So Many Interesting Things

From China With Film

Ho got photos, slides, and 16mm film. screen shot

Call it Finding Missionary China, to borrow from a wonderful documentary whose story it resembles, called Finding Vivian Maier (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2012/09/wit-and-surprise-and-playful-spirit.html). It's the tale of one Joseph Ho, who, like the protagonist of the other, was in the right place at the right time. In this case, the place was San Diego's Chinese Historical Museum and the time was the moment an elderly man walked in with artifacts from pre-revolutionary China. The man's parents had been missionaries there and, as it turned out, had taken many photos of their sojourn in that country from the 1920s to the early 1950s, as had another family to whom the man introduced him. "Some of the most striking images were of American family life in China in the '30s and '40s," Ho says. What makes these pictures so unique among the many taken during that period, explains University of Michigan associate history professor Par Cassel, is that most include details of location and subject. Until now, he says, this particular aspect of Chinese history got short shrift, "seen as a branch of church history rather than Chinese history" (story, video): http://global.umich.edu/2015/03/forgotten-photos-and-film-provide-unique-view-of-china/

OK? OK!

March 23 is an important date for this reason: It's the birthday of that indispensable, practically international term "OK." The well-researched story of its origin begins with a popular trend, in the mid-1800s, of misspelling familiar phrases and then basing their acronyms on those misspellings. "No go," for example, was "k.g." (from "know go"). Well, on March 23, 1839, the Boston Morning Post ran a facetious article about a tongue-in-cheek group called the Anti-Bell Ringing Society. It said, in part, "The 'Chairman of the Committee of Charity Lecture Bells,' is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his train-band, would have his 'contribution-box,' et ceteras, o.k.—all correct—and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward." So "o.k." stood for "oll korrect" ~ or, as it was appropriated and used in the 1840 election, for candidate Martin van Buren's nickname, Old Kinderhook: http://mentalfloss.com/article/50042/whats-real-origin-ok

Out-of-Water World

bathing in waste water, Jakarta, Indonesia Beawiharta/Reuters

garbage-filled river, Manila, Philippines Noel Celis/AFP

March 22 is World Water Day. A recently released UN report predicts that, unless countries work to dramatically reduce usage, in 15 years, the world will have 60% of the water it needs. The main causes are our ever-growing population (an expected 9 billion of us by 2050) and inconsistent rainfall due to climate change. Already, according to the report, approximately 748 million people have inadequate access to clean drinking water: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/world-water-day-2015-photos-think-twice-wasting-163733724.html#tOPSEf0
   (photos): http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/world-water-day-2015-photos-make-you-think-twice-about-wasting-this-precious-resource-1492907
   The theme for this year's World Water Day is "Water and Sustainable Development." The WWD website has ideas for how to observe the day and lots of great information about water's crucial role in health, nature, urbanization, industry, energy, food, and equality: http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday
   Water has always been a huge issue in Los Angeles, and Southern California in general, pitting urban against rural interests (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/01/nor-any-drop-to-drink.html). That battle has resurfaced recently, with the drought: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2015/03/socal_offering_to_pay_its.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LAObserved+%28LA+Observed%29

A Royal Invitation

We've been hearing a lot about the plight of the butterfly, and in particular, it seems, that of the beautiful Monarch (Danaus plexippus). Anyone, but especially parents and teachers, might be interested in a new National Wildlife Federation campaign to help these lovely creatures. Joining the fun entails taking a picture of yourself making the American Sign Language sign for "butterfly" and pledging to be a Butterfly Hero. Then you'll receive a Butterfly Garden Starter Kit, with seeds, instructions, stickers, and information (website): http://www.nwf.org/Butterfly-Heroes/Pledge.aspx?s_email_id=20150319_MEM_ENG_Butterfly_Heroes|STBot

Here's a Discovery video full of interesting information about the Monarch, shared by kids. The video's followed by a time-lapse video of the butterfly's life stages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI2vZ1_5eqs

Sky's the Limit

the eclipse will delight Nanortalik, Greenland. from worldccp.com

The first day of spring, March 20, is always a special occasion on the calendar ~ BUT this year it's extra special, as it's also the day of a total solar eclipse AND a supermoon! Unfortunately, you'll have to travel to Greenland, the Faroe Islands, the Svalbard Islands, or the North Pole to catch this relatively rare celestial event in its full glory. Sky watchers in Europe, northern Africa, and northern Asia will get to see a partial eclipse. And the rest of us will have to make do with videos and photographs: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150318-total-solar-eclipse-equinox-supermoon-astronomy-spring/

Into the Void

Alexei Leonov, March 18, 1965 Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

