Friday, October 5, 2012

Sun, Sep 30, 2012 10:35 pm Paws & Claws ~ September 30, 2012 ~ Celebrate the Full Moon ~

"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe,
then I'd have to say
that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little."

-George Carlin
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See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Equinox: The Sun from Solstice to Solstice
Credit & Copyright: Tunç Tezel (TWAN)
Explanation: Yesterday was an equinox, a date when day and night are equal. Today, and every day until the next equinox, the night will be longer than the day in Earth's northern hemisphere, and the day will be longer than the night in Earth's southern hemisphere. An equinox occurs midway between the two solstices, when the days and nights are the least equal. The picture is a composite of hourly images taken of the Sun above Bursa, Turkey on key days from solstice to equinox to solstice. The bottom Sun band was taken during the winter solstice in 2007 December, when the Sun could not rise very high in the sky nor stay above the horizon very long. This lack of Sun caused winter. The top Sun band was taken during the summer solstice in 2008 June, when the Sun rose highest in the sky and stayed above the horizon for more than 12 hours. This abundance of Sun caused summer. The middle band was taken during the Vernal Equinox in 2008 March, but it is the same sun band that Earthlings saw yesterday, the day of the Autumnal Equinox.
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See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
A Space Shuttle Over Los Angeles
Image Credit & Copyright: Stephen Confer
Explanation: It's not every day that a space shuttle lands at LAX. Although this was a first for the major Los Angeles airport hub, it was a last for the space shuttle Endeavour, as it completed its tour of California skies and landed, albeit atop a 747, for the last time. During its last flight the iconic shuttle and its chase planes were photographed near several of California's own icons including the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the HollywoodSign, and the skyline of Los Angeles. Previously, in May, the space shuttle Enterprise was captured passing behind several of New York City's icons on its way to the Intrepid Sea, Air, & Space Museum. Pictured above, the piggybacking shuttle was snapped on approach last week to LAX as it crossed above and beyond a major Los Angeles street. Now retired, the space shuttles are all museum pieces, with the above shuttle scheduled to be towed along the streets of LA to the California Science Center.
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Rex Barker here with, Why Bad Things Happen...
All of us wish life was always smooth and went the way we hoped. Who doesnt want everything to go right, to have abundance of health, happiness, relationships, family, friends and ample resources not to have to worry about things, Who doesnt want their efforts to achieve things to go smoothly.

Well, as you have guessed, life rarely happens the way we plan it. The old joke is, Man plans, God laughs.

In truth, the Divine plan is to have us struggle to achieve things and to overcome our limitations. Even when things are horribly challenging, ultimately they are for our good. Sometimes we are blessed to be given the clarity such as when one is fired and has a tough time, but ultimately end up in a much more rewarding position -- and other times we never understand why something happened. Our lack of understanding does not mean it wasnt for our good. It just means that there are some things we were just not meant to understand.

The definition of anxiety is when you are not on the correct path that your soul wants you to be on. The challenge is that most of us are only remotely connected to our souls. Effectively, our souls are hidden from us, and our goal in life is to reconnect. Often the challenges we face in life are wake up calls to reconnect. So the next time something challenging happens, ask yourself (again and again):

1. Why is this happening?
2. What should I learn from this?
3. What do I need to improve in my life?
4. How can I connect more to my soul, which is hidden?

Try doing this for a week and your entire outlook on life will change...and dont be surprised by the answers
This is Rex Barker wishing you all great clarity in your life which is one of the greatest blessings you can receive.
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We were shopping for clothes when my 13-year-old daughter spotted a hat with "Guinness" written on it.
She put it on and proclaimed, "Look! I'm a genius!"
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Portland On The Web: Forbes, BusinessWeek, San Francisco Gate

Portland's Pearl District was named one of America's Hippest Hipster Neighborhoods by Forbes this week, drawing ire from many over-caffeinated, fixed-gear riding denizens on the east side of the river. But really, can one trust an assessment of 'hip' from a magazine run by a dude who is one mustache and a top hat away from being Mr. Monopoly?

Speaking of people with lots of money, Portland company PostureNOW recently faced a panel of millionaires on the popular reality show The Shark Tank. Perhaps having more self-made millionaires in town would help us out, considering we only made it to number 5 on BusinessWeek's list of America's Best Cities. We're still winning where counts however: beer. Apex has been voted the top beer bar on the Pacific Coast.

