caveat emptor (bibentis et audientis)

From: Reanimation Library

"Antique Italian violins, such as those crafted by Antonio Stradivari or Giuseppe Guarneri 'del Gesu,' can fetch millions of dollars. Many violinists truly believe that these instruments are better than newly made violins, and several scientists have tried to work out why. Some suspected at the unusually dense wood, harvested from Alpine spruces that grew during an Ice Age. Others pointed the finger at the varnish, or the chemicals that Stradivari used to treat the wood.
     But Claudia Fritz (a scientist who studies instrument acoustics) and Joseph Curtin (a violin-maker) may have discovered the real secret to a Stradivarius’s sound: nothing at all.
     The duo asked professional violinists to play new violins, and old ones by Stradivari and Guarneri. They couldn’t tell the difference between the two groups. One of the new violins even emerged as the most commonly preferred instrument."
— Discover Magazine
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"An expensive wine may well have a full body, a delicate nose and good legs, but the odds are your brain will never know.
     A survey of hundreds of drinkers found that on average people could tell good wine from plonk no more often than if they had simply guessed."
— The Guardian
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"'Of course, the wine preferences of the subjects were clearly nonsensical. Instead of acting like rational agents — getting the most utility for the lowest possible price — they were choosing to spend more money for an identical product. When the scientists repeated the experiment with members of the Stanford University wine club, they got the same results. In a blind tasting, these 'semi-experts' were also misled by the made-up price tage. 'We don't realize how powerful our expectations are,' says Antonio Rangel, a neuroeconomist at Cal-Tech who led the study. 'They can really modulate every aspect of our experience. And if our expectations are based on false assumptions' — like the assumption that more expensive wine always taste better — 'they can be very misleading.'"
—Jonah Lehrer (from his book How We Decide), The Frontal Cortex
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See related article here...

au revoir (revisited)

"Peter Frampton has been reunited with the Gibson electric guitar he played on Frampton Comes Alive, three decades years after it was presumed destroyed in a plane crash.
     It turns out the guitar did not burn up in November 1980 when a cargo plane crashed on takeoff in Caracas, Venezuela, on its way to Panama, where Mr. Frampton was to perform. Instead someone plucked it from the burning wreckage and later sold it to a musician on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao. [...]
     Last month, the tourist board official, Ghatim Kabbara, bought the guitar with public funds and traveled to Nashville to hand it to Mr. Frampton in a tattered gig bag. Mr. Frampton said he knew as soon as he picked the instrument up that it was the same 1954 Gibson Les Paul with customized pickups that he had played for a decade. It was an emotional moment, he said.
     'For 30 years, it didn’t exist – it went up in a puff of smoke as far as I was concerned,' Mr. Frampton said in a telephone interview.
     Mr. Frampton said he was given the guitar by a man named Mark Mariana in 1970. Mr. Frampton had been playing with his band Humble Pie at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, and he borrowed the guitar from Mr. Mariana for a show because his own instrument kept feeding back when he soloed. He fell in love with it. Made of Honduran mahagony, it was light in his hands, and the neck was thin, the fretting action light, suiting his small hands. 'I used it for both sets and my feet didn’t touch the ground,' he recalled. saying he thought, 'This is the best guitar I have ever played.'
— James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times
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iowan pie vs. american pie… bye-bye

From: informed COMMENT

"From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66 per cent among Hispanic households and 53 per cent among black households, compared with just 16 per cent among white households."
— Deccan Herald
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stuff that dreams are made of

From: Reanimation Library

"It was during the time of Freud that the concept of ectoplasm as ghost residue gained popularity. Studies of the time suggested ectoplasm was a yellow-green ooze around a ghost body. Residue was thought to be left behind and often spotted on a photograph or with special lights or goggles. Contact with ectoplasm was thought to have the potential to harm. One of the key properties of ectoplasm is that some of its forms are extremely sensitive to light, so much so that even flashing a torch drives the substance back into the medium's body with the force of snapped elastic. Bruises, open wounds and hemorrhage may result. In a seance at the British College of Psychic Science one of the sitters made a violent movement when touched by ectoplasm; the medium, Mr. Evan Powell, immediately suffered a severe injury to his chest. Breathing it or moving through it was supposed to be the cause of illness or possession, although many times the supposed ectoplasm was found to be fabricated.
     Other samples of ectoplasm have been proven to be a composition of egg white, cheesecloth or wood pulp created by or for the medium. The distinctive texture and smell of ectoplasm can be created using various ingredients, such as a mixture of soap, gelatin and egg white. In the late nineteenth century many fraudulent mediums used muslin. In the twentieth-century divining rooms that sprung up during the Spiritualist movement, seances were often held for members of the public. During these rituals, webs and pieces of gauzy fabric were covered with fluorescent paint and glowing materials to create fake ectoplasm. Sometimes liquid was released in an effort to create tears or rain by spirits, often dropped from the ceiling, and pulled back up before the end of the seance. Visitors would be warned not to touch the 'spirit residue,' lest they come to grave harm."
— Robin Bellamy, PSICAN
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Francis Bacon by John Deakin for Vogue 1962 (Anamas à Miami)