On March 18 fifty years ago, the first human took his first step into space. Russian Alexei Leonov was out there for a little more than 12 minutes. "What remains etched in my memory," he recalled recently, "was the extraordinary silence, my heart beating, and difficulty I had breathing." But breathing was not the only problem he encountered. "After 8 minutes of free floating, I clearly felt the volume of my spacesuit change," he says now. "After calculating the amount of time in light and oxygen supply I had left, I decided to drop the pressure inside the suit ... knowing all the while that I would reach the threshold of nitrogen boiling in my blood, but I had no choice": http://news.yahoo.com/eva-50-cosmonaut-alexei-leonov-took-1st-spacewalk-180043817.html;_ylt=A86.JySM1glVJUkApJEnnIlQ and http://time.com/3745861/leonov-spacewalk-50th-anniversary/
Leonov's feat proved that such a thing could be done and inspired many spacewalks since, including that of Edward White, the first American to walk in space, three months later (slideshow): http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/g1922/history-of-spacewalks-50th-anniversary/?slide=1

The Sting

the bullet ant © Alex Wild

Crazy as it sounds, there is a scientist out there who has taken it upon himself to categorize the pain caused by insects' stings ~ by experiencing them firsthand. The sting of the bullet ant, for example, he rates at Level 4, the most severe. "The pain is so immediate and intense," he says, "that it shuts down all illusions of life as normal." Yikes! And yet, continues Dr. Justin Schmidt, "I enjoy what I do." One would hope so. He's been doing this for more than 30 years and has been stung, mostly by accident, by more than 150 different species: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150312-the-worlds-most-painful-insect-sting

Just Because: 'Autobiography of Eve'

William Blake illustration of John Milton's Paradise Lost

North Carolina poet Ansel Elkins describes the origin of her compelling and illuminative poem: "In the summer of 2012, while following the trial of the band Pussy Riot, reading the plays of Mae West, and watching pre-Code movies filled with unrepressed seductresses like Marlene Dietrich and Clara Bow, I began writing 'Autobiography of Eve,' an ode to sex, desire, rebellion, and so-called fallen women." She worked on it until, last July, she had an epiphany: "... it occurred to me that the moment I was writing toward was not Mae West's, it was Eve's. I dismantled the poem and recast the lines dozens of different ways, playing with varieties of syntax and sound in an effort to locate the pulse of this pivotal moment between good girl and bad girl—a moment like Eve's soliloquy in Book 9 of Paradise Lost as she stands before the tree of knowledge and speaks the word freedom for the first time ... ." from Poem-a-Day:

Autobiography of Eve

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I leapt
to freedom.

Civic Deed

© Stik

You have to have a special kind of mind to be good at palindromes. The kind of mind, it seems, that's also good at breaking codes, a mind like those of Alan Turing and his cohorts at Bletchley Park who broke the Nazis' Enigma code (as celebrated in the movie The Imitation Game). Their friendly palindromic rivalry came to light only decades after their more famous achievement. It all started, apparently, when one among them challenged the rest to come up with a better palindrome than "step on no pets." In response, codebreaker Peter Hilton created "sex at noon taxes," and they were off: http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wc/the-palindrome-game-of-the-enigma-codebreakers/

Light Unfolding

Erik and Petra Hesmerg

Dutch company Studio DRIFT ~ which is actually mainly Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta ~ "explores the relationship between nature, technology and mankind." One of their latest explorations involves the creation, for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, of ceiling lights that unfold like flowers as they slowly descend nine meters toward the ground before ascending to begin again. Gordijn and Nauta describe the five silk lights as combining "nature's changing movement with advanced robot and light technology" (story, gif, video): http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/03/shylight-beautiful-unfolding-kinetic-lights-that-bloom-like-flowers/

Lucky Charms

Come St. Patrick's Day, we are, of course, regaled with stories about Leprechauns, those snakes, and that old Blarney Stone as we down green beer at the nearest Irish pub. But there's a story we don't hear as often that is equally enchanting, and that's the one about the Irish poet and singer Thomas Moore (1779-1852) and his wife. The story goes that Moore's wife, Elizabeth (or Bessie), who had been an actress when they met, contracted small pox, a notoriously disfiguring disease. She was left so scarred that she locked herself in her room, refusing to see anyone, even her husband, for fear that he would stop loving her. To convince her of his undying love, Moore wrote the lyrics to an Irish folk song, now known by its first line, "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms." The story goes that he sang it to her through the bedroom door (video): http://yhoo.it/1AQLlWX

And if the opening strains sound familiar, it's because they're also the beginning of (one of my all-time favorite songs ~ that fiddle! that banjo!!) "Come On Eileen," by Dexy's Midnight Runners (video): http://yhoo.it/1x9X6wC

Oh! Couture ...

