Again, Henrietta Lacks

We have been watching old Eureka episodes about one show per night during dinner at Anne's place.  The science on the show is really bad mumbo-jumbo, but the writers were good at picking up on the big keywords that were happening in science at the time -- wormholes, strangelets, quantum computing, AI memes, you name it -- and making them part of the story.

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Back at my place, I usually watch a few YouTube videos before bed.  A huge variety of topics, from short biographies, science bits, math puzzles, geography and history, Minecraft updates, D&D lore, board gaming, with subscriptions to Mathologer, ibxtoycat, Nerdist, Aphmau, Professor of Rock, Today I Found Out, and many others.  Let's just say that my main feed is weird.  And if I see something I think Anne would like, I make a mental note of it, and we go to my History page and find it a few nights later.  Over the weekend, I saw this video about Henrietta Lacks, who was not directly involved in science history, but she made a huge contribution to medical research starting in the 1960s.  The name was vaguely familiar so I tuned in to see where I knew it from.  Oh, right, THAT story.  Fascinating stuff.  I won't spoil it for you, since Thoughty2 does such a good job revealing and expanding on the story.  Let's just say there is a cell line called HeLa named after her, and it is still going strong today.   Maybe a little too strong.

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When I scroll through my YouTube history of those strange diversions, I usually have to give Anne a little pitch about why I think she would find a particular video interesting, and this time I said it sounded like something out of a Eureka episode.

Last night on Eureka (Season 5 episode 10, about 6 minutes into it), while they were trying to bring Holly back to life (again), Henry said, "Just like Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cell line."  Just like that, out of the blue.  A super obscure medical factoid gets mentioned the day after Anne first heard about it.  It didn't really fit what was actually going on in the show, because it's not a science show.  As I mentioned, they tend to throw out taglines to science stories, and this was a whopper.  But the show is fun to watch because of the great cast.  And sometimes, as thousands of writers try to boil down the thousands of directions of science into digestible bits, there is a convergence of waves in our Unlikely Times.

On a personal note, will they please stop killing Felicia Day??  Come on already.  ;-)

Carnivorous Deer & Squirrels?

Well, let's tone that down to "omnivorous".  Here are some reports of deer eating certain meaty bits ...

carcasses [OutdoorLife.com]

rabbit ears [OutdoorLife.com]

birds [io9.com]

birds [nationalgeographic.com]

birds (video search) [yahoo]

birds and rabbits [onPasture.com]

squirrel [youtube]



The strangest possible revenge for this might be a squirrel that eats deer?  Someone actually asked at answers.com:
Can a squirrel eat a deer?
Which was dignified with this broken answer:  "Not likely, a squirrel has a body shape that is too small and its digestive system couldn't  digest a deer, so practically no." But wait a minute ... this is fun:
youtube video.
Oddly, this same "vampire squirrel" is also mentioned in Science magazine (June 2014) for being so darn fluffy.  Too cute.  I suppose, when finished, all that's left are the antlers.


Just google "carnivorous squirrel" for all kinds of reports and videos.  It's no surprise that squirrels will eat insects, and it's not unusual for them to eat young birds and other tiny animals.  But what if the fluffy little rats work their way up the food chain?  Over on answers.yahoo.com, there was this deep inquiry: "What would you do if I was being attacked and eaten by carnivorous squirrels?" to which my favorite answer was, "Join them in their feast."


For fun, I will leave you with this piece from Scary Squirrel World.  Which is an overall fun site, full of silly bits and games.

Disclaimer: no, this is not a serious research article, I just like to follow wacky threads and see where they lead.

Totem

We went out to see Cirque du Soleil show "Totem" today.  A spectacular bit of fun, very colorful, one amazing acrobatics act after another.  For each prop or apparatus, they start simple and get more and more daring, until the acts of dexterity reach levels that don't even seem humanly possible.  Some fine misdirection, some great visual gags.  Amusing (and non-scary) clown bits in between.  The trapeze act was breathtaking: like the rest, you think you've seen some playful trapeze work before but no, this goes over the top; risky, wild and playful.  They could take hula hoops or glowing balls or a couple of sticks and make an act you can't believe you're seeing.  Wonderful costumes and makeup.  The stage itself was like a character, with an endless stream of images beamed down onto it, sometimes perfectly in sync with the motions of the people on it, plus movable parts and all kinds of trapdoors and openings. 

