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Awww, you guys always spoil all the fun.
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I can guess what Bonny Prince Charlie is thinking, but can somebody tell me when Madonna joined the RAF?
A staple of humor magazines everywhere has always been the weddings and engagements postings in local newspapers. In fact, I think Jay Leno does this bit at least once a month on "The Tonight Show". Here are some recent examples from a blog usually devoted to Linux. (thanks to a Mutual Friend of Torrez)
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Today's word is pareidolia
Last week it was a story about a white whale in Australia. This week it's a pink dolphin in Louisiana!
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Let's play "Spot The Moron!" Can you spot the moron?
Studio audience...shhhhh...don't give away the answer!
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Crotchy is a warm and cozy....er, crotch-thing with long skinny legs, a puffy crotch panel and...ahem...a pink button anus! Plus, check out that awesome tattoo!
I'm not exactly sure what you're supposed to do with Crotchy, but I'm sure you'll figure out something...
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The Sydney Morning Herald reports that an honest-to-goodness white humpback whale has been spotted off the eastern coast of Australia.
He's been dubbed "Migaloo", which means "white fella" in the Aboriginal language. I suppose the aborigine who first saw him must have thought he was a typical American tourist. Scientists aren't sure if the whale is an albino or if humpback whales just naturally have white pigmentation once in a while.
Our friend flerdle happens to be on the scene in Brisbane for a bit -- any chance of a first-hand report, flerdle?
In related news, New Bedford police report a tall, grim fellow with a wooden leg trying to convince passers-by to join him for "a little cruise to the South Pacific".
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Speaking of my daughter and gender bias...
Her tee-ball team did baseball cards. By season's end, Charlotte was the only girl on her team. The other two girls quit the very first week, one without ever even playing a single time. Most of the other teams she played against were similar -- one girl or two at most, with the clear appreciation that the girls are only there temporarily. Once the kids move on to more serious baseball, the girls are just not included until they get to the age where girls' softball is available.
By comparison, the soccer organization does a much better job of encouraging girls to play. The teams are sex-segregated right from the beginning, and remain so all the way, but the turnout for the girls' teams is just as big as the boys' teams.
I wonder why there's still such a gender breakdown with baseball, but not soccer. With football there is eventually the strength difference and the fear-of-injury factor that ultimately discourages girls, but baseball in particular doesn't have either of those gender walls. Charlotte was just as good at standing around in the outfield and doing nothing as the next kid. It's odd, because one of our overall observations with Charlotte and her peers is that there's not nearly as much "boys vs girls" self-segregation at this age as Bridget or I recall from our own childhoods.
I don't expect her to continue with baseball for very long, but mostly because she seemed to have very little interest in it compared to soccer. I also suspect she won't be a soccer player for the long haul either, but right now I'd say it's better than even money that she won't want to do baseball next year.
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Speaking of limited perimeters...I think I need to get out a bit more myself.
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Might want to consider a new name for that shop, fella.
Just because every village HAS an idiot doesn't mean every village NEEDS an idiot -- overheard online
Something to keep in mind as the leaders of the G8 group of industrialized nations are meeting this week in Germany.
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I grabbed this screenshot of one of the QuickVote polls on CNN.com yesterday. Almost 100,000 people responded. I think this is about as close to a unanimous opinion as you're ever going to get in this country.
Sad commentary on the state of things, isn't it?
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Check out this Snopes article: a car wash owner in Maryland was losing money from his change machine and suspected his employees of stealing, so he set up a camera to catch them in the act. Imagine his surprise to discover that it was a gang of starlings!
The Snopes article clears up a few mis-reported elements of the story and has a few more pictures of the starlings in action.
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Yesterday, Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates finally got together on stage at the D-2007 trade show to reminisce about the good old days. The computer press had been anticipating this for weeks because it has been a decade since the last time Gates and Jobs appeared together in person.
I realize I am probably not the first guy to notice this, but I just thought I'd point out that Bill and Steve bear an eerie resemblance to Barry and Eliot Tatelman. Now that Barry has left the family business, maybe Eliot could moonlight as Jobs' double for publicity appearances. Heaven knows he's not shy.
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A few years ago, we were all very impressed with the guy who created this incredible chart comparing the sizes of various well-known spaceships from science fiction.
But even though that chart has a few contemporary buildings on it to offer some sense of scale, they're so dwarfed by some of the spacecraft that you don't really get to appreciate the effect. So this guy has boldly gone where no nerd has gone before by superimposing scaled images of the Enterprise-D over Google Map images of well-known American landmarks like the Pentagon, the White House, the St. Louis Arch, and others.