Dvora for Yahoo Style

And speaking of appearances (which we were ~ see post immediately below this one), I admit that I appreciate great fashion and style when I see it. OK, so call me shallow, but full disclosure, it almost makes me drool. Mostly, what I love is the creativity, the mixing and not-matching, the individuality and uniqueness of it all. These pictures of street style from New York, London, Milan, and Paris have all that and more in spades (slideshow): https://www.yahoo.com/style/the-best-street-style-of-c1426113794453.html

Face Value

Wright State University

"Beauty is not in the face," poet, artist, and writer Kahlil Gibran once said, "beauty is a light in the heart." But that light, we're now learning, is reflected in the face. It seems that our faces do say a lot about us ~ more than we would like to think. Even tiny shifts in appearance are noted by others, mostly subconsciously. Face shape and tint (beyond ethnic coloring) transmit messages about health, personality, fertility. One example can be found in the work of Carmen Lefevre, Northumbria University in England. Her studies reveal, according to this article, "that people with higher levels of testosterone tend to be wider-faced with bigger cheekbones, and they are also more likely to have more assertive, and sometimes aggressive, personalities." As well, the article continues, "the amount of fat on your face ... provides a stronger indication of your fitness than more standard measures, such as your body mass index": http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150312-what-the-face-betrays-about-you

Nut Case

Apropos of not much but interesting nonetheless (and therefore a justifiable subject for a post!), this nut from dictionary.com:

The term "in a nutshell" refers to a short description, or a story told in no more words than can physically fit in the shell of a nut. But the origin of the term tests those limits with the most longwinded of tales. The ancient Roman encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder claimed that a copy of Homer's The Iliad existed that was small enough to fit inside a walnut shell. Almost 2,000 years later, in the early 1700s, the Bishop of Avranches tested Pliny's theory by writing out the epic in tiny handwriting on a walnut-sized piece of paper, and lo and behold, he did it!

All of which, of course, begs many questions, one being, as there must have been many bishops of Avranches over time, which is the one who wrote out The Iliad?According to Fact Monster (http://www.factmonster.com/dictionary/brewers/iliad.html), it was a Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721 ~ which would have placed the accomplishment in question in the late, not the early, 1700s). Apparently quite the polymath, Huet translated works from and into Latin and Greek in addition to writing his own tomes. He co-founded the first provincial academy of science to receive a royal charter and directed its work for some time. According to Wikipedia, "His taste for mathematics led him to the study of astronomy. He next turned his attention to anatomy, and, being short-sighted, deovted his inquiries mainly to the question of vision and the formation of the eye. In the course of this study, he made more than 800 dissections. He then learned all that was then to be learned in chemistry, and wrote a Latin poem on salt": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Daniel_Huet

Change Your Mind

the final device probably won't look like this. screen shot

Coming soon to a medicine cabinet near you ~ a gadget controlled via your smartphone that, according to its inventors at the startup Thync, electrically stimulates parts of your brain to either energize or help you calm down. The writer of this piece tried it out. "There's no question that I feel a significant change from the calm vibe," he says, "but could that be a placebo effect? I wonder if it works on everyone, and if it works the way Thync says it does." So he sets about finding out (story, video): http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/535641/the-electric-mood-control-acid-test/

What Goes Around

flickr

This year, Pi Day is not just any Pi Day. That's because, while the month and day, 3/14, are cause for celebration and veneration any other year, this time the year itself is getting into the act, thus: 3/14/15. And if you add a specific time into the mix, 3/14/15 9:27 or, better yet, 9:26:53 (a.m. or p.m.), well, it just doesn't get any better than that, does it? So, celebrate the number that helped build the world as we know it. You won't get another chance to do it this way for another hundred years (story, quiz): http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/pi-day-2015-celebrating-one-of-maths-greatest-numbers-20150313-1422ay.html and http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/irrational-exuberance-how-will-you-celebrate-the-pi-day-of-the-century/

Such a once-in-a-lifetime occasion calls for ... you got it ... "Mathematical Pi" (aka "The Pi Song")! (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWGGTb5pY2U

There But Not There

from the 100 Days of Solitude series Nidaa Badwan

The first line of Leo Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina is "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." To the extent that that's true, the same can be said for individuals. There is, for example, the unhappiness that comes from within, which is quite different from that which assails us from situational, or life, circumstances. And regardless of the source, people have different ways of coping. Nidaa Badwan is 27 and lives in Gaza. Her way of coping, at least for the last year and a half, has been to stay in her room and create art. And that has made her room very colorful and has led her to completing a project called 100 Days of Solitude, consisting of 14 self-portraits. "You can say now there is another life for me," she says. "I feel I'm not living here. The project made new windows for me": http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/world/middleeast/finding-gaza-unbearable-artist-creates-her-own-world-in-one-room.html?_r=0

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Atlantic bluefin tuna © Wild Wonders of Europe/Zankl/WWF

