Swift-Walker? Boneshaker?

Today is apparently the anniversary of something bicycle-related, I read just now. I was surprised to learn HERE that, for the first 50 years after it was invented in 1817, it came to be known by many other names before the term "bicycle" was coined in 1869, including "velocipede" and "boneshaker" and "hobby horse" and "swift-walker."

I was also intrigued by the notation that in 1898, the popularity of the bicycle in America went into historic decline.

"Would You Kill The Fat Man?"

"When moral dilemmas are posed in a foreign language, people become more coolly utilitarian." So begins THIS Economist article that goes on to explain, "Specifically, when people are asked the fat-man question in a foreign language, they are more likely to kill him for the others’ sake. Dr Costa and his colleagues interviewed 317 people, all of whom spoke two languages—mostly English plus one of Spanish, Korean or French. Half of each group were randomly assigned the dilemma in their native tongue. The other half answered the problem in their second language. When asked in their native language, only 20% of subjects said they would push the fat man. When asked in the foreign language, the proportion jumped to 33%."

How Often Do You Really Need To Shower?

It's a question fraught with peril, perhaps, answered HERE as follows, "daily showering is actually not objectively healthier or better; and in fact, one of the most common reasons that people cut down on showering is actually for skin-health reasons, not laziness."

I'd like to see the data on that.

So You Led A Failed Rebellion, Then What?

I was surprised to read yesterday that, after the American Civil War ended in 1865, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, lived another 25 years. He spent only two years in prison after the war, apparently, and yesterday was the anniversary of his release in 1867. What did he do for the rest of his life, I wondered?  How do you follow-up leading a failed rebellion and a ruinous, 5-year civil war?

"Sell life insurance" would not have been my first guess.  But according to Wikipedia, he initially became President of the Carolina Life Insurance Company before, amazingly, being re-elected to the U.S. Senate in 1875.  He was barred from  taking that office, apparently, but I wonder whether, if he had been allowed, he would've strode down the aisle of the Senate apologizing to everyone ("sorry... sorry... terribly sorry.... won't happen again...") or triumphantly, with purpose and head held high ("Don't Call It A Comeback!"). 

The Biggest Drinkers In The World... Are in Chad?

"When abstainers are excluded the national averages look extremely different," reads THIS new article in The Economist. "By this measure, it is in Africa, Asia and even the Middle East where actual drinkers quaff the most. In Chad almost nine in ten adults abstain, yet its 780,000 drinkers put away almost 34 litres of alcohol each. On the usual ranking, it would come 115th out of 190 countries. France drinks a lot, but because it has one of the lowest rate of abstainers at just 5%, it ranks 113th compared with 20th."

Santa Maria Found, "Pinta" Means What!?!

We're all familiar with the phrase,"the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria." Now comes news that one of those three ships famously on Christopher Columbus' first voyage to The New World, the Santa Maria, has been found by underwater archaeologists off the northern coast of Haiti (where it drifted and wrecked -with Columbus aboard- in almost slapstick fashion, just weeks after making initial landfall in the Bahamas).

As an aside, "La Nina" and "La Pinta" were not actually those ships' real names. They were nicknames.  "La Pinta" means "the painted" in Spanish, and at the time was apparently sailor slang for "prostitute."

Why Name Hurricanes? And How?

This morning I stumbled on a reference to the fact that, back on this date back in 1978 apparently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that they would no longer exclusively name hurricanes after women.  That got me wondering: why name hurricanes at all, and when did that practice start? 

Conveniently, the NOAA website has a page HERE with all the answers. "Experience shows that the use of short, distinctive names in written as well as spoken communications is quicker and less subject to error than the older, more cumbersome latitude-longitude identification methods. These advantages are especially important in exchanging detailed storm information between hundreds of widely scattered stations, coastal bases, and ships at sea."

Fair enough.  That's actually a much more cogent, reasonable explanation than I was expecting.

"For several hundred years many hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the particular saint's day on which the hurricane occurred... Tannehill also tells of Clement Wragge, an Australian meteorologist who began giving women's names to tropical storms before the end of the 19th century... During World War II this practice became widespread in weather map discussions among forecasters, especially Army and Navy meteorologists who plotted the movements of storms over the wide expanses of the Pacific Ocean."

