They should have hired a cat long ago

Posted on October 23, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Along with all his other glorious insanity, Gary Larson created this gem:

Gary Larson – The Far Side

The dog looking out the window had the answer right under his nose, but he failed to make the critical connection:

Over at the BBC, you can watch Dexter help his friend Gizmo overcome the obstacle. Apparently this is not an isolated incident; Dexter the cat and his dog pal Gizmo were shut in the kitchen at owner Matt Hurst’s home in Sheffield every morning when he left for work. After finding them in the rest of the house for three days running, a confused Mr Hurst set up a camera to find out how they were making their escape. Click through for the full story and video.

Thanks to my friend Billy O’Shea for pointing out this lovely story.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Constantinople, not İstanbul

Posted on October 23, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Note: The title of this post, a riff on the song title “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon, is a simple reference to the fact that when these photos were taken, the city was still called Constantinople in the minds of many people, even though the Christian era officially ended in 1453. The blog is not intended to be a place for religious or political bickering; given the nature of the comments that are starting to appear, comments have now been closed.

Photography in Istanbul became popular in 1850. However, in 1843 the French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey was the first person to photograph the city. Remarkably, his photographs were only discovered in the 1920s in a storeroom of his estate and then only became known eighty years later. Some of his work is seen below.

A panoramic view of Constantinople. One of the first pictures ever captured of the city. 1844.

A larger section of the above photo.

Beyazıt Camii (Beyazid II Mosque)

Sariyer Fisheries

Çengelköy

Haydarpaşa

Alay Köşkü (Procession Kiosk)

Various untitled photos

İstanbul is one of the most captivating cities in the world. I’ve spent many hours wandering its streets and bazaars and mosques and monuments; I’d love to be able to go back and spend a lot more time exploring it. Oh, the food, and the spices, and the lokum and the sahlep and the ayran and the…

The Old Wolf has spoken.

50 Years Later

Posted on October 22, 2013 by The Old Wolf

MIT graduating class of 1875, shown 50 years later in 1925

This is an awesome photo. It’s beautiful because they were able to get so many of the class members together 50 years later, given that life expectancies were so much shorter back then.

But such things still happen:

This is the nursery school class at Hunter College Elementary School, taken at the end of the year when most of us had just turned 4 years old. I’m not going to tell you which one I am, but if you have spent any time at all reading this blog, it’s pretty obvious. Among this group are prominent urologists, television producers, attorneys, psychologists, and a whole host of others. Most of them, by nature of the New York demographic that this experimental school drew from, were Jewish; the old joke about the mother who points to her three year old and her five year old, “This is the doctor and this is the lawyer” is probably more true than any of us would like to admit. When I say “us,” I mean the class in general – among the boys, I think I was one of two or three goyim in my entire class.

57 years later, the graduating class of 1962 got together again. The quality of this picture is hqiz, but trying to get a bunch of people of this caliber to hold still for a photo is like herding cats.

What astonished us is that even after so long, so many relationships endured the test of time, and conversations were resumed as though graduation had been yesterday. It was an amazing experience.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

1955: Bunny Yeager and Friends

Posted on October 22, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Bunny Yeager and her friends at the Miami Fire Department.

12 Habits of Healthy, Happy People Who Don’t Give A Rat’s South-40 About Your Inner Peace

Posted on October 21, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Note: This has been reblogged from Yoganonamous. It has been bowdlerized for my audience (if you haven’t used that word before, it means I’ve cleaned it up a bit.) If you want to read the original in all its salty glory, you may do so at the original page. The Old Wolf approves this philosophy.

12 Habits of Healthy, Happy People Who Don’t Give A Rat’s South-40 About Your Inner Peace

By YOGANONYMOUS

Every time someone in my Facebook feed posts something like this, I click it. Every single time.

We all have this Facebook friend, right? People you genuinely love and admire. People you like hanging out with. People you invite to your birthday parties. You know. Actual friends. Until you’ve clicked links exactly like this again and again and again. For years. And all of a sudden, you start to wonder if this is some elaborate hoax, if you’ve actually just been reading the same article over and over.

It’s not like I have anything against happiness, or success, or meditation, or yoga, or being nice, or smiling more, or eating healthy, or losing weight, or being your best you, or embracing the day with a positive attitude. Those all sound great. Honestly, they do. And there are some really smart, simple truths to be found in all of those articles. There truly are.