"Baron Schrenck Notzing was able to get a fragment of ectoplasm into a tube. The moment he wanted to trap it it vanished with lightning-like speed. Occasionally, however, with the medium's consent, specimens were amputated for chemical and microscopical analysis. Of the result Baron Schrenck Notzing writes: 'Very probably the formation of the substance which appears in the sitting as liquid material, and also as amorphous material, or filmy net-like and veil-like material, in the form of shreads, wisps, threads and cords, in large or small packets, is an organized tissue which easily decomposes-a sort of transitory matter which originates in the organism in a manner unknown to us, possesses unknown biological functions, and formative possibilities and is evidently peculiarly dependent on the psychic influence of the medium. As regards the structure of the teleplasm, we only know this: that within it, or about it, we find conglomerates of bodies resembling epithelium, real plate epithelium with nuclei, veil-like filmy structures, coherent lamellar bodies without structure, as well as flat globules and mucus. If we abstain from any detailed indications concerning the composition and function of teleplasm we may yet assert two definite facts: 1. In teleplasm, or associated with it, we find substances of organic origin, various cell-forms, which leave behind cell detritus. 2. The mobile material observed, which seems to represent the fundamental substance of the phenomena, does not consist of india-rubber or any other artificial product, by which its existence could be fraudulently represented. For substances of this kind can never decompose into cell detritus, or leave a residue of such.'"
— New Age Village
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side effects; side affects

From: Reanimation Library

"Why are inert pills suddenly overwhelming promising new drugs and established medicines alike? The reasons are only just beginning to be understood. A network of independent researchers is doggedly uncovering the inner workings—and potential therapeutic applications—of the placebo effect. At the same time, drugmakers are realizing they need to fully understand the mechanisms behind it so they can design trials that differentiate more clearly between the beneficial effects of their products and the body's innate ability to heal itself. A special task force of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health is seeking to stem the crisis by quietly undertaking one of the most ambitious data-sharing efforts in the history of the drug industry. After decades in the jungles of fringe science, the placebo effect has become the elephant in the boardroom.
     The roots of the placebo problem can be traced to a lie told by an Army nurse during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of southern Italy. The nurse was assisting an anesthetist named Henry Beecher, who was tending to US troops under heavy German bombardment. When the morphine supply ran low, the nurse assured a wounded soldier that he was getting a shot of potent painkiller, though her syringe contained only salt water. Amazingly, the bogus injection relieved the soldier's agony and prevented the onset of shock."
— Steve Silberman, Wired
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"It might sound strange to some, but a new study published in the most recent issue of PLoS One may have turned the conventional idea of a placebo on its head. Researchers found that placebo pills benefited patients, even when doctors explained that they were only taking sugar pills.
     'Until now, doctors have thought they had to lie about the placebo pill in order to tap into the effects,' said Dr. Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston. 'But we said, "Let's see if placebos can work when they're applied in an honest way."'
     And, according to this study, it seems they did."
— Mikaela Conley, ABC News
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"I said don't tear me up." — part two