And just how are names selected?

"The NHC does not control the naming of tropical storms. Instead a strict procedure has been established by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization... For Atlantic hurricanes, there is a list of names for each of six years. In other words, one list is repeated every seventh year."

A "Hands Off" Approach To Open Defecators With iPhones

I'm fascinated by diplomatic euphemisms.  "Open defecators" is the newest one to me, a term referring to "pooping in public," a practice which apparently remains stubbornly common in some parts of the world, and which is a major public health hazard because of the impact on drinking water. I read about it just now in THIS New York Post article, and was intrigued by many of the collateral revelations, including:
 
1.   "Attempts to improve sanitation among the poorest have long focused on building latrines, but the United Nations says that money literally went down the toilet. Attitudes, not infrastructure, need to change, it said. 'In all honesty the results have been abysmal,' said Rolf Luyendijk, a statistician at the U.N.’s children’s fund UNICEF. 'There are so many latrines that have been abandoned, or were not used, or got used as storage sheds. We may think it’s a good idea but if people are not convinced that it’s a good idea to use a latrine, they have an extra room.'"

2.  "Many countries have made great progress in tackling open defecation, with Vietnam and Bangladesh – where more than one in three people relieved themselves in the open in 1990 – virtually stamping out the practice entirely by 2012."

3.  "The country with the largest number of public defecators is India, which has 600 million. India’s relatively 'hands off' approach has long been at odds with the more successful strategy of neighbouring Bangladesh."

4.   “'What is shocking in India is this picture of someone practising open defecation and in the other hand having a mobile phone,' said Maria Neira, director of Public Health at the WHO."

Some Words Just Don't Belong Together

THIS ABC News item spotlights what sounds like a fantastic medical breakthrough for sufferers of a rare genetic condition.  But I hope they soon assign someone to come up with alternative phrasing for "lab grown vaginas."

When Anachronistic Phrases Make News

Two phrases I've heard a lot less over the last decade than I did in, say, the 1970s, are "hunting safari" and "almost extinct." THIS news today, about a Saudi prince whose hunting party illegally shot and killed over 2,000 "almost extinct" houbara bustards (birds) during a recent "hunting safari" in Pakistan, manages to use both.

Does it surprise anyone that this story goes on to explain that the meat of these extremely rare birds is "considered an aphrodisiac."

What's In A Name, "Katie Russell"?

Now that we're in the week between the one year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing (yesterday), and the running of the 2014 Boston Marathon next Tuesday, I'm reminded how frustrated I was that the news media (national and local, tabloid and broadcast) all seemed to accept uncritically the version of events being peddled at the time by the surviving American widow of the ethnic Chechen bomber who'd immigrated to America, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

I found it especially galling that everyone in the media referred to her as "Katie Russell." As THIS New York Post article makes clear, "Russell changed her name. Now she was Karima Tsarnaeva... Where Russell was on April 15, 2013 — the day of the Boston Marathon bombings — is still unknown... Following her husband’s death, Russell fled to her parents’ home back in North Kingston, and the FBI descended on the tiny apartment in Cambridge. There they found bomb-making residue in the kitchen sink, in the bathtub, and on the kitchen table. On Russell’s laptop, they found the first issue of the al Qaeda online magazine Inspire, which included an article titled 'How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.'... Russell said nothing... When the FBI showed up at her parents’ home on April 21, 2013, Russell refused to speak with them... She has made it clear to her entire family that she is a Muslim and will remain a Muslim. That’s non-negotiable." As the  3 minute local news segment about her (below), which aired last night in her local Rhode Island market, makes clear, nothing has really changed over the last year.