There was a live band performing the music -- at least at the end of the show (I didn't see them in the first act, maybe they lowered the reed barrier for act two?).  I admire the simplicity of just paying to get a top-notch performance, as opposed to something like the olympics where some of the same skills require millions of $$ in endorsements, product placement, and other baloney, just to be nitpicked and eliminated in the end.  There were no losers here, just performance, and that overall sense of circus wonder and thrills that reminded me of being a kid.  No real story, just lots of cross-cultural, multilingual and culturally abstract color and life.

Synchronicity

As an interesting example of synchronicity, try reading a book or magazine while the TV or radio is on in the background. I've found that about once per hour there is a near-perfect overlap of a word being read and a word being spoken on the TV/radio. Just now I was cataloging stamps from German East Africa, and was writing "German" on an envelope just as the news said something about the German Chancellor, the word German being spoken at the same time. 

I've had it happen while reading Sherlock Holmes tales and a commercial for Seinfeld comes on. Or I'm reading a Dune novel and my wife is on the phone talking about gardening. You never know what will mesh together. These moments are really striking. Oddly jarring from a state of dullness to a state of awareness, and sometimes even worth a chuckle. 

It should be completely expected, but we can never guess WHEN it will happen. So it feels weird. I suppose we could increase the likelihood of a hit by reading and listening to things on the same topic. If I was reading about tornados and listening to some Weather Channel report from Iowa (no doubt with Jim Cantore on the line), I would expect to hear a lot more overlaps ... but I'm not sure it actually works that way? 

Back in college we'd sometimes get bored and play a game where we pick up wildly different books and take turns reading lines. Guy might read a line from Shakespeare then I'd have to quickly find a reasonable follow-up line from H.P. Lovecraft, followed by Bill finding some segue into a biology text. Usually just silly, but I remember some very strange times where we'd find almost the same exact words on whatever pages we happened to be looking at. 

Which reminds me: there was some hype a few years back about the "Bible code". How a guy wrote a program to line up letters in the Bible and look for hidden messages up, down, diagonal, or in any pattern. Especially if you vary the length of the lines of text, and quibble over translations, or pick any edition that suits you, you've produced an endless source of essentially random letters. I once started a program to see if I could get the same effect using Moby Dick, but found it unbelievably tedious. The funny thing is, I watched that "Bible Code" show again (on the so-called History Channel, I think), and even with all that fudging the program was only producing the most inane fragments, which had to be augmented and "interpreted" by the author, often allowing for misspellings to make it work. It all shows nothing more than if there are enough things happening side-by-side, or enough searching through noise, there will eventually be something that looks like a signal, but is just a playful bit of nothing at all.

Mother Goose is Dead?

Most recent anthology with one of my stories in it ...

Mother Goose is Dead

I'm afraid I forgot about it in the shuffle, just got mine today. Always a fun theme to play with!

Ancient things never change

Over the weekend, a conversation turned to the somewhat tired topic of people who believe that Stonehenge and the Pyramids (a.k.a. anything ancient and big which took a lot of effort) could not have been built by humans. We glossed over it quickly and got on to more satisfying topics. But that very night I was reading the History of the Danes, by Saxo Grammaticus, written about 1200 A.D. And here was this funny parallel:

"That the country of Denmark was once cultivated and worked by giants, is attested by the enormous stones attached to the barrows and caves of the ancients. Should any man question that this is accomplished by superhuman force, let him look up at the tops of certain mountains and say, if he knows how, what man hath carried such immense boulders up to their crests. For anyone considering this marvel will mark that it is inconceivable how a mass, hardly at all or but with difficulty movable upon a level, could have been raised to so mighty a peak of so lofty a mountain by mere human effort, or by the ordinary exertion of human strength. But as to whether, after the Deluge went forth, there existed giants who could do such deeds, or men endowed beyond others with bodily force, there is scant tradition to tell us."

It's sobering to note that these things were ancient even 800 years ago. Sadly, it's easier to believe in supernatural causes than to believe that some group of humans just worked very hard. Compared to today, yes, there were "men endowed beyond others with bodily force" back then: simply men who would work themselves (or slaves) to death for goals whose importance has since been lost. 6 to 10 ordinary people can flip a car. We've all probably seen videos of bodybuilders pulling fire engines or bulldozers, even using just their teeth. I can easily picture what 100 or 1,000 strong men can do. I just don't see a disconnect. These things have never been impossible.

