Vratsa, Bulgaria

Wondering where to go, I ask Google for cheap houses in Europe, which leads to Vrasta, Bulgaria, which leads to

Vratsa is the home of a professional Quidditch team operating within the fictional Harry Potter universe. The Vratsa Vultures have won the European Cup seven times. - Wikipedia

Well, isn't that something.
Turns out the cheap houses are 300 square foot apartments in Sunny Beach on the Black Sea, site of future sea battle between Barack and Vladimir. Book your ringside seats now.

Lotsa Mules

June 18, 1911 Building  the Los Angeles Aqueduct

Via Posthip Scott

King Clock

Old Town Clock of Prague

Looking for a picture of the clock tower from Neal Stephenson's Anathem, Google directed me to The Paltry Sapien. Seems like this clock might be where Neal got his idea for a clock that not only shows you the time but a dozen other bits of astronomical information as well.

Leg Bones

An X-ray showing a right hip (left of image) has been replaced, with the ball of this ball-and-socket joint replaced by a metal head that is set in the femur and the socket replaced by a white plastic cup (clear in this X-ray).

I'm in Vail, Arizona, babysitting my 230 pound little brother who is going in for hip joint replacement surgery tomorrow morning. He is a little concerned about how the surgeon is going to fix the length of his leg. The surgeon's plan is to compare kneecaps. Iaman's concern is that the reference leg also needs a joint replacement, so that leg might not be the right length either, and so should not be used as a reference.
    This reminds me of a couple of horror stories I heard. Not to worry, they turned out okay. One was from a woman I know in Iowa. She was in an auto accident in her younger years and both of her legs were severely injured. When they put her back together she was four inches shorter than she had been. Her legs, from what I have seen of them, are not disfigured. There might be a couple of scars, but nothing prominent. Then again, she could have been pulling my leg. I have no corroborating evidence.
    The other story is about a young man in Ohio, He was a few years ahead of me in high school. He got a job as a lineman working for the power company. He fell 80 feet from a power pole. He landed on soft ground, which I suppose saved his life. He sustained severe injuries, mostly to his hip joints. The doctors were able to put him back together, though he too ended up several inches shorter than before.

P.S. Operation was a success.

Disability-Adjusted Life Year

Age-standardised disability-adjusted life year (DALY) rates from All Causes by country (per 100,000 inhabitants). Color indicates rate. It ranges from 9,250 for light yellow to over 80,000 for dark red.

Detroit Steve sent me a link to a complicated DALY chart. There are a bunch of diseases listed, but what the heck is a DALY? Wikipedia knows:

    The disability-adjusted life year (DALY) is a measure of overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death. It was developed in the 1990s as a way of comparing the overall health and life expectancy of different countries.
    The DALY is becoming increasingly common in the field of public health and health impact assessment (HIA). It "extends the concept of potential years of life lost due to premature death...to include equivalent years of 'healthy' life lost by virtue of being in states of poor health or disability."^[2] In so doing, mortality and morbidity are combined into a single, common metric.
    Looking at the burden of disease via DALYs can reveal surprising things about a population's health. For example, the 1990 WHO report^{[citation needed]} indicated that 5 of the 10 leading causes of disability were psychiatric conditions. Psychiatric and neurologic conditions account for 28% of all years lived with disability, but only 1.4% of all deaths and 1.1% of years of life lost. Thus, psychiatric disorders, while traditionally not regarded as a major epidemiological problem, are shown by consideration of disability years to have a huge impact on populations.

Swingin' Hot Spot

big yellow taxi - joni mitchell in concert 1970
Hadn't heard this song in a long time, so here we go.

Update March 2017 replaced missing video with different one. Same artist and same tune, different venue.

Police Etiquette

Morpheus didn't say this. I have no idea if Mr. Fishburne ever said it or not.

Wondermark points to a Pacific Standard story by Ezekiel Kweku that talks about black people and the police, wherein I found this paragraph:

. . . the tactics I use to avoid being arrested or killed by the police have been instilled too deeply in me for me to forget. It is a carefully calibrated etiquette that feels like a delicate dance, . . . . Answer questions quickly, but not so quickly that you come off as snippy. If you have to move, move deliberately, but not so slowly that you look reluctant to obey or are stalling for time. Speak calmly and conversationally, but be polite and not too familiar. Answer questions, but don’t offer any information you don’t have to. And on it goes, each balance to be carefully struck, each parameter to be tuned in response to changing circumstances.

It struck me as I was reading this that these are the same rules that I follow. It was kind of surprising, because it made me feel just like I do when I am talking to the police. I'm not sure where I got these rules. Did my parents drill them into me? Or is is just part of being respectful, or perhaps 'showing respectfulness'? All I know is that I don't treat an encounter with the police the same as would with any other, non-police person.

OK, that's a post, but now I need a picture, so I go a Googl-ing and I find a very good article by Max Tucker entitled How To Deal With Cops. He covers the same ground from a slightly different perspective.

Part 1: Understanding CopsThe first step in dealing with cops is empathy. Seriously, it sounds like bullshit, but understanding them and relating with their position is critically important if you want them to let you skate on the stupid things you do. 

The 3 Things You MUST Understand About How Cops Think: 

1. Cops’ first and biggest concern is safety: I cannot over-emphasize this: The job of a police officer puts him in potentially dangerous situations every day, so everything he does starts with ensuring his personal safety. I’ve known and been friends with so many cops and all of them say the same thing: You’re always on guard because you never know what you’re walking into, and mistakes can get you killed. Every single cop knows other cops who have died in the line of duty. When an officer comes up to a car he’s pulled over or knocks on the door of a home that has reported a domestic disturbance, he has no idea who he’s going to be dealing with. You may understand that you are a perfectly nice, non-threatening person, but he doesn’t know that–he’s thinking about the guy who graduated with him at the police academy and got gunned down by a tweaker on a routine traffic stop last week. This concept—the primacy of personal safety—is drilled into them from the beginning of training onward, so understand that when a cop walks up to you he is–at the very minimum–suspicious and wary.
That is why the first minute of your interaction with a police officer—especially during a traffic stop or potentially dangerous situation–is so crucial. In this small window it is imperative you display the fact that you’re not a threat to him. This can mean hands up and open, a nice calm demeanor, a submissive tone, etc. Your specific actions depend on the situation, but everything you do upon initial contact with a cop should be about displaying the fact that you are not a threat. If you do that right, you will put yourself in a great position with the cop who has your immediate fate in his hands.