I love math (though it's debatable whether math loves me back, I suspect not) so it's a pleasure to read Cliff Pickover's newest creation, The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics.

Don't let the title fool you - The Math Book is a thoroughly enjoyable "walk" through the history of mathematics with each milestone narrated by Pickover in a short and sweet fashion (and surprisingly, with very little equations) that even non-mathemagicians like myself can enjoy. If you've ever heard the terms Bessel functions, Transcendental numbers, and Riemann hypothesis, and want to know more, then this is the book for you.

Below is an excerpt from the book (selecting which ones to show was a hard thing to do - there were just so many interesting articles!):

Cicada-Generated Prime Numbers

Cicadas are winged insects that evolved around 1.8 million years ago during the Pleistocene epoch, when glaciers advanced and retreated across North America. Cicadas of the genus Magicicada spend most of their lives below the ground, feeding on the juices of plant roots, and then emerge, mate, and die quickly. These creatures display a startling behavior: Their emergence is synchronized with periods of years that are usually the prime numbers 13 and 17. (A prime number is an integer such as 11, 13, and 17 that has only two integer divisors: 1 and itself.) During the spring of their 13th or 17th year, these periodical cicadas construct an exit tunnel. Sometimes more than 1.5 million individuals emerge in a single acre; this abundance of bodies may have survival value as they overwhelm predators such as birds that cannot possibly eat them all at once. (Photo: Joelmills [Wikipedia])

Some researchers have speculated that the evolution of prime-number life cycles occurred so that the creatures increased their chances of evading shorter-lived predators and parasites. For example, if these cicadas had 12-year life cycles, all predators with life cycles of 2, 3, 4, or 6 years might more easily find the insects. Mario Markus of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany, and his coworkers discovered that these kinds of prime-number cycles arise naturally from evolutionary mathematical models of interactions between predator and prey. In order to experiment, they first assigned random life-cycle durations to their computer-simulated populations. After some time, a sequence of mutations always locked the synthetic cicadas into a stable prime-number cycle.

Of course, this research is still in its infancy and many questions remain. What is special about 13 and 17? What predators or parasites have actually existed to drive the cicadas to these periods? Also, a mystery remain as to why, of the 1,500 cicada species worldwide, only a small number of the genus Magicicada are known to be periodical.

Borromean Rings

(L) Borromean Rings; (M) Valknut, or three interlocked triangles, on the Stora Hammar Stone; (R) Molecular Borromean Rings by J. Fraser SToddart

Peter Guthrie Tait (1831 - 1901) - A simple yet intriguing set of interlocking objects of interest to mathematicians and chemists is formed by Borromean rings - three mutually interlocked rings named after the Italian Renaissance family who used them on its coat of arms in the fifteenth century. (Image: Theon [Wikipedia])

Notice that Borromean rings have no two rings that are linked, so if we cut any one of the rings, all three rings come apart. Some historians speculate that the ancient ring configurations once represented the three families of Visconti, Sforza, and Borromeo, who formed a tenuous union through intermarriages. The rings also appear in 1467 in the Church of San Pancrazio in Florence. Even older, triangular versions were used by the Vikings, one famous example of which was found on a bedpost of a prominent woman who died in 834.

The rings appear in mathematical context in the 1876 paper on knots by Scottish mathematical physicist Peter Tait. Because two choices (over or under) are possible for each ring crossing, 2⁶ = 64 possible interlaced patterns exist. If we take symmetry into account, only 10 of these patterns are geometrically distinct.

Mathematicians now know that we cannot actually construct a true set of Borromean rings with flat circles, and in fact, you can see this for yourself if you try to create the interlocked rings out of wire, which requires some deformation or kinks in the wires. In 1987, Michael Freedman and Richard Skora proved the theorem stating that Borromean rings are impossible to construct with flat circles.

In 2004, UCLA chemists created a molecular Borromean ring compound that was 2.5 nanometers across and that included six metal ions. Researchers are currently contemplating ways in which they may use molecular Borromean rings in such diverse fields as spintronics (a technology that exploits electron spin and charge) and medical imaging.

Golden Ratio

Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (1445 - 1517) - In 1509, Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli, a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci, published Divina Proportione, a treatise on a number that is now widely known as the "Golden Ratio." This ratio, symbolized by , appears with amazing frequency in mathematics and nature. We can understand the proportion most easily by dividing a line into two segments so that the ratio of the whole segment to the longest part is the same as the ratio of the longer part to the shorter part, or (a+b)/b = b/a = 1.61803 ...

If the lengths of the sides of a rectangle are in the golden ratio, then the rectangle is a "golden rectangle." It's possible to divide a golden rectangle into a square and a golden rectangle. Next, we can cut the smaller golden rectangle into a smaller square and golden rectangle. We may continue this process indefinitely, producing smaller and smaller golden rectangles.

If we draw a diagonal from the top right of the original rectangle to the bottom left, then from the bottom right of the baby (that is, the next smaller) golden rectangle to the top left, the intersection point shows the point to which all the baby golden rectangles converge. Moreover, the lengths of the diagonals are in golden ratio to each other. The point to which all the golden rectangles converge is sometimes called the "Eye of God."

The golden rectangle is the only rectangle from which a square can be cut so that the remaining rectangle will always be similar to the original rectangle. If we connect the vertices in the diagram, we approximate a logarithmic spiral that "envelops" the Eye of God. Logarithmic spirals are everywhere - seashells, animal horns, the cochlea of the ear - anywhere that nature needs to fill space economically and regularly. A spiral is strong and uses a minimum of materials. While expanding, it alters its size but never its shape.

Benford's Law

Simon Newcomb (1835 - 1909), Frank Benford (1883 - 1948) - Benford's Law, also called the first-digit law or leading-digit phenomenon, asserts that in various number lists, the digit 1 tends to occur in the leftmost position with probability of roughly 30 percent, much greater than the expected 11.1 percent that would result if each digit occurred with a 1 to 9 probability. Benford's law can be observed, for instance, in tables that list populations, death rates, stock prices, baseball statistics, and the area of rivers and lakes. Explanations for this phenomenon are very recent. (Photo from Mark J. Nigrini)

Benford's law is named after Dr. Frank Benford, a physicist at the General Electric Company who publicized his work in 1938, although it had been previously discovered by mathematician and astronomer Simon Newcomb in 1881. Pages of logarithms, with numbers starting with the numerals 1 are said to be dirtier and more worn by other pages, because the number 1 occurs as the first digit about 30 percent more often than any other. In numerous kinds of data, Benford determined that the probability of any number n from 1 through 0 being the first digit is log₁₀ (1 + 1/n). Even the Fibonacci sequence - 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 - follows Benford's law. Fibonacci numbers are far more likely to start with "1" than any other digit. It appears that Benford's law applies to any data that follows a "power law." For example, large lakes are rare, medium-size lakes are more common, and small lakes are even more common. Similarly, 11 Fibonacci numbers exist in the range 1 - 100, but only one in the next three ranges of 100 (101 - 200, 201- 300, 301- 400)

Benford's law has often been used to detect fraud. For example, accounting consultants can sometimes use the law to detect fraudulent tax returns in which the occurrence of digits does not follow what would be expected according to Benford's law.

Menger Sponge

Menger Sponge by Jeannine Mosely, at the Institute for Figuring. Photo: Ravi Apte

Karl Menger (1902 - 1985) - The Menger sponge is a fractal object with an infinite number of cavities - a nightmarish object for any dentist to contemplate. The object was first described by Austrian mathematician Karl Menger in 1926. To construct the sponge, we begin with a "mother cube" and subdivide it into 27 identical smaller cubes. Next, we remove the cube in the center and the six cubes that share faces with it. This leaves behind 20 cubes. We continue to repeat the process forever. The number of cubes increases by 20ⁿ, where n is the number of iterations performed on the mother cube. The second iteration gives us 400 cubes, and by the time we get to the sixth iteration, we have 64,000,000 cubes.

Each face of the Menger sponge is called a Sierpinski carpet. Fractal antennae based on the Sierpinski carpet are sometimes used as efficient receivers of electromagnetic signals. Both the carpets and the entire cube have fascinating geometrical properties. For example, the sponge has an infinite surface area while enclosing zero volume.

