Cartoons: misfires

Today's mix looks at D. Trump's absence from the Thursday night debate, voter suppression in 22 states, and an accidental shooting in a movie theater.

On Thursday Trump staged an improvised fundraiser for American military veterans instead of attending the debate nearby. Quoting the article,

Mr. Trump organized the fundraiser to compete with the final candidates’ debate before the Iowa caucuses, in an effort to undercut viewership for the Fox News debate.

Many cartoonists are viewing his tactics as childish or cowardly, but not Mike Luckovich.

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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Cartoonist Steve Sack's view is more surreal.

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Steve Sack, The Week

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While politicos are headed down the road to the election, conditions for the voters have changed dramatically: The last large-scale push to curb voting access was more than a century ago, after Reconstruction. Until now. Liberal magazine, The American Prospect, details how

Voters in 22 states will face tougher rules than in the last midterms. In 15 states, 2014 is slated to be the first major election with new voting restrictions in place. 

Although American Prospect is not exactly an objective publication, don't expect conservative publications to offer reliable information on this topic. It's too late and maybe impossible to change these restrictions now, but citizens can help the minorities targeted setup their rights to vote in each state.

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Tom Toles, The Week

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Here are some of the details for the cartoon below.

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Milt Prigee, The Week

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My apologies for the lack of humor lately--it seems to be in short supply.

-- Marge

DIY: Design and make your own bag revisited

Gucci, Light Soho leather hobo

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Possibly you can save thousands on a designer handbag. For example this Gucci Soho leather hobo has a price tag of $1,980.  I know, I know...it's the status of carrying around a pricey bag with a well known brand.  But one can always step out of that game into the game of being a creator.  Maybe even charge thousands for your own creations.  Even design your own brand--but that's another story.

A diverse collection of do-it-yourself purses/handbags/bags can be found at craftgawker. Here's one for a reversible purse from Martha Stewart; her site is a wealth of other types of DIY projects, as well.

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Reversible purse, Martha Stewart

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Nicole at You SEW Girl! offers patterns in PDF format for sale. She also has a couple of books out, one titled The Better Bag Maker. A business idea, maybe?

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Laptop bag, You Sew Girl!, Nicole Mallalieu Design

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For those of you challenged by sewing machines (I learned to lean into it or be stuck with the same old off-the-rack clothes or no new clothes at all), here's a no-sew project by Handimania, a channel on YouTube. One thing about this design that troubles me is the possibility that putting any weight in the bag will cause it to eventually lose the items. It seems a good idea to seal the bottom with washable fabric glue or tape. You can find some at Amazon. (Aleene's Fabric Fusion Tape seems to be popular.)

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Another rich resource for free bag patterns is It's Sew Easy by Maebh Walsh.

Tote bags and simple handbags are an excellent first projects for beginners.


 -- Marge

Internet sleuths

Image from "The amateur detectives tackling murders and kidnaps," BBC

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Somewhere I picked up the term internet sleuth. I thought it was in a TIME Magazine article by reviewer Daniel D'Addario writing about The Hidden Danger of Making a Murderer and Other True Crime Entertainment. But it seems I'm wrong, 'cause it's not there, online at least.

But the concept is fascinating: using your computer and the records available through the internet to solve mysteries. The goal is often finding missing persons and solving cold cases.

Two sites stand out: Internet Sleuth, a repository of links to information on airports, phonebooks, death records, to name a few of the categories; and Websleuths, a forum for sleuths and would-be sleuths. To delve into the information offered by Internet Sleuth, check out the How do I... page. To learn about and assist with informal (not official) investigations on Websleuths, sign up and verify. Note that Websleuths recognizes Professional Posters & Verified Insiders. There seems to be a lot of health care professionals and lawyers; the reporters and private investigators seem to me a given. Pursuit Magazine has an interesting article on Locating Mobile Phones through Pinging and Triangulation.

Also helpful for sleuthing are meta search engines. SocioSite, based in Amsterdam, offers three--Dogpile, Metacrawler, and SavvySearch--plus interfaces for other tools.