Here is a round-up of the goings-on in Portland this week:
Forbes: America's hippest hipster neighborhoods
BusinessWeek: America's 50 Best Cities
Craft Beer: Craftbeer.com readers select the country's favorite beer bars
Portland Business Journal: Portland's PostureNOW dives into ABC's 'Shark Tank'
OregonLive: Portland State University lands on U.S. News list of growing universities
San Francisco Gate: Portland housing project has bed bug sauna
Nick Fish: Portland fun for every season
Portland Tribune: East side streetcar begins service

Red Tricycle Portland: Great places to enjoy fall colors in Portland

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"When you drink the water, remember the spring." - Chinese Proverb
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Austria’s yodelling, hiking trail awaits your musical talent
The Austrian Alps famously inspired Julie Andrews to launch into song in the film "The Sound of Music". Now tourists can do the same on a new trail where hikers can learn unique art of yodelling.
Thanks, Ed
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I went to an AA meeting last night.
I was confused….
It was full of women with tiny tits.
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A public service announcement from a Belgian bank - worth watching.
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I fucking love science
Sometimes I sit in the dark and touch my meteorite.

A firm and heavy iron meteorite belonging to the chemical group IIAB, its coarse octahedrite structure feels rough beneath my eager fingers, its strange regmaglypted surface the result of hot and heavy atmospheric ablation at 5.6km above the Earth's surface.

I think about the 93% iron, 5.9% nickel, 0.42% cobalt, 0.46% phosphorus, and 0.28% sulfur that lends it most of its mass. How deeply that mass must have plunged into the fertile Earth waiting below, the impact crater filling with hot and gooey tektites and the Earth releasing her dirty, dirty meteoric dust with a shudder and groan.

I can almost taste the trace amounts of germanium and iridium on my wanting tongue, my bottom lip quivering as I think about other minerals present: taenite, plessite, troilite, chromite, kamacite, and schreibersite. Mmmmm.

Sometimes I sit in the dark and touch my meteorite. By 50 Shades of Science
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Why are there so many Jones's in the phone book?
Because they all have phones.
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Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench to pound in the correct screw.
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Image cropped and annotated from the one at imgur, discussed at Reddit.
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A Capella Science - Rolling in the Higgs (Adele Parody)

There's a collider under Geneva
Reaching new energies that we've never achieved before
Finally we can see with this machine
A brand new data peak at 125 GeV
See how gluons and vector bosons fuse
Muons and gamma rays emerge from something new
There's a collider under Geneva
Making one particle that we've never seen before

The complex scalar
Elusive boson
Escaped detection by the LEP and Tevatron
The complex scalar
What is its purpose?
It's got me thinking

Chorus:
We could have had a model (Particle breakthrough, at the LHC)
Without a scalar field (5-sigma result, could it be the Higgs)
But symmetry requires no mass (Particle breakthrough, at the LHC)
So we break it, with the Higgs (5-sigma result, could it be the Higgs)

Baby I have a theory to be told
The standard model used to discover our quantum world
SU(3), U(1), SU(2)'s our gauge
Make a transform and the equations shouldn't change

The particles then must all be massless
Cause mass terms vary under gauge transformation
The one solution is spontaneous
Symmetry breaking

Roll your vacuum to minimum potential
Break your SU(2) down to massless modes
Into mass terms of gauge bosons they go
Fermions sink in like skiers into snow

Lyrics and arrangement by Tim Blais and A Capella Science
Original music by Adele
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"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way did not become still more complicated." - Poul Anderson
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beer corpses
Oktoberfest is in full swing in Munich, Germany. Redditor snowmanspike took a picture on his way to work one morning so we can see the evidence. "Bierleiche" translates into English as "Beer Corpse." Link
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The latest from AsapSCIENCE tries to convince me that my ears make my stomach hurt when I go on carnival rides that I shouldn't. What do they know? -via Geekosystem
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Right? Even though everyone's charmed by wildly different kinds of physical characteristics, that hasn't stopped our old friend science from stepping in and asserting truths about what we are biologically inclined to find appealing.

Julian Wolkenstein was intrigued that those with symmetrical faces were widely seen as more attractive, and set out to consider the idea in a series of portraits that mirror both the left and right halves of an individual's visage, resulting in two often quite different depictions of the same person
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Why is Chelsea Clinton growing up a confused child?
Because dad can't keep his pants on and mom wants to wear them.
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Father Goose Story No. 8

There was this troupe of dancers that traveled around the country dancing in clubs and theaters. They were called the Steppers. At one club, the Steppers did such a good jobm of pulling in patrons that the management gave them all the drinks they could drink after the show.

Well, they all got plastered and were having a big party. When it came time to get on their bus to travel to the next town, they did not want to stop partying, so they just moved the party to the bus. As they rode down the highway, you could here their yelling, singing, and laughing for miles.