According to the Institute for Figuring, with each iteration, the Sierpinski carpet face "dissolves into a foam whose final structure has no area whatever yet possesses a perimeter that is infinitely long. Like the skeleton of a beast whose flesh has vanished, the concluding form is without substance - it occupies a planar surface, but no longer fills it." This porous remnant hovers between a line and a plane. Whereas a line is one-dimensional and a plane two-dimensional, the Sierpinski carpet has a "fractional" dimension of 1.89. The Menger sponge has a fractional dimension (technically referred to as the Hausdorff Dimension) between a plane and a solid, approximately 2.73, and it has been used to visualize certain models of a foam-like space-time. Dr. Jeannine Mosely has constructed a Menger sponge model from more than 65,000 business cards that weights about 150 pounds (70 kilograms).

The Quest for Lie Group E₈

E8 graph as a 2-dimensional projection, by Peter McMullen
(image by Claudio Rocchini [wikipedia])

Marius Sophus Lie (1842 - 1899), Wilhelm Karl Joseph Killing (1847 - 1923) - For more than a century, mathematicians have sought to understand a vast, 248-dimensional entity, known to them only as E₈. Finally, in 2007, an international team of mathematicians and computer scientists made use of a supercomputer to tame the intricate beast.

As background, consider the Mysterium Cosmographicum (The Sacred Mystery of the Cosmos) of Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630), who was so enthralled with symmetry that he suggested the entire solar system and planetary orbits could be modeled by Platonic Solids, such as the cube and dodecahedron, nestled in each other forming layers as if in a gigantic crystalline onion. These kinds of Keplerian symmetries were limited in scope and number; however, symmetries that Kepler could have hardly imagined may indeed rule the universe.

In the late nineteenth century, the Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie (pronounced "Lee") studied objects with smooth rotational symmetries, like the sphere or doughnut in our ordinary three-dimensional space. In three and higher dimensions, these kinds of symmetries are expressed by Lie groups. The German mathematician Wilhelm Killing suggested the existence of the E₈ group in 1887. Simpler Lie groups control the shape of electron orbital and symmetries of subatomic quarks. Larger groups, like E₈, may someday hold the key to a unified theory of physics and help scientist understand string theory and gravity.

Fokko du Cloux, a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist who was one of the E₈ team members, wrote the software for the supercomputer and pondered the ramifications of E₈ while he was dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and breathing with a respirator. He died in November 2006, never living to see the end of the quest for E₈.

On January 8, 2007, a supercomputer computed the last entry in the table for E₈, which describes the symmetries of a 57-dimensional object that can be imagined as rotating in 248 ways without changing its appearance. The work is significant as an advance in mathematical knowledge and in the use of large-scale computing to solve profound mathematical problems.

Mathematical Universe Hypothesis

Max Tegmark (b. 1967) - In this book, we have encountered various geometries that have been thought to hold the keys to the universe. Johannes Kepler modeled the solar system with Platonic Solids such as the dodecahedron. Large Lie groups, like E₈, may someday help us create a unified theory of physics. Even Galileo in the seventeenth century suggested that "nature's great book is written in mathematical symbols." In the 1960s, physicist Eugene Wigner was impressed with the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences." (Photo: MIT Physics Faculty website)

In 2007, Swedish-American cosmologist Max Tegmark published scientific and popular articles on the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that states that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and that our universe is not just described by mathematics - it is mathematics. Tegmark is a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute. He notes that when we consider equations like 1 + 1 = 2, the notations for the numbers are relatively unimportant when compared to the relationship that are being described. He believes that "we don't invent mathematical structures - we discover them, and invent only the notation for describing them."

Tegmark's hypothesis implies that "we all live in a gigantic mathematical object - one that is more elaborate than a dodecahedron, and probably also more complex than objects with intimidating names like Calabi-Yau manifolds, tensor bundles, and Hilbert spaces, which appear in today's most advanced theories. Everything in our world is purely mathematical - including you." If this idea seems counterintuitive, this shouldn't be surprising, because many modern theories, like quantum theory and relativity, can defy intuition. As mathematician Ronald Graham once said, "Our brain have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions."

__________

Cliff Pickover is a prolific author, having published more than 40 books, translated into over a dozen languages, on topics ranging from science and mathematics to religion, art, history, computers and creativity, human intelligence, higher dimensions, time travel, and science fiction. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University's Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, holds over 50 U.S. patents, and is an associate editor for several scientific journals. His computer graphics have appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, and his research has received considerable attention from media outlets ranging from CNN and WIRED to The New York Times. His website, pickover.com, receives millions of visits.

Links: The Math Book website | The Math Book on Amazon | Cliff Pickover's Reality Carnival

__________

Previously on Neatorama: 5 Scientific Laws and the Scientists Behind Them

Math T-shirts from the Neatorama Store:

I Love Math T-Shirt	Math Puns Are The First Sine of Madness	Integral of 1/cabin = log cabin

Hi, I'm Lisa Katayama — I write a blog called TokyoMango, and I'm also a freelance magazine journalist and editor at Boing Boing Gadgets.

Last year, I published a book called Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan. It's a collection of 108 quirky and (usually) useful life hacks that are meant to solve problems and entertain people. It was inspired by a two-page spread on a Japanese TV show that I wrote in Wired Magazine's October 2006 issue — a couple months after the story came out in Wired, I met with an editor at Chronicle Books and we put together a book proposal, and the rest is history.

Urawaza is about applying nuggets of wisdom passed down through generations to every day problems that we still have trouble solving, like getting wine stains out of a white shirt or showing off to our friends by swimming backwards.

Here are three samples from the book, with accompanying videos made by friends and family:

1. How to clean up spilled egg yolk

Dilemma: The egg was supposed to crack in the pan--not on the floor.

Solution: Sprinkle some table salt on the spilled egg and wait ten minutes for it to soak in, then sweep the egg yolk right off the floor with a broom.

Why this works: The salt dissolves the lipoproteins in egg yolk, which changes its texture from gooey to nongooey, making it easier to clean.

2. How to make a baby stop crying

Dilemma: Sure, the baby's cute. But why won't he stop crying?

Solution: The secret to stop a crying baby lies in making the sound you produce during the mouthfeel stage of wine tasting.

Why this works: When babies are still in the womb, the noises they can hear are limited to those in the 6000-8000mHz range. The sound you make when you slosh the liquid behind your lips during wine tasting takes place at about 7000mHz, reminding the baby of a time when the world around was peaceful and the whirs and stirs inside Mommy's tummy soothed him back to a sleepy state.

[Update 4/22/09 - correction in the second printing of the book] Why this works: The sound you make when you slosh the liquid behind your lips during wine tasting reminds the baby of the noises they hear when they're still in the womb.

3. How to prevent body odor

Dilemma: Soap keeps you feeling fresh for a few minutes out of the shower, and deodorant masks the smell for a few hours thereafter, but by the end of the day, your armpits smell like a funky mix of sweat, dust, and fake baby powder.

Solution: A natural deodorant made of baking soda and lemon juice works better than almost any over-the-counter stick. Just dust some baking soda on your pits, rub some lemon juice on top, and pat dry for natural-stink-free crevices.

Why this works: Baking soda absorbs moisture and kills odor-causing bacteria, and the acidity of the lemon changes the pH balance of your skin. Because bacteria don't do so hot in high acidity, they tend not to proliferate in a lemony environment.

You can read more about the book here.

__________

[By Alex] As you can tell, the post above is a guest post by Lisa Katayama. Her book, Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan (illustrated by Joel Holland) is filled with strange lifestyle tricks and useful techniques that we've come to expect and love from Japan.

If you are an author and are interested in plugging your book for free on Neatorama, let's talk!

Culture shock happens when you pick up the live wire of daily life in another country, particularly another continent.  It can be the big thing such as finding yourself a racial minority and oddity in the street, or small things such as wondering what all those fires in front of every business and home mean–it’s not the least bit cold.  Why do people stuff their sales receipts in special clear plastic boxes on the sidewalks–and, speaking of sidewalks, why is the sidewalk a different height and design in front of each business or home?  and speaking of home and business, what is it like to have the family living room open out into the street and double as a place of business where every body who wants to, say, have your dad fix their scooter, can bring it right up to the family couch and television?   Does everybody have their family shrine right over the TV and DVD player?

Before we get into the genuinely amusing, strange stuff (from an American perspective) about Taiwan, let me get several things off my chest:

Don’t they all look alike?  I mean, really how can you tell those people apart?
This is the one comment that pushes my button.  Really.  Stand around on any street here for five minutes and you’ll see Taiwanese don’t look any more alike than Caucasians.  Even without the admixture of the American Armed Forces stirring the genetic pot for decades, the advent of modern hair coloring means the average school girl with blond hair here is no more likely to be a real blond than an American one.  There has been a disquieting fad for wearing enormous blue contacts in their eyes.

a shot of this promotional poster is as well as I can do since I couldn’t take photos of the elevator operators in Shin Kong Department Store

Don’t they eat dogs and other odd stuff like snakes?
No.  They don’t eat dogs.  Most dogs I’ve seen here are as pampered as ones in America.  On the way to a concert today, I saw no less than three dogs in, so help me God, knitted sweaters.  In this heat, that may cook them, but not by design.

