"Stranger suicide" and "detergent suicide"

A number of years ago I gave a series of lectures on toxic gases (asphyxiants, irritants, war gases), and during the irritant gas lecture I always made a point of emphasizing that hazardous gases could be inadvertently created in the home or workplace by inappropriately mixing household cleaners (an acidic liquid + sodium hypochlorite bleach, or the latter plus ammonia).  Now I see reports that such mixes are being used intentionally during suicide attempts.

The Telegraph this week reported on a case of "stranger suicide" -

A man and a woman have been found gassed to death with toxic chemical in a car on a rural road... Their Ford Ka had been sealed from the inside and marked with a handwritten sign indicating that it contained hazardous materials... A senior source told the Sun newspaper: “There is no obvious link between them."

About six months ago I had bookmarked a similar case from The Guardian:

Police believe a couple found dead in a suspected chemical suicide pact met only hours before and had made contact via the internet... The bodies were found in the fume-filled car, which had notes placed on the windows warning of the toxic chemicals inside. The Sun said Lee, who reportedly had a severe eating disorder, had used the [internet] forum to ask advice on concocting a toxic mix to take her own life.

The most detailed explanation of the phenomenon was at Wired two years ago:

A suicide technique that mixes household chemicals to produce a deadly hydrogen sulfide gas became a grisly fad in Japan last year. Now it’s slowly seeping into the United States over the internet, according to emergency workers, who are alarmed at the potential for innocent causalities.

At least 500 Japanese men, women and children took their lives in the first half of 2008 by following instructions posted on Japanese websites, which describe how to mix bath sulfur with toilet bowl cleaner to create a poisonous gas. One site includes an application to calculate the correct portions of each ingredient based on room volume, along with a PDF download of a ready-made warning sign to alert neighbors and emergency workers to the deadly hazard...

The American version of the method substitutes a common insecticide for the bath sulfur used in the Japanese recipe; bath sulfur isn’t available in the United States...

This is your face on meth

Selections from a group of 21 before-and-after mug shots posted at MSNBC, via the J-Walk Blog.

Americans with(out) passports

This map was posted at Political Language, with these comments:

As with every social statistic applicable to the US there are geographic disparities. I couldn’t find exact figures for states, so I extrapolated zip code-based passport issuance data from the State Department to create a choropleth map of globetrotting & stay-at-home America.

These are very rough calculations, better for comparison than exact figures. There aren’t many surprises. Alaska & Hawaii... weighed in at 44% and 33% respectively, New Jersey was the only state approaching 50%, and West Virginia and Mississippi tied for last place at 13%.

Additional explanation at the link.  Since this was described as a "chloropleth" map, I had to look that up:

A choropleth map (Greek χώρος + πλήθω ("area/region" + "multiply") is a thematic map in which areas are shaded or patterned in proportion to the measurement of the statistical variable being displayed on the map... Choropleth maps are based on statistical data aggregated over previously defined regions (such as counties), in contrast to area-class and isarithmic maps, in which region boundaries are defined by data patterns. Thus, where defined regions are important to a discussion (as in an election map divided by electoral regions), choropleths are preferred...

Technical aspects of the color schemes at Wikipedia.

Washington - the "blackest name" in the United States

From an AP story in the StarTribune:

The 2000 U.S. Census counted 163,036 people with the surname Washington. Ninety percent of them were African-American, a far higher black percentage than for any other common name...

"There was a lot more consciousness and pride in American history among African-Americans and enslaved African-Americans than a lot of people give them credit for ... they were thinking about how they could be Americans," says Adam Goodheart, a Washington College professor and author of "1861: Civil War Awakening."

But for black people who chose the name Washington, it's uncertain precisely why. "It's an assumption that the surname is tied to George," says Tony Burroughs, a black genealogist, who says 82 to 94 percent of Washingtons listed in the 1880 to 1930 censuses were black. "As far as I'm concerned it's a coincidence."..

Washington was listed 138th when the Census Bureau published the 1,000 most common American surnames from the 2000 survey... Ninety percent of those Washingtons, numbering 146,520, were black. Five percent, or 8,813, were white. Three percent were two or more races, 1 percent Hispanic, and 1 percent Asian or Pacific Islander.

Jefferson was the second-blackest name, at 75 percent. Lincoln was only 14 percent black.  Many present-day Washingtons are surprised to learn their name is not 100 percent black.

The presidential motorcade

This illustration (click for bigger) accompanied a recent article in The Atlantic explaining how the Secret Service protects the President.