At a house along that very highway, there lived a family that had a pet snake. It was a viper, and it's name was Peter. That night, Peter Viper was asleep in his snake house in the back yard. Suddenly, he was awakened by a loud racket. It was the bus carrying the Steppers still having their party. But Peter didn't know that. In his confusion, he thought he was back in deep dark Africa being pursued by Pygmies. He slithered out of his snake
house, headed across the yard as fast as he could, and crossed the highway just in front of the bus. The bus driver, who was a little sleepy, saw Peter Viper in the road, and mistook him for a giant log. He swerved, and the bus landed in the ditch, drunk Steppers lying everywhere.

The next day, the headline in the paper read "Peter Viper wrecks a truck of pickled Steppers".
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That's a whale of a kite! Peter Lynn Kites has created a huge 100-foot long kite shaped like the blue whale:
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Best new reason for an emergency landing
United Flight 1214, a Boeing 737-800 with 52 passengers, departed for Chicago at 6 a.m. and returned to RDU at 6:40 a.m.
A United Airlines flight to Chicago returned to Raleigh-Durham International Airport shortly after takeoff Wednesday morning, after an altercation broke out between two flight attendants.
“Our law enforcement team was notified by the tower that the captain had requested law enforcement to meet the aircraft,” said Mindy Hamlin, RDU spokeswoman. “The aircraft had gotten about 50 miles out when he reported a possible assault on the aircraft.”
Airport police officers determined that no assault had taken place and no blows were exchanged, Hamlin said. They made no arrests… Uh-huh!
The two attendants were removed from the plane and replaced with other employees. The flight continued to Chicago O’Hare after a three-hour delay. Fly the friendly skies. Right?
Thanks Ed ~
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Famous People with High IQs
One's IQ is akin to one's income or weight: you don't brag about it, and it's rude to ask about it. But celebrities have a hard time keeping anything secret, especially when they've graduated from Yale or MIT. Then there are those famous folks whom you may be surprised to find they have a high IQ. Shakira has a reported IQ of 140 (which puts her in the "gifted" range). See the rest at Unreality. Link
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"Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream." - W. S. Gilbert
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His cuddling stinks -in a good way, but can't you just picture him speaking with a French accent while trying to chase down the little kitty? Via I Can Has Cheezburger
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Eat Your Kale
Kale or borecole is a form of cabbage in which the central leaves do not form a head. It is considered to be closer to wild cabbage than most domesticated forms. Turns out there's quite a bit of science behind this super food hype. Kale is an excellent, potent source of Vitamin K, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, fiber and carotenoids.
Research has also shown that kale contains 45 different flavonoids with a variety of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. The name borecole originates from the Dutch boerenkool (farmer's cabbage). Here in the Netherlands we usually serve borecole with a smoked sausage.
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THE UNIVERSAL DECISION MAKER
http://www.sylloge.com/5k/entries/162/
Flipping a coin is just so 20th century. Get with the times and check out the Universal Decision Maker. It will make all your daily decisions easy and entertaining...
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ZOBMONDO - WOULD YOU RATHER...?
http://www.zobmondo.com/play/game
Based on the board game, answer mind-boggling questions on Pain, Fear, Discomfort, Appearance, Embarrassment, Food Ingestion, Ethics, and Intellect. It's also fun to predict how your friends will answer.
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http://youtu.be/2IB7NDUSBOo
This video was made by students at Wallace County High School in Sharon Springs, Kansas, in reaction to new school nutritional rules that limit the amount of calories served. The lyrics are at the YouTube ppage. The guidelines may work well for younger children, but high school students are both set in their tastes and require more food overall. Students at Cut Bank High School in Montana are resorting to a second lunch at McDonalds or bringing brown bags to supplement what the school serves -bcause it's not enough for growing teenagers, they say.
New USDA school lunch guidelines, part of President Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, require doubling the servings of fruits and vegetables, with less sodium and fat and no meat for breakfast. The rules limit calories, so as First Lady Michelle Obama has said, school lunches don’t undo parents’ efforts to ensure their children eat healthy meals.
The problem, however, is in the limit of protein — meats, cheese, sour cream, yogurt (but not milk) — and grains to 2 ounces each for young children and 3 ounces for high schoolers. The new rules set the minimum at only 1 oz. of protein per meal, said Salley Young, a Montana School Nutrition Association executive board member and food service manager at Greenfield Elementary School.
In rural communities, some students get on the bus at 7:15 a.m., have school all day and then participate in activities in the evening, pushing dinner time to 8 p.m. or later, meaning they need more food than the minimums set, she said. Teenagers can easily pack away twice as much food as a middle-aged person without gaining weight. Link -via Buzzfeed
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Penguin poop can be seen from space

