Monday Links from the Bench vol. CDLVIII

[NickFitz]

Quite a mild day out there, but that doesn't mean you have to go out in it when you could stay in reading stuff instead

• Golden blood: the rarest blood in the world - Turns out the rhesus factor in blood is a tri-state thing: "Golden blood is actually the nickname for Rh-null, the world's rarest blood type… the type is so rare that only about 43 people have been reported to have it worldwide, and until 1961, when it was first identified in an Aboriginal Australian woman, doctors assumed embryos with Rh-null blood would simply die in utero."
  
  
• The universe’s continued existence implies extra dimensions are tiny - "The fact that the universe hasn’t been destroyed by evaporating black holes puts strict limits on the size of extra dimensions, if any actually exist, [Katie] Mack and Robert McNees of Loyola University Chicago claim in a paper posted online at arXiv.org September 13." Here's an earlier piece by Katie Mack explaining vacuum decay and how it could cause the end of the Universe: Vacuum decay: the ultimate catastrophe
  
  
• The pork cylinder - Another delightful episode of medical history from Roger Morris: "A few days ago I was reading an article about foreign bodies in the bladder – for what better way to while away a dull afternoon?… Dr Packard’s article informed me that one French patient had been operated on after going to a doctor with a ‘cylinder of pork’ stuck inside his bladder. What on earth could this object be, and how did it end up there?"
  
  
• The Lawrence Bader Mystery - ”When Lawrence Joseph Bader disappeared on a solo fishing trip on Lake Erie on May 15, 1957, the Coast Guard and Bader's own family feared the worst… there seemed no question that his death was just a tragic accident. And so it might have remained except for the chance encounter one of Bader's friends from Akron had at a sporting goods show in Chicago five years later.” Amnesia, or insurance fraud?
  
  
• How to Make a Bow and Arrow By Hand - "Learn to make a Native American longbow by hand and become a DIY archer." A step-by-step guide with “Find your tree” as step 1
  
  
  
  
  
• What a Beetle’s Genital Worms Reveal About the Concept of Individuality - "Dung beetles sexually transmit nematodes, and that’s a good thing—for them, and their young."
  
  
• Abraham Lincoln and the St. Louis Vampire - A strange tale from the time of the American Civil War: ”In 1864, every time there was a hanging at the prison, a young Swiss woman named Elizabeth Mund would appear wanting to suck the blood of the hanged man, believing it would cure her of a nerve disease."
  
  
• Flocking - ”Have you ever watched a school of fish, a flock of birds, or even a crowd of people and watched how they move?” Excellent tutorial, with interactive examples, on implementing flocking algorithms, by Drew Cutchins.
  
  
• The Elevator-Phobes of a Vertical City - Amos Barshad on the perils of living in New York when you have a fear of lifts: ”My record up is 22 flights. My record down is 50. That’s at my parents’ place in Tribeca. They moved to the city a few years back and gleefully flocked to a 50th-floor apartment with truly stunning panoramic views. They tell me they love me, but sometimes I’m not sure.”
  
  
• In 19th-Century Britain, The Hottest Status Symbol Was a Painting of Your Cow - And not just cows: ”The portraits were often exaggerated to emphasize the idealized animal shape, which usually consisted of ‘[providing] a bit more fat in crucial areas.’ For pigs, the ideal was a football shape. Cows were rectangular, and sheep tended towards oblong." This sheep is just weird:
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!

[northernladuk]

•In 19th-Century Britain, The Hottest Status Symbol Was a Painting of Your Cow - And not just cows: ”The portraits were often exaggerated to emphasize the idealized animal shape, which usually consisted of ‘[providing] a bit more fat in crucial areas.’ For pigs, the ideal was a football shape. Cows were rectangular, and sheep tended towards oblong." This sheep is just weird:

I believe MF still uses this technique from what I can see.

•The pork cylinder - Another delightful episode of medical history from Roger Morris

Wasn't quite what I thought the title indicated

What an icebreaker at parties Cristina Ledón-Rettig has.
Which one of these facts about me is true?
I am Spartacus
I can bleed a radiator
I am credited with discovering Dung Beetles have worms in their genitalia


Great links as usual.

[DoctorStrangelove]

• How to Make a Bow and Arrow By Hand - "Learn to make a Native American longbow by hand and become a DIY archer." A step-by-step guide with “Find your tree” as step 1
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!

Wood? Yew, surely.

THE WORKSHOP Making a self yew English longbow

[northernladuk]

Wood? Yew, surely.

THE WORKSHOP Making a self yew English longbow

That wouldn't be a Native American bow then would it?

[DoctorStrangelove]

That wouldn't be a Native American bow then would it?

Using Pacific yew I don't suppose it's exactly an "English" long bow either.

Well there's inneresting then:

In most inhabited areas, common timbers can be made into high-quality self bows.

The pieces must be long enough (approximately the height of the archer), and the grain must be sufficiently straight.

Denser timbers normally store energy better and can be made into narrower bows with less effort – high-quality yew allows for particularly narrow self bows, such as the traditional European version of the longbow.

The Eastern Woodlands tribes of North America used hickory, tribes in parts of the Midwestern United States osage orange, Native Americans of the west coast used short, wide, recurved bows made of American Pacific yew, Brazilian rainforest tribes used palm wood, and many others.

In Europe and North America, common woods such as maple, ash, elm, and oak make excellent flat bows, and are far easier to obtain than good-quality yew.

Quite an expensive hobby:

PRICE LIST for items available from green man longbows

[ladymuck]

Didn't think this worthy of its its own thread so am hijacking Nick's

Miyu Kojima Creates Miniature Replicas of Lonely Deaths | Spoon & Tamago

Essentially someone creates miniature replica kodokushi scenes, where someone has died, naturally I guess, and not been found for months. Short article, will be hunting down more examples as the few shared are quite intense.

[NickFitz]

Didn't think this worthy of its its own thread so am hijacking Nick's

Miyu Kojima Creates Miniature Replicas of Lonely Deaths | Spoon & Tamago

Essentially someone creates miniature replica kodokushi scenes, where someone has died, naturally I guess, and not been found for months. Short article, will be hunting down more examples as the few shared are quite intense.

Profoundly bleak, but also very cool

[greenlake]

Didn't think this worthy of its its own thread so am hijacking Nick's

Miyu Kojima Creates Miniature Replicas of Lonely Deaths | Spoon & Tamago

Essentially someone creates miniature replica kodokushi scenes, where someone has died, naturally I guess, and not been found for months. Short article, will be hunting down more examples as the few shared are quite intense.

That reminds me of the Miniature Killer episodes on CSI....

The Miniature Killer - Wikipedia