What people eat is always  an interesting question.  Food often is a major definition of culture.  My culture in North Carolina is only a generation or two removed from widespread consumption of chitlin’s, possum, squirrel, and fat back.   Frog legs are considered a delicacy in French restaurants, so let’s not get carried away with what other people think is down home cookin’.  There is a place in Taipei called Snake Alley that sells snake meat.  It’s mostly a tourist attraction now.  The average Taiwanese eats no more snake than the average American eats rattlesnake or alligator meat.

Don’t you get tired of eating rice?
No.  Mainly because they don’t serve a lot of rice here.  Look back through all my food photos, in my travel letters and my extra photos on Flickr; don’t see any rice do you?  Rice is served like a roll might be served to you in the States.  I have been served rice three times in the more than two weeks I have been here.  Each time it was simply in a small bowl to the side, a bowl no bigger than a coffee cup at home.  The average Taiwanese’s reaction to a serving of Kung Pow chicken from an AMERICAN Chinese restaurant would be about the same as an American’s if served field peas, collards, carrots and fried pork chops glopped together on a bed of twelve slices of bread.

WITH THOSE ITEMS OFF MY CHEST, LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT SOME STUFF THAT AIN’T LIKE IT IS AT HOME.

7-11s run this country.  It’s not a democracy nor a dictatorship.  It is “quick-stop-ocracy.”

There are competing chains, Circle K, Family Store, Happy Store, etc. but they’re all the same as a 7-11 which remains the dominant brand.  You can do anything at a 7-11; pay your bills, taxes, traffic tickets; buy French wine, pickled duck eggs, Love Milk, and videos.

Every receipt comes with a lottery ticket.  Now wouldn’t that just get all the Baptists’ panties in a twist back home in the South!

It seems tax evasion was a problem for the government in a country where credit cards are not widely accepted and small business transacts most business.  The government hit upon the idea of a sales lottery rather than a sales tax.  Every sales receipt has a lottery number printed on its back.  Once a month, the government publishes several newspaper pages of winning numbers.  You can win anywhere between $5 and about $200 if you have a lucky sales receipt.

The government’s theory was everybody would demand a sales receipt if they had a chance of winning a lottery.  You play anytime you make a purchase; no matter how small a purchase.  The result is, as the island has become more prosperous, most people don’t want to bother with combing through thousands of lucky numbers in a newspaper once a month to maybe win $5.  Charities stepped in.  Along many streets you see clear plastic canisters promoting various charitable causes soliciting your sales receipts.  Retired volunteers go over the numbers on receipts collected.  It gives non profits a source of funding and gives old people a steady way to contribute without hard physical labor.  The Yngge Ceramics Museum I visited last Saturday collected sales receipts instead of charging admission.  If you were without a sales receipt (unlikely in this country) you could run across the street to 7-11 and buy a piece of candy for pennies and come back with a sales receipt.

Amazingly, you can never have too many convenience stores.  I have a photo of a place a few blocks from the Taipei Artists’ Village where I am staying of two 7-11 stores separated by only one block.  I have often seen several competing brand stores in one block together.

Sales receipts donation box on Zhong Shan North Rd.  Just outside a bridal photography shop.

Even Gucci and Louis Vuitton have money to burn on Zhong Shan North Road

Walking up Zhong Shan Road, I saw Gucci and Louis Vuitton placate beings with money.  Nothing unusual about that you say, Vuitton and Gucci market to people with money. I do not mean that to sound like it is written.  They were givng away money. Everybody offers money to the gods and ancestors.  Once a month, at least.

At the beginning of the lunar month, offerings are made to ghosts, gods, ancestors, and assorted spirits.  Taiwanese give more money to gods than the Baptists.  And they do it direct– with a system of delivery FedEx and Western Union would envy.  They burn it.
In the West, when we say “give money to God” we don’t think God actually needs money; we believe God wants us to behave in a moral manner so we give money to what we believe is a good cause God would endorse.  In the East, religion and ethics are less intertwined.  (Confucius, a mortal who devised a system of ethics for which he is honored and revered, but is no more a “God” than we would worship at the Jefferson memorial because Jefferson devised our system of government.)
Here, ethical guidance aside, gods need money to build their mansion of many rooms–demons evidently don’t work for free.  To gain favor, mortals burn “spirit money” which goes directly to a god or an ancestor.  In temples, offering are made as well–the price tags often left prominently attached.
(You would think a god would know how much you’d paid or even that you’d gotten it on sale but left the original price tag on.)
A table covered with flowers, burning sticks of incense, candy, or even elaborate meals are set out in front of a house or building while the spirit money is burned.  I have seen a few people pray at these tables, but the majority of people are just casually throwing stacks of spirit money into the fire while discussing the latest soap opera or who has got the better baseball team, no solemnity or reverence to the practice at all.

Actually, you can send quite a bit postage free and guaranteed delivery to gods and spirits. There is a good business in making elaborate Mercedes, sailboats, houses, etc. that are burned at temples to be sent to ancestors or gods one is trying to bribe for favor.  (No word on whether you have to burn gas for the Mercedes as well.)

My initial cultural ignorance was so vast that the first time I arrived in Taiwan in 2004 in the city of Kaohsiung, it was 87 degrees F but my wife and I supposed we should expect cold nights as everybody had these large oildrum looking cans outside their homes for burning stuff.  We assumed they would gather around them for warmth like street people in the States. It was the lunar month change.
By the way, you don’t have to wait for a new month to send money to heaven.  If your ancestors run a little short before the next new moon, you can go to a temple and use one of the large, elaborate furnaces there.
At most stores, you can buy stacks of spirit money to burn.  Buy gold leaf covered money to send to gods and silver leaf covered bills to send to ancestors.  Evidently, the gods and ancestors are easily fooled, since only the top most bills in any stack of spirit money you buy actually have the designs and leaves of metal on them.

Below, some spirit money burners for sale.  Others are simply red painted cans with holes cut in them.

A shop for all your spiritual needs near Long Shan Temple.  The bales of yellow colored spirit money are stacked to the left behind the scooter. You can buy small offerings, candies, etc. to use at home or next door in the temple.   Small money burning cans are visible at the bottom of the counter in the middle.  I love the “no smoking” sign in a shop selling and burning incense.

Lovely Rita, the Meter Maid…
As I mentioned earlier, you can pay your parking tickets at the 7-11.  Actually, you can pay them at all sorts of places; government offices, banks, etc.  A parking ticket is not only no big deal here, it’s expected.
True story.  Back in April of 2005, a Taiwanese friend took me and another visiting American artist out to the National Palace Museum (the old one) and found a nice parking place just a block or two away.  We spent three hours in the museum before returning to his car with six or seven parking tickets stacked under the windshield wiper.  We were horrified and apologetic that we’d cost our friend so much money, ‘why, we’d have paid for a stay in a parking garage!’ we told him, he’d owe a fortune, we’d help pay, blah, blah, blah….  Relax, he said, it’s just parking tickets.  Exactly, we said and started our rounds of apologetic hysteria again…  Puzzled, he finally tried to quiet us by saying, well, okay, if you insist and it’ll make you happy, I’ll pay the parking tickets right now.
He pulled over and went into a 7-11.  “It came to NT$ 60,” he said when he came back out.  (About US$ 2).
Parking tickets are really just parking bills, he explained.  Rather than put up meters and run a punitive system as we do in the States, they just post signs saying how much parking costs per half hour or so along a particular stretch of road.  A meter maid comes by every half hour recording your license tag and leaves another computer bar coded ticket (or bill) on your window.  You have thirty days to pay or you do pay a penalty.  But you can take a stack of them into a 7-11 or a government office anytime, have the bills scanned and pay what you owe.  It takes pressure off meter maids, no maintenance for meters, and signs are cheaper to post and can vary the amounts charged by time and day.  The same system works for motor scooters.

Meter maid working her route along Tian Jian Street.  Below, a meter guy for scooters on his bicycle in front of the Taipei Artists Village.  Note how well equipped he is with umbrella, satchel, water and so forth.