In all of this, Karima Tsarnaeva reminds me of Melinda Marling Maclean, the American wife of the notorious British spy Donald Maclean, a committed communist (and bisexual and alcoholic and rabid anti-American) who spied for the Soviet Union while living in, among other places, Washington, D.C., and then fled across the Iron Curtain (just ahead of prosecution) in 1951, living the rest of his life there. When he first fled, Melinda denied knowing anything about his spying, denied being a communist herself, and took her children to live with her mother in Geneva, Switzerland.  Then, a year later, she  suddenly disappeared over the Iron Curtain herself to join Donald in Moscow.  She lived there unhappily for years, and ultimately returned to America for good in 1979, and lived in seclusion at her mother's apartment in New York City, keeping a low profile and refusing ever to speak publicly about Donald Maclean ever again until her death in 2010. She quietly encouraged a public perception of her as a clueless dupe, and a devoted (and abused) wife. (Sound familiar?) It was subsequently revealed that she was a communist sympathizer all along, had known about Donald Maclean's spying from the time they first met, and had, in fact, aided him from time-to-time, including abetting his escape to Moscow.

Europe's Most Prolific Sperm Donor, "Humanitarian"

Reading THIS profile in the New York Post of a Dutch man who is Europe's most prolific sperm donor, I became increasingly intrigued by the fact that, as I read on, it became clear much of this wasn't being done through traditional clinics.  Instead, he apparently prefers to make his "donations" to individual women directly, the old fashioned way. ("In 2002, he became an independent contractor of sorts... Houben says having sex with him is not required, but he insists it’s the most advisable... Houben charges no money for his services, partly because it’s ­illegal to buy and sell human ­material in the Netherlands and partly because he sees himself as a true humanitarian.")

I was astounded to read that he apparently has no legal documents drawn up regarding any of this. ("He feels protected enough by Dutch law.") But the most bizarre part, I thought, was the description of how he handles things when a woman show up at his house for her scheduled "donation" with her husband in tow. 

A "John Lloyd Wright" Home

Would you pay extra to watch Michael Jordan's son play basketball?  Or would you be more interested in a surrealist painting if it were by the son of Salvador Dali?

If so, you may be interested in THIS home for sale that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.

"Hoarders" of 1947

I'm not a huge fan of the cable TV series "Hoarders," about people who live in homes crammed to the ceiling with junk, trash, and 'collectibles.' To its credit, the show tries to get at the root of the problem, which is almost always psychological and typically based on trauma (frequently childhood trauma). For me, that makes the show tragic rather than whimsical.

Nevertheless, until now I've always assumed that 'hoarding' was a modern phenomenon, somehow a decadent manifestation of post-WWII consumer culture in America.

But THIS article in today's New York Daily News, about two brothers who lived for decades as notorious hermits in a Harlem brownstone before WWII amid the clutter of a lifetime, suggests the phenomenon of 'hoarding' is much older, and is perhaps psychological, not cultural, after all. 

Homer and Langley Collyer were found dead in their dilapidated home in 1947, after not having been seen in public for years.  This article has a 21 photo slideshow of what police found when they broke into the home, looking for the men.  There were 5 grand pianos buried under the piles of junk, as well as a stash of pornography and a skeleton.  The men's bodies were also found, after an extensive search.  One brother apparently died when he accidentally triggered one of their own booby traps.  The other, already an invalid reliant on his brother for care, died helpless and unattended soon thereafter.

Why Is Gvt. Encouraging Deer To Cross Road?

"Listeners of a North Dakota radio station got a good laugh when an incensed caller complained about the government putting up deer crossing signs in high-traffic areas. But the caller, only identified as Donna, didn’t seem to understand that such signs aren’t for deer to be told where they can cross — but rather for drivers..."

“'I’ve even seen [the signs] on the interstate,' Donna said on the Fargo-area radio station, Y94 Playhouse. 'Why are we encouraging deer to cross at the interstate?' But her questioning didn’t end there. 'It seems to me that it’s so irresponsible of us to allow these deer crossings to be in an area where these deer are so likely to be struck by oncoming traffic,' she said."

You can read the entire New York Daily News article (including a link to the audio) HERE.

What Fidel Castro And Jimmy Hoffa Share

Speculation about 86 year old Fidel Castro's imminent death has once again reached a fever pitch in recent days. (HERE is a CNN article today.) Like reports that Jimmy Hoffa's body may finally have been found, news that Castro is on his deathbed seems to come up every few years now, very reliably, only for false hopes to be dashed predictably once more.