I particularly like the picture of the Big E looming over the Seattle skyline (the Manhattan one is good too).
(via a Friend of Torrez)
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Only in Dubai, I guess...construction continues apace on this new convention center complex.
(That's an actual photograph, BTW, not a "artist's concept drawing")
Do you suppose Dick Cheney will relocate his "undisclosed location" here when it's finished so he can be closer to his Halliburton buddies?
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Yup, that's wood alright.
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It's one thing to intellectually understand how something works, but sometimes seeing it for yourself can be an illuminating experience.
This webpage has a fabulous series of photographs showing the development of a chicken from just a plain old egg yolk into a fluffy little yellow chick.
Oh, and did you see the story the other day about the English boy who was able to hatch a chick from a store-bought egg? (His mum bought it from a farm stand that sells fresh eggs, so don't go running off to the supermarket to buy a dozen eggs thinking you can start your own KFC or something.)
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This great photo of Manhattan as seen from an airliner on its landing approach comes from the blog of another mutual Friend of Torrez, a fellow I only know as "Vidiot". Here's a larger version of the picture on his photo blog.
As I said on the flickr page for this picture, when I used to fly back and forth to New York on the Delta/USAir shuttles, my favorite part of the flight was when the landing approach took us directly over Manhattan like this, getting lower and lower past the skyscrapers as the plane made it's last big turn over the southern tip of Manhattan.
I stopped making that regular trip to New York in 1999 and didn't fly into New York again for several years, during which time the world changed drastically. Apparently it's possible once again to have this view flying into the city, but I personally can't help but think of 9/11 and the people on those planes that morning, flying the same route. Vidiot pointed me to this 2003 Salon "Ask The Pilot" column, where the columnist, Patrick Smith (a former airline pilot) talks about his own impressions of flying this approach.
(Oh, and Vidiot also makes a mean pot of chicken stock)
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This handy item, called "flickr-blockrs" (via) is intended to help you maintain your anonymity when being photographed by your friends as you commit wild and unhibited acts of youthful indiscretion, so that when the photos inevitably wind up on the Internet, you have some some degree of plausible deniability.
Members of the Bush Administration have been wearing rose-colored glasses with blinders on the side as part of their uniform of the day since 2003, but with the ever-expanding mass of scandals coming to light, I think they should probably trade those in for a large supply of these puppies.
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Mmm, boy! Crunchy mole crickets in spicy brown curry sauce!
The other day Bridget and I were talking to Charlotte about where food comes from, and we were explaining that beef is really cow, pork is really pig, and so on, and I brought up the fact that in a lot of Asian cuisines, people eat fried crickets. Charlotte didn't completely believe me, I could tell.
Looks like a can of friend crickets in curry sauce is only about $5.00. I might have to order one as an "experiment".
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Though it's probably fairly accurate, I don't think seeing this luggage carousel in an airport would leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy about getting my suitcase.
(not Photoshopped, BTW, this is an actual advertisement in an Italian airport for a local casino)
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(via FARK, of course)
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Following up a bit on yesterday's post about the difference between food porn and actual fast food, here's a website from a fellow who has made a habit of collecting McDonald's hamburgers and "preserving" them for years. (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)
I used quotations around the word preserve, because all he really does is leave them out in the open air and let them dry up. The preservatives and such involved prevent the burgers from getting moldy, so that eventually they wizen up and look like "apple doll" burgers, if you will.
The oldest one in his collection is the one pictured above, from 1989. That burger is old enough to vote!
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The inimitable Kokogiak is a mutual Friend Of Torrez, whom I recently had the chance to meet in person when another mutual friend and longtime blog-buddy adampsyche was in town.
Kokogiak shared some photos of the doomed Russian sub Kursk with us the other day, and I thought I would share them with you, along with a couple of links I dredged up reading up on that disaster. The picture on the left is the Kursk setting out to sea from the Soviet sub base in the Baltic Sea. The picture on the right is what was left of the interior of the sub after the explosion that took it to the bottom of the ocean, along with its entire crew.
At the time of the accident, there was much speculation as to the actual cause. The Russian government offered a number of weak explanations: "minor technical difficulties", a "depth charge", and so on. The Western media speculated that the nuclear reactor had detonated. Eventually, as the Wikipedia article lists, there were a number of theories proffered ranging from a suicide bomber among the crew to mutiny. Eventually, though, the final report concluded that a torpedo misfire was the most likely cause. When one looks at the cut-away of the wreck, it's not hard to make a similar conclusion.