No Tanning lines, please!
Tanning beds never made it here.  Darker skin is considered unattractive.  Freckles are thought ugly.  Umbrellas are sold with UV ratings!
It is hot most of the year, most people carry an umbrella against the sun, not rain.  You’ll even see some people wearing gloves while riding bicycles or scooters to keep their hands from tanning.   And since people are constantly losing umbrellas, they are a favorite items for street vendors to sell.  You can buy a large one for about $US 3.

The Sidewalks of Taiwan
If you’re a city planner or inspector for a modern American city, please just skip the next section.  it will only give you heartburn.

In Taiwan, each person is responsible for the sidewalk outside their business or home.  You can do it to please yourself.  Anything goes.
(Remember the two giant colorful feet painted outside the foot massage business I placed at the top of a previous newsletter?)  A sidewalk can be an area of artistic and/or personal expression for the owner; it can serve a useful purpose such as being designed to integrate with the business.  Since Taiwan receives twice the world wide average yearly rainfall, flooding is a problem; sidewalks are often built steeply sloping away from the front of the building.  It is not at all uncommon to step up or down one, two, or even three steps as one walks along since one owner may have built his section much higher than his neighbor.

That’s not your only hazard.
Motor scooters and bicycles are allowed on the sidewalks, too.  If you’re hit, it’s probably your fault for not paying attention.  As a practical matter, it probably helps if you’re running an outdoor/sidewalk eatery and there are too many steps for a scooter or bike to go up; it keeps scooters from zipping through and among your customers and tables.  Parking spaces are often clearly marked for scooters on the sidewalks (as you can barely make out in one of the photos above.)

To an American sculptor, the use of green marble is amazing–such veneers are VERY expensive at home.   Taiwan is the second largest exporter of marble in the world after Italy.  Marble, especially around the east coast city of Hualian is cheap, so is widely used.  No store at home could afford such a marble sidewalk in front of their shop even it it were allowed.  Note the sloping sides. Taken on my trip to the small town of Yngge.

From a marble sidewalk to marbles in the sidewalk.  A photo taken a block down the street from the one above.

BELOW, closing up a sidewalk eatery after lunch in Taipei.  Note the steps to the upper right.

There is a program in Taipei now to paint all the electrical system switch boxes for beautification.  Artists use oil paints to paint standard landscapes.  Nearly all have bright blue backgrounds.

BELOW, a Taipei motorcycle dealer has embedded spark plugs in the sidewalk outside his store

Typical view of sidewalk variation

HAAS, WHAT WILL YOU WRITE ABOUT NEXT!!??
The truth is I am faaar behind in catching up everything I have notes and photos for.  I spent a day in the ceramics city of Yngge. You can, at least, see some of the photos from that trip on my Flickr album HERE.
I want to write about the bridal industry–it’s not just the different customs which are to be expected–wedding photos here would shock Americans; I have not yet written up anything about the wonderful SoHu Paper Museum and the remarkable people behind it; I have not even gotten any good photos yet to go with the story about the dancers/drummers/monks/meditators/physical fitness buffs/acting company living in the mountains–U Theatre, whose performance I attended yesterday at Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Plaza (the plaza is an article in itself); I have not yet written up the visit to Long Shan Temple, even though I used some of the photos in the article about the National Palace Museum.   Not to mention the scantily clad girls in glass booths on the edge of town (they’re not what you think–they’re selling betel nuts to taxi drivers and working men); the lucky money cats and crystals in all the stores–no matter how sophisticated; the Taiwanese obsession with brassieres; and my own misadventures learning and speaking Chinese; my return trip to the 228 Memorial Peace Park; and the unique Grass Mountain Vistas program being developed at one of Chiang Kai Shek’s former mountain villas.

At the risk of overwhelming myself even further, I always invite your comments and any suggestions as to what else I could write about.

In closing, I leave you with the two unique restroom signs I encountered at the SoHu Paper Museum Friday.   They are made in cut paper.

Joel Haas is a sculptor from Raleigh, North Carolina. You can see his works at his website or at Neighborhood Sculpture Walk, and read stories at his blog. More updates from Taiwan will be coming soon!

Also see Joel’s previous posts:
A Trip to Taipei’s Shilin Night Market
Red Bean Filled Hockey Pucks and Mind Control
Yam Wielding Grannies, Plastic Bugs, and Cilantro Ice Cream

Whatever they are, a night market is NOISE and COLOR!!

The smell of “stinky tofu” (fermented tofu) fills the air so you know you’re in a true Taiwanese market. You can buy everything to eat from steaks to jellyfish to candied tomatos to tea jelly; cotton candy to squid; tripe to exotic fruit. Shop for clothes, luggage, underwear (remember the people who needed waistband amplifiers?) or books. Power tools or bok choy, a night market’s got it all and probably more.

Grannies shoot baskets at one of the numerous arcades.

“Buddha Head” fruit on sale–Joy’s and my favorite. Called “custard Apple” in English. It is unknown in the States as it doesn’t ship well.

I couldn’t resist buying a package of this stuff. It’s very thin and dry. Quite tasty, actually.

Fried chicken is widely served, but is cut into pieces and sold like McNuggets. She will season it with local hot sauces. None of the cuts of chicken–or any other meat is familiar in style to Westerners.

Fresh lettuce is washed behind the scenes and the water dumped into the central gutter.

A used book stall.

Little girl has her juice while waiting for fried chicken.

Your choice of “black glutinous rice” or “ovary and digestive gland” steamed dumplings.

Tomatoes, not apples, are candied here and sold on a stick for 90 cents US note the bubbling pan of red sugar to the right. Strawberries are often candied as well. A shooting arcade is directly behind the girl–she’d better not back up too much!

The regular Mandarin and Taiwanese fortune teller booths.

A typical crush of people along the aisles. Here, I am just coming into one of the main aisles.

Another set of fortune tellers–the customer sits before them, palms out and the fortune tellers use chopsticks to rapidly tap a large gold colored disk and constantly consult a table of numbers as they tap to read out somebody’s future.

I had a very popular drink–tea jelly with milk and shaved ice and lime or lemon juice. As you can see in the background there were a lot of vendors offering this drink— costs $US 1 for a 12 oz cup.

The red bean paste “hockey pucks” shown here with a wider variety of fillings.

Prawns on a stick, wrapped in dragon whiskers noodles and deep fat fried prawns in whisker noodles

Sugar cane vendor. He puts a length of cane through a crusher to produce a 16 ounce cup of hot or cold sweetened water guaranteed to put your pancreas into shock if you drink it all.

A cheap date–it’s very popular to pay a few cents and “fish” for crayfish or minnows– usually an entertainment for small children.

Some sort of gambling game using tiles and a huge bingo-like card tiles and cards

Pinball machines–actually made with pins and marbles.

24 hour foot massage–you can buy a 45 minute or a one hour massage–designed to make you howl and cure a panoply of ills.

Dumpling dough being torn into small sizes from the long ropes of raw dough. They’ll be steam cooked and look like the dumplings on the left.

Like the red bean “hockey pucks,” a pancake like batter is cooked in a half mould and then– as seen here, shrimp, eggs, onions, etc, added to the “cup.” Then they’ll be sealed with another half dome of batter and filling to make a ball. (see far right)

The cotton candy man stays busy.

Not everybody works hard–the cotton candy vendor brings his dog and an old couch on the back of his scooter.

Next to the cotton candy man, Dad and son have friendly game of cards while Mom keeps an eye on the stand.

Joel Haas is a sculptor from Raleigh, North Carolina. You can see his works at his website or at Neighborhood Sculpture Walk, and read stories at his blog. Part two of Joel’s adventures in Taiwan will be online tomorrow!

The following is a guest blog post by Jo Marchant, author of Decoding the Heavens.

Main fragment of the Antikythera Mechanism (Photo: Jo Marchant)

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient Greek clockwork computer that has lain at the bottom of the sea for two thousand years. I first came across it in late summer 2006, when a major paper describing its workings was due to appear in the science journal Nature, where I was on staff as an editor.

The story grabbed me immediately. If such a sophisticated device really existed, what did it do? Who could have made it? And why?

I travelled to Greece to see the remains of the device (on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens) and find out more about it. The modern part of its story begins in autumn 1900, when Captain Dimitrios Kontos and his crew of sponge divers were sailing home from their summer diving grounds of the coast of Tunisia. They were heading for the island of Symi in the eastern Mediterranean but were blown off course by a storm, and took shelter by a barren islet called Antikythera.

When the waters had calmed, one of the divers dropped down to look for sponges but soon emerged, gabbling about a heap of "dead, naked women" on the seabed. These turned out to be not corpses but statues, from one of the most spectacular shipwrecks ever discovered from the ancient world - a Roman ship carrying stolen Greek treasures west to Rome.