To eat tuna, or not to eat tuna? It's a quintessential dilemma of our times. First we heard it is high in omega-3s and other anti-inflammatories. That's good. Let's eat more. Then we learned that it also has unacceptably high levels of mercury, especially the yellowfin (ahi), and that that level has been rising quickly. Not so good. Stop eating it. Now, it seems that it also has a form of selenium that mitigates mercury's dangerous effects. This antioxidant protects the fish and could protect us, as well: http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=112
As far as canned tuna is concerned, however, mercury is just one of the concerns. For more than three decades, cans have been lined with something called BPA, or bisphenol A. (FYI, it's also in credit card and ATM receipts, among other things.) According to the Mayo Clinic, "Some research has shown that BPA can seep into food or beverages from containers that are made with BPA. Exposure to BPA is a concern because of possible health effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children." Some companies are switching to alternative linings, but of those, only a couple will release information about what, exactly, they're using: http://www.inspirationgreen.com/index.php?q=bpa-lined-cans.html
And here's the information that started this whole post: a list of canned tunas ranked according to the sustainability of the company's fishing practices, the company's ethics, and its fair trade practices (interactive infographic): http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/tunaguide/

The Song of the Matryoshkas

screen shot

What happens when you put 167 single-oscillator theremins inside 167 matryoshka dolls and give them to 167 musicians? Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, that's what (story, videos): http://mentalfloss.com/article/51929/167-theremin-players-perform-beethoven
And if you're now intrigued enough to want to learn more about this instrument when it's not inside a nesting doll, well, here's an old post about it: http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/07/their-theremin-show.html

Building the Future

innovation vs. symbol screen shot from Kushner's TED talk

"You don't have to copy the past to complement the past," insists architect Marc Kushner, from whose book The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings the 10 photos in this piece are drawn. And then he proves it. This is such an exciting time for the field. New materials and technology are allowing architects to play with forms and functions like never before, and imagination can run wild in the service of sustainability and community, as these photos demonstrate (slideshow, videos): http://ideas.ted.com/gallery-10-buildings-showing-the-future-of-architecture/
In this video of his TED talk, Kushner explains how buildings change us ~ and how our reactions to the architecture around us will change the way buildings are designed. It's kind of like the way Yelp influences how some businesses operate: http://www.ted.com/talks/marc_kushner_why_the_buildings_of_the_future_will_be_shaped_by_you

Opportunity, Spirit, and Enthusiasm

screen shot

Enthusiasm is contagious, and there's nothing quite like the enthusiasm of a science geek. So here's an opportunity to get excited about Mars and its rovers. JPL engineer Kobie Boykins takes us practically step by amazing step from the liftoff of the Delta II rocket to the rover's bouncing, balloon-insulated landing to its unfolding of its solar arrays. "Well done!" he marvels as he watches the video along with his audience. "I must have seen this a thousand times. It doesn't matter how many times I see it, I get very excited when it works. My team and I were the team that designed that." Next, he takes us on a voyage of discovery with the rover, by which point you'll probably be considering a second career as a mechanical engineer at NASA (video): http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/ng-live/boykins-mars-rovers-nglive?utm_source=NatGeocom&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=inside_20150205&utm_campaign=Content
Opportunity, despite its somewhat arthritic robotic arm, has found some interesting rocks. "We checked one and found its composition is different from any ever measured before on Mars. So, whoa!" says Opportunity Project Scientist Matt Golombek (which means "little dove" in Polish, btw!): http://news.yahoo.com/mars-opportunity-rover-spots-weird-rocks-near-marathon-220853694.html;_ylt=AwrT6V6MhP9U8o8A7V4nnIlQ

All Things Bright and Sparkly

In honor of Rio de Janeiro's famous Carnival, which, believe it or not, is once again upon us (March 13-17: http://rio-carnival.net/rio_carnival/carnival_in_rio.php), an illustrated history of the sequin. Who knew it all started centuries ago, with currency? And that it was rediscovered with the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 ~ just in time for the glitter and glam of the Jazz Age (aka the Roaring Twenties)?: http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/lifestyle/line-beauty

Swim for the Win

Reuters

This spring look toward the Pacific, where a pretty amazing journey is scheduled to begin in April (or May or July, depending on your news source). French swimmer Ben (Benoit) Lecomte will attempt to swim from Tokyo (yes, Japan) to San Francisco (yes, California). And no, it won’t be all at once ~ that would be ridiculous. He’s going to do it in stages, using a GPS to mark where he gets out of the water to rest, etc., and returning to that spot to continue. Still, it won’t be a cakewalk: Lecomte will be in the water at least eight hours a day for five months (and yes, he’ll be wearing a sonar device to keep the sharks away) ~ also ridiculous but maybe a bit more realistic. Apparently, he kind of knows what he’s in for, because in 1998, he swam from Massachusetts to France (this is just a summary of the magazine's story, as it's in the current issue): http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/water-activities/swimming/Man-Overboard-Lecomte.html
Probably the first danger one thinks of on hearing of Lecomte's plan is sharks. But there are other perils out there, too: http://dailynews.openwaterswimming.com/2012/03/is-ben-lecomte-safe-swimming-in-pacific.html

