FOLIO OLIO: FRIDAY #3900

One Of My Very Own

EMAIL:

ralh.henry.at.folio.olio@gmail.com

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Hurricane parties are a real thing in Florida.

HUMAN WEAKNESSES

So glamorous...

^^A1^^

Like almost 60,000 others this year, Brahana decided to brave the Mediterranean sea in order to reach Italy, and therefore Europe.

She paid people-smugglers $1,600 (£950), she says, to board a boat packed with more than 300 people. “It’s really hard with a small baby,” she says stoically of a journey that has proved deadly for thousands over the past 20 years. Her boat was intercepted by an Italian navy ship last week and all its passengers were taken to safety. The question for them now is what comes next.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/25/-sp-boat-migrants-risk-everything-for-a-new-life-in-europe
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The world needs all kinds and I believe that more now than ever before.
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You guys know how I feel about this guy.

I was a conservative. I hated deficits. I hated government intrusion in lives like throwing people in jail for drugs and prostitution and every other victimless "crime". This guy is no conservative.

People don't seem to have the ability to think through a problem.

Hell, here's another reality star. Maybe we ought to elect her...she couldn't embarrass us more.

The smile of a child already dead inside.
^^A4^^

Most Americans are familiar with the concept of "medical tourism" - traveling to another country to get necessary care at more affordable prices.

An article in Kaiser Health News shows how far this concept can be taken. The patient from Mississippi traveled to Mexico, as did a surgeon from Wisconsin. Her total knee replacement prosthesis was made in the United States. And the entire process was paid for by her American medical insurance company.
The hospital costs of the American medical system are so high that it made financial sense for both a highly trained orthopedist from Milwaukee and a patient from Mississippi to leave the country and meet at an upscale private Mexican hospital for the surgery.

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2019/08/medical-tourism-goes-to-next-level.html
^^A5^^

I'm not a supporter of quotas. There is ample evidence that it's not that effective.
^^A6^^

Cannabis garden, Paris, 1910

"It was a very common ingredient in pain-relieving medicines back in the day. My great grandmother would refuse to take even an aspirin, but she used tincture of cannabis for her migraines. You could buy it in many places right up until the Second World War."
^^A7^^

We are so inculcated by meaningless fashion that people who refuse to follow the dictates of make-believe authorities are considered lesser human beings.

^^A8^^

I had an Italian lover in Germany in the 1960s and she had hair like that. I was taken aback at first then realized that it was perfectly natural and that shaving was an imposed standard that we should all be free to accept or reject.
And that is a perfect segue to the next section.

^^A9^^

In hell, your dog dresses you in goofy outfits.

ART PHOTOGRAPHY SERIES THAT I SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF

London-based filmmaker, photographer, and artist Ben Hopper have caused quite a stir with his project, titled “Natural Beauty” which challenges female beauty standards with a photo series aimed to find out why women with body hair are labeled as unattractive.

Seriously, do you think that hair makes those young women ugly? Of course not. Think for yourself.
^^B1^^

Artist Stephanie Leigh Rose photographs “anti-selfies” of herself “dying” at Famous Landmarks.

^^B2^^

Photographer Oliver Curtis has spent several years going to famous landmarks and tourism objects and pointing his camera in the wrong direction.

^^B3^^

Just once, I’d love to see a post-game interview where the losing team blames Satan.

THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW YESTERDAY

https://www.sciencealert.com/incredible-fossilised-fly-eyes-are-changing-what-we-know-about-insect-eye-pigment?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

You Christians who believe the Bible when it says the world is about 6000 years old can ignore that finding. The scientists must be either mistaken or heretics.

^^C1^^

These are called warded locks. If the key wasn't the same shape as the ward, the lock wouldn't open.

Older versions were pretty easy to pick by modern standards, but wards are still in use. Modern locks have a plate on the front of them that defines the shape of the key that the lock will accept. That's why you need to get a key cut from the appropriate blank or it won't work. If you check your keys, odds are very good that stamped on the bow (the part of the key that you hold to turn it in the lock) is a small letter/number code that identifies the blank and therefore the shape of the ward.
^^C2^^

No one is good at multitasking.

Multitasking is the act of performing several independent tasks within a short time. It requires rapidly and frequently switching attention from one task to another, increasing the cognitive demand, compared to completing single tasks in sequence.
This study builds on an existing body of research showing human brains cannot manage multiple activities at once. Particularly when two tasks are similar, they compete to use the same part of the brain, which makes multitasking very difficult.
https://www.sciencealert.com/women-aren-t-better-multitaskers-than-men-they-re-just-doing-more-work?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

^^C3^^

The image will be reasonably familiar to anyone who has seen a contaminated specimen through a microscope, but this is a view of rainwater from the mountains of Colorado.

Rainwater samples collected across Colorado and analyzed under a microscope contained a rainbow of plastic fibers, as well as beads and shards. The findings shocked Wetherbee, who had been collecting the samples in order to study nitrogen pollution.
http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2019/08/plastic-fibers-falling-from-our-skies.html
^^C4^^

The "double bag" refers to keeping consonants and vowels in separate bags. When you draw your letters you can do so from either bag in whatever proportion best balances your rack. If you get three of a letter, you can exchange one of them for a different letter. This prevents winding up with the dreaded IUIUCIW-type rack.
There are others I found very interesting:
http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2019/08/fun-variants-of-scrabble.html
^^C5^^

A stump from the "Bloody Angle" Confederate entrenchment. The trunk of the 22-inch tree was completely severed by bullets.

During the War Between the States, the game was played on the battlefields and even in wartime prison camps. Baseball was, after all, portable, and even amid the horrors of war, soldiers sometimes found opportunities to play on the vast open fields where they needed only a bat, a ball, and a few willing participants.
This ball was found and retrieved in 1862 in Shiloh, in southwestern Tennessee, on the grounds of one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles. The ball is inscribed: “Picked Up on the Battle Field at Shiloh by G.F. Hellum.” Giles Hellum was an African-American who worked as an orderly for the Union Army at Shiloh. He later enlisted as a soldier in the 69th Colored Infantry. The artifact is a “lemon peel ball,” looser and softer than today’s baseballs, and it is hand-stitched in a figure 8 pattern with thick twine.
^^C6^^

Two of four experimental drugs designed to tackle Ebola have proven highly effective during field testing. Up until now, 70% infected of those infected with the Ebola virus have died. With the new drugs in play, 90% of those treated have been completely cured of the disease.
https://boingboing.net/2019/08/15/ebola-is-now-a-treatable-disea.html
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"Climate change threatens to undo the last 50 years of progress in development, global health, and poverty reduction."

The biggest risk, the report explains, is to the world's poor; people from nations who are the least responsible for the consequences of carbon pollution, but who will feel its most severe impacts.
https://www.sciencealert.com/hundreds-of-millions-at-risk-of-devastating-climate-apartheid-un-expert-warns
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A 63-year-old man who went to a New York emergency department for left knee pain after falling on his behind, and ended up with an alarming and rare diagnosis - penile ossification.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-went-to-hospital-for-knee-pain-and-discovered-his-penis-is-turning-to-bone
^^C9^^

When I'm eating a salad and some leaf stems are sticking out of my mouth I feel like a brontosaurus.