Among the salvaged hoard subsequently shipped to Athens was a piece of formless rock that no one noticed at first, until it cracked open, revealing bronze gearwheels, pointers, and tiny Greek inscriptions. It has taken more than a century of ingenious labour to fully decode this mechanism (during which it was largely ignored by mainstream historians) but scholars now know that it represents by far the most stunning scientific artefact that survives from antiquity. A sophisticated piece of machinery consisting of precisely cut dials, pointers and at least thirty interlocking gear wheels, nothing close to its complexity appears again in the historical record for more than a thousand years, until the development of astronomical clocks in medieval Europe.

Radiograph of the major fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism
(Images: Antikythera Mechanism Research PRoject)

The mechanism was encased in a wooden box, about the size of a squat dictionary, and operated by a handle on the side. Its purpose was to calculate the motions of celestial bodies. A large Zodiac dial on the front had several revolving pointers that represented the Sun, Moon and planets moving around the sky. Complex epicyclic gearing (in which wheels ride around on other wheels) was used to model the Greeks' latest astronomical theories, in order to display the variable speed of the Sun and Moon as seen from Earth as well as the wandering motions of the planets. Meanwhile on the back of the device were two spiral dials - one was a sophisticated 19-year calendar, developed to unify the motions of the Sun and the Moon, while the other displayed the timing of eclipses.

By turning the handle on the box you could make time pass forwards or backwards, to see the state of the cosmos today, tomorrow, last Tuesday or a hundred years in the future. Whoever owned this device must have felt like master of the heavens.

The mechanism dates to around 100 BC. It's not clear exactly where it was made, but the choices are limited as by this time the Romans had taken over most of the Mediterranean region, so Greek scientists weren't able to work freely. One possible source is Rhodes, where the shipwrecked vessel had stopped off shortly before its demise. Hipparchus, one of the greatest astronomers of the ancient world, lived on Rhodes in the second century BC, and his theory describing the varying speed of the Moon is beautifully captured within the mechanism's gearing. On the other hand, the calendar on the device incorporates month names that may be from Syracuse in Sicily, home to the famous mathematician Archimedes in the third century BC. Perhaps he first came up with the idea of using bronze gears to model the universe.

One question that has always intrigued me about the Antikythera mechanism is why the Greeks would have built such a machine. A clue may be found in the writings of Cicero, a Roman lawyer and author who lived in the first century BC. On a couple of occasions, he described "bronze spheres" that modelled the daily movements of the Sun, Moon and planets as seen from Earth. According to Cicero, Archimedes made one of these in the third century BC, while he attributed the other to a philosopher called Posidonius, who worked on Rhodes in the first century BC. Cicero gave no details of how these devices worked so historians haven't taken these stories very seriously - they figured the Greeks couldn't have been capable of building such complex machines. After all, until the sponge divers' discovery, archaeologists had never found a single gearwheel from the ancient world. But now that we know the Antikythera mechanism was exactly such a model, it seems likely that Cicero's account was accurate.

For both Cicero and Posidonius, these devices were of religious and philosophical importance. Cicero wrote about them to make the argument that just as it would be clear to anyone that they had a intelligent creator, so then did the universe itself. And Posidonius belonged to the Stoic school of philosophy, meaning that for him God was a divine life force that pervaded the entire universe. He would have seen astronomy and astronomical models as a way to understand and demonstrate the workings of the cosmos, and therefore to get closer to God.

The Greeks have often been dismissed by historians for wasting the technology they had on toys such as vending machines or automated puppet shows, instead of using it to tell the time or do useful work. Yet their most advanced creation, the Antikythera mechanism, was about demonstrating scientific principles and understanding the nature of the universe - and elevating one's spirit in the process. To me, that doesn't seem such a waste.

Recreation of the antikythera by Michael Wright, narrated by Jo [YouTube Link]

_____

Jo Marchant is a freelance journalist specializing in science and history, and author of Decoding the Heavens. In her book, Jo recounts the full story of the 100-year quest to understand the 2,000-year-old computer. She unearths a diverse cast of characters - from Archimedes to Jacques Cousteau - and explores the roots of modern technology in Greece, the Islamic world, and medieval Europe.

You can learn more about the Antikythera mechanism on Jo's website, her article at New Scientist, or on Wikipedia.

_____

If you're an author and would like your book featured on Neatorama, please email Alex about a possible guest blog just like this one.

The following is a guest blog by Adam Koford, current curator (if you believe his tale) and/or creator (if you believe John Hodgman and everyone else) of the Laugh-Out-Loud Cat comic strip and the The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats Sell Out book

Alex has graciously asked if I would write a post about the comic strip I help create and curate entitled the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats. You may have seen it featured here from time to time on Neatorama. If not, and you don't know what I'm talking about, feel free to visit the archive of the comic, which contains well over 1000 installments.

I'll wait.

Done? Good.

Here's a very short version of the history of the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats comic strip (which you may or may not believe): in 1912, my great-grandfather Aloysius Koford created a short-lived comic strip featuring two hobo cats, Kitteh (the big one) and Pip (the small one). In spite of it's quick disappearance from the few newspapers that ran it, the world and words of the two filthy felines he drew somehow made their way into the cultural subconscious of America, and ultimately the internet. Though long dormant, Aloysius' influence finally resurfaced sometime within the past few years, in a much-transmogrified form, as LOLCats. If you are unfamiliar with standard-issue internet LOLCats, I am both shocked and somehow very happy for you.

As I mentioned, some have chosen not to believe this origin of the webcomic I've been saddled with for the past 21 months. That is their right. John Hodgman, in his introduction to my new collection of comics (the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats Sell Out, available now from Abrams ComicArts), makes a valiant attempt to disprove my tale. I leave it to you, the reader, to weigh the evidence and be the judge. But let's leave that debate for another time (I myself am not sure whom to believe anymore).

Several cultural touchstones show evidence of being influenced by my great-grandfather's handiwork. Or, if you don't believe my great-grandfather actually existed: I, Adam Koford (coincidentally also a cartoonist) have looked to several influences in the creation of the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats comics. I'll list a few of the less obvious examples, without mentioning the LOLspeak we've all learned to love and hate.

Paper Moon

Peter Bogdonovich's wonderful road movie about a traveling con-man and the young girl who may or may not be his daughter was released on the day I was born. The two aren't technically hoboes, but they are petty thieves, and by the end of the film you'll love them both.

Sullivan's Travels

Preston Sturges' 1941 film starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake is a movie about hoboes. John L. Sullivan (McCrea) is a movie director tired of making popular comedies. To research his career-shifting epic of the common man, entitled O Brother Where Art Thou?, he decides to hit the road as a hobo to see how the down and out live. Hilarity ensues, plots are twisted, lessons are learned, and Veronica Lake makes the best looking tramp you ever saw.

Old Doc Yak

I first read the adventures of Sidney Smith's anthropomorphic talking yak on the Barnacle Press website, which has several months of the strip archived. It's not his most significant creation, and not particularly monumental in the history of comics, but it is fun to read.

I've since learned (with the help of the essential Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics and several wonderful blogs) that most early 20th Century comic strips still retain their charm if you're willing to invest some time to get to know the characters.

Hank Ketcham

Dennis the Menace was never my favorite character growing up: in his 50 year history, you can count the number of times his parents smiled on one hand, and I he didn't use that slingshot nearly enough. But it was certainly fun to look at. Hank Ketcham and his ghost artist Al Wiseman crafted a charming world that any cartoonist would be wise to learn from.

B. Kliban

You'll likely recognize his trademark cat, especially if you have any memories of the 1970s, but Bernard Kliban created many more strange and hilarious drawings. To me, he's the quintessential cartoonist: his work can be cryptic and impenetrable on one hand, and timelessly funny on the other.

My very own children

They say you should write what you know, and I don't think I could have created Pip before I had kids of my own. Pip's inexplicable fascination with leaves has it's genesis in my own son's early obsession with any and every tiny rock we'd come across in our meanderings. Kitteh's anger at the mere mention of ducks has it's roots in one of my kid's early perception that ducks only existed to be chased (he's since learned otherwise).

Finally, the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats wouldn't exist without people like you. That may sound trite, but it's true. I started the project as a way to make money, one drawing at a time. Nearly 1,100 drawings (only a few of which I still own), 600 or so fan club members, and a hardcover book later, you've helped me create a little world of hoboes and bindle sticks I've grown to love exploring. Thank you.

_____

A. Koford is the cartoonist behind such web gems as the 700 Hoboes Project, Order-a-Monkey (the origins of our collaborative Caption Monkey series), Alphabet of Monsters, Onomatopedia, and oh yes, the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats as well as the Neatoramabot and Neatoramanaut.