Chez Jesus

the house in question stands between two graves. © Israel Sun/REX

A group of archaeologists think they may have found the house where Jesus grew up. The limestone and stone-and-mortar structure has actually been more or less in the public eye for centuries and was believed by many to be Jesus’s house, but it wasn’t until recently that it was determined that it actually dates back to the 1st century CE. The house is in Nazareth, Israel, long believed to be where Jesus lived. It survived the centuries because both the Byzantines, who occupied the area until the 7th century, and the Crusaders, who showed up in the 12th, took care to protect it, and then it lay hidden until it was discovered in the 1880s by the nuns of the Sisters of Nazareth convent: http://www.livescience.com/49997-jesus-house-possibly-found-nazareth.html
photos of the site and area: http://www.livescience.com/49941-jesus-home-photos.html

So Many Interesting Words

The word "boring" is, in itself, rather boring ~ hackneyed, if you will. Also less than polite. And yet, there are still, unfortunately, occasions on which it, or something like it, is necessary. When describing your neighbor's endless health reports, for example, or (according to at least three top-ten lists) The English Patient and Titanic. Here are five scintillating synonyms that can easily take its place: http://dictionary.reference.com/slideshows/boring-words#ennui

Thinking Inside the Box

the media finally caught up with Spiers E.D. Lacey

Climate change, ISIS, pesticides, racism. Sometimes, it's good to focus on the lighter side of human accomplishments, like how a guy mailed himself halfway around the world in 1964. When Australian javelin thrower Reg Spiers's wallet was stolen in London, he couldn't buy his plane ticket home. Remember, this was in the '60s. So, what's a guy to do? What this guy did, with the help of a friend, was get in a crate addressed to a fictitious shoe company in Australia. "I worked in the export cargo section," he recalls, "so I knew about cash-on-delivery with freight. I'd seen animals come through all the time and I thought, 'If they can do it I can do it.'" Interestingly, his adventures didn't stop there and include a death sentence in Sri Lanka (which he successfully fought): http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31700049

A Rare Bug

Jim Craigmyle/Corbis

No one wants to get the flu, and a new study suggests that, while kids get it about once every other year, adults don't really succumb to it that often ~ approximately twice every 10 years, in fact. It seems that this is a result of immunities built up over the childhood years. According to this article, "The immune system responds to flu viruses by producing antibodies that specifically target proteins on the virus surface. These proteins can change as the virus evolves, but we keep antibodies in the blood that have a memory for strains we've encountered before." Mostly, when those of us over the age of 30 think we have a flu, what's really making us miserable is a common cold: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150303141546.htm

It Came Up From the Swamp

Singapore in the 1950s

Singapore is a city-state that values its cleanliness. No gum, no smoking in public, no spitting, of course no littering, and heaven forbid that you forget to flush the toilet in a public lavatory. Its population is among the world's wealthiest. But it wasn't always like that. Before Singapore became an independent state, 50 years ago this year, "It was a hard life," recalls Manjit Kaur, whose niece is the author of this first-person piece looking at Singapore's history. "There was no water, no healthy water. We lived a simple life, our neighbours were simple. We looked after each other and we had the same goal—to survive." At that time, most of the population lived in wooden shacks, still others in slums. Many had never seen a flush toilet or clean water from a tap. Then along came independence, and with it a nation-building campaign and the Housing Development Board: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31626174

Kitten Kindness

New Hope Animal Rescue

We're getting to that time of year when flowers bloom and animals give birth. It was one late spring, in fact, that we ended up with an extraordinary kitten we found at the bottom of a faux pillar (long story). He was so tiny, he fit in the palm of my hand. Of course, we named him Lucky. We fed him from a bottle and he not only survived but lived a long (if not uneventful ~ another long story) life. But not all baby animals are so fortunate. Here are some pointers about what to do should you find stray kittens (story with some very useful links): http://www.care2.com/causes/7-things-to-do-if-you-find-stray-kittens.html
Also, if you find a very young kitten (I'm not sure the age at which this is no longer true), you should know this: They cannot poop or pee on their own. Their mother stimulates this reflex by licking the area under their tails, from the front back. The best way to simulate this is with a warm damp washcloth or other soft cloth (that you don't mind getting dirty and having to wash every time!). Be aware that, like human babies, as long as a kitten's on a liquid diet, its poops will reflect that fact. Trust me on this. I know from experience.

Airheads

presumably, Daphne's body has more or less the same makeup

Biology class was so very long ago, wasn't it? from wisegeek.com:

Atoms are mostly empty space. In fact, if all of the space from the body’s atoms were eliminated, the leftover result would be so tiny, the body could fit into an opening that is less than 1/500th of a centimeter -- or the point of a pin. Although atoms are small and comprised of empty space, they are numerous; the average adult human body is estimated to contain 7 octillion (or 7 followed by 27 zeros) individual atoms. Each atom is believed to contain material that was created billions of years ago. For instance, hydrogen is thought to be nearly 14 billion years old, and oxygen was thought to be created about 12 billion years ago.

More about the structure of the human body:

The human body is thought to contain 10 times more bacterial cells than actual cells that form the body.