Getting reamed

Here's what my friend Doug would call "one of those moments of serendipity when things just come together."

I was printing packing slips to mail out a bunch of eBay lots, when I ran out of paper. I went out to the garage to grab another ream. I looked at the stack and said, "Six reams, okay, I won't have to buy paper for a while." That's good. I have a knack of always trying to inventory things.

But when I got back to the computer and clicked on the next order, the customer's last name was Reams!

Now I know from experience that if you read books with the TV on in the background, about every two hours a word will be spoken at the same moment that you read the same word in print. Depends on the types of shows & books. But in over 10 years of genealogy research, having seen tens of thousands of names, and having shipped out over 10,000 batches of stamps around the world ... I didn't know Reams was even a real last name. Never saw it until just now, less than 10 seconds after counting my reams of paper.

;-)

words of unwisdom

With enough research we can prove that everything is something, except when something is nothing, and nothing is good enough.

My "strange utterance of the week" when responding to facebook messages. I like the ring of it. Clearly i've been corrupted by old Bob Dylan songs: "I've heard you say many times | that you're better than no one | and no one is better than you. | If you really believe that | you know you're got nothing to win | and nothing to lose." From "Ramona."

No paramedics ... or not

It's a bit disorienting when the Unlikely strikes close to home.

We had an odd episode last night (March 2010). Lifeline called us to let us know our elderly neighbor had fallen down, and we needed to go check on her. She was fine, and we got her back in bed. They called again to see how she was. We said she was fine, and no services were needed. Last time, the paramedics came out and there was a big argument when they tried to drag her to the hospital in the middle of the night -- I know they mean well, and that time she had a small bump on her head and we wanted to be sure she was okay. But this time, no. No medical help was needed. Lifeline said they were glad to hear she was okay, and no paramedics would be sent.

So we went back home, glad it wasn't something serious.

Barely ten minutes later we heard a fire truck rumbling up the street. Through the door, there it was, headed for the old neighbor's house. And we heard the ambulance right behind. Jeez. This was going to be fun. They were going to need us to let them in the house so they could scare the crap of our neighbor and get another big argument going. But wait ... they stopped two houses further down, where we knew there was another old lady we'd never actually met.

We were all ready to run out there and try to be helpful or annoyed (hard to tell which), but we would have looked like crazy people, because it was a completely unrelated call for help.

It's not like we get ambulances on our block all the time. Maybe once a month someone within a 20-house radius needs help. But here it was, twice in the same half hour, two houses apart. Unlikely times.

Barbie turns 50

Here's something I never thought I'd write about - Barbie. But she fits right in here. What were the odds that a toy based on "a sexually-themed gag toy for men", based on "a cartoon character 'who was essentially a prostitute,'" would end up selling million of units to children around the world? While I have tried to stay away from silly human behavior on this blog, I'll use a bit of poetic license and say that Barbie is a phenomenon.

Anyway, Barbie turned 50 today. It's all over the news. But this raises some deep (I mean not-so-deep) questions ...

Do plastic people have birthdays? At what age will she start needing plastic surgery? Then again, she ages in "plastic years", and considering the rate at which plastic decays, 50 years is only about 20 minutes old!

My quotes came from this article from CNN.com.

Thanks for the tweet from EchelonPress to put these gags in my head. Now they're in your head. Enjoy.

Lightning loops

Living in southern California, I miss thunderstorms. We get maybe a few rumbles each year -- nothing like the storms we'd get when I was growing up back east. I've always been fascinated by lightning, and having watched many storms in the distance, I've seen odd things, like lightning that skims along the bottoms of clouds. And lightning that loops back into the clouds without hitting the ground. I've always wondered how rare these really are.

Looping lightning is not rare, but photos of it are. See this article for a nice example:

Source: USA Today "Looping lightning is rare, but not unknown" (31 Aug 01)

Lightning follows the path of least resistance (okay, impedence), and the air under a storm is naturally churned up. Still, it was a bit of a surprise to hear that cloud-to-cloud lightning happens "10 times as often as lightning that hits the ground."