If you wonder whether relatively untrained investigators can be helpful in investigations where they have no official role, take a look at this collection of headlines: The amateur detectives tackling murders and kidnaps (BBC); How Internet sleuths on Facebook and Reddit solved the 20-year-old mystery of a missing teenager (Washington Post); and Internet sleuths are furiously trying to find out who made an ominous viral video (Washington Post).

To check out the mechanics of sleuthing, I picked out the name of someone missing at random---Palmgren, Gail Nowacki--at Websleuths. In respect for Gail's family I won't publish here all the details of my search. But following leads and ferreting out information is definitely absorbing.

Happy hunting to you, Sleuths.

-- Marge

Cartoons: please like me

Life in America is a curiouser and curiouser. Take for example the topics of these cartoons: Sarah P. endorses Donald T.; oil brings the stock market down, then back up; 67% of the voters are angry; and business in the like-me era.

Sarah P. + Donald T.

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Oil + US stock market.
News today--Crude oil has finally stopped crashing -- and that's excellent news for the stock market.

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Steve Breen, The Week

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Voters | Republicans
Pollster Rasmussen Reports reports Most Voters Are Still Angry.

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Gary Varvel, The Week

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Then there's business as it's practiced today...

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Andy Singer, The Week

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-- Marge

Making sure the water is safe...to drink

Filtering water, Outdoor Gear Lab

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With Flint Michigan's water crisis prominent in the news, let's take a look at what cities have done and do to provide safe drinking water. Also, what you and I can do to purify water when no reliable local authority is around. BTW, here's a timeline of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Wikipedia offers a comprehensive overview of water purification.  It offers such gems as--

The practice of water treatment soon became mainstream and common, and the virtues of the system were made starkly apparent after the investigations of the physician John Snow during the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. Snow was sceptical of the then-dominant miasma theory that stated that diseases were caused by noxious "bad airs". Although the germ theory of disease had not yet been developed, Snow's observations led him to discount the prevailing theory. His 1855 essay On the Mode of Communication of Cholera conclusively demonstrated the role of the water supply in spreading the cholera epidemic in Soho, with the use of a dot distribution map and statistical proof to illustrate the connection between the quality of the water source and cholera cases. His data convinced the local council to disable the water pump, which promptly ended the outbreak.

A shorter definition of water purification and related facts are given by Science Daily.

When hiking, that sparkling, swift-running stream is hard to resist. I was always told that swift-running water is safe. But LowerGear in Water issues and treatment says no.

Not wanting to belittle Flint's water problems, For Third World, Water Is Still a Deadly Drink (Nicholas D. Kristof, 1997). Quoting the article:

''I try to boil the water,'' Mrs. Bhagwani said pleasantly. ''But the boys sometimes insist on drinking right away because they're thirsty.''

Then, she said, there is the cost. To boil water consistently would cost about $4 a month in kerosene, almost a third of Mrs. Bhagwani's earnings. She could afford that, but then there would be less money for food.

And even boiling water does not remove chemical toxins (Modern Survival Blog).


-- Marge

Where the Wild Things Are

Book cover, Wikipedia (fair use)

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Maurice Sendak, author of the children's book Where the Wild Things Are, was an illustrator first, then decided to write as well as illustrate his books. In the mid-1950s he started this book. According to Wikipedia,

The story was supposed to be that of a child who, after a tantrum, is punished in his room and decides to escape to the place that gives the book its title, the "land of wild horses". Shortly before starting the illustrations, Sendak realized he did not know how to draw horses and, at the suggestion of his editor, changed the wild horses to the more ambiguous "Wild Things", a term inspired by the Yiddish expression "vilde chaya" ("wild animals"), used to indicate boisterous children.

He replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, caricatures that he had originally drawn in his youth as an escape from their chaotic weekly visits, on Sunday afternoons, to his family's Brooklyn home. Sendak, as a child, had observed his relatives as being "all crazy – crazy faces and wild eyes", with blood-stained eyes and "big and yellow" teeth, who pinched his cheeks until they were red. These relatives, like Sendak's parents, were poor Jewish immigrants from Poland, whose remaining family in Europe were killed during the Holocaust while Sendak was in his early teens. As a child, however, he saw them only as "grotesques".

According to Sendak

at first the book was banned in libraries and received negative reviews. It took about two years for librarians and teachers to realize that children were flocking to the book, checking it out over and over again, and for critics to relax their views. Since then, it has received high critical acclaim (Wikipedia).

And that's how one classic was born.

-- Marge

Cartoons: it's on.

Today's cartoons are takes on Bernie and Hillary; the presidential race in general; Powerball; and one cartoonist's farewell to David Bowie.

This cartoon about the race between Bernie and Hillary cracked me up. Seeing candidate Sanders associated with the latest Mad Max movie is, well, a shock.

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Pat Bagley, The Week

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Imagine, if you will, the presidential candidates as car models.

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Jack Ohman, The Week

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Powerball seems to be on everyone's mind. The most recent jackpot was 1.5 billion, split between 3 tickets. Powerball has a website.

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Drew Sheneman, The Week

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David Bowie, a man of many interests, created the fictional astronaut Major Tom. (There's a video that plays the song Space Oddity and gives the lyrics.)

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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Farewell also to British actor Alan Rickman. Here's a video discussing his role in Galaxy Quest.

-- Marge

DIY: Storytelling

John Howe, Beowulf battles Grendl, john-howe.com

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In the immortal words of Rod Serling "picture, if you will," a storyteller silhouetted by the great fireplace of an ancient hall. His audience leans forward with rapt attention as he tells the battle of Beowulf and Grendl. He knows that his listeners have heard the story before and will call him on any deviation from the story as they know it. He also knows that his duty is to pass down the accumulated wisdom of his people. Beowulf's adventures are some of the few mythic tales that have been committed to the written page; other tales were passed down by word-of-mouth exclusively.

It's different today. We have books, films, recordings, and even collections of ancient manuscripts. Most of us can read. And we have Twitter, Instagram, and email. Yet storytelling continues, although its form and intent have to a large extent changed. There is literature and recounting personal experience. Not to mention fabrication and corporate spin (see new rhetorics).

Now each of us is a storyteller, or potential storyteller. An article in Time Magazine by James Murdoch discusses our new roles in Storytelling—both fiction and nonfiction, for good and for ill—will continue to define the world. In his article he says,

In 2016 and beyond, those who wish to create a better world will have to make storytelling the center of their efforts, not an afterthought. It’s clear that economic and military might will always be the key levers of statecraft. But more than ever before, swift and dramatic change is being driven by powerful narratives that crisscross the world at the speed of a click or a swipe.

Underlying this change is the empowerment of ordinary people: citizens, mothers, sons, all of us. Once, consumers had limited points of access to information and content, and powerful state and commercial institutions guarded the gates. That time is over.

In 2016, from Lhasa to Tehran to Odessa, people will continue to seek and find forbidden things. In this connected world, the game is up. Censors cannot hide, and their victims have decided, and are empowered, not to take it anymore. Italo Calvino had it right in If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler: “In the decree that forbids reading there will be still read something of the truth that we would wish never to be read.”

-- Marge

Science: 4 new elements found

Periodic Table with new elements, 2016, Science Alert

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News coming across the virtual wire is Four new elements confirmed. The numbers given them are 113, 115, 117, and 118; and they complete the 7th row of the periodic table. According to Gizmag these elements do not exist in nature, but were "confirmed to have been created for the first time."

My question is: are the real atoms with 113, 115, 117, and 118 protons lurking somewhere in nature, to be discovered sometime in the future, or are we making things up as we go along. Quoting the Gizmag article:

Element 113, for example, was created by using a linear accelerator to bombard a thin layer of bismuth with zinc ions travelling at about ten percent of the speed of light in hope that, in rare instances, the bismuth and zinc atoms would fuse to form a element. The resulting super-heavy atom of 113 would then decay and turn into other unstable radioactive isotopes, which would decay nearly as fast.

