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.

Space Heaters: on the horns of a dilemma

Posted on October 16, 2013 by The Old Wolf

I am in a real quandary, and searching the internet has been no help. I’m looking for the best space heater for our basement, (about 1500 ft²) which tends to be a bit chilly in the winter. There are a lot of options out there, and I’m unable to find a comprehensive and unbiased review site for different heaters and types out there – there are too many sock puppets and shill sites to be able to get an accurate picture.

The three models below are representative of the types of heaters I’m looking at – not these specific brands or models, necessarily, but rather by style. Note that each of these heaters is rated at 1500 watts, which means 5120 BTUs – according to the math, each one should provide exactly the same amount of heat.

Honeywell HZ-03604U Mini Tower Heater – $40.00 (this is an older model, but it’s the one I have)

• 360-degree space heater
• SafetyTip tip-over switch shuts heater down if it’s knocked over
• 2 heat settings
• Adjustable thermostat
• Includes overheat protection
• Model: HZ-0364u-WMT
• 1500 Watts
• 5,120 BTU

Feel warm and cozy with the Honeywell HZ-03604U Mini Tower Heater. Designed to provide all-around warmth, this 360 Degree Space Heater is perfect for small to mid-sized rooms. Since, heat is distributed evenly in a 360 degree range, every nook and corner of the area warms up in a matter of minutes. With two different heat setting modes and an adjustable thermostat, you have complete control over the heating process. Made of flame-resistant plastic, this overheat protection heater is absolutely safe for any room in your home. An additional protective tip-over switch safeguards your family from accidental topples. A portable room heater, it is perfect for the coldest of winters and comes with a convenient handle that helps you carry it around from one place to other with ease.

Note: I have one of these – it does a really good job keeping my office toasty in the winter.

Lifesmart LS1003HH13 1,800 SQ FT – $171.99

• Heats a Room Up to 1800 Square Feet
• 1500 Watt
• Injection Molded Plastic Cabinet; User-Friendly Controls with Large LED Display
• Built-in Fan Circulates Air through the Heater and Into the Area Being Heated
• Infrared Technology Effectively Uses Less Energy to Produce Even Heat from Floor to Ceiling
• Programmable Temperature and Timer Feature

DuraFlame (Twin-Star) Electric Fireplace – $269.00

• Uses 3 InfraRed Quartz Heating Elements
• 5,200 BTUs. 1500 Watts, 12.5 Amps
• InfraRed Heating Elements Lifetime is Over 20K Hours
• Infrared Heating Technology
• Quickly and evenly distributes heat throughout the room

Healthy heat – Produces a moist heat that does not dry out the air and lower oxygen levels in the body and the room
Safe for kids and pets – Stays cool to the touch
Excellent zone heating source – Can help save on energy costs

I’ve seen one of these work – they’re very pretty, and the one I experienced did a good job heating the main living area of an 800 ft² cabin.

Still, this last one is quite confusing; the manufacturer, Twin-Star (these are OEM’d by DuraFlame) claims that this unit will heat 1,000 ft². However, I asked Home Depot, who carries the same model, what it was rated for, and this was the answer from their customer service department:

Upon reviewing the fireplace I was able to find the model number 23if1714-c247 which is the product on Amazon.com we do carry the exact one on Homedepot.com. I have researched this product and the square feet it will heat at a consistent temperature is 144 sq. ft. This fire place will heat a supplemental area of 1000 square feet meaning it will be warm but not at the consistent heat of the 144 square feet area.

Duraflame Spec Sheet
Intertek Test Report

According to this calculator, each one of these heaters would cost about .1692¢ per hour, or $25.00 per month if they were run for 5 hours per day, but the specs on each one differ significantly, and websites don’t help because they’re busy trying to sell them.

My challenge is that each one has the same heat rating – heat output is a factor of resistance, and if each one is 1500 watts, then the BTU rating is 3.4 times that. So is one better than another? (I’m ignoring the visual fireplace part of the DuraFlame – that’s just there for pretty. I’m just comparing the heating ability and technology. The prices are obviously way different, and if a small one will do just as well as a large one, I can’t see shelling out for a larger unit.