No, seriously. The combination of background colouring from satellite images and the penguin's formidable gastrointestinal prowess allows the Emperor penguin (and others too) to be tracked by satellites orbiting the Earth. Background colouring comes handy when all that you're looking over is white sheets of ice over which penguin poop marks can easily be discerned -
in fact, new penguin colonies have been discovered using this method. Peter Fretwell, who led one of the studies, and colleagues totted 595,000 penguins, which is almost double the previous estimates of 270,000-350,000 emperors. The count is thought to be the first comprehensive census of a species taken from space, and there's virtually no environmental impact occurring due to research too.

Now to the pooping part: A study (see source 1) focused on Adélie and Chinstrap penguins shows that these birds can poop at four times the pressure that humans can. They sit at the edge of nests and poop forty centimetres backwards. That's really impressive given the height of the penguins is roughly 60 centimetres.
Sources:
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9zzHKvkPNo
1)http://www.springerlink.com/content/a9j4vvpattrukeyn/
2) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090603-penguin-poop-video-ap.html
3) http://www.omg-facts.com/Facts/Penguin-poop-can-be-seen-from-space/50351
4) http://phys.org/news163141205.html
5)http://www.neatorama.com/2012/04/02/penguin-poop-can-be-seen-from-space/
6) http://www.penguinpoop.com/
Image: http://www.penguinpoop.com/
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These days it seems like there's another new gadget every other week, whether it's a phone, handheld device, tablet computer, laptop or some other hi-tech innovation. We've certainly come a long way from the days when everyone was getting the latest pocket calculator, marveling at the technology of these machines when they came into the mainstream back in the seventies. Take a look at some calculators from years gone by.
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Dodger Stadium Skydive
Several Navy SEALS recently parachuted into Dodger Stadium to impress the crowd. They had to maneuver themselves in from pretty high -it's about a four-minute drop- but executed it perfectly! And the great thing for us is that one guy was wearing a camera so we can see, if not feel, what the dive was like. Link
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Mad scientists at Pizza Hut, contemptuous of what you regard as "real food," have devised Kit Kat Pops. These are Kit Kat bars baked inside pizza dough, then lightly dusted with awesomeness. So far, they are only available at outlets in the Middle East Link -via Foodbeast
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Fresh Air in a Can
When authorities don't seem to be taking air pollution seriously, China's billionaire Chen Guangbiao tried to raise awareness in a very unusual way: he's selling canned of fresh air collected from remote regions of the country. He has recently started selling canned fresh air collected from “revolutionary” areas of China, including Jinggang Mountain in Jiangxi Province and some ethnic minority areas and Taiwan. ”One only has to open the can, directly ‘drink’ it or put the nose close to the can to breath deeply,” Chen said Link
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Study: Urban Coyotes Are 100% Monogamous
Fidelity may not be a virture found in every species, but it is in coyotes. During a study of 236 of them in the Chicago area over six years, researchers found no evidence of a coyote straying from its mate:
"I was surprised we didn't find any cheating going on," said study co-author Stan Gehrt, a wildlife ecologist with Ohio State's School of Environment and Natural Resources. "Even with all the opportunities for the coyotes to philander, they really don't. [...]
The loyalty of coyotes to their mates may be a key to their success in urban areas, according to Gehrt.
Not only does a female coyote have the natural ability to produce large litters of young during times of abundance, such as when living in food-rich cities, she has a faithful partner to help raise them all.
"If the female were to try to raise those large litters by herself, she wouldn't be able to do it," said Gehrt, who holds appointments with the university's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and Ohio State University Extension. "But the male spends just as much time helping to raise those pups as the female does."
Unlike the males of polygamous species, a male coyote "knows that every one of those pups is his offspring" and has a clear genetic stake in helping them survive, Gehrt said.
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It might still be plenty warm for the rest of us, but this little meerkat is from the Sahara, so he needs to warm himself by the fire. Via I Can Has Cheezburger
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Here’s a cute video, uploaded by Zach Menchini of Bring a Snack, of two day-old goat kids playing on a see-saw. Zach is a recent transplant to New Zealand from New York City.
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Sure, they’ll drive you crazy with the punching and the mud and the peeing on everything, but did you know that they actually get inside a mother’s head?
Long-time readers of the blog may remember the beautiful story of how mothers and babies share cells throughout pregnancy. In the later trimesters, one out of everythousand cells in the mother’s blood can be from the growing baby, after crossing the placenta and migrating into her bloodstream. Some of those cells remain in her body after delivery, settling and growing and forever making the child a part of the mother. It’s a poetic embrace, a permanent biological link with unknown consequences.
Newer research on this phenomenon found that over half of boys’ mothers tested carried DNA from the Y-chromosome in their brains, showing just how extensively the cells had migrated.
Who knows if there’s biological significance to those lingering remnants of a mother’s creation (with help from the dad, of course)? More research will have to be done to decipher any harm or benefit. For now, we can remind ourselves of this beautiful tale, and just how deep our parental connections are.
(via ScienceNOW)
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Goodbye