It’s just that I have a problem with being told to do all of those things by skinny blonde ladies laughing on a beach wearing yoga pants.

Don’t believe me? Take the challenge. Next time you read one of these articles, I dare you not to play Inspirational Photo Bingo:

Don’t believe me? Compiling these photos took less than four minutes.

I can’t remember the last time I pranced around a tropical island paradise waving a white scarf around my head as a professional photographer snapped a picture, but I bet if I did, I’d be a whole lot happier too.

Below please find my version of this article, that I want to share with you, the internet. May it bring you all the inner peace you can cram into your backpacking gear right before downward dogging it atop that mountain at sunrise.

Do whatever you want.
Do whatever you want.
Seriously, do you want that burger? Then just eat a burger. Don’t be gross about it, and don’t eat a burger three meals a day. But I beg you, women and image-conscious male humans of the world, stop beating yourself up about it and just eat the burger.
Do whatever you want.
Have good friends. Call them. Complain a little. That’s what friends are for. Return the favor. Don’t be a crappy friend.
Learn how to laugh about farts. Fart more. Laugh about it.
Be incessantly curious about the world around you! Experience art, science, beauty, and nature! But stop beating yourself up on those nights when you just want to sit your ass on the couch and watch reruns of Friends.
Smile when you feel like smiling. Laugh whenever you feel like laughing. Pro tip: Being told to ‘laugh more’ is not going to make you laugh more. Being told to ‘smile more’ is not going to make you smile more.
Make time for yourself. After you’ve run that 5K, started a load of laundry, harvested your organic vegetable garden, run to the bank, paid the bills, dazzled everyone with recipes that are cost-effective, healthy, and delicious, thought of something witty and clever to share with your social networking site, caught up on current events and politics, and cleaned all of the house, that special hour set aside just for you is so critical to your well-being.*
Do whatever you want.
Don’t care what other people think. Unless they’re right. In which case, humble yourself enough to listen to them.
Do. Whatever. You Want.

Do what you want. Be your self. Don’t be a terrible person. Be nice to others. Be supportive of your friends and allow yourself to give them the benefit of the doubt when they want to try something new, like rescuing shelter dogs, or making performance art in the nude, or dating terrible people. They’re your friends and you love them, and if they suck, stop being their friend. Show up for work. Pay your bills. Find some purpose in your life, and figure out a way to share that purpose with others in a way that isn’t sanctimonious and doesn’t involve a picture of a woman laughing at an empty beach. Smile because something makes you smile. Laugh because you’ve surrounded yourself by people who make you laugh, and they’re funny people, and you’re happy to be with them. Dance because you’re drunk at a big dance party with your friends and Michael Jackson is playing, not because ‘no one is watching.’ Everyone is watching. We’re at a party. That’s how parties work.

Do whatever you want.

And the next time one of you has the kind of spare cash around to take a prancercise vacation to a tropical island, for the love of all that is holy please bring me with you. I am excellent at waving scarves around but even better at buying drinks with tiny umbrellas.

*And I don’t even have kids! Or a husband! Or a boyfriend! I can’t even imagine how condescending that advice must feel to working moms. As someone who works all the time and can barely remember which day of the week the trash gets taken out: making time for yourself seems like one of the cruelest bits of advice of all. I’ll make plenty of time for myself. Once I finish all of the things.

With massive thanks to Katherine Fritz, who has a great blog called “I Am Begging My Mother not to Read This Blog,

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Be noble, for you are made of stars.

Posted on October 20, 2013 by The Old Wolf

There is supposedly a Serbian proverb that states, “Будите скромни за вас су од земље, да буде племенита за вас су од звезда.”

Be humble, for you are made of earth. Be noble, for you are made of stars.