Definitely check out Adam's new book The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats Sell Out ( with introduction by John Hodgman.)

_____

Are you an author and would like your book featured on Neatorama? Please email me about a possible guest blog post just like this one!

The following is a guest post by Collin Palkovitz and Jason Latshaw of Elany Arts, creators of an iPhone app called LETHAL that tells you what dangerous things are lurking just around the corner, or in any given location in the United States.

We scoured government databases and academic publications to find crime rates, disease rates, disaster occurrences, and deadly wildlife ranges. We then compiled our findings into one centralized database that pulls those stats, combines the score into four categories, and gives you an overall “LETHAL Index” for hundreds of locations.

The research for this project was both captivating and terrifying. It was fascinating to learn about the different dangers that various locations pose. Below are the most dangerous locations in each of our four categories.

Wildlife

Photo: King Power Cinema [Flickr] (Yes, in Mobile, AL)

We were all surprised to discover the location in the United States with the greatest number of deadly animals.

One might think that somewhere in Alaska with polar bears, grizzly bears, AND great white sharks would take the prize, but no. (Even though the possibility of meeting up with all three of those fearsome beasts does make Alaska pretty exciting. But you’ll read later what keeps Alaska from being all around completely awesome.)

Or maybe the Everglades, the only place in the world where crocodiles and alligators are both native (in addition to bears, panthers, and poisonous snakes! Seriously, think about that, they’re one tiger away from being able to say “Oh my!”)? But again, no. The Everglades aren’t it either.

Instead, welcome to Mobile, Alabama, the home of 19 – yes, nineteen - deadly animal species. It’s like the Baskin Robbins of blood-thirsty predators. Whether you are on the land or the sea, something here can kill you. The sheer number of creatures you have to watch out for is impressive. A day at the beach near Mobile may sound pleasant, but you should be prepared to wind up fleeing the shark infested waters only to find yourself in a land crawling with more kinds of poisonous snakes and spiders than anywhere else in the country.

But I’m sure you’re wondering what the most BORING place is when it comes to Wildlife? I know we were. Well, if you don’t like the idea of being offed by something that you thought was lower on the food chain, make immediate plans to move to North or South Dakota or Nebraska. There, the only thing you’d have to watch out for would be a couple of lame standbys that are just about everywhere else, too – Dogs, Hornets, Black Widow Spiders, and Mosquitoes. Yawn!

Crime

The St. Louis Arch is there to distract tourists from the city's dangers.
Photo: Storm Crypt [Flickr]

When it comes to crime in the U.S. you may think that New York or Los Angeles sound like scary places, but compared to Detroit and St. Louis, those cities are delightful locations for Sunday-school picnics.

St. Louis and Detroit battle it out for the title of “Which City is More Likely to Annihilate You With Its Crime,” and quite honestly this contest is going into extra innings with no end in sight.

St. Louis comes out of the gate and scores some quick points because of its insanely high violent crime rate – 2,480 violent crimes per 100,000 citizens. But the Motor City comes right back – nearly tying the match with its own hefty rate of 2419 per 100,000.

Maybe the Lions went 0-16 because they couldn't focus on the game – they were too busy looking over their shoulders to make sure they weren't going to get mugged or killed!

Speaking of getting killed, if you do decide to ignore the fear of being mugged, stabbed, or beaten and decide to brave these Midtown Detroit streets, you run the risk of being one of many yearly murder victims there – people are killed at the gaudy rate of 61 per every 100,000 citizens. When you realize that the national rate is a mere 7, you see how dangerous this area is.

But before you fall out of your chair and start hyperventilating know this: Downtown St. Louis has that rate beat – by a mile – because 93 out of every 100,00 are murdered there. All of a sudden, Midtown Detroit might be looking safe. But it isn’t.

Because St. Louis has one thing going for it in the crime department ­– at least when it comes to Forcible Rape, it’s not Midtown Detroit.

Detroit is not safe enough even for the Department of Public Safety.
The building has been abandoned ...
Photo: Derek Farr (Detroit Derek) [Flickr]

We’ll let you know just how bad Midtown Detroit is in the rape department, but first a discussion about the stats we found for rape in the US: When we were doing our research, we were horrified by Juneau, Alaska. I don’t know what they’re drinking there, but 102.3 out of every 100,000 people are getting raped in the land of “Whatever It Is People Do In Juneau,” Since the US average is a mere 33.1, clearly they have a serious problem. (And actually, it’s kind of widespread to the whole state of Alaska! That place has an unbelievably high rate of 76 – that’s for the state on average. Sarah Palin, what in the world is going on up there?).

Truly it can’t get worse than Juneau, right? Wrong. Sleepy little beach communities Ocean City, Maryland and Key West, Florida made a baffling and troublesome attempt to hang with the major cities by weighing in with rates of 123.3 and 127.3, respectively. Think about that for a second. If you had a NFL Football game in Ocean City, Maryland, about 127 people in that crowd would be raped that year, on average. What’s going on, Ocean City? Considering that New York City’s Rape rate is a mere 13 per 100,000, one has to wonder if NBC should move the Special Victim’s Unit to Ocean City, Maryland! Benson and Stabler, head to the Shore!

Actually, no. If we’re going to be calling Benson and Stabler anywhere, it should be to Midtown Detroit. While we were scandalized and terrified by Key West, Ocean City, and Jeneau – we were absolutely left in a state of disbelief by Midtown Detroits numbers. 181 rapes per 100,000 people. Yes, 181. Just about six times the national average.

So it looks like Midtown Detroit is more likely to rape you while Downtown St. Louis will more likely just kill you. We can’t pick a winner. But we know two areas we’ll be avoiding for the near future. (This would be the time to point out that both Detroit and St. Louis have areas that are very safe and lovely. But really, don’t go to Midtown or Downtown without body armor and some pepper spray.)

Disasters

We were shocked to learn which location ranked the highest for disasters. Memphis, TN!

The Mississippi River has a nasty habit of flooding in Memphis.
Photo: jeb simpson [Flickr]

As it turns out, this unsuspecting town sits in the path of tornadoes and is located in an area geologically prone to earthquakes, floods, and landslides. There is also significant potential for wildfires in this area. In addition to natural disasters, motor vehicle deaths, accidental firearm deaths, and suicides are all above average.

But if you’re headed to the nation's capital, you might want to follow Obama’s lead and drive in a bullet proof SUV, because Washington DC has the most gun related deaths per year – by far. A full 21% more deaths than the runner up in this inglorious category, New Orleans.

And if you’re feeling a little down, you may want to steer clear of Montana. There’s something about all that ranching and wheat farming that must make you want to just up and end it all, because Montana has the worst suicide rate in the nation. 22 out of every 100,000 Montanians (I have no idea if they’re called that or not, but what’s the alternative really… Montanites?) kill themselves every year.

Disease

US Naval Hospital Ship Mercy docked in San Diego in 2006.
Coincidence? I don't think so ... Photo: Jim Frazier [Flickr]

San Diego takes the cake (ew, what kind of cake would that be? Pro tip: don’t eat it) for the most disease-ridden location in the United States. It is a good thing that cancer, heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer’s are non-communicable; otherwise the entire city would have to be quarantined.

But it’s a city on the other side of the continent that takes the unfortunate status of being the “AIDS capital of America.” That would be Baltimore, with 37.7 AIDS related deaths per 100,000 citizens. Its sister city Washington DC isn’t much better off in that department at 37.1. Compare that to a mere 3.7 AIDS deaths per 100,000 in Oakland, California or the very impressive virtual ZERO in Salt Lake City, Utah and you’ll see that Baltimore and DC have to change something up.

Win a Free Download!

If you’d like to score yourself a free copy of LETHAL for your iPhone or iPod touch , be the first to answer ONE of the following questions in the comments. We’re giving out 5 freebies here.

1. Can you guess what location has the highest overall LETHAL Index?
   Hint: it is none of the locations listed above. It is a city where a moderately high score in all four categories reveals that it has the most cumulative danger.
   
2. Can you guess what location has the least overall LETHAL Index?
   Hint: It also wasn’t mentioned.
   
3. Can you tell us which city comes in 3rd behind Detroit and St. Louis with the Crime Index?
   
4. Which state should probably have its collective Drivers License taken away because it has the highest automobile death rate?
   
5. What state has the highest rate of Occupational Fatality?
   Yep, a whole lot of people seem to die on the job here… over 40% more than the second most dangerous area in this category!