I cannot comprehend it; to me it is a mass of confusion. I need to do more research, but for now my head hurts.

If anyone who happens to read this has any insights for me, I’d be grateful for your input.

Happy fishbowl to you, me, and everyone.

Posted on October 16, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Thus ends one of my favorite stories by the Good Doctor Asimov, “The Dead Past.” I won’t tell you much more about it, because it would spoil the read, and it’s one of his best pieces. However, it addresses the issue of privace in a way that few people could; Asimov has a way of being able to take concepts to their logical, illogical, or eternal conclusions.

Image courtesy of redditors SexualWeasel, joystick354, and Sqorck (more about that at a previous post.)

In today’s world, its very difficult to maintain the illusion of privacy. Just how much information about each and every one of us is available out on the Internet would curdle your plasma if you really knew, and scrubbing the ether of our presence is, while not impossible, a challenging task.

So the question is raised: how much privacy are we entitled to, and what constitutes a violation?

An interesting article over at the Huffington Post addresses both the issues of bullying/abuse and privacy in a story of a father who sent his autistic son to school with a wire, and uncovered some very unsavory behavior on the part of a teacher and a classroom aide.

Certainly we are entitled to an assumption of privacy about our vital statistics, financial data, and medical records (much stricter now since the introduction of HIPAA); whether or not that privacy actually exists is another issue, but that’s a subject for another discussion. What we do in our own homes or on our own property should be inviolate, although government has long been pushing for inroads, and whereas they were formerly chipping at the cornices of this right with small hand tools, they are now drilling at the foundations with jackhammers. Again, a topic for another day.

But when we are out in public – on the streets, in stores, in view of other people, it should be fairly assumed that we are being watched by someone, somewhere – even if it’s only by a duck.

Bullies don’t like light. Like cockroaches, they prefer to hide in dark corners, exercising their unrighteous dominion over others in places where they think they won’t be seen or caught. Unfortunately, schools have long been shielded from public scrutiny, but this HuffPost article suggests that this immunity may not be long for the world.

I remember when I was in elementary school, in another geological era, our school installed closed-circuit cameras as part of there experimental educational regime. I had forgotten about those until one of my classmates – even 50 years on, many of us have stayed in touch – reminded me about them during a reunion in June of 2012. We had to be on our best behavior when those cameras were rolling – it was an odd sensation. Today, recording devices on school buses have become more common, installed to protect students, aides, teachers, and drivers in the event of mishap or misbehavior. They’re not always used to best advantage, but they are there. This implies that intrinsically, there should be nothing wrong with having a video camera in every classroom, because it is in essence a public place, and teachers and students alike should be operating under the assumption that they are being watched. I don’t feel very George Orwell about this at all; when you’re sitting in a classroom with 40 or 50 other students, this is hardly a private environment. And, every parent of every child in that classroom has the right to know that their children are learning in an environment of safety.

Where every piece of technology can be used for good, there must also be the assumption that it can be used for ill. As a result, I can hear 1,000 legal hands waving in the background^[1], each attached to an attorney who will a) have an opinion as to why this is a bad idea, and b) offer their services at a very reasonable hourly rate. But the point here is not about practicality, it’s about the rights of our children to learn without fear. The only thing that is certain is that things in the world of education will change, and it will probably move in the direction of greater scrutiny and less privacy. That may be a good thing, or it may not – but going forward, I will support any reasonable proposal that makes this world a safer place for our children and all of us.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] I’m sure a whole raft of educators will have their hands up as well, and that’s not a bad thing. These are the people in the trenches, and their ideas need to be heard, but for myself, I do not look favorably on ideas that sacrifice safety for convenience.

Strip poker, 1941

Posted on October 15, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Found at Shorpy.

Photo by Arthur Siegel in the summer of 1941 in Detroit. One of a 5-part series from the Office of War Information archive seen here. This photo bore the annotation, “This image in jacket marked ‘Killed’.”

“Detroit, Michigan. Girls playing cards and drinking Coca-Cola.”