In related news, the recent speculation that an informer with mob ties had finally led the FBI to Jimmy Hoffa's body, buried under the driveway of Patricia Szpunar's home in suburban Detroit, proved groundless once again. Tests of soil samples taken there were revealed on October 2nd to be negative for decomposition. 

 The week before, on September 27, ABC News published THIS interview with a Jimmy Hoffa expert, who claimed also to have been contacted by this un-named mob informant months earlier.  This expert's extreme skepticism was validated a few days later when the soil tests came back negative. But he does reveal a lot of detail about the 'mystery' informant himself and also discusses how the authorities (and the Hoffa family) handle the endless stream of 'Hoffa tips.'

Unintended Consequences: "False Positives"

A small seaside town in Maine near Kennebunkport has been rocked by an unlikely prostitution scandal, as you may have heard.  A 29 year old dance instructor named Alexis Wright was charged earlier this month with engaging in prostitution out of her "Pura Vida" dance studio, where she taught a Latin-inspired fitness program called 'Zumba.'

Given the sleepy, staid location, that in and of itself was sort of noteworthy, especially locally.  But these sorts of scandals only really gain traction in the national media when rumors begin spreading that there's a list of johns which may be disclosed.  And that's happened in this case, too.  According to NBC News HERE, "Police said she kept meticulous records suggesting the sex acts generated $150,000 over 18 months."  The town of Portland, Maine has been on pins-and-needles for days awaiting the promised release of this list of names.

Police began releasing the names yesterday (after getting court approval).  But it was first and last names only: no middle names, no addresses, an no ages. That was a condition imposed by the court, apparently. An unanticipated problem immediately emerged, however. "'The fact is that by releasing names only, you're getting a lot of false positives. You're implicating people who may be completely innocent and simply share the same or similar names with people charged, and that's a real harm,' Schutz told the AP."

Yesterday, the same superior court justice in Maine reversed his earlier decision and these other identifying details are now being released publicly.  So now men like Paul Main don't have to keep denying they're THE 'Paul Main' on the notorious list.  (It turns out there are 20 residents of Maine named Paul Main.)

Police Not Wearing Seat Belts

"Although most state’s laws require police to use seat belts, federal data show that only about half of them do, and over the past three decades, 19 percent of the officers killed in accidents were ejected from their vehicles."

"By contrast, 84 percent of all American drivers use their seat belts, the NHTSA estimates."

You can read more in The Washington Post HERE.

Is a Lap Dance "Tax-Exempt Art"?

"New York's highest court will consider legal arguments by a strip club on whether nude dancing is an art and deserves a state tax exemption as such.The case set for oral arguments Wednesday."

You can read the entire Associated Press article HERE.

"Nite Moves claims the dances are exempt under state tax law as 'live dramatic or musical arts performances.' The exemption also applies to theater or ballet. The club is relying on testimony from a cultural anthropologist who has studied exotic dance and visited Nite Moves... The appellate court also noted that the club dancers are not required to have any formal dance training and that the anthropologist didn't see any of the dances done in private rooms. "

So is the difference between a regular patron and a 'cultural anthropologist' whether you've been in the champagne room?

Egypt's Garbage Crisis And Pigs

"Garbage in Cairo has traditionally been collected by the Zabbaleen, Coptic Christians who for decades made the city’s waste their livelihood. After sorting organic waste from glass and plastic, the trash collectors sold the recyclable goods to national and international companies. Pigs, once omnipresent in predominantly Christian neighborhoods, would eat the rest."

"When the animals were fat, they were sent to slaughterhouses that catered to hotels. In the spring of 2009, alarmed by the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico, Egyptian authorities ordered the immediate slaughter of all pigs in the country... The ban on trash-eating pigs removed a major method of disposal, sparking a crisis in the city of 19 million people. Trash cans are often overflowing and garbage is routinely left on sidewalks and empty lots, resulting in a nauseating smell and attracting rats and flies."

"But, compounding the problem, trash workers employed by companies with state contracts say their wages have been late or incomplete in recent months, as Egypt’s economy has been reeling from the 2011 revolt and its aftermath."

You can read more in The Washington Post HERE.