Mr. McCain is correct that there appears to be a growing gap in height between North and South Koreans, likely due to poor nutrition and impoverished living conditions.

(…)

While the conditions for North Koreans are troubling, Americans have a similar height gap to worry about, and it also appears to be due to a lower standard of living, poor health care and inadequate nutrition. Last summer, the journal Social Science Quarterly reported that Americans are, quite literally, falling short of Europeans.

New York Times columnist Tara Parker-Pope on the irony that in the first presidential debate, John McCain pointed out the height of the North Korean people (in comparison with South Koreans) as a sign of how bad life there is–while his own American citizens quite literally “fall short” of their European counterparts, for different political, but similar biological reasons.

(link)

On occasion, living in a Jewish neighborhood makes for some interesting observations. The local synagogue (calling itself a temple, thus, according to Wikipedia, giving the hint that it’s a conservative congregation) seemed to be packed tonight, judging by the amount of cars parked around it, in observance of the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah.

In front of it: Two Pittsburgh cops, observing the passers-by.

I wonder why? Is the social climate here particularly hostile against Jewish citizens? That was not my impression, so far. But possibly, it’s similar to the presence of policemen that I saw in front of the New Synagogue in Berlin a while ago (hey, at least the ones in Pittsburgh don’t carry automatic guns). While today’s German society as a whole is not prone to antisemitic tendencies, just in case some douche nozzle has a strong form of historic ignorance, there is protection in place anyway.

Come to think of it, I recently saw apparently anti-judaistic Christian missionaries quite obtrusively trying to convert the local Jews to Christianity, by walking around on the main street with transparents and forcing flyers onto innocent bystanders. (Interestingly, their targeting specifically orthodox jews for their evangelization efforts goes into the same–heavily criticized–direction of Pope Benedict’s recent change to the Catholic Good Friday Prayer for the Jews, though I doubt these missionaries were Catholic. But I am digressing).

Anyway, sad if they need the police to keep such people off their backs.

Gotta love Amazon recommendations. Apparently, it found out due to my viewing history, that I am interested in stem vowels:

What they did not explain is how the Belgium they came up with that (I know for a fact that I did not search for that), and more importantly, how it is even possible to develop an interest in stem vowels.

Then again, I am not a linguist, so maybe I am just an utter philistine when it comes to the beauty of stem vowels. Who knows?

This xkcd comic is just way too cool to be left unblogged:

Needless to say, due to its ginormous size I needed to cut off the middle part (one of the beauties of its CC-by-nc license), so make sure to click on the picture to see it in all its beauty.

Randall Munroe made a map of the observable universe, from top to bottom, on a logarithmic scale. I love the details (“Eris: All hail discordia!”–Eris is the Greek goddess of strife, or Cory Doctorow in a balloon, or Pluto (not a planet, neener neener)…). It’s also cool how funny the buildings look due to the scale.

It’s also available as a poster!