60% of the human body is comprised of water, which contains hydrogen and oxygen molecules.

Although the brain makes up just 2% of the total human body, it requires at least 20% of the body’s entire oxygen supply.

Blame the Gerbils

© The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource

The Black Death originated in Asia, and once it got to Europe, it killed millions in outbreak after outbreak over the next 400 years. We all learned in school that the disease was spread by rats, but apparently, rats may have had very little, if anything, to do with it. Tree-ring records of contemporary weather patterns show that "there is no relationship between the appearance of plague and the weather," says the University of Oslo's Professor Nils Christian Stenseth. "We show that wherever there were good conditions for gerbils and fleas in central Asia, some years later the bacteria show up in harbor cities in Europe and then spread across the continent." The one constant here is the fleas, which we all know are evil little messengers of the devil, disease or no disease: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31588671

The History of Bunk

The word "bunk," which is short for "bunkum," isn't used all that much anymore, but maybe it should be. A word like this deserves to be kept around, if just for its history (and to remind us that Congress has always had its ... moments ...). It seems that on February 25, 1820, Congress was all in a dither. The focus of their debate was actually quite a serious one, the Missouri Compromise. Well, during this agitation, the representative from North Carolina, one Felix Walker, stood up and began a long and rambling speech that had little, if anything, to do with the matter at hand. When his colleagues objected, he told them that he was speaking not to them but to his constituents in Buncombe County. Buncombe, bunkum, long-winded digressions ~ you see where this is headed (http://www.history.com/topics/missouri-compromise): http://blogs.lib.unc.edu/ncm/index.php/2004/02/01/this_month_feb_1820/

Lights, Color, Action

the Peacock Mantis Shrimp Samuel van Eldik

Meet the mantis shrimp. Really? Shrimp, yes; praying mantis, yes. But mantis shrimp? Qué es? Well, first of all, it is for real ~ I googled it. But it doesn't seem like it could really exist. For one thing, there are about 400 species of this little guy (that we know of so far). Their eyes have 16 color-receptors, as opposed to our 3. They usually grow to about a foot long, and yet most of them can break through aquarium glass. Their attack is so fast, it creates a shock wave that will stun or kill their prey even if its initial strike doesn't. It's also so fast that it produces sonoluminescence, or bursts of light coming from imploding bubbles. (Thank you, Pike, for introducing me to this fascinating little creature) (infocomic): http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp

Upper Crust to Dust

Mobutu's palace Sean Smith for the Guardian

If ever there was a country that embodied the true meaning of the word "irony," it would have to be the Democratic Republic of the Congo (http://bit.ly/1LdZtkF, http://bit.ly/1FubxxK, http://bit.ly/1AGsl3r). And if ever there was one site that exemplified all that country's tragic history and misfortune, it would have to be Gbadolite, former Congo President Mobutu Sese Seko's birthplace and home to his private paradise, now slowly sinking back into the jungle. Mobutu (aka Joseph Mobutu, aka "a voice of good sense and goodwill," according to President Ronald Reagan) was arguably one of the world's most corrupt leaders, amassing an estimated $5 billion during his 31-year rule of the Congo (which he renamed Zaire). One of the things he did with his fortune was build himself a town complete with schools, hospitals, three palaces, and a runway for the Concorde he chartered. Still, many there remember him fondly. “He was a dictator, that’s right, but he was also a builder,” says Congolese sculptor Alfred Liyolo. “He was a man of culture who wanted his home furnished by local artists. He was generous and allowed local artists to be known throughout the world and immortalised" (story, link to fascinating photos): http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/10/where-concorde-once-flew-the-story-of-president-mobutus-african-versailles

The Commercial Cowboy

Darrell Winfield, who died last month, was not the first Marlboro Man, but he was the realest. Philip Morris couldn't have found a better spokesperson. For decades, Marlboros were considered a women's cigarette. According to this article, "Their debut slogan in 1924 was 'Mild As May.' Early ads presented black-and-white sketches of listless flappers, slouched over an ashtray at a bistro table—or a sultry profile of a Gibson girl whose dark lipstick remained unblemished after a drag. It wasn’t until the 1950s that, as a Stanford study put it, the brand underwent a 'sex change.'" And that change was spearheaded by the image of the dusty, ultramasculine, hard-working cowboy ~ never mind that fact that most hard-working cowboys chewed rather than smoked their tobacco: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/the-real-marlboro-man/385447/#disqus_thread

Notes on the Brain

screen shot

"Music," wrote William Congreve (1670-1729) in Act I, Scene 1, of The Mourning Bride, "has charms to soothe a savage breast." And to stimulate the brain, as we have since learned. Now, with MRIs and PET scans, we are able to understand more about that phenomenon, including how differently the brain reacts to playing an instrument than to just listening to music being played by someone else. Note to self: Get back on the piano (video): http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-playing-an-instrument-benefits-your-brain-anita-collins