Goodbye, you see its time for me to die
It's really been fun living in hell
And I'm sure it's beginning to tell;
People are already saying God bless,
Its time this weary head was put to rest.

What is as versatile as a University?
Where the social life is a necessity
And the girls are all after the looks
Rather than what you can do with the books
But does the intention ever justify the end.

Still there are good things with life
Shame they are all double edged knifes
For the weapon is not fit as a sword,
For all we do with vast sums, is hoard
Money it seems will drive us to death.

But what are our best days I am told
It is question that is not quite so bold
For it is something that we all hold the key
Before that is when we cease to see
School and childhood is the answer.

We choose to forget those days
As it was all just a dizzy haze
It is childish and stupid we are told
But it's the most valuable that we hold
Reminding ourselves of what was in front.

People you see, always see behind
From figures to stats which seem to bind.
Important we feel they may be
But it's more relaxing just to sip tea
And try to grasp what our future holds.

Goodbye, you see its time for me to die
For what I've said could all be a lie
But if that was true then why do I feel dread
As I near my final challenge in facing death
Does the intention ever justify the end.

~ Justin Parker
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Celebrate Health from Health.com
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13 DELICIOUS PUMPKIN RECIPES
Pumpkin frenzy is hitting coffee shops and restaurant menus everywhere, so dig into this fall food while you can. Low in calories and high in antioxidants, here are some amazing ways to enjoy the flavor.
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THE BEST AND WORST FOODS FOR SLEEP
Insomnia. Ugh, there's nothing worse. While food isn't always the culprit, here's a list of potential good guys and bad guys when it comes to getting some shut-eye.
http://health.chtah.net/a/tBQYzqvBFYNexB8uQ-qCFNC1Ei$/top23
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Things Adults Learn From Kids

1. There is no such thing as child-proofing your house.
2. Legos will pass through the digestive tract of a 4-year-old.
3. A 4 years-old's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
4. If you use a waterbed as home plate while wearing baseball shoes it does not leak - it explodes.
5. No matter how much Jello you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk on water.
6. You probably do not want to know what that odor is.
7. Always look in the oven before you turn it on.
8. Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
9. Quiet does not necessarily mean don't worry.
10. A good sense of humor will get you through most problems in life (unfortunately, mostly in retrospect).
(From Aha! Jokes)
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The Camel

The sexual needs of a camel
are greater than anyone thinks.
For once in a moment of passion
it attempted to ravish the Sphinx.

The Sphinx's posterior entrance
was clogged by the sands of the Nile,
which accounts for the hump on the camel
and the Sphinx's inscrutable smile :)
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"A new sleep study suggested that insomnia is linked to early death. Well that should help you doze off. If you weren't sleeping before, this should knock you right out." -Jay Leno
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The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself.
--Oscar Wilde
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Wake the F#ck Up!

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Manatee Rape
http://youtu.be/05-5uLLoygA
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RANDOM TIDBITS

Due to the similarity between his last name and that of canine PSA character McGruff, who urges everyone to "take a bite out of crime," baseball slugger Fred McGriff became popularly known as "The Crime Dog."

Woodsy Owl debuted in 1970 as an environmental representative who chastised us "Give a hoot, don't pollute," a slogan coined by U.S. Forest Ranger Chuck Williams. During the 1990s, Woodsy's message was changed to be a bit more all encompassing: "Lend a hand, care for the land!"

Dick Van Dyke starred in a series of Public Service Announcements from 1975 to 1984 for the National Fire Protection Agency's "Learn Not to Burn" campaign. After he lost his Malibu home to a wildfire, he agreed to become the voice of Sparky, the Fire Dog.

Before there was a rock band of the same name, there were the original Crash Test Dummies. Named Larry and Vince, these two characters spent 15 years reminding Americans what could happen to them if they forgot to buckle their seat belts when riding in an automobile. Their motto: "You could learn a lot from a dummy."

There's an old children's joke about Smokey the Bear's middle name being "The". Not only is the joke bad, but the information is as well. The character's full name is really just Smokey Bear.