Whether it is Serbian in origin or not, it’s a good proverb. I like it. Because it’s true. From Random Science Tools comes this chart of the relative preponderance of elements in the body of an average 70kg man:

Element	Amount / kg		Amount / Mol.
Oxygen	43		2700
Carbon	16		1300
Hydrogen	7		7000
Nitrogen	1	.8	130
Calcium	1	.0	25
Phosphorus	0	.78	25
Sulphur	0	.14	4	.4
Potassium	0	.14	3	.6
Sodium	0	.10	4	.3
Chlorine	0	.095	2	.7
Magnesium	0	.019	0	.78
Silicon	0	.018	0	.64
Iron	0	.0042	0	.075
Fluorine	0	.0026	0	.14
Zinc	0	.0023	0	.035
Rubidium	0	.00032	0	.0037
Strontium	0	.00032	0	.0037
Bromine	0	.00020	0	.0025
Lead	0	.00012	0	.00058
Copper	0	.000072	0	.0011
Aluminium	0	.000061	0	.0023
Cadmium	0	.000050	0	.00044
Boron	< 0	.000048	0	.0044
Barium	0	.000022	0	.00016
Tin	< 0	.000017	0	.00014
Iodine	0	.000013	0	.00010
Manganese	0	.000012	0	.00022
Nickel	0	.000010	0	.00017
Gold	< 0	.000010	0	.000051
Molybdenum	< 0	.0000093	0	.000097
Chromium	< 0	.0000018	0	.000035
Caesium	0	.0000015	0	.000011
Cobalt	0	.0000015	0	.000025
Uranium	0	.00000009	0	.00000038
Beryllium	0	.000000036	0	.0000040
Radium		3.1×10^-14		1.4×10^-13

Chemical composition of the human body by mass

As little as it may be, we have gold in us. And other rare elements. And we have to remember that at the creation of the universe, the only elements present were hydrogen and helium. Every other naturally-occurring element in the periodic table was born in the hearts of dying stars which ended their lives as supernovæ, or – as recently hypothesized in the case of heavier elements like gold – in collisions between neutron stars.

I like Carl Sagan’s quote, which he also managed to work into his book Contact: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Whether we are alone in the universe is a question which science has yet to answer, but it’s pretty mind-bending to think that the elements which make up our bodies came from the universe around us. As astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson said,

“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Iron Butterfly, March 1943

Posted on October 18, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Found at Shorpy.

Albuquerque, New Mexico. “Lifting an engine to be carried to another part of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe shops for wheeling.” Photo by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information.

Stupidity, hard at work in the White House

Posted on October 18, 2013 by The Old Wolf

The Post Office designed a new set of stamps to encourage kids to get active. Great idea, right?

Unfortunately, thanks to some on the President’s Council on Fitness, the project has now been put on hold, because it appears that these three stamps are promoting “unsafe” activities:

The stamps deemed unsafe by federal officials included illustrations of kids skateboarding without kneepads, doing a cannonball dive into a swimming pool, and doing a handstand without wearing a helmet. A handstand without wearing a helmet???

There are times I really wish I could swear. Of all the chuckleheaded, doltish, ludicrous, ill-considered, short-sighted and politically correct nonsense I have ever heard, this takes the cake. YOU BLISTERING SIMPLETONS! Yes, I’m SHOUTING! Did you get run over by the stupid truck? What, are you going to put federal monitors on every school playground and in every backyard, to make sure kids don’t run, jump, do cartwheels, tumble, climb trees, roll down hills, do somersaults, and everything kids do to enjoy life and burn off energy? ^[1]

I’ve written about the difference between safety and paranoia, but it appears the general trend continues in favor of paranoia, fueled largely by attorneys hungry for billable hours and with far too much time on their hands. For the love of anything you consider holy, every single one of those activities on the stamp sheet come with some inherent risks; we might as well curl up in a ball under our bed if we’re worried about safety to that extent. At least that way, nothing will get us but the dust mites.

I don’t believe in violence, but things like this are very stressful for me ^[2].

It was earlier reported that the entire run of stamps is being destroyed, but according to USPS spokeman Roy Betts, “The stamps are on hold and a decision would be made later.”

You can read more about this mind-boggling witlessness at ABC News.

[1] It appears stupidity is not limited to the USA. A school in Australia actually tried to ban kids from doing cartwheels.

[1] Stress: The confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic desire to choke the living daylights out of some jerk who desperately deserves it.

The haunted island

Posted on October 17, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Four miles south and slightly east of the Venice train station sits the small island of Poveglia. It is uninhabited, and police boats patrol the area to keep tourists away. The locals want nothing to do with it.