It is a sorely underappreciated fact that both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were the subjects of relatively close-call assassination attempts. During a speech Bush gave at Tbilisi’s Freedom Square in Georgia on May 10, 2005, an assailant threw a live grenade at the president... Luckily, the grenade fell more than 30 yards away from Bush, outside of its effective range, and it did not explode. The Secret Service had warned the president and his staff that it was not able to screen everyone within the standard range, and that as a result, he was potentially in danger. According to former administration officials, Bush insisted on giving the speech anyway.

Clinton’s brush with death was closer still, and his life may have been saved by a gut decision made by his detail leader... in 1996, President Clinton was in Manila for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, and had on his agenda a visit with a local official. He was running late, in a surly mood, and eager to get going. According to Gormley, just moments before the motorcade was about to move, agents using a special intelligence-gathering capacity—one that remains classified—picked up radio chatter mentioning the words wedding and bridge. Knowing well that wedding was often a code word for a terrorist hit, Merletti changed the route, which happened to include a bridge. Clinton was angry at the decision, which would cause further delay, but he did not override it. When agents arrived at the bridge, they indeed found explosives: had Clinton taken the prescribed route, he very likely would have been killed. (Within the past decade, the service has added an electronic-countermeasures vehicle— theoretically capable of jamming remotely controlled explosives—to the presidential protection package.) 

I understand the President needs protection and continuous/instantaneous communication with everyone.  But the full panoply of the motorcade gives me unpleasant associations with an "imperial" presidency.

U.S. teen birth rate at record low

For some reason, that title seems counterintuitive.  The report comes from The Raw Story:

The US teen birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in 70 years, a study said Wednesday, as an expert pointed to regular contraceptive use by teens as the main cause of the drop.

The 2009 rate was 39.1 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19, or 59 percent lower than the high of 96.3 births per 1,000 recorded in 1957, said the report by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)...

"But the US teen birth rate still far outpaces most European countries," Lindberg cautioned.

The teen birth rate in Russia was nine percentage points lower than in the United States, while among European Union member states, only Bulgaria had a higher rate -- 43.4 percent -- of teen births than the United States, according to UN statistics included in the NCHS report.

In France and Germany, only around 10 percent of teenaged girls have babies, while in Britain the ratio is around one in four, a high rate for Europe but still around 13 percentage points lower than in the United States.

More at the link.

California's "worse case scenario" - floods of Biblical proportions

At a conference in Sacramento last week, 117 researchers brought together to study flooding risks in California presented a chilling model they say could become a distinct possibility: A winter storm that brings warm South Pacific air over parts of California, creating an "atmospheric river" that could bring 10 feet of rain over 40 days, flooding large tracts of the state and bringing flood water to nearly a quarter of the state's homes...

As sensational as that scenario sounds, researchers say it's based in historical reality: Such storms have hit California before, most notably in 1861 and 1862, when floods turned a 300-mile stretch of the Central Valley into a lake...

"We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes," said Lucy Jones, chief scientist of the US Geological Survey Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project, which created the model with the help of researchers from FEMA and the California Emergency Management Agency...

The article closes by noting that the risks of such a superstorm "increases as climate change takes hold." Ah....

Good guys vs. bad guys

Here's a thought-provoking question posted at Reddit this morning:

"If we want our children to grow up smart, why do we send them mixed messages in cartoons saying that the villain is a genius and the hero beats them with brawn?"

Ponder that for a while.

Spirograph wheels

In my judgement, one of the best toys ever marketed.

From the Flickr photostream of Leo Reynolds.

Impressive Labyrinth skills

I used to be quite good at this game when I was a child, but I never tried it with two balls, as this fellow does.

When I watched this video at 22 words, I started wondering what year it was that my family had the game.  There are so many "labyrinth-" named games now that a Google search was frustrating, but I finally found an answer after adding the word "original" to the search - "Introduced in 1947, the original labyrinth has challenged young and old for over half a century."

Sources for national and international news

Data from a survey conducted conducted Dec. 1-5, 2010 "among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines" by the Pew Research Center.  At the link, the data are further analyzed by generations (18-29, 30-49, 50-64, 65 and up):

The decline in the share of Americans who cite television as their main source of national and international news crosses all age groups. Over the past three years, the number saying TV is their main source has fallen 16 points among 18-29 year-olds, eight points among those 30 to 49, and six points among those age 50 and older.

Those data are presented in graphic form at the link.  Via The Daily Dish.

Cognitive biases

Just a few selections from an impressively long Wikipedia list found yesterday, via Robot Wisdom:

Anchoring – the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.

Bandwagon effect – the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same.

Bias blind spot – the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people.

Confirmation bias – the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Experimenter's or Expectation bias – the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.

