you host a party ask guests to guess "how quickly" will the microwave melt the ice cube.  

Addendum:  several interesting observations in the comment thread.

Related:  Microwaving Ice - why defrosting is so slow.  Note: "This is why you shouldn't defrost a chicken on full power..."

Genetic map of the Habsburg Jaw - updated

The jaw, as seen in Rudolph II -

And the genetic map of the trait -

Interesting how it becomes more common as the generations continue to inbreed.  More details in this prior post, which featured this family tree for King Charles II of Spain:

Painting: Joseph Heintz the Elder: Emperor Rudolf II, c. 1592 © Kunsthistorisches Museum /Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.

Reposted from 2011 to add new information about the risks of breeding with first cousins.  We've all known since our childhoods that breeding with a close relative increases the risks for the emergence of a recessive disorder like CF, sickling, hemophilia, and Gaucher's.  But this new study finds other risks:

Researchers at the city's university are entering their 18th year of the Born in Bradford study. It's one of the biggest medical trials of its kind: between 2007 and 2010, researchers recruited more than 13,000 babies in the city and then followed them closely from childhood into adolescence and now into early adulthood. More than one in six children in the study have parents who are first cousins, mostly from Bradford's Pakistani community, making it among the world's most valuable studies of the health impacts of cousin marriage.

And in data published in the last few months - and analysed in an upcoming episode of BBC Radio 4's Born in Bradford series - the researchers found that first cousin-parentage may have wider consequences than previously thought.  

They found that even after factors like poverty were controlled for, a child of first cousins in Bradford had an 11% probability of being diagnosed with a speech and language problem, versus 7% for children whose parents are not related.

They also found a child of first cousins has a 54% chance of reaching a "good stage of development" (a government assessment given to all five year-olds in England), versus 64% for children whose parents are not related...

... it adds to a growing concern among scientists that has caught the attention of lawmakers across Europe. Two Scandinavian countries have now moved to outlaw cousin marriage entirely. In Norway, the practice became illegal last year; in Sweden, a ban will come into effect next year.

For most in the UK, the prospect of marrying a cousin is largely alien. But it wasn't always so unusual. The father of evolution Charles Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood. Their son, the Victorian scientist Sir George Darwin, went on to estimate that cousin marriages accounted for almost one in 20 aristocratic unions in 19th Century Britain. One of them was Queen Victoria, who married her first cousin, Prince Albert. The novel Wuthering Heights is full of fictional examples...

But crucially, Prof Oddie thinks the main risk to genetic health in Bradford is not cousin marriage, but a similar issue known as endogamy, in which people marry members of their close community. In a tight-knit ethnic group, people are more likely to share common ancestors and genes - whether or not they are first cousins, he says.

Endogamy is not unique to Pakistani communities in the UK. It is an issue too in the UK's Jewish community and globally among the Amish and also French Canadians.

"It's often the case that the exact familial tie can't be traced, but the gene occurs more commonly within a certain group, and for that reason, both parents carry the affected gene," Prof Oddie says. "It's an oversimplification to say that cousin marriage is the root of all excess recessive disorders in Bradford or in Pakistani communities. Endogamy is an important feature."

Related:  "Mommy, what's an Icelandic incest-blocker?"