I wonder if there was anything else in that Coke…

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The cat the rat the dog the cow… wait, what?

Posted on October 14, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Over at Mental Floss, I found some of the oddest sentences that are perfectly grammatical and yet which don’t compile ^[1] properly.

One of the most famous is,

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

A visual explanation of this monstrosity is the most effective:

You can also visit Wikipedia for a detailed linguistic deconstruction; like Columbus’ egg (an appropriate simile for today) ^[2], it’s easy when you see what they’re doing.

However, only slightly less well known is this one: ~~Never go in against a Sicilian~~ sorry, I meant

“The rat the cat the dog worried killed ate the malt.”

This is an example of nested relative clauses. The structure is easy to follow when only few are used:

The rat ate the malt. The cat killed the rat. These become, “The rat (that) the cat killed ate the malt.”

Add in “The dog worried the cat” and you get “The rat (that) the cat (that) the dog worried killed ate the malt.” Since the subordinating conjunction “that” is optional in such clauses, the resulting sentence begins to become incomprehensible as the nestings are more and more difficult to follow.

The human mind is a wondrous machine, capable of prodigious feats of memory, calculation, and creativity, but it can only perceive so much at a single glance. In the case of determining how many items are within a field of vision, this skill is called subitizing, and the current human limit seems to be between five and seven.

Quick, how many dots?

Three. No challenge, right? Now try this one. Quick, no counting!

The answer is “24,” but you didn’t know that without counting, unless you happen to be one of those few people, either autistic or supergenius, who has somehow bypassed the normal human ability.

But let me show you the same number like this:

And while you can’t subitize the dots, you can immediately calculate how many there are based on your encyclopedic knowledge of the universe and a bit of simple math.

In the same way, the human mind is able to understand and generate language, but there are limits to how much complexity can be comprehended, even if all grammatical rules are followed. Thus taking our example to its logical conclusion, “The House that Jack Built” becomes:

This is the malt the rat the cat the dog the cow³ the maiden⁴ the man⁵the priest⁶ the cock⁷ the farmer⁸ kept waked married kissed milked tossed worried killed ate, that lay in the house that Jack built.

It’s interesting from a scholarly standpoint, but nowhere near as fun to recite while bouncing your grandchild on your knee.

Remember, time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies like a banana.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] This is computational linguist slang for “I don’t get it.”

[2] I am 1/2 Italian by descent. As such, Columbus Day has long been a great celebration, especially in New York where I grew up. Sadly, in much the same way as we now know that brontosaurus is now an apatosaur, and that Pluto is no longer a planet but a Trans-Neptunian Object, we now know that Columbus is not the national hero he has been made out to be; October 14th would better be renamed “Genocide Day.” Yes, he played a significant rôle in the development of this nation, but the human toll that was left behind in his wake is staggering. A couple of things you might be interested in reading are at The Thunder Mountain Monument, The Oatmeal, and Lies My Teacher Told Me.

[3] with the crumpled horn
[4] all forlorn
[5] all tattered and torn
[6] all shaven and shorn
[7] that crowed in the morn
[8] sowing his corn

Giant concrete arrows: Prehistoric VOR

Posted on October 14, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Or, “The beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid!”

Recently the Internet has become aware of a string of giant concrete arrows dotting the landscape across the country. Rumors abounded, with the Von Daniken crowd hauling out their tinfoil hats and other, more pragmatic folks doing more scholarly research. It turns out they were guideposts for our earliest courageous airmail couriers, who often flew in abominable weather, at night, in the dark, wet, lonely, and miserable. (How’s that for evocative prose. Thank you! Thank you!)

You can read a comprehensive writeup at Core77, and see some local Utah interest at KSL. I’ll have to get a picture of my own one of these days.

Early photo of an arrow with marker shack and lighting tower

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Playing in the World Game

As One

Be noble, for you are made of stars.

Iron Butterfly, March 1943

The haunted island

Space Heaters: on the horns of a dilemma

Happy fishbowl to you, me, and everyone.

Strip poker, 1941

The cat the rat the dog the cow… wait, what?

Giant concrete arrows: Prehistoric VOR