From: Modern Mechanix

"[...] Almost a lone voice at the time was that of Winston Churchill who recorded his opinion in May 1919 while he was the War Secretary that: ‘I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. ... It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected’. [...]
     In January 1953 the Colonial Secretary, now Oliver Lyttleton, authorised the army to use a ‘new tear gas’, known as BBC, in Malaya. ‘This gas’, he said, ‘the only effect of which was lachrymatory, would be used in the jungle to divert bandits into other routes or to deny portions of the jungle to them. It was possible that, when it became known that this gas was being used in Malaya, there would be criticism from some quarters’. The Cabinet, chaired by the Foreign Secretary, now Anthony Eden, gave its approval but Lyttleton had been misinformed about BBC (also known as CA for short), or to give it its proper name, Bromobenzyl-cyanide. It was not a ‘new tear gas’ because it had been used by the French as Camite during World War I. Under the terms of the Geneva Gas Protocol the use of BBC was permissible because the British army was engaged in fighting ‘bandits’ who were members of the Malayan National Liberation Army, the military wing of the Malayan Communist Party. It was a therefore a ‘police action’ and not a ‘war’ (to remove any doubts it would come to be called the ‘Malayan Emergency’) but it still represented a major change in attitude for the army to be allowed to go beyond the use of a lachrymatory agent for crowd control and to employ it as a stand-alone ‘area denial’ weapon.
     At the time there were two main lachrymatory agents employed by police forces and their exploitation illustrates the difference in attitudes to tear gas on the other side of the Atlantic. The first, and the one most probably used in Northern Rhodesia, Bombay and shipped to Palestine by the War Office to replace the obsolete KSK grenades, was Chloroacetophenone, known as CN for short. It was discovered by German scientists in the 1870s and further developed by the US after World War I. It caused severe irritation to the eyes, nasal passages and throat. It also induced involuntarily closure of the eyes and a feeling of helplessness and panic and during the 1920s CN became virtually standard equipment in US urban police departments.
     The second was Diphenylaminechlorarsine, known as Adamsite or DM for short. Although this was also first discovered in Germany, it was developed independently in the US by Dr. Roger Adams (after whom it was named) in 1918. In small doses its effects were similar to CN but in higher concentrations it caused nausea and uncontrollable vomiting.

Its effects could last for up to twenty-four hours and one of its earliest uses was after President Hoover ordered the removal of the so-called ‘Bonus Army’ from Washington, D.C. on 28 July 1932. An infantry regiment and a cavalry regiment commanded by Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur (with Major Dwight D. Eisenhower as one of his aides), supported by tanks commanded by Major George Patton, used DM and rifles fitted with bayonets to break up a huge protest camp created by World War I veterans (accompanied by their wives and children) who were demanding payment of a war bonus they believed they had been promised.

     After World War II another lachrymatory agent, 0-chlorobenzylidene Malononitrile, known as CS for short, gradually replaced most of the others. It had first been synthesized in 1928 by two US chemists, Ben Corson and Roger Stroughton, whose initials identify the compound. It was developed further by the Chemical Defence Establishment (CDE) at Porton Down in England where it was found that CS reacted with moisture on the skin and in the eyes causing effects similar to CN, but that the dose of CS which might lead to subsequent death was at least twelve hundred times greater than that which produced symptoms so intolerable as to force a person to leave an exposed area. SK, KSK, BBC (CA), DM and CN all had a much lower safety factor and the first use of CS by the British army in the Empire was in 1958 in the Crown Colony of Cyprus. [...]
     There is one further lachrymatory agent that should be mentioned. Didenoxazepine, known as CR for short, was only ever manufactured in the UK at the Chemical Defence Establishment at Nancekuke in Cornwall between 1962 and 1977. On the closure of Nancekuke the remaining stocks of CR were transferred to Porton Down and in response to a question asked in the House of Commons in December 1994 it was disclosed by the Chief Executive of Porton Down, Graham Pearson, that: ‘The studies on CR gas in relation to the skin and eye sensitivity tests ... concluded that CR was found to have certain advantages over CS in specific situations. Its potency was found to be approximately ten times greater than that of CS and its toxicity is low in comparison with the other irritants’. In response to another question in December 1998 the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Defence, John Spellar, said that: ‘We have no records of CR having been used operationally by the Armed Forces. ... CR was authorised to be held in readiness for use in Northern Ireland in October 1973. Its possible use has also been authorised on a small number of occasions where the armed forces have responded to a request for assistance for law enforcement purposes from the civil power’. It is still reserved for use by military Special Forces and is not available to the police."
— Mike Waldren, Police Firearms Officers Association
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Protester reacts to tear gas in Cairo, Egypt (from: The Telegraph)