The result was that the scientists who created the new element had to spend years tracing back the event through a labyrinth of isotopic breakdowns to prove that they descended from the new element. Then, the JWP of the IUPAC had to review the literature to make sure no mistakes were made.

Fundamental as chemistry is to science, it has a kind of mystical aura to it. Russian chemistry professor Dmitri Mendeleev pieced together the periodic table in 1869 "to correct the properties of some already discovered elements and also to predict the properties of eight elements yet to be discovered." In Mendeleev's time 60 elements were known. Later in the Wikipedia article about Mendeleev, there's this:

As he attempted to classify the elements according to their chemical properties, he noticed patterns that led him to postulate his periodic table; he claimed to have envisioned the complete arrangement of the elements in a dream.

Another possible case of a chemist dreaming a solution (pun alert!) is August Kekule who suggested the structure of the benzene ring. His dream of a snake biting its tail has become famous; it was notably cited by Carl G. Jung in support of his ideas on alchemy. However, according to a piece in the New York Times, the story may not be true.

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Currrent atomic model, Newcastle School, SCIENCE-esl

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Other elements have been added in modern times. Here's a summary of the current periodic table's contents:

A total of 94 elements occur naturally; the remaining 20 elements, from americium to copernicium, and flerovium and livermorium, occur only when synthesised in laboratories. Of the 94 elements that occur naturally, 84 are primordial. The other 10 naturally occurring elements occur only in decay chains of primordial elements. No element heavier than einsteinium (element 99) has ever been observed in macroscopic quantities in its pure form, nor has astatine (element 85); francium (element 87) has been only photographed in the form of light emitted from microscopic quantities (300,000 atoms).

For more information on the new elements, check out Four elements have just earned a permanent spot in the periodic table at Science Alert.


-- Marge

Cartoons: rebels with iffy causes

Today's selection of cartoons looks at Charlie Hebdo's special edition; the Oregon occupiers; and Donald Trump vs. Kim Jong-un.

Assuredly I don't want to diminish the horror of the attacks on magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, 2015; the writers and cartoonists didn't deserve a death sentence for being provocative. However, being a provocateur has its price. The New York Post reports Charlie Hebdo marks attack anniversary with scathing special edition with a photo of the edition's front cover; the Washington Post reports Associated Press removes images of God-as-terrorist Charlie Hebdo cover.

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Nate Beeler, The Week

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Remember the Bundy standoff in Nevada in 2014 over cattle grazing fees? Now his son and stalwart supporters have occupied a federal building in Oregon. There's more about the situation in Oregon Occupiers to Face Charges When Siege Ends: Sheriff.

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Clay Jones, The Week

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Provocateur Kim Jong-un is scaring everyone. Take a look at this headline: Why even a failed test makes North Korea’s nuclear arsenal scarier. Even scarier than that is D. Trump confronting Kim Jong-un. O.K., maybe a little funny, too.

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Nate Beeler, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: turtle play

"Turtle draw" by Valiant Technology Ltd, Wikipedia

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According to the Wikipedia article on Turtle (robot), we've been playing with Turtles since the late 1940s. The Valiant Turtle "was sold from 1983 to 2011. It was controlled by infrared." In checking to see if a Turtle robot using the Logo programming language is still available, I came across c2.com's message: 

You can still buy the Valiant Turtle (http://www.valiant-technology.com/usa/turtle1.htm) although the price is steep. There is also Roamer (http://www.valiant-technology.com/usa/roamer1.htm) [same URL as Valiant Turtle] which can be controlled by a computer, and with a pen attachment can draw pictures on paper on the floor, but doesn't seem to be able to pick up or put down the pen.

I've been looking for a cheap (under $100) tethered turtle for a while now. LegoMindstorms (about $200) can do the trick, but it is major overkill if all you are trying to do is draw pictures on butcher paper in LogoLanguage.

