Boho

Kate Moss

Came across this image, or a similar one, while leafing through DuJour at the doctor's office the other day. Boho? What is this Boho? The Bohemian / Homeless look? Who says the elite don't care?

Estocolmo

ESTOCOLMO

We just finished watching season 1 of this series and  it is nuts.  We've got all the standard ingredients for a crime show: cops, lawyers, kidnapping, murder, mayhem, sex, and prostitution. On top of that we have a higher level of politics and corruption. And then there is the elephant in the room that no one will talk about. We don't know what it is, but it must be big, because everyone seems to be walking around it. They drag it out for so long, it gets to be irritating, but by the end of the show it has become obvious that the rot runs deep. Corruption can be found everywhere, but from where I sit in my cozy little cell, corruption in Latin America is much worse than it is here in the USA. I don't really know of course. Maybe the criminals here are just better at covering their tracks. Or maybe because I am well fed and warm my perceptions are distorted.

There is a thread of a story running through all this, but it can be a little hard to keep a hold of it with all the random drama popping up, not to mention the red herrings. Nothing is revealed, they are saving that for season 2. Or 3 or however long they can drag this out.

Most of the show is set in Buenos Aires and it looks just like any big city with skyscrapers and modern offices. At first we were guessing that maybe it was set in Mexico or Spain, but it wasn't until I checked that I found it was set in Argentina.

San Carlos de Barlioche

The last few episodes appear to be set in San Carlos de Barlioche, which is nestled up against the Andes mountains.

Estocolmo is Spanish for Stockholm, as in the Stockholm Syndrome. Identidad perdida translates as 'lost identity'.

Mayhem

Mayhem - Watchers (Official Music Video)
The boys went to see this band last night at the Hawthorne Theater. I fail to see the attraction, but then I don't much care for horror movies either and those are extremely popular with some people. Also, I am old. The band's whole shtick seems to be nihilism. I can see how that could be attractive to people who are fed up with the behavior of their fellow citizens.

The band is notorious for some very bad things, though the perpetrator's are no longer in the band. Maybe, it's a little hard to tell when everybody goes by a stage name. They have been around for 30 years. The Quietus has a review:

". . . they were a forward-looking group of musicians who had stronger avant garde/ experimental credentials than anyone else in their field and that I thought it was time to forget all about the murders, suicide, skull jewellery, arson, political extremism and to simply concentrate on the music. In return for my flight I had written a long feature on the history of the band and the solidity of their leftfield musical credentials for a Norwegian paper. It was a very lengthy feature and before I got to the long coda where I commanded people to stop talking about the murders, suicide, skull jewellery, arson, political extremism and concentrate on the music instead; I recapped the band’s history, including all the stuff about the murders, suicide, skull jewellery, arson, political extremism and whatnot." - John Doran

The way he repeats the catch phrase reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's apology for his 'Axis of Weasels' remark.

Update March 2020 replaced missing video. This one has a warning about epilepsy.

Silicon Forest

Silicon Forest by Brian Borrello
At the Interstate/Rose Quarter Max Station
Illuminates the surroundings at night using the solar power that has been collecting during the day.

Kind of cool, I guess. I wasn't aware of this until Sharon, who lives on the other side of the country, sent me the link. It's nice that Tri-Met is trying to do something to alleviate the fascist-modern style that comes with massive concrete installations. Not that it really makes much difference. Public art has to be kind of brutal just to survive being hammered on by the public.

I got your Jihad right here . . .

A search was conducted at this hotel in rue de Ponthieu (8th arrondissement), where the main suspect of the attack of the Louvre would have stayed. LP / OLIVIER ARANDEL

No explosives found on him
On Friday morning at around 9:45 the man burst into the gallery of the Carrousel du Louvre carrying two backpacks. After he approached the soldiers on patrol, he took out two machetes to attack them. According to prefect of Paris Michel Cadot, the man rushed at the soldiers, “uttered threats” and shouted “Allahu Akhbar”.In the report, the aggressor, aged about thirty, was seriously wounded in the flank and buttocks. He was conscious when taken away by the ambulance. No explosives were found in his backpacks.The man fought and risked being killed to try and gain entrance to the Louvre with a satchel full of PAINT BOMBS. - Le Parisien via Vlad Tepes.

Paint bomb? Perhaps balloons filled with paint that he was planning to throw on the most famous paintings in the museum. I suspect these nut cases are coming to the West to make a nuisance of themselves because the secret police back home would have crushed him.
    There are two ways we can go on this. We can turn all of Western Civilization into a police state and track down and kill all these rabid dogs. Or we can embark on a 500 year education plan to eliminate ignorance. Nobody is willing to wait for 500 years, we want it now, whatever it is, so police state here we come.

Via Sharon

Surgical Staples

Our patient made a follow up visit to the doctor yesterday where they removed the 40 odd surgical staples that had been holding the incisions closed. The one on the outside of his ankle was about five inches and the one on the inside was about half that long. I had been so caught up in the mechanics of bone repair (plate and screws) that I completely forgotten that they would have had to cut into his leg in order to get access to the bones.

In any case, he tells me that when the staples are removed they are in the shape of the letter M. Well, that's weird, so I go a Googling. I don't recommend it. Ask Google for images of surgical staples and it serves up an endless supply of pictures of wounds that have been closed with dozens of surgical staples. Too grim for me. A little more digging gets us some information about the nice, clean, bloodless machinery.

Preloaded, Disposable Stapler, on eBay for $9.

Disposable staple remover from iRemedySupply for $1.

I surmise that closing a gash is now a do-it-yourself procedure. Here's a couple of illustrations that show the mechanics of insertion and removal.

Staple Insertion

Staple Removal

Ran across a couple of stories this morning that give you an idea of how weird our bodies are. Kind of weird because one of the illusionists we saw earlier this week stuck a coin in his eye socket and pulled it out of a gash he made in his arm, which is not even possible.

How much energy would it take to blow up a planet?

How Much Power Do You Need To Destroy A Planet?
Remember when Darth Vader used the Death Star to blow up Princess Leia's home planet of Alderaan in the original Star Wars movie? I got to wondering about this the other day. In particular I was wondering if the Death Star would be big enough to generate the required energy. I'm thinking we could use microwave radiation to heat the interior of the planet to the point that it would boil and then vaporize. Who knows why this returned to my attention tonight, but it did. A little surfing turned up a story on Science Alert that features a video by Scott Manley (above) and an article in Popular Mechanics that offers a selection of ideas on how the job might be accomplished. I like Manley's explanation best, mostly because he put together this cool video.

Manley has graced these pages before.