Friday Hodgepodge

Four Things

1. Tom Lehrer fans take note. The good news is that the mathematician-satirical musician has, for all practical purposes, made his music public domain. The bad news is that we'll have only until the end of 2024 to download it.

Probably not talking about maps... (Image by Taisiia Stupak, via Unsplash, license.)

2. Whether you need to settle a bar bet or just like maps, you might like MapFight, which interactively compares areas of maps in its database. For example, my nearest large city, Jacksonville, covers nearly three times the area of New York City, and over two thirds that of Rhode Island.

In fact, the site has an entire page of comparisons with the largest city (by area) in the lower 48.

3. Checking on news of Hurricane Zeta, I smiled when I learned that it was business as usual -- almost -- at Biloxi's Golden Nugget casino the whole time:

The Golden Nugget announced Wednesday afternoon it would remain open throughout the day and evening, with limitations to its menu.

"We ask that anyone already visiting our property or considering a trip to follow the National Hurricane Center for updates, and to avoid traveling to or from our property during the storm, as hurricane conditions and road flooding may present dangerous travel conditions," the casino said on Facebook.

Footage from the bottom level of the hotel's garage had me scratching my head, though: If you're going to gamble all night during a hurricane in a low-lying area, don't park on ground level.

4. When I was in academia, I used a very early version of this literature management software, and it was neat then. But pharma blogger Derek Lowe reports a very impressive new feature:

A red banner appeared across the top with a notice that a paper that I had in one of my collections had been retracted. That's pretty handy: a red X now appears next to the paper, and it's also part of a new folder that the program created ("Retracted Items") I was naturally curious to see what paper it was that I'd found interesting that was now being pulled, and was surprised to find that it was a high-profile publication ... on protein degradation.

Yes. You can now be automatically alerted about retractions in Zotero.

-- CAV