During the 1980s, a large number of American cartoon shows contained PSA's at the end of their shows. Three of the most widely known are the closing moral segments at the end of He Man and the Masters of the Universe, the "Knowing is Half the Battle" epilogues in GI Joe: A Real American Hero and the "Sonic Sez" segments from Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog.
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QUOTE: "Tomorrow - your reward for working safely today."

HINT: (1955-), author, journalist and documentary filmmaker.
ANSWER: Robert Pelton.
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The Two Poles

dudeney poles puzzle
A puzzle by Henry Dudeney:
A man planted two poles upright in level ground. One pole was six and a half feet and the other seven feet seven inches above ground. From the top of each pole he tied a string to the bottom of the other — just where it entered the ground. Now, what height above the ground was the point where the two strings crossed one another? The hasty reader will perhaps say, “You have forgotten to tell us how far the poles were apart.” But that point is of no consequence whatever, as it does not affect the answer!
One pole was 78 inches high, and the other 91 inches. Multiply these two numbers together, and also add them together. Then divide the first result by the second, and you get 42 inches as the height above ground of the point where the two strings intersect, no matter how far the poles may be apart.
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Visiting London for the first time in 1912, Russian poet Samuil Marshak asked a man on the street, “Please, what is time?”
The man said, “That’s a philosophical question. Why ask me?”
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Body paint
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There is so much evil and stupidity in the world, sometimes it is therapeutic, uplifting even, to examine the nobler pursuits of man; like the annual North American Wife Carrying Championship in Newry, Maine.

Yes, not only is this a real event, it's an international sport and part of the World Alternative Games. The object of the event is to carry your wife through a challenging open field course with plenty of mud, muck and water hazards.

The origin of the sport was apparently inspired by the Finnish wife-carrying tradition and a 19th century character named Herkko Rosvo-Rankainen, who--as folklore has it --chose people for his marauding band of thieves based on how well they could carry wives away from the villages they plundered.

The modern day version includes only willing participants, and the women don't even have to be married. To compete teams must be comprised of a man and a woman and be 21 years or older. The rules even allow for the woman to carry the man in case he gets exhausted.

The best part of this heroic endeavor is that the winner, in addition to a cash prize, wins his wife's weight in beer. Now that is what I call a relationship-building exercise.
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Former prison for sale in Pa. --*
EBENSBURG, Pa. - A Pennsylvania municipality is seeking a buyer or tenant for a unique property -- the former county prison. The Ebensburg Borough Council said the back portion of the facility, which is newer than the front, is being used to house county records, but the front portion, which was the original Cambria County Prison, has been vacant for 15 years, WJAC-TV, Johnstown, Pa., reported Thursday. "If it wasn't the landmark that it is in town, if it wasn't on the national list of historic places, we still couldn't tear it down," Ebensburg Borough Manager Dan Penatzer said. "I think it's probably impossible to tear this building down." He said there are many different potential uses for the building. "A restaurant, a microbrewery, retail, offices, anything," Penatzer said. "There's so much crazy character about this building that could apply it to any business theme like that. I think there's a lot of possibilities."
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Everyone knows that spinach is high in vitamins A, C and E as well as folic acid, magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron (despite the famous misplaced decimal point myth).

But in addition to its reputation as a superfood, spinach has recently been discovered by engineers to have certain properties that can be harnessed in order to generate electricity.

Like many plants spinach contains a photosynthetic protein that converts light into electrochemical energy. Knowing this a team of scientists from Vanderbilt University isolated the protein and combined it with silicon. The result is a "biohybrid" solar cell that could very well lead to more efficient solar panels.

"This combination produces current levels almost 1,000 times higher than we were able to achieve by depositing the protein on various types of metals. It also produces a modest increase in voltage," lead scientist David Cliffel explained. "If we can continue on our current trajectory of increasing voltage and current levels, we could reach the range of mature solar conversion technologies in three years."

But why spinach? According to Cliffel, the protein in spinach used for photosynthesis can continue to function well after it is extracted. The protein is also known to convert sunlight into electrical energy with close to 100 percent efficiency. A considerable leap compared to the 40 percent achieved by modern devices.
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Using girls for sex
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Three playing cards in a row. Can you name them with these clues?

There is a two to the right of a king.
A diamond will be found to the left of a spade.
An ace is to the left of a heart.
A heart is to the left of a spade.
Now, identify all three cards.