"While tear gas and pepper spray are banned from use in war by an international treaty, domestic use is legal and nearly ubiquitous in the United States. The advantages of these 'non-lethal' technologies, police say, include fewer deaths and serious injuries to officers and suspects, a more benign image for departments and less litigation. Currently, more than 90 percent of the country's police departments issue pepper spray to their officers, according to the Justice Department, and many departments store tear gas for use in crowd control or riot situations.
     Despite widespread use, none of the agents sold for police purposes is monitored, tested or regulated by any government agency for consistency, purity, toxicity or even efficacy. Dr. Howard Hu, a Harvard University epidemiologist, says that the extent of ill effects from these chemicals is unknowable since there have been no rigorous, independent follow-up studies on exposed populations. Little has changed since 1989, when Hu wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 'There is an ongoing need for investigation into the full toxicological potential of tear gas chemicals and renewed debate on whether their use can be condoned under any circumstances.'
     Because they are treated as weapons, police-grade products 'fall between regulatory cracks,' says Raymond Downs, program manager in science and technology at the National Institute for Justice. 'Police are at the mercy of manufacturers,' Downs adds, in that they have to rely solely on makers' claims for the safety of the chemical weapons themselves and for the wide variety of solvents and propellants routinely added to turn the active ingredients into aerosols."
— Terry Allen, Common Dreams
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See earlier article about tears here...

au revoir

From: Coco The Blogging Dog

"A Swedish woman's recent toiling in her garden turned up a rather unexpected harvest when she pulled a carrot out of the ground 'wearing' the wedding ring she had lost back in 1995. After 16 years, Lena and Ola Påhlsson, who reside near Mora, Dalarna, in central Sweden, had given up hope of ever finding Lena's lost wedding ring. The ring, which Lena had designed herself, went missing after she had put it on the kitchen counter in midst of a holiday baking session back in 1995. The couple engaged in a frantic search for the ring, even checked behind the appliances and beneath the floor boards when renovating the kitchen a few years later, but to no avail."
— Nothing To Do With Arbroath
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"A businessman who lost his mobile phone on a beach was amazed when it turned up - in the belly of a giant cod. Andrew Cheatle thought it had been swept out to sea after it slipped from his pocket.
     But a week later his girlfriend's mobile rang and it was fisherman Glen Kerley saying he'd found the phone in a 25lb fish, reports The Sun. Andrew got the handset back, dried it out - and amazingly it still works."
— Junior's Book
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"An Arizona woman who lost her class ring 26 years ago says she has no idea how the object wound up in Iowa, a state she has never visited.
     Cindy Herzner said she obtained the ring from Phoenix's Trevor Browne High School in 1985 and lost it six months later, The Arizona Republic reported Wednesday.
     Herzner said she never thought she would see the ring again until she recently received a call from Amanda Kennedy, whose grandmother, Sandy Neuhaus, discovered the ring entwined in the roots of a dead evergreen she was removing from her Dyersville, Iowa, yard in August."
— UPI
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"In 1942, Ted Mogil was given a military-issued prayer book just prior to being shipped out to the South Pacific. As the only Jew in his regiment, he grew especially attached to the prayer book as the only tangible ties to his Jewish heritage while he fought in World War II. He said he always kept it in the left breast pocket of his shirt, every single day overseas. After the war, Mogil married his childhood sweetheart and they left their Nebraskan hometown. Sixty-seven years later, a twelve-year-old Nebraskan boy named Will Beach browsed through a used book sale at his temple and found an old, but well-kept, army-issued prayer book with Mogil’s name inscribed inside the book cover. Using the money he saved from mowing lawns, Beach bought the book and after searching on the internet, eventually found and returned the book to Mogil, who by that time was living in Washington, halfway across the country."
— Listverse
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"Bill Fulton, of Baker City, Oregon, dropped his wallet behind the bleachers in his middle school gym in 1946. Sixty-three years later, that lost wallet, with its leather cowboy design and Fulton’s original Social Security card still inside, has been returned to him.
     The contents have been untouched since the end of World War II, holding, along with the SS card, Fulton’s bike license, which he carried as a delivery boy for a pharmacy. Melanie Trindle, the secretary for Baker Middle School, said the wallet was found by a worker removing the school’s bleachers in a renovation. When she brought the wallet to Fultons door, he was very suprised and appreciative to Trindle for bringing the missing item back.
     Fulton, now 78, says the wallet probably got dropped behind the bleachers while he was cheering at a highschool basketball game with his friends. Seeing it again has made him reflect back on his life, which has taken him to the Korean War and Berlin and back to Oregon. He commented on how fast time goes."
—lostfoundreturned
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