Please login and use your Neatorama username (if you don't have one, please register). Place your guess in the comment. One answer per comment, though you may enter as many guesses as you'd like. One free download per person.

Be sure to check out LETHAL App for more information (or get one at iTunes now!)

The following is a guest post by Charles Horn, Emmy-nominated writer of Robot Chicken and author of The Laugh Out Loud Guide: Ace the SAT Exam without Boring Yourself to Sleep!

Whenever I tutor for the SAT, I invariably see either a boredom factor or a stress factor come into play. If they’re bored, they just won’t put in the effort, and if they’re too stressed, their learning ability becomes impaired. Comedy helps in both regards, because it reduces stress and keeps them interested and engaged. The other remarkable thing about comedy is that it actually increases recall as well, so they’ll remember the information better on test day (and apply the same concepts to the more boring SAT questions).

I won’t lie – Robot Chicken is still way more fun than studying for the SAT. But I figure if they’re going to be forced to take the dreaded test, at least they deserve to have a little fun along the way.

The Laugh Out Loud Guide: Ace the SAT Exam without Boring Yourself to Sleep! uses comedy to prepare students for the dreaded SAT. Here are a few sample questions. How would you do?

1. Yo Momma so _______, when you mail her a letter, you need two zip codes.

(A) diaphanous
(B) luminous
(C) ravenous
(D) grisly
(E) corpulent

2. At a Saks Fifth Avenue store, Winona Ryder examines four distinct blouses, five distinct dresses, and two distinct handbags. How many different combinations of items can she shoplift if she takes exactly one blouse, two dresses, and a handbag?

3.My parents, Brad and Angelina, went to Vietnam and all they got me was this lousy brother.

(A) went to Vietnam and all they got me was this lousy brother
(B) went to Vietnam, all they got me was this lousy brother
(C) went to Vietnam, this lousy brother was all they got me
(D) went to Vietnam; and all they got me was this lousy brother
(E) went to Vietnam; and this lousy brother was all they got me

4. On a scale of 1 to 10, Warren’s hotness can be expressed as a , where a and b are positive integers and ab. If Warren’s hotness is equal to 2, what is the value of a – b?

(A) -10
(B) -1
(C) 0
(D) 1
(E) 10

5. Loading The Toddmeister onto a gurney, the emergency
        A
medical technicians, who happened to be Kappa Omega
                                       B
Kappa brothers themselves and the winning team of the
                              C
2000 Chug-a-thon, was relieved to see that the
                                    D
championship drinking trophy was still out on display.

No error
     E

6. In the figure, if x = 5 - y, what is the value of y² + 25?
(A) 7
(B) 32
(C) 39
(D) 56
(E) 64

7. After a _______ investigation, the inspector _______ that faulty wiring was foshizzle the cause of the fire that burned down Snoop Dogg’s hizzouse.

(A) lengthy, realized
(B) complete, prognosticated
(C) cursory, ruled
(D) thorough, determined
(E) copious, charged

ANSWERS:

1. E
2. 80
3. A
4. D
5. D
6. B
7. D

Charles Horn is the author of The Laugh Out Loud Guide: Ace the SAT Exam without Boring Yourself to Sleep!

He is an Emmy-nominated comedy writer with credits including Robot Chicken and the Robot Chicken: Star Wars special, as well as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He also has a Ph.D. from Princeton University. Charles writes a blog and a comic strip. You can also check out his education-themed and other fun t-shirts.

-----

Are you an author and would like your book featured on Neatorama? Please email me about a possible guest blog post just like this one!

The following is a guest blog by Craig Conley, author of Magic Words: A Dictionary

If you've ever paid a compliment, written a mission statement, stated an affirmation, made a wish, shouted a command, or said a little prayer, you've used some magic words.

Indeed, magic words aren't just for stage performers or superstitious folks. They're powerful language tools, like blueprints for constructing reality. With magic words, we define a sacred arena where miracles can come into play. There are profound truths in that old cliché of a magician pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat with the magic word abracadabra. Almost everyone recognizes the image. But what relatively few people know is that our stereotypical magician is speaking an ancient Hebrew phrase that means "I will create with words." He is making something out of nothing, echoing that famous line from Genesis: "Let there be light, and there was light."

In the course of compiling Magic Words: A Dictionary, we unearthed a wealth of magical expressions from comic books, television shows, rock 'n' roll, ancient Egyptian scrolls, and pulp fiction. Here are some of our whimsical favorites:

THE POWER OF PURPLE

The title "Purple One" popularly refers to the artist formerly known as Prince. But former teen idol and now game show host Donnie Osmond was a purple one back in the mid-1970's. Elprup is the word that Donnie Osmond spoke on The Donnie and Marie Show to transform into Captain Purple. The word is purple spelled backward.

FROSTY THE SNOWMAN'S SECRET

Frosty the Snowman's secret comes to us courtesy of home automation expert Gordon Meyer, author of Smart Home Hacks. Animovividus Homonivalis is a pseudo-Latin spell for bringing a snowman to life. The word animo refers to the life force or soul of the snowman, which is conjured to vivify with the word vividus. Nivalis means "snowy," and homo means "man."

BART SIMPSON'S ZOMBIE SPELL

Zabar, Kresge, Caldor, Wal-Mart is Bart Simpson's spell for conjuring zombies, chanted in Matt Groening's animated series The Simpsons (Season 4, Episode 64, "Dial Z For Zombies," Oct. 29, 1992). The words are actually names of discount retail markets.

Bart also has another zombie spell: Cullen, Rayburn, Narz, Trebek. The words are names of game show hosts: Bill Cullen of To Tell the Truth, Gene Rayburn of Match Game, Jack Narz of Concentration, and Alex Trebek of Jeopardy.

A SPELL FOR A LA-Z-BOY

The magic word rantorp (a Scandinavian name) changes people into chairs in the play General Gorgeous by Michael McClure (1982).

"HOLY COW!"

Alizebu is a magic word for revealing hidden passages in the computer game King's Quest 6 (Sierra Entertainment, 1992). The word zebu comes from the Tibetan ceba, meaning "hump." Zebu is a breed of hump-backed India ox. With the Arabic Ali ("by the most high") in front, Alizebu could be translated as "holy cow."

OOO EEE OOO-AH-AH TING TANG WALLA-WALLA BING-BANG

This phrase is a love spell chanted in the song "Witch Doctor" by David Seville (1958). "It is a song of unrequited love cured by the magic incantations of the witch doctor" (Bob McCann, "The Declension Song," 2003). Diana Winn Levine suggests that ting tang are the magic words and walla walla bing bang mean the magic is over.

A CAT IN A HAT

If Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat were a magician, his magic word might be inspiratus, Latin for the divine "breath" that inspires creativity. We unearthed a delightful fakir's incantation that incorporates the word as it celebrates a Schrödinger's Cat paradox:

Hocus, pocus, inspiratus,
there is a cat in the hat;
hocus, pocus, inspiratus,
there is no cat in the hat.

(Incantation quoted in Lawrence Bruehl's The Mathematics of Unlimited Prosperity, 1939)

PEANUT BUTTER AND SESAME STREET

Abba Zabba recalls the expanse of the alphabet, A (abba) to Z (zabba), the alpha and omega of creative power. The words appear in a Captain Beefheart song of the same name (1974). The lyrics are a sort of nursery rhyme about childhood rituals and seem to suggest that the primal syllables abba zabba are "song before song before song." Abba Zabba is also the name of an old-fashioned peanut butter taffy candy bar.

Interestingly, peanut butter figures into other magic words. A-la Peanut Butter Sandwiches has appeared in a "Rugrats" comic strip and is the Amazing Mumford's magic expression on the Sesame Street television series. The peanut is like the sesame seed of Open Sesame fame—a spiritual food which unlocks a doorway to a world of wonders. The pods of peanuts and sesame plants open to reveal their seeds, just as the wall of rock opened for the legendary Ali Baba when he said the secret password.

SMALL CHANGE

Here's a magic word that is tailor made for a wishing well. Found in 18th-century Kabbalistic treatises, matba is a magic word for obtaining small coins. It literally means "bring forth." As a talisman to be carried in one's money purse, matba was to be written on a square of paper.

PEE-WEE HERMAN

Mekka-Lekka-Hi, Mekka-Hiney-Ho was popularized by the children's television series Pee-Wee's Playhouse (1986). "One of Pee-wee's visiting pals to pop into the Playhouse was in the form of a genie—a disembodied, turban-topped talking head named Jambi. Always a jokester, Jambi swiveled his head and worked his magic much to Pee-wee's rapture; he granted wishes if Pee-wee chanted along with him" (Stephen Cox, Dreaming of Jeannie, 2000).