While checking out the site, c2, I came across this intriguing piece of information in a paper titled A Laboratory For Teaching Object-Oriented Thinking:

The most difficult problem in teaching object-oriented programming is getting the learner to give up the global knowledge of control that is possible with procedural programs, and rely on the local knowledge of objects to accomplish their tasks. Novice designs are littered with regressions to global thinking: gratuitous global variables, unnecessary pointers, and inappropriate reliance on the implementation of other objects. 

Because learning about objects requires such a shift in overall approach, teaching objects reduces to teaching the design of objects. We focus on design whether we are teaching basic concepts to novices or the subtleties of a complicated design to experienced object programmers.

O.K., now I'm distracted. For an overview of what object-oriented programming (OOP) is, check out the link to Wikipedia's article. Here's a C++ snippet from the Code Project:

class Human {
   private:
      std::string nameC;
   public:
      Human(const std::string & name) : nameC(name) { }
   };

According to neONBRAND, with OOP it's easier to maintain and modify existing code; ease of development and portability are better; and efficiency is improved.

Returning to the turtle and robotics, Wikipedia has a Robotics Portal that looks like fun to explore.

-- Marge

Science: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Captain Moore, posing with a water sample taken from the Great Garbage Patch.
Courtesy of Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Yale Scientific

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In Mythbuster: The Truth about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch author Taryn Laubenstein describes the Patch thus:

From above the Pacific Ocean, all is calm. Blue water meets blue skies, each reflecting the other’s pure, infinite depths. But now a white scrap meanders by; not the reflection of a cloud, but a bobbing Styrofoam cup. Soon it is joined by two, now three, now ten, now fifty others, all jostling for space. They start to stack, forming hills, mountains. They support their plastic brethren: discarded bottles, packaging materials, webbed fishing nets. Worn-out tires pile atop one another forming rubber towers, while flimsy shopping bags flutter like flags in the breeze. It is an island of plastic the size of Texas, floating in the middle of the Pacific.

This is the image that comes to mind when people hear of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: a massive, floating heap of debris. However, while it is true that trash does find its way into the oceans, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a floating island in the traditional sense. Instead, the Garbage Patch is composed of tiny plastic bits that linger unseen beneath the surface, ranging in size from a few square inches to barely visible specks.

The myth of a floating island of debris originated with its discoverer, Captain Charles Moore, in 1997. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, it is one of five oceanic vortices where ocean currents trap pelagic plastics, chemical sludge and other debris. These vortices are called gyres.

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Fangz, North Pacific Gyre World Map, Wikipedia

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In 2015 a trash-mapping expedition shed light on the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' by "measuring the size and mapping the location of tons of plastic waste floating between the west coast and Hawaii (The Guardian)." The sponsoring group, Ocean Cleanup, and its founder Boyan Slat have promised a report of findings by mid-2016.

Recently Slat's group tested its first trash-catching barriers in Dutch waters. Gizmag reports that by using a

natural system of circular ocean currents to push plastic waste into long floating arms and onwards into a central collection point, Slat's system would be highly energy efficient. He claims that it would cut the time required to clean up the oceans from millennia to mere years, and a positive feasibility study and US$2.1 million crowdfunding phase have since given him impetus to put his plan into action.

-- Marge

Cartoons: It's a new year, make yourself at home

Today it's all about New Year's.

We each welcome the new year in our own way.

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Luojie, The Week

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D. Trump will likely moderate (verb) the coming year for us. (This may be the only time you hear the words moderate (adjective) and Donald Trump in the same sentence.) By this time next year Trump will be a fading memory or we will have to listen more attentively to what he has to say.

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Marshall Ramsey, The Week

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It may be best to just keep running and not look back.

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Bob Gorrell, The Week

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I couldn't resist this one--there's still silly humor in the world, thank God.

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Andy Singer, The Week

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Happy New Year!


-- Marge