Sometimes we tune out the common stuff. Most lightning stories we hear are of buildings and trees being struck and people killed. There's no human interest in stories about lightning that doesn't hit the ground. So, having never spoken much about it, it ends up seeming unlikely. seems like our perceptions of reality have looped without touching the ground.

Pop go the hay bales

Last month there were enormous wildfires in Australia, but as that continent bakes in the summer sun, there are other hazards. Like hay bales and entire sheds of hay exploding. Last year (2008) was "the worst season ever for spontaneous hayshed fires." [1]

It's not as sensational or mysterious as spontaneous human combustion, but it has the benefit of being verifiably real. The first article I found estimates some 400 cases of sudden hayshed fires in New South Wales alone, though it's not clear whether this is only for 2008 or for some longer period. [1] "One German study using data from an insurance company reported 304 haystack fires between 1970 and 1980, dropping to 118 between 1980 and 1990 due to the insurance company distributing 2500 hay thermometers to fire brigades since 1980." [3, quoting Wolk and Sarkar, 1993]

Oddly, it's not the driest bales that burst into flame, but ones with a moisture content around 20%. The moisture allows bacteria to thrive, and my initial impression is that the bacteria could be producing methane. However, the explosions are the result of bacteria raising the core temperature of the hay bale to 76 degrees C, and the ignition is just a reaction with oxygen. [1,2]

"The phenomena of exploding haystacks has been with mankind for as long as he has been making hay. Pliny, the Roman Philosopher wrote in 60BC, 'When the grass is cut it should be turned towards the sun and must never be stacked until it is quite dry. If this last precaution is not carefully taken a kind of vapour will be seen arising from the rick in the morning, and as soon as the sun is up it will ignite to a certainty, and so be consumed.'" [3]

It's odd that something which has been known and documented for over 2,000 years still sounds absurd and unlikely, but a lot of farming procedures and parameters are largely unknown to the general public.

1. Bizarre weather sends hay bales up in flames (News.au.com, Jan 21 08)

2. Spontaneous Combustion of Hay (PDF) (Dep't of Primary Resources, South Australia - PIRSA)

3. The Case of the Exploding Haystacks: Spontaneous Combustion of Natural Products in New Zealand (Australian Biotechnology, March/April 1997)

Riding those coat tails

A few weeks ago we were watching "The Incredibles" again. One of the repeating gags in the movie is that long capes are an occupational hazard. Capes get caught in sinister machinery, leading to bad times for the superheroes wearing them.

Imagine my surprise when I found the following story in my family history research just a few nights later:

"Francis Marion Cook [...] was visiting Ann and Lincoln in Aurora, MO. He had married his daughter Melvina. Two months later he was walking down town. He was looking at a big engine. He was dressed in his preacher suit (He was a Baptist minister) with long coat tails. The tails got caught in the big flywheel. Messed him up so bad they could not ship him back, so he is buried there."

It's hard to write fiction without a grain of truth (however unlikely) creeping in.

Zombie power

I had some downtime around the holidays, but the Weird never takes a vacation.

Here's a story of mayhem on the highways. You know those elecronic billboards that are supposed to warn us of impending construction? Someone has been hacking them in Illinois and posting horror-show messages, including "ZOMBIES IN AREA! RUN!"

Just a quick note showing the perils of letting too many writers get frustrated ... while funny to some people, we really don't need MORE distractions on the road.

Source: Yahoo News

Metallica's new zombie horde

I know, I haven't posted in a while. Sometimes the unusual just seems normal. But every now & then something comes up that's so odd, I just have to share. My brother tipped me off to this new Metallica video, a twisted horror homage to the Tunguska blast:

http://metallica.com/index.asp?item=601688

Even if you don't like the band, try the video. It's horrific, but so well composed, looking like so much authentic government archive video, plus an animated zombie hoard and a modern-day paranoid twist at the end. Thanks for the tip, Jon. ;-)

By the way, 2008 was the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska blast. If grew up hearing about it like I did, it seems hard to believe. If you're not familiar with it, Google it. Enjoy.

Whose flag is that?

I'm always on the lookout for strange events, and they have a knack for showing up where I least expect them. During the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, there was an odd comment when the team from Liechtenstein entered the stadium.

