From a 1960 Observer.

News flash: Zac Johnson has a new number on the UM football team. Don’t look for #19 on the kickoffs and punts; look for #36. His mother just let me know of the change.

A press release this morning from the Department of Community Health:

The Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) is making
potassium iodide pills available to people living, working or visiting
areas within 10 miles of the state’s nuclear power plants.

In the unlikely event of a nuclear power plant incident, a radioactive
iodine release could occur. Radioactive iodine can be stored in the
thyroid gland, causing thyroid cancer or other thyroid related
illnesses. A non-prescription drug called potassium iodide (also called
“KI”) can prevent these illnesses by reducing the thyroid gland’s
ability to absorb radioactive iodine.

“Hopefully there will never be an accident where these pills would be
needed,” said MDCH Director Janet Olszewski. “Making KI available
now, we are giving the public an opportunity to add an extra measure of
protection to their emergency supplies.”

KI is effective only if taken within a few hours of exposure to
radioactive iodine. If a General Emergency is declared at a nuclear
power plant, taking KI is recommended as an additional health protective
measure, supplementing other emergency measures such as evacuation and
protection of the food supply.

Continued…

I was fortunate to be driving to Adrian yesterday when the story of the U.S.S. Kirk came on the radio. It was one of those riveting tales I wouldn’t have been able to stop listening to had I reached my destination before it was over. It’s an amazing story:

“We looked up out on the horizon, and pretty soon all you could see were helicopters. And they came in and it was incredible. I don’t think I’ll ever see anything like it again,” said Doyle, now retired and living in Rhode Island.

The South Vietnamese military helicopters were packed with people — pilots and their family and friends. And now, as some of the choppers were precariously low on fuel, the pilots were looking for a place to land. Dozens of UH-1 Huey helicopters flew past the Kirk heading for the larger aircraft carriers. The Kirk had only a small flight deck.

I couldn’t get to the computer fast enough to remember correctly. What did the NPR commentator say – there are 3 billion e-mails sent every day? 300 billion? I do remember this: the average number of e-mails received every day is 110.

I’m please to know I’m below average, even with all the Observer mail. That’s a really bad day when I reach that high of a number. These figures must really make Postal Service officials cringe. Can you imagine opening 110 paper letters every day?

The NPR figures were a lead-in to a report on Google Mail’s new software that will help assign priorities to your incoming mail.

I’ll save you the Googling time and tell you the language Guugu Yimithirr comes from an aboriginal people in Australia. It’s one remote region where “egocentric” words such as left and right are not used. Janet discovered this is a NYT magazine article about language:

Guugu Yimithirr doesn’t make any use of egocentric coordinates at all. The anthropologist John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson have shown that Guugu Yimithirr does not use words like “left” or “right,” “in front of” or “behind,” to describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.”

It goes on to describe a situation that a researcher found in Bali back in the 1930s: For us, it might seem the height of absurdity for a dance teacher to say, “Now raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.”

This section starts on page 2 of this piece.