From Wikipedia:

The island first came to be referenced in chronicles in 421 AD, when people from Padua and Este fled there to escape the barbaric invasions. In the 9th century the island started to be intensely populated, and in the following centuries its importance grew steadily, until it was governed by a dedicated Podestà. There were many wars on Poveglia, as many barbarians still wanted the people who fled there. In many cases the Poveglians won these wars, but in 1379 Venice came under attack from the Genoan fleet; the people of Poveglia were moved to the Giudecca, and the Venetian government built on the island a permanent fortification, called “the Octagon,” still visible today. The island remained uninhabited in the following centuries; in 1527 the doge offered the island to the Camaldolese monks, but they refused the offer. In 1661 the descendants of the original inhabitants were offered to reconstruct their village on the island, but they refused to do so.

In 1777 the island came under the jurisdiction of the Magistrato alla Sanità (Public Health Office), and became a check point for all goods and people coming to and going from Venice by ship. In 1793, there were several cases of the plague on two ships, and consequently the island was transformed into a temporary confinement station for the ill (Lazzaretto); this role became permanent in 1805, under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, who also had the old church of San Vitale destroyed; the old bell tower was converted into a lighthouse. The lazzaretto was closed in 1814.

In the 20th century the island was again used as a quarantine station, but in 1922, the existing buildings were converted into an hospital for mentally ill and long-term care. This went on until 1968, when the hospital was closed, and the island, after being shortly used for agriculture, was completely abandoned. Presently, the island is closed to locals and tourists and remains under control of the Italian government

In recent times, some legends have arisen about the island. According to legend, during Roman times it was used to isolate thousands of plague victims, and during the three occasions when the Black Death spread through Europe, the island was effectively used as a lazaretto and plague pit – it was considered an efficient way of keeping the infected people separated from the healthy. According to this version, over 160,000 people died on the island throughout its history.[3] The island used in 1576 to accommodate those hit by the plague was not Poveglia, but Lazzaretto Nuovo.

Another legend surrounds a building erected in 1922 on the island, which was used for various purposes, including usage as a mental hospital.[4] The legend states that a particular mental health doctor tortured and butchered many of the patients, before going “mad” and jumping to his death from the bell tower. According to that same legend, he survived the fall, but was ‘strangled by a mist that came up from the ground’. Its ruins remain to this day.[3] The institution in question has been described as a retirement home, but evidence on the island shows that despite the controversy, at least part of the building housed mental patients.

From the web page “Island of Madness“:

Today Poveglia is uninhabited and tourism to island is strictly forbidden. Every now and then the lapping waves on the shore uncover charred human bones.

Several psychics have visited the island the abandoned hospital, but all of them left scared to death of what they had sensed there. Every now and then daredevils dodge the police patrols to explore the island, but everyone who has made it there have refused to return saying that there is a heavy atmosphere of evil and they the screams and tortured moans that permeate the island make staying there unbearable.

One report from a misguided thrill seeker who fled the island says that after entering the abandoned hospital, a disembodied voice ordered them, “Leave immediately and do not return.”

Italians are naturally a superstitious lot.^[1] Fortune tellers and other psychic types make a pretty good living there, so ghost stories of this nature would tend to grow in the telling, and mass hysteria about a place with a sordid history is not unexpected. Regardless of the stories that surround Poveglia, it certainly had a colorful past.

Salt Lake City has its very own haunting legend, the story of Emo’s Grave; I have spent a lot of time in the cemetery documenting graves and I’ve been there. It’s creepy enough even in the daytime. As for Poveglia, the Google Earth image above looks very forbidding indeed, with wild vegetation, tumbledown buildings and interiors exposed to the open sky. Even if visits were allowed, this is not a place I would want to go exploring.

Fortunately, there are some who have braved the perils, and posted an interesting report and some on-the-ground pictures of the area – these do nothing to dispel the aura of decay and strangeness that surrounds the island. Click through for more.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] We’re Calabresi. I know.

Playing in the World Game

As One

Author Archives: The Old Wolf

They should have hired a cat long ago

Constantinople, not İstanbul

50 Years Later

1955: Bunny Yeager and Friends

Be noble, for you are made of stars.

Iron Butterfly, March 1943

The haunted island