FROM INSIDE PANDORA'S BOX

Jiggery pokery is action with astonishing results or a clever deception. It is the name of one of the plagues and misfortunes that was contained inside Pandora's box of mythology.

JOHNNY THUNDER'S SECRET

Cei-u (pronounced "say you") is the word that gives comic book character Johnny Thunder (Flash Comics, 1940) the power to summon The Thunderbolt (his magical partner who appears as a puff of pink smoke).

A GHOSTLY NAME

In the folklore of West Cornwall, England, Nomme Domme was a name that spirit-quellers used to address and obtain power over ghosts. The name is undoubtedly a corruption of the Latin In Nomine Domini ("In the Name of the Lord"). The name was considered "a magical word, very likely the spirit's name among spirits, for old folks held that they acquire new ones quite different from what they bore when in mortal bodies" (William Bottrell, Stories and Folk-Lore of West Cornwall, 1880).

A WATCHED POT NEVER BOILS?

It's been said that a watched pot never boils, and perhaps that inspired this Italian magic spell for getting water to bubble: Pentola, pentola, pentola, bolli.

BRUCE LEE-STYLE

Exclaimed at the end of a chant, the magic word harrahya could be likened to the shout of a martial artist delivering a knifehand strike, focusing power toward an amazing conclusion.

HOLY MOLY

Popularized by the Captain Marvel comics in 1940, Holy Moly is an expression of wonderment that recalls a magic herb of Greek mythology. Sporting white flowers and black roots, moly was Hermes' gift to Odysseus, to protect against incantations.

MAGIC IN OZ

In the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, it is said that to transform people and objects, the word pyrzqxgl must be pronounced correctly. The Munchkin named Bini Aru, who discovered the word, hid away the pronunciation directions after Princess Ozma decreed that only Glinda could practice magic in the land.

BROCCOLI

Oh! Brocoli,
Oh! Brocoli,
A magic word
is Brocoli!
—J.A.H., "The Masonic Password," Freemason's Magazine (Aug. 15, 1868)

The incantation quoted above was said in jest, yet it's not preposterous that the vegetable broccoli have a magical name. The word derives from a Latin root, brocchus, meaning "projecting." A simple definition of a magic word is "a powered projection" (to paraphrase W. Ong, The Presence of the Word, 1967).

UN-BEWITCHING

Zolda Pranken Kopeck Lum are the magic words the character Uncle Arthur teaches Darrin Stephens in the television series Bewitched, when Darrin is convinced he's been turned into a Warlock.

EXCELSIOR

Excelsior is a cry of ascendancy, supremacy, mastery, greatness. It is a charm for gaining the upper hand. The silvery tones of this heart-stirring magic word "put a soul in every bell / To triumph o'er the powers of hell—Excelsior!" (Thomas Bracken, "Longfellow," Musings in Maoriland, 1890). In his poem "Excelsior," Henry Wadsworth Longfellow likened the word to a sigh, an oft-repeated prayer, the accents of an unknown tongue, and a falling star. Excelsior is of Latin origin, ex meaning "beyond" and celsus meaning "lofty." It is typically taken to mean "ever upward."

Described by Encarta as "America's most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation," Craig Conley has also been called a 'cult hero' by Publisher's Weekly. A former college teacher of writing and literature, he left academia to pursue his research into one-letter words, magic words and ancient Zen versions of Rock-Paper-Scissors.

In addition to Magic Words: A Dictionary (Weiser Books) and One-Letter Words, a Dictionary (HarperCollins), he has written a field guide to identifying unicorns by sound, a coloring book that requires no crayons, an atlas of blank maps, and four editions of the textbook Human Diversity: A Guide for Understanding . Craig blogs at OneLetterWords.com/weblog and MysteryArts.blogspot.com.

Are you an author and would like your book featured on Neatorama? Please email me about a possible guest blog post just like this one!

The following is a guest blog by Kelsey Timmerman of Travelin Light | Blog

During my research for my book Where am I Wearing: A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People that Make Our Clothes I met a lot of garment workers. Allow me to introduce you to a few of them:

Arifa holding her daughter Sadia

Arifa
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Quote: “Their father was a crook, and the government doesn’t take care of my children. It’s not like the USA or the UK.”

Arifa is a single mother. She lives on the sixth floor of a crumbling apartment building in Dhaka with her daughter Sadia, 4, and her son Abir, 11. She has another son, Arman, 18, who went to Saudi Arabia to work. He sends half of his money home to help his mom and siblings Arifa works at a nearby garment factory where she earns $24/month. A trip through the market is enough to show that Arifa is well respected by all and feared by merchants, who don’t dare bargain with her.

Nari (left) with roommates

Nari
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Quote: “The workers at beauty salons make less than garment workers, but I will be an owner and make more.”

Nari works at a factory that makes blue jeans. She shares an 8’ X 12’ apartment with seven other girls. Four of the girls sleep on a bamboo bed and the other four sleep on the concrete floor. Nari irons jeans. It’s a job that she had to pay a $50 bribe – a month’s wage – to get. Fifty dollars is probably enough for one person in Cambodia to live on, but Nari, like many of the garment workers in Cambodia, supports her family of six. She is attending beauty school and hopes to open her own salon someday. She doesn’t like bowling.

Ai
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Quote: “I miss working and talking in the rice fields. At the factory, we aren’t allowed to talk. The bosses want us to work as quickly as possible.”

Ai shares an apartment with Nari and works at the same factory. She is a checker, looking for flaws. Eighty-five people have a hand in sewing together a single pair of blue jeans, and Ai makes sure that no one screwed up. Like many garment workers, she lives far from her home village and rarely visits; a six-day workweek won’t allow it. Ai doesn’t have a contract with the factory, which means she doesn’t have the same rights as other workers. She can be fired for absolutely no reason. She supports six people on her wage of $55/month. She owns a Tweety Bird shirt, but has no idea who Tweety Bird is.

Zhu Chun (left), Dewan (right)

Dewan and Zhu Chun
Guangzhou, China
Quote by Zhu Chun: “One thing is for sure. I don’t want (my son) to come here to work in the factory. I just want him to study, because people like us who don’t have knowledge have to work very hard.”

Dewan and Zhu Chun moved from their village 600-miles away to Guangzhou to get a job at a factory making shoes. They haven’t seen their 13 year-old-son in three years. The original plan was to work a few years to pay off the home they built in their village, but Dewan’s mother got sick and died. Now they have a house and expensive medical bills to pay off. A few years have become a few more. The law limits their workweek to 44 hours, but they often work more than a hundred. Neither one of them has eaten cheese.

Debbie holding the author's favorite shorts

Debbie
Perry, New York
Quote: “They would have to push me out the door to get me to leave.”

Debbie’s job working for Champion was supposed to be a filler between college and whatever she decided to do next. Twenty-eight years later she is still working at the factory, which is no longer owned by Champion. In 2002 Champion moved the factory’s work and hundreds of jobs to Mexico. Lucky for Debbie the community of Perry pulled together and a new company, American Classic Outfitters, was born from the ashes of Champion. You’ve seen Debbie’s and ACO’s work. They make uniforms for 16 of the 30 NBA teams, all of the WNBA, 73 colleges, and 3 NFL teams.

Kelsey Timmerman is the author of Where am I Wearing. From the inside flap:

Ninety-seven percent of our clothes are made overseas. Yet globalization makes it difficult to know much about the origin of the products we buy—beyond the standard "Made in" label. So journalist and blogger Kelsey Timmerman decided to visit each of the countries and factories where his five favorite items of clothing were made and meet the workers. He knew the basics of globalized labor—the forces, processes, economics, and politics at work. But what was lost among all those facts and numbers was an understanding of the lives, personalities, hopes, and dreams of the people who made his clothes.

In Bangladesh, he went undercover as an under-wear buyer, witnessed the child labor industry in action, and spent the day with a single mother who was forced to send her eldest son to Saudi Arabia to help support her family. In Cambodia, he learned the difference between those who wear Levi's and those who make them. In China, he saw the costs of globalization and the dark side of the Chinese economic miracle.

Kelsey's blog is full of neat tidbits from the book. Don't miss the Underwear Wall of Fame and his informal survey of where people's T-shirts were made.

Oh, one more thing: his wife Annie just gave birth to the couple's first child, Harper Willow Timmerman, on January 6, 2009. She's very cute! (Congrats Kelsey!)

Are you an author and would like your books promoted on Neatorama? Let's talk about a possible guest blog post just like this one!