ANSWER: Ace of Diamonds, King of Hearts, Two of Spades
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Quite a few states were proposed in the history of the United States that never became reality -although most of the areas in them were or eventually became part of other states. But what if they had gained statehood? Kids in school might be singing rhymes that include Absaroka, Scott, Transylvania, and Nickajack! Read about these and more states that might have been at mental-floss. Link
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"Jeopardy!" Champion Ken Jennings takes you on a challenging adventure through the secrets of American history. Will you be our grand prize winner?
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Two hundred years after the Salem witch trials, farmers became convinced that their relatives were returning from the grave to feed on the living
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snake arm
The Alternative Limb Project gives people who have prosthetic limbs the chance to stand out uniquely. Paralympian and swimming champion Jo-Jo Cranfield, pictured above, wears an arm with a realistic-looking snake coiled around it. Other unique limbs include a floral-patterned leg and a leg that appears to have built-in stereo speakers Link -via Breda Fallacy
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We've seen pixel art before, but never like this. Meet IRIS (2012), an "interactive media canvas with expandable matrix of transmissive monochrome LCD" by Hybe.
If the last sentence made you go "huh?", it's because it's kind of hard to explain. Hybe hacked an Xbox 360 with a custom designed Arduino board to create a matrix of transparent LCD screens that display varrying sizes of black circles. These dynamic circles are what you see as art.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via My Eclectic Depiction of Life
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The characters of some of your favorite movies try to explain how time travel works. For them. Your mileage, existing in the real world, may vary. You'll find a list of the films used at Flavorwire. Link
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wire
Kevin Iris, an artist in Wisconsin, loved to grow bonsai trees. But he found shaping their growth with wire guides too challenging. Sometimes, he had as much wire as he did tree. This inspired him to begin wrapping and folding thousands of wires into metal alternatives.
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The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.
University of Utah computer science professor Matthew Might welcomes his new graduate students each year by explaining a PhD by drawing, literally, "the big picture" in graph form. That series of pictures has become a classic story of pride and knowledge and then a shattering dose of reality, but still ends with "Keep pushing." Don't neglect to read past the original story to the explanation of why Might is selling a printed version of the guide -it will all make sense when you see it. Link -via Open Culture
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Name: Steve Collins
Grew up: in SoCal, watched the Apollo landing on TV with great interest and attended North Hollywood High School
While growing up: His parents fed him a regular diet of books about space
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Chimera is a term for some mythological monsters that are made of different parts from different animals. Real-life chimeras contain the genetic material of more than one individual. And it happens more than you may realize. For example, Venus the cat is probably not a chimera, but your mom might be! -via The Daily What Geek
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The Exeter mail coach was making its way past Salisbury on the night of Oct. 20, 1816, when it met with a rare adventure. From the Edinburgh Annual Register:
At the moment when the coachman pulled up to deliver his bags, one of the leaders was suddenly seized by a ferocious animal. This produced great confusion and alarm; two passengers who were inside the mail got out, ran into the house, and locked themselves up in a room above stairs; the horses kicked and plunged violently, and it was with difficulty the coachman could prevent the carriage from being overturned. It was soon perceived by the coachman and guard, by the light of the lamps, that the animal which had seized the horse was a huge lioness. A large mastiff dog came up, and attacked her fiercely, on which she quitted the horse, and turned upon him. The dog fled, but was pursued and killed by the lioness within about 40 yards of the place.
The creature had escaped from a caravan on its way to Salisbury fair. She was hunted into a hovel under a granary, where “her howlings were heard to the distance of half a mile,” and the caravan’s owner eventually appeared and led her back to her cage. “The horse, when first attacked, fought with great spirit, and if at liberty, would probably have beaten down his antagonist with his fore feet, but in plunging he embarrassed himself in the harness. … The ferocious animal missed the throat, and the jugular vein, but the horse is so dreadfully torn he is not expected to survive.”
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Why have a normal, everyday family portrait made in the great outdoors when you can battle a zombie horde? Evan, Ken, and their three children battled zombies and got a professional set of family pictures that none of them will ever forget! See the entire series, in which zombies sneak up on the group, they run, and then fight back, are at Pseudodad. Link -via Buzzfeed
zombies
(Image credit: Ashley Jones Collichio/Luke Austin Photography)
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A pious man who had reached the age of 105 suddenly stopped going to synagogue. Alarmed by the old fellow's
absence after so many years of faithful attendance the Rabbi went to see him.

He found him in excellent health, so the Rabbi asked, "How come after all these years we don't see you at services anymore?"