Even now, though, conspiracy theorists remain convinced of other, more sinister events. The leading conspiracy idea is that the Kursk collided with an American or a British sub, since subs from both navies were in proximity to observe the Russian naval wargame the Kursk was participating in. The linked conspiracy site goes to great ends to detail this idea, which actually had some credence initially, but over the course of time since the accident, very little of this theory holds water (pardon the pun).
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It's my assumption that most of us are fully aware of the business of food styling -- the people who are responsible for making food look so damn good in photographs, commercials, and product packaging. It's a speciality business, but a lucrative one, and many people who go through the culinary school process find themselves drawn to it as an alternative to the restaurant business.
I also assume that there are few of us who aren't aware that food stylists use all manner of tricks and tweaks to make the food look like that. Indeed, in many cases what winds up being photographed is often something totally inedible because of the enhancements (the one that always sticks out in my mind is that the "milk" in cereal bowl photos is usually mixed with Elmer's Glue).
But just to give us a reminder of the cognitive dissonance we cause for ourselves when we actually choose to eat the food these ads represent, this website does a little side-by-side comparison of the food porn ad photos and what you actually get (link via The Presurfer). I actually chose one of the better looking ones for this post; just wait until you see some of the other comparisons.
Still lovin' it?
Permalink |If you are not yet sick and tired of hearing about my recent trip to Ireland, you will no doubt enjoy some of the photographic highlights of the trip, which I've posted to flickr.
I have tried to include some meaningful comment with each one, and they are grouped according to location, though not in chronological order of the trip itself.
Enjoy.
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The Department of Homeland Security has announced a new initiative designed to keep each and every American safe and secure.
The FreedomSphere™ Personal Security System will guarantee that all Patriotic Citizens will be protected from virtually any sort of Evil committed by Evildoing Evildoers. All Americans will be required to use the FreedomSphere™ in all public spaces beginning January 21, 2009.
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Or something like that. I guess it was okay to sell nuclear fuel to the Shah, because there was no way he'd use it to make bombs, nosiree. He was our good buddy! Not like those Evil-Doers who want to Destroy America. No way!
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Yesterday's Washington Post reported that functional illiteracy in the District of Columbia hovers around 36%. In other parts of the United States, functional illiteracy among teenagers is estimated to be as high as 50%. (via MetaFilter)
Not Photoshopped. Kroger Supermarkets are actually selling "Old Yeller" brand dog food.
What market are they trying to appeal to? The pet-owners-with-rabid-dogs-who have-to-shoot-them-in-the-head segment? The I-never-saw-the-end-of-that-movie segment? The Mommy-said-Yeller-went-to-live-on-a-puppy-farm segment?
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The image above is a photograph of a recent solar eclipse taken from the vantage point of a satellite in non-geostationary Earth orbit. The smaller object is the Moon as it passes between us and the Sun. Here on Earth, of course, the disc of the Moon appears to block the Sun, but from a different vantage point the true size difference between them is obvious.
(The weird color is an artifact of the image processing -- the eclipse does not make the sun turn purple -- but it makes for a cool picture).
Via Universal Hub comes this link to a flickr page from a fellow in Cambridge who has decided to help the local authorities tell the difference between real bombs and not-bombs with the help of some handy stickers.
He's working the wrong side of the river, though. As far as I know, the Cambridge cops haven't blown anything up yet. Boston occasionally has these attacks of insecurity where they feel inferior to New York and have to do something to make themselves feel important. Cambridge has no problem with its own self-importance, so they don't think they have to go looking for bombs. The bombs will find them.
If you'd like to help the Boston Police Department, the stickers are only $2.99 and are available here. They're printed on vinyl, so they won't bleach out in the sun or run in the rain. Get cracking, because there are a LOT of pay phones, mailboxes, parking meters and ATMs, and the BPD Bomb Squad hasn't blown anything up in almost a week.
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It ended up being cloudy and showery in our neck of the woods just as the lunar eclipse would have been visible on Saturday evening, but apparently it was quite a show.
This picture, which I have seen on a couple of websites, purports to be an actual shot of the red moon as seen from somewhere in the UK during the eclipse on Saturday (the UK got to see the full eclipse, including totality, while here in North America we only got the red moon).
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A: His ass
Have a look at these super-macro images of bugs who came into fatal contact with windshields courtesy of Der Spiegel (by way of BoingBoing)
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Did anybody else notice the uncanny resemblance when Dick Cheney was visiting Australian PM John Howard last week?
Based on some of the policies of the Howard government, it seems like Dead-Eye Dick really did clone himself.
No, that's not Photoshopped. It's an inverted rainbow.
Well, sort of. In fact, it's a circumzenithal arc, caused by the presence of ice crystals in the air . The San Francisco Chronicle has a brief story about this one and the guy who was lucky enough to get such a great photo of it.
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