Apparently, in the opening ceremony of the 1936 Olympics, during the procession of the athletes, Liechtenstein found out that they had the same exact flag as Haiti. So the next year Liechtenstein added a small crown to their flag so they would be distinct once again.

I always wondered about all those flags that have just two or three stripes ... are they really all different? Turns out they weren't, but now they are, again.

Freemasons and the City

I have to admit, I enjoy reading conspiracy theories and New Age mumbo jumbo ... well, maybe "enjoy" isn't the right word. It's actually saddening to see people sling assumptions and accusations around, with so little basis in reality. But it's what passes for mythology in our mixed-up culture. (Hmm ... that's even sadder.) Still, there are occasionally a few concrete things to talk about.

Like the theory that the Freemasons designed the street plan for the city of Washington, D.C., and included a pentagram in the design to demonstrate their occult powers. If this doesn't qualify for a blog about unlikely things, I don't know what does. The theory itself uses the "grasping at straws" method, where the authors take a few facts, like George Washington being a Freemason (true), and pentagrams being associated with Freemasonry (iffy), and come up with a weird scenario that sounds cool but demonstrates nothing.

The best site I've found for debunking this urban legend is a huge archive called "Anti-masonic claims refuted," at the Grand (Masonic) Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon. Yes, the Masons have a right to defend themselves. After all, they get smeared all the time, and no wrongdoing has ever been proven. These articles are very well written, with proper supporting facts. A really fascinating collection.

For the Washington, D.C. case, see this article, which goes into detail on the flaws in the "theory," including who created the city plans, and who didn't. It includes links to the actual plan. What I like is the breakdown of all the unspoken assumptions that go into the theory. This is where the fringe stuff usually breaks down; by talking fast and being unaware of just how many pieces are missing.

So, was ANY city EVER designed to include Masonic symbols? For fun, the Grand Lodge site also has an article about the one city that is known to have a Masonic layout ... Sandusky, Ohio.

King Kong is Burning

Right now there's a major fire burning in the back lot of Universal Studios. The set from "Back to the Future" is reported as being destroyed, as well as the King Kong exhibit that's part of the regular tour, plus the set from Clint Eastwood's recent film, "The Changelings", the New York Street exhibit, a few other sets and a major film & video archive. Up to 50,000 videos and reels in the video vault may have been destroyed, but duplicates of these exist elsewhere, according to the report [1]. Ten firefighters are reported injured [2]. The fire started just before 5 A.M. and the cause is under investigation.

LINK 1: MSNBC 01 June 2008.
LINK 2: CNN 01 June 2008.
LINK 3: FirstShowing.net 01 June 2008 - good photos.

Like almost everything else, this has actually happened before. In November, 1990, another fire on these same back lots caused $25 million in damage, and destroyed the "Back to the Future" set. That fire was set by a security guard, who was convicted and sent to prison for four years.

Fish farts?

Every now & then, a headline is irresistible. Here's an odd piece about herring releasing bubbles from their tail eed, possibly as a form of communication.

LINK: New Scientist (05 Nov 2003)

I'm not sure this needs a polite scientific term, but it's called "Fast Repetitive Tick." They're not farts as we know them here in the air-breathing world, since "the number of sounds does not change when the fish are fed." Evidence as a form of communication includes, "when more herring are in a tank, the researchers record more FRTs per fish" and more activity after dark, when the fish can't see each other.

It's not the latest news, but it shows that sometimes the unexpected can be right under our noses.

The Wilhelm Scream

There was a famous movie scream recorded way back when (earliest known use in "Distant Drums" - 1951) which made its way into stock sound f/x libraries and has become something of a Hollywood gag. It has been reused in almost every Star Wars film, Indiana Jones film, even in Disney cartoons. It supposedly showed up in the new Indiana Jones film, too, when Indy and Mutt were sliding under those tables in the library on the motorcycle -- a startled student shrieked it out. After you hear it once, you'll hear it everywhere.

LINK - a more detailed history of it over at DamnInteresting.com.
and
LINK - a hysterical compilation of Wilhelm screams from many of your favorite movies, over on YouTube.

So, if you're watching a movie or cartoon and some of the laughs or screams or miscellaneous sounds seem hauntingly familiar, don't be surprised if you really have heard them all before.