The Meaning of the Word IS

Islamic State continues to grow and to perpetrate unbelievably inhuman acts that shock and disgust the world. (To be fair and honest, it must be admitted that these acts are only barely less human than some of those carried out legally by some governments and officers of the law.) What daily life must be like for those unhappy individuals, particularly women, who have been caught in the areas now under their control is hard to imagine. And few of us outside their organization understand either them or their actions. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” explains Bernard Haykel, an expert on their ideology. IS fighters, he says, “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.” According to Haykel, IS's goal is to recreate the earliest days of Islam and to follow the precepts of the Koran to the letter. And, as with most religious fanatics, in the end, it all comes down to the Apocalypse: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
Related information, on the origins of Islam, seems in some ways to differ considerably from the above. No wonder we're confused! from delanceyplace.com:
Today's selection -- from Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong. The founding of Islam by Muhammad came at a time when the new-found wealth of Arabs in Mecca had led them to ignore the plight of the poor. Muhammad's message was a reminder to his fellow merchants to take responsibility for one

Yakov Stalin

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) did not have a happy childhood. Apparently, he personally made sure that at least one of his three children didn't, either. from wisegeek.com:

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin really did hate his son Yakov. In fact, Stalin refused to surrender German soldiers in exchange for releasing his son from capture during World War II. In 1943, Yakov Stalin reportedly committed suicide while being held prisoner in a German concentration camp. Stalin is thought to have despised his first born son, which may be due to his beloved first wife dying when Yakov was just nine months old. At the funeral, he claimed that his wife had softened his hard heart and without her he would never be able to love anyone again. Although Stalin remarried and had another son and a daughter, his relationship with his oldest son was so contentious that Yakov attempted suicide as a result, leading the dictator to scoff about his son’s poor gun aim.

Flammulated Owl Brad Wilson

Of all the creatures Brad Wilson has photographed ~ and there have been many ~ perhaps his most challenging subjects have been the owls. For this series, he focused on owls at St. Louis's World Bird Sanctuary and Española, New Mexico's Wildlife Center. While we may think first of their eyes when we think of these birds, apparently, it's not so easy to get them to look directly into a camera ~ and, as Wilson discovered, it's also not so easy to gain their trust (story, gorgeous photos): http://www.audubon.org/magazine/january-february-2015/whos-who?utm_source=engagement&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2015-02-11_email_wingspan

Just Because: 'Invitation to Love'

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) wrote his first poem when he was 6 and published two in his city's newspaper at the age of 16. His parents had been slaves in Kentucky before the Civil War, and his mother learned to read specifically so that she could help him in his studies. Dunbar wrote poems in both dialect and standard English. In all, he wrote a dozen books of poetry, four novels, four compilations of short stories, one play, and the lyrics for a musical. from Poem-a-Day:

Invitation to Love

Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or come when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Come in the night or come in the day,

Come, O love, whene'er you may,

And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,

You are soft as the nesting dove.

Come to my heart and bring it to rest

As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.

Come when my heart is full of grief

Or when my heart is merry;

Come with the falling of the leaf

Or with the redd'ning cherry.

Come when the year's first blossom blows,

Come when the summer gleams and glows,

Come with the winter's drifting snows,

And you are welcome, welcome.

Do U Heart Conversation Hearts?

Couldn't let Valentine's Day go by without a shout-out. As we used to say in high school, Happy VD, everybody! And what more Valentinesy thing can we learn about on this day than those little pastel-colored hearts with messages stamped into them in red? As always, we turn to Mental Floss for that kind of invaluable information. And we read, for example, that there's a good reason those things taste suspiciously like NECCO (which stands for New England Confectionery Company, btw) wafers, and that's because they are NECCO wafers, just in a different shape. For both, we have two brothers from Boston to thank. (We have another Bostonian, Esther Howland, to thank for popularizing Valentine's cards.) Today, NECCO estimates, it pumps out almost 100,000 pounds of hearts every year: http://mentalfloss.com/article/61510/history-conversation-heart

Spring Into Action

Glacier National Park Robert Zavadil

The sudden appearance of three beautiful poppies in our yard got me thinking spring. Of course, many areas are still covered in snow, but eventually we'll all be celebrating the green season and the reemergence of the sun. In anticipation, here's a list of nine of the national parks where the wildflowers will be popping. Given the selection, there's got to be one not too far from just about everyone (slideshow): http://parkadvocate.org/get-ready-for-spring-9-great-spots-to-see-wildflowers/

For a Change

an Action Hero and his socks

Last year's winners include a high-school student who founded a group of volunteers around his age to teach music to younger children, a seventh-grader who started Boxes of Love for children around the world impacted by disaster, and a preschooler who has collected 1,256 (at that point) new pairs of socks for various nonprofits. Who will this year's be? Volunteers between the ages of 8 and 15 who are doing something to make a difference in the world ~ either globally or locally ~ can become Hasbro Community Action Heroes and get a $1,000 educational scholarship and $500 donated to the charity of their choice (website): http://generationon.org/teens/awards/hasbro-community-action-hero-award/eligibility

