Random charts - child deaths

Source: The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States

Random charts - U.S. births

 

 

Source: The Age That Women Have Babies: How a Gap Divides America

"... Becoming a mother used to be seen as a unifying milestone for women in the United States. But a new analysis of four decades of births shows that the age that women become mothers varies significantly by geography and education. The result is that children are born into very different family lives, heading for diverging economic futures...."

Random maps - original names

Click to enlarge:

Source: The Atlas of True Names. "... reveals the etymological roots, or original meanings, of the familiar terms on today's maps of the World, Europe, the British Isles and the United States." Cool!

Random chart/picture

Chart source: Snakes take flight "... Most flying or gliding animals rely on a symmetrical pair of wing-like structures to generate lift, the force that opposes gravity and keeps the flier aloft. But `flying' tree snakes have no wings or any other obvious structures that might help them fly, explains Jake Socha, a biologist at Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois. Little was known about these enigmatic creatures until Socha, then a graduate student at the University of Chicago, set out for Singapore in search of the elusive paradise tree snake ..."

DOD tries to uncover secret of flying snakes

Random chart

Source: IBM Global Commuter Pain Study Reveals Traffic Crisis in Key International Cities

Grout cleaning

OK, so the grout in the upstairs bathroom is badly discolored. Even after cleaning, a lot of scrubbing, and even a steaming (both by this blogger, and professionally by Stanley Steemer grout cleaning) it looks pretty much the same... Then I spotted this, Stainsolver, "an environmentally safe oxygen bleach."

Well, although it all sounded very much like the items that you see on informercials (that work really well on television, but not so well when you buy them and try them at home), this blogger went ahead and ordered some. On receipt and after one application, it did seem to improve the grout significantly... Additionally applications surely necessary, but a nice start...

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After:

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Random charts

Source: In U.S., Canada Places First in Image Contest; Iran Last.

Stars and Journeymen

Something that has been happening for a while in our society is the widening gap between the "stars' and the "journeymen" (this blogger will use this term, journeyperson sounds bizarre...). This has occurred in many fields - sports (a much smaller number of mega-stars that are paid astronomical amounts while much larger numbers of "bit" players toil for much lower pay), finance (ditto, though the current economic crisis may have started to put a dent in this...), entertainment, and many other fields. This "split" has also been expanding into all sorts of areas. Whether it be missing children, where a small number receive ridiculous amounts of coverage (viz. Caylee Anthony on the Nancy Grace show on CNN) while other victims receive no coverage at all; to shows such as The Apprentice where the winner gets all manner of benefits while the "losers" get nothing (and are often humiliated to boot!); to some worthy causes getting showered with resources while others languish from lack of assistance, this habit of piling it on for the few while giving very little to the many is not a healthy trend!

In his panegyric to social connectivity, entrepreneurship, and the internet, Kristof introduces a young girl, Talia, who raised enormous sums for post-Katrina hurricane victims and other worthy causes. An even younger child, 'Alex', set up a lemonade stand in her yard and ralso aised millions for her cause. In both cases, for whatever reason, they caught the public's attention and their causes reaped the vast generosity of the American public. Meanwhile, large numbers of other kids toiled in anonymity for other causes just as worthy.

The television show 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' seems to also follow this pattern of unevenness. This blogger doesn't generally watch this show, but happened to catch an episode. In it, the family chosen certainly had seen a run of bad luck and had many needs, but this blogger was appalled by the excesses - the existing house that was torn down was replaced by one multiple times the size of the original; the appointments were really top of the line; in addition the father received a truck, a workshop full of tools, and a year of gas; etc. The gifts went on and on. It seemed to this blogger that while the premise of providing help to those in need was good, a much larger number of families could have been helped if the money used had been spread around to other needy families, and not just lavished on one family!

OK, so good for those who do well and are done well by! But it is to be hoped that this does not become the norm in our society. While there will always be differences (which is good) too great a disparity between the few and the many is not healthy for society...

How Jay Leno is Contributing to Our Awful Economy
Talia for President
RandomKid The Power of ANYone
Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

Amazing new species...

From National Geographic, some pictures of new species discovered the Greater Mekong River region in the last ten years....

Boondoggle or silver bullet?

Researchers (and the DHS) continue to look for a security "silver bullet" that will solve their problems. "Future Attribute Screening Technologies" a.k.a FAST is designed to remotely identify 'malintent' (sic) from indicators of their pulse rate, breathing, skin temperature, fleeting facial expressions, etc.

This blogger is all for them ponying up seed money for companies with possible avenues for research that might lead to actual products, but only if extreme skepticism is the order of the day...

Note; the DHS's Science and Technology Directorate Human Factors Division "...looks at biometrics, motivation and intent, suspicious behavior detection, human factors engineering, public perception information and the social/behavioral/economic sciences to improve detection, analysis, and understanding and prevention of threats..." in a number of different "thrust areas."

'Pre-crime' detector shows promise
Can a government remotely detect a terrorist's thoughts?
Draper Labs awarded $2.6 million contract by DHS
FAST Request For Information (RFI)
Future Attribute Screening Technologies Precrime Detector
OPED 14 Science to the rescue - from Feb 2002.

Who knew?

Interesting - M.C. Hammer started thinking re how to exploit the Internet as far back as 1994. After visiting SGI and Apple to find out re video over the Internet he developed "... a passion for understanding how video would be consumed over the Internet and it kind of gave me a headstart with planning how to monetize it as well..."

MC Hammer Hoping for Comeback as Internet Titan
AlwaysOn & STVP: Summit at Stanford Breakout session video: "Music Artists Go Entrepreneurial"
MC Hammer blog

Round the world

A quick tour of constitutions around the world. Is there a correlation between the political stability of a country over time and the number of constitutions it has had?

Constitutions around the World: A View from Latin America