Illusion of control – the tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.

Information bias – the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

Normalcy bias – the refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.

Planning fallacy – the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.

Status quo bias – the tendency to like things to stay relatively the same

Availability cascade – a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse.

Hindsight bias – sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable.

Ostrich effect – ignoring an obvious (negative) situation.

Egocentric bias – occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would.

Herd instinct – common tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict.

Ingroup bias – the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups.

Just-world phenomenon – the tendency for people to believe that the world is just and therefore people "get what they deserve."

Many, many more at Wikipedia.

Another library bookshelf hidden door

Found at Bookshelf Porn, via Book Porn.

The woes of hybrid cars

Since spring, irate owners of hybrid Civics have been venting their frustration on the web. Some describe how their cars’ battery can suddenly die while trying to overtake or labour up a hill. Others talk of leaving their car with the battery fully charged, only to return an hour or two later to find it flat...

Honda’s answer has been to issue a couple of software patches that make the Civic’s battery work less energetically, and its petrol engine harder still. However, after having the fix downloaded, many owners claim not only that their cars have lost power, but also that their fuel economy has fallen from about 45mpg (5.2L/100km) on the highway to around 33mpg—little better than a non-hybrid version of the same model, which costs $5,000 less. Some have asked, unsuccessfully, to have the old software re-installed. Others have threatened to sue, and had their pricey batteries quietly replaced.

The surprise in all this is that the batteries conking out are the reliable old nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) variety—not the more powerful but finicky lithium-ion versions being adopted in the latest generation of electric cars and plug-in hybrids...

The best guess about what is happening is that it has something to do with the way the batteries are charged and discharged during use...

More at The Economist for those interested or affected.

WikiLeaks Task Force acronym: W.T.F.

Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it's mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F.  (source)

Res ipsa loquitur

Nice library

Biblioteca do Palàcio Nacional da Ajuda Lisboa III, Lisbon, Portugal.

Photo found at La Petit Poulailler, via Librarianista.

"Telling the bees"

The aptly named phrase consists of the practice of promptly informing Bees of a death in the family in order to preempt them from departing the hive once they realize they have lost their ‘keeper’. The custom is more common than you would think, even to this day, as recounted by the American writer Mark Twain in his famous novel, ‘Huckleberry Finn’;

“And he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me.”

In China, Beehives are turned a different direction after the death of their keeper, hinting at a superstition that harkens back to a more ancient custom. Details vary, but the essence remains the same – tell the Bees, and quickly. In England circa 1840, a woman inquired if the Bees had been informed of the death of their keeper and upon learning they had not, proceeded to prepare a dish of spice cake and sugar and presented it to the hive while jingling her keys and reciting the following rhyme; 

“Honey bees, Honey bees, hear what I say!
Your Master J.A. has passed away.
But his wife now begs you will freely stay,
And still gather honey for many a day.
Bonny bees, Bonny bees, hear what I say.”

I've excerpted this from a much longer, three-part article by Andrew Gough at his Arcadia site.  Lots of arcane information in each of the three parts.  Please explore and enjoy.   And a big hat tip to Uncertain Times for pointing the way.

Why the clown visited Molly

From a heartbreaking story reported by CBS News:

When older brother Jeff was 6, Molly disappeared. For a while Jeff asked constantly: "Where's Molly?" He stopped asking after being told repeatedly by his mother he had to forget his baby sister...

Jeff Daly reunited with the sister he last saw when she was just shy of her third birthday... Molly couldn't tell Jeff and Cindy about those missing 47 years, they set about filling in the details, which brought them to the institution where Molly was sent back in 1957: the Oregon Fairview Home.

Fairview, founded in 1907, was originally named the "Oregon State Institution for the Feeble-Minded." And it was hardly alone. By 1962, there were 123 state institutions around the country... "The doctors told my parents, 'It's okay. Let Molly go to Salem. She'll be in an institution. She'll be better off there.'"

...at first, Molly's father visited often, until Fairview's staff advised him to stop, because Molly would become inconsolable after he left.

But Jack Daly found an ingenious way to continue seeing his daughter... "He did go back," said Jeff. "It was only a way that I suppose my dad could have figured out. He went back as a clown."

The rest of the story is at CBS News (along with a link to the video), via BoingBoing.

The long winter night comes to Tromsø

In Tromsø, Norway - way north of the Polar Circle - the sun has gone down for the last time this year. To mark the beginning of the ‘Mørketid’ as the period without daylight is called, hundreds of local kindergarten kids each brought a homemade candle to the city square where they were all lit…

The sun is expected to return in early January 2011, as usual…

Via Ordinary Finds.