Just Because: 'Wonder and Joy'

Tor House and Hawk Tower Hella Mitschke Rothwell

In a happy example of things going around and coming around, an appreciation of this poem by Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) led to the discovery that he was the one who built a fascinatingly quirky home in Carmel that many often wonder about. Born in Pennsylvania, Jeffers was accepted into Occidental College in Los Angeles at the age of 16, graduated, and moved on to the University of Southern California. He adopted the state as his own, and many of his poems celebrate its central coastal area. In 1913, Jeffers and his wife (after a sojourn in Europe to escape the commotion caused by their pre-marriage affair) moved to Carmel, where they built Tor House and later added the rather Gothic Hawk Tower (http://www.torhouse.org/history.htm), which Jeffers built himself. In 1922, he wrote, "Poetry is more primitive than prose. It existed before prose and will exist afterward, it is not domesticated, it is wilder and more natural. It belongs out-doors, it has tides as nature has ... ." from Poem-a-Day:

The things that one grows tired of—O, be sure
They are only foolish artificial things!
Can a bird ever tire of having wings?
And I, so long as life and sense endure,
(Or brief be they!) shall nevermore inure
My heart to the recurrence of the springs,
Of gray dawns, the gracious evenings,
The infinite wheeling stars. A wonder pure
Must ever well within me to behold
Venus decline; or great Orion, whose belt
Is studded with three nails of burning gold,
Ascend the winter heaven. Who never felt
This wondering joy may yet be good or great:
But envy him not: he is not fortunate.

Amazing Grace

Hopper at the UNIVAC, 1957 photo taken for Philadelphia Inquirer

Grace Hopper (1906-1992) was one of those amazing people most of the rest of us mortals never hear about. What made her amazing was not just the things she managed to accomplish but that she did them at a time when women weren't expected to be interested in, let alone doing, such things. Things like continuing to serve in the Naval Reserve past the war and eventually attaining the rank of rear admiral and becoming the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the Navy. Things like getting a PhD in mathematics from Yale and going on to invent the first compiler for a programming language, popularizing the term "debugging," and being the driving force behind the development of the computing language COBOL. "What I felt was that there was a large number of people in the country who did not like symbols. They were not mathematicians, and they hated symbols, so let them write their programs in English," she recalled of her role. "It was common sense." Common sense from a very uncommon person (video): http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-queen-of-code/

Tales From the Ebola Zone

Pete Muller/Prime for the Washington Post

The fourth of a National Geographic four-part series on the Ebola crisis (which, though we may have forgotten about it, continues to wreak havoc) is a Q&A with photographer Pete Muller, who has spent time covering it in Sierra Leone. Asked about any differences he noticed between his most recent trip there and the one he took in August, Muller says, "I think people are exhausted at this point. Hotels have closed. People lost their jobs. There's not much tourism; there's not as much movement from one place to another. But life is continuing" (story, short video): http://news-beta.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150205-ebola-virus-outbreak-epidemic-pete-muller-questions-answers/

Sauced

You're about to make a great pasta dinner and realize you used the last of the pasta a couple of weeks ago. You rush to the store, and there you are once again, staring at shelves of spaghetti ... and rigatoni and fusilli and farfalle and capellini and pappardelle and ... And now what? Which to choose? Does it matter? Turns out it's all about the sauce: http://www.kcet.org/living/food/the-nosh/infographic-learn-about-188-pasta-shapes-and-how-to-cook-them.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=kcet

Meditation Upon a Monk

Welcome to the Ripley's Believe It or Not installment of somanyinterestingthings. It's unbelievable enough that a man was going to sell a 200-year-old mummy of a meditating monk on the black market, but that's not the end of it. Some people who are familiar with such things believe that this monk is not dead but is instead in a deep state of meditation called tukdam (story, video): http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mummified-200-year-old-monk-not-dead-5098795

It's a Slug! It's a Leaf! It's E. Clorotica!

Patrick Krug

"In the future," according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, "[gene therapy] may allow doctors to treat a disorder by inserting a gene into a patient's cells instead of using drugs or surgery." For now, however, it is still an experimental procedure ~ for us humans. In one of the only known examples of what could be called natural gene therapy, the sea slug E. chlorotica embeds chloroplasts from an alga in its digestive cells so that it can perform photosynthesis on its own. The question has always been, How does it keep those chloroplasts alive and functioning for up to nine months? And now we have the answer. "One of several algal genes needed to repair damage to chloroplasts and keep them functioning is present on the slug chromosome," explains the University of South Florida and the University of Maryland, College Park's Sidney K. Pierce, the study's co-author. "The gene is incorporated into the slug chromosome and transmitted to the next generation of slugs." So now that we have a model, the expectation is that we'll be able to figure out the mechanism (thanks to Pike): blog.mbl.edu/?p=3285

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