Those of you who've followed this 'blog for a while might be wondering what happened to the paper that I started submitting to journals in mid-June of last year. Well, yeah; me too.

As previously reported here, it was rejected by three journals as unsuitable to a general audience of economists, after being rejected by one without any reason being given. As it was rejected for being too specialized by one journal, I would then submit it to a more specialized journal. I submitted it to a fifth journal in early September. That process had to be repeated as their representative wanted me to purge the acknowledgments before the paper were passed-on to an editor (I'm not sure why someone there didn't delete them from the LAΤΕΧ file that they'd had me submit, nor why their submission template provides for acknowledgments, with no guidelines on when not to include them), but the paper was then officially recorded as submitted on 8 September. And I've been waiting since for a yea or for a nay.

They have an on-line site at which I can check on the status of my paper. After a while, the site reported that an editor had been assigned; then, in early January that reviewers had been assigned. Anthony suggested that perhaps they had had trouble finding reviewers who would be sufficiently comfortable with the sort of mathematics used. In late March the status report was changed to say that reviewers were assigned at that time, as if perhaps one or more of the original reviewers had left without returning an evaluation.

This journal doesn't really provide any guideline about querying them concerning the status of a submission. A common guideline from economics journals (as some others) is to contact them if one hasn't received any word after six months. I couldn't really claim that I'd not got any word for six months, but what I'd got surely didn't seem informative. Towards the end of June, after getting an opinion from Anthony, who said that I should feel free to query them, I did. The person whom I contacted said that, much as Anthony had suggested, there seemed to have been a problem finding reviewers, and that my query had been forwarded to the editor.

I've received nothing further. So, I don't really know the status of my paper.

Craig Yoe's book, Secret Identity, revealed that Joe Shuster, the original artist and co-creätor of Superman, had during a low point in his life provided illustrations for a sado-masochistic series, Nights of Horror, and for three one-shot sado-masochistic fantasies, Rod Rule, Hollywood Detective, and Continental. I am therefore surprised that no one seems to have reported on the artist for House of Tears, by Harold Kane.

I found those illustrations on the WWWeb this morning. In some cases, they were creditted to Harold Kane; in others they were not creditted at all. A search of Google for pages containing both Harold Kane or House of Tears and Shuster or Schuster produced only false positives.

I don't know whether House of Tears had further illustrations. But, in any event, it seems that Shuster's underground oeuvre is larger than previously recognized.

A stereotype ex libris book-plate that I got to-day: This image is by Andre Louis Armand Rassenfosse (1862 – 1934). I've had an eye out for one of this particular design for quite a while.

At Kingdom Kane (a 'blog focussed upon the art of Gil Kane), Mykal Banta has reproduced The Birth of the Atom. a story which contains what I have long regarded as an epitomal sequence of what I call comic-book science:

As I noted to Mykal, a white dwarf star has a density of about 1 million grams per cc, and the meteor appears to be about 1000 cc, so the whole thing should mass at about 1 million kilograms.

It's not apparent why 1 million kilograms should stay compressed into such a small volume. In the case of a dwarf star itself, the gravitational mass of the star as a whole creätes sufficient force, but this is just a fractional piece of such a star. It ought to fly apart as a terrible burst of radiation. But let's assume that this somehow doesn't happen, that the meteor just stays together in a nifty one-liter piece.

The meteor that creäted Meteor Crater in Arizona was under 30,000 kilograms. Ray wouldn't be excavating the meteor at all; he would have been killed by the shock waves from the impact. Those who later did excavate the meteor wouldn't find it buried just a couple of feet deep.

At the surface of the Earth (which itself masses about 5.97 × 10²⁴ kilograms), this meteor would weigh about 11 hundred tons, but Ray picks it up! He subvocalizes a few puffs, but he manages to carry the thing back to his car! Now-a-days, they don't make cars that can carry 11 hundred tons. I don't think that any grad students can lift 11 hundred tons. And, really, Ray ought to be sinking into the ground, as even if he has big feet and has both feet on the ground he is applying over 7000 kPa of pressure to the soil.

It might be suggested that the meteor, while perhaps of material that were once compressed to a density of about 1 million grams per cc, were subsequently uncompressed, and that what Palmer recovered were only, say, 100 kilograms of material. But I don't know how, then, it would be recognizable as originating from a white dwarf star. For example, the core of the sun compresses matter to a greater density than 100 grams per cc.

To-day, when I was starting my shower, I saw what looked like a silverfish swirling around in the water. I don't want silverfish in my apartment, but didn't see any need for the thing to die, and the water hadn't been hot enough to kill it, so I held my hand over the drain, turned-off the water, and let what was in the tub drain slowly.

Sure enough, there was a water-logged silverfish. I grabbed a clean, empty bottle in which the silverfish could be held until I finished showering and dressing, and some bathroom tissue with which to pick-up the insect, as I could not pick it up with my bare fingers without crushing it.

I made the mistake of using dry tissue, which did not mold itself around the creature, and which wicked the remaining water off it, so that the thing was able to leap free…

…into the drain.

Well, I'd tried.

(Underscore mine.) Actually, the Magnum® variety is not super-sized. It is not much different in size from various other condoms. It is simply marketed in a manner that yields an impression of being super-sized to those who don't actually check the facts — such as journalists. An ordinary-sized Trojan condom is 52mm wide and 200mm long; the Magnum® is 54mm wide at the base, widening to 60mm at the head, and 205mm long. (The Magnum® XL differs in that it widens to 65mm at the head.)

(The Durex® Avanti™, on the other hand, has a width of 64mm along its length. It is, however, only 180mm long, which might be of concern if the condom is being used to prevent the transmission of disease and the anatomies of the sexual partners allow penetration to a greater depth.)

When the subject of condom size is raised, many women and various men with small penes make the point that condoms stretch, so that a regular-size condom can be put on a larger penis. Indeed, but elastic substances produce greater counter-force when stretched farther. The fact that someone might be able to fit a spring around his-or-her cranium (as occasionally condoms are stretched around heads for one reason or another) doesn't mean that one can comfortably wear that spring around one's penis. So larger condoms are quite appropriate for some men.

But, with the Magnum®, Trojan is selling a mere 0.08in in additional width, just 0.2in in extra length, and fantasy.

I've written about the topic of self-policing elsewhere, earlier. But I've been thinking of writing about it here, and it arose in conversation to-day.

The term self-policing has multiple meanings, but it usually refers not simply to individuals regulating their own behavior, nor simply to any sort of regulation of own-behavior, but to members of a group acting to regulate how other members of that group treat outsiders. When, for example, one refers to members of a profession engaging in self-policing, one is typically speaking of them taking steps to protect clients against incompetence or dishonesty.

Lots of self-policing is not recognized as such. For example, when a state goes to war, those within the nation who attempt actively to impede the war are engaged in self-policing based on notions of right-and-wrong. Those who actively seek to compel support for the war are also engaged in self-policing, albeït based upon different notions of right-and-wrong.

The American civil rights movement succeeded exactly by persuading a sufficient number of white Americans to act to regulate the behavior of other white Americans; again, it was self-policing. Whites who did no more than insist that not all whites engaged in discrimination were not truly part of the problem, but they certainly weren't part of the solution, and they ought to have been.

And likewise for those in other groups who, instead of self-policing, will merely self-righteously insist that the problematic behavior from within their group is not universal to its members. They are not truly part of the problem, but they certainly aren't part of the solution, and they ought to be. Although a people may be not only technically but meaningfully civilized without self-policing, a society or culture that lacks self-policing is none-the-less less civilized than one with self-policing. And, while we are not entitled to forceably compel other people in-or-outside of our own culture to self-police, we are entitled to demand such in non-coërcive ways, and to look with contempt upon people or peoples who do not self-police.

To-day, 20 May, is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. I'm quite disappointed that its founder has retreated; I could not have withdrawn in good conscience, even though my contribution demonstrates that I am pretty poor at working in charcoal:

Some people have chosen to draw caricatures, but my objective was simply to violate a grossly illegitimate prohibition. As such, I sought to draw Mohammed. If the death threats become more narrowly focussed on those who creäte caricatures, then I will creäte a caricature.

From a copy of Le Rire from 1908, reproduced at Vintage Poster:

After Adam had eaten of the fruit of the Tree, the dog did lick juice from the fruit, but from its flavor decided that the fruit was not food. And so the eyes of the dog were but little opened. The cat did merely sniff of the fruit, and then turned to other things.