The old man looked around and lowered his voice. "I'll tell you, Rabbi," he whispered. "When I got to be 90, I expected God to take me any day. But then I got to be 95, then 100, then 105. So I figured that God is very busy and must've forgotten about me, and I don't want to remind Him!"
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A bird in the hand will probably shit on your wrist.
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"Clint Eastwood has won so many awards, it's easier to name the awards he hasn't won, The Soul Train Award: I think that's about it." --Craig Ferguson
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"A new study found that running for two minutes is just as good for you as working out for 90 minutes. That doesn't sound like a study: it sounds like something a chubby guy says after being on the treadmill for two minutes." -Jimmy Fallon
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Wall of cocks
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Google Street View now takes us down into the deep at selected locations off the coast of Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii. Divers with cameras, rather than drivers with cars, captured the images that accompany the maps. They're not fully functional yet. I tried to get bicyling instructions from Canberra to the Great Barrier Reef and Google Maps couldn't generate them.
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All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. --Aristotle
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“To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.” — Marcus Aurelius
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“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” — John Maynard Keynes
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“Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?” — A.J. Ayer (attributed)
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Researchers in Indonesia have discovered what looks like a teeny tiny dragon. As yet, we have no information on whether they guard small piles of gold or attack miniature castles.
This was a nesting female found in the Lambsuango Forest reserve in 2009 and was immediately released after this photograph was taken.No everyone, this is not photoshopped. Just google 'gliding lizard' - there are aroun
d 15 described species, mostly found in South East Asia. This is thought to be a new species with the genus but further study will be required to confirm that.
For those saying it must be fake, because they wouldn't have released it ... there are actually laws about taking animals off of reserves you know. They're called reserves for a reason.
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An empire is an immense egotism. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I was on vacation in Florida and saw a car in a parking lot with a bumper sticker on it that read,
“I really miss St. Louis”.
So I broke out the side window and stole the radio, and left a note on the seat that said, “I hope this helps”.
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Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise. --Han Suyin, Eurasian author and physician
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tiling task 1
We’ve removed two squares from this 7×8 grid, so that it numbers 54 squares. Can it be covered orthogonally with tiles like the one at right, each of which covers exactly three squares?
tiling task 2
No. Number the squares as shown. Now each tile, however it’s placed, must cover a 1, a 2, and a 3. But the grid contains 19 1s, 18 2s, and 17 3s. So the task is impossible.
From Pierre Berloquin, The Garden of the Sphinx, 1981.
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A good way to threaten somebody is to light a stick of dynamite. Then you call the guy and hold the burning fuse up to the phone. "Hear that?" you say. "That's dynamite, baby."
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Two Cats and a Banana Box
http://youtu.be/GFqu19_NjMM
Mimi is inside the box. Chibi-bang is on the box. Boys and girls, can you guess what will happen? The Shironeko cats know how to have a good time! Link -via Daily Picks and Flicks
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The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it. --Joseph Conrad
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A Taxonomy of American Barbecue Sauces
There are so many ways to make barbecue sauce that you want to know the basic kinds and maybe sample them all. That could involve some traveling to get the "real thing," as most of them on this list are named for the region where they originated. American barbecue sauces owe their differences to their colonial histories and can be divided in three basic categories, vinegar based, tomato based, and mustard based. Then there are at least 11 distinct classic American regional barbecue sauce styles and infinite variations (if we stretch the definition of "sauce" to include Memphis dry rub).
But this guide has links to recipes so you can make your own, and to commercially-available versions you could try out, too! Link -via the Presurfer
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"Superpod" isn't a phrase you see used often, but it's appropriate here. Mike Horn and Chase Jarvis were filming a segment for Polyform when the 110-foot boat they were sailing off the coast of Cape Town was suddenly surrounded by thousands of dolphins. It's gorgeous on film, but the real-life experience left the crew in awe, as Jarvis explains in the video. Via Death+Taxes
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To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.
--Publius Cornelius Tacitus
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The Breweries of Europe by Pop Chart Lab
Breweries of Europe by Pop Chart Lab is a tasty poster design that comprehensively maps out approximately 1,000 beer breweries from all over the continent of Europe. A limited edition of 1,000 signed and numbered 39″ x 27″ posters are now available to pre-order (with a shipping date of Tuesday, October 2, 2012) from the online Pop Chart Lab store. We have previously written about Pop Chart Lab and their great collection of print designs.
The world’s most comprehensive mapping of the breweries and abbeys of the European continent, this print measures in at over seven square feet and features nearly 1,000 breweries, from craft to macro and everything in between. images via Pop Chart Lab via Pop Chart Lab
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Thirty-two metronomes are started off in pretty much random beats. Over time, they sync up with each other, sort of like the positive feedback resonance people on a walking bridge experience, which has caused troubles in the past. See, the surface they sit on is suspended, so that each device's "bounce" affects the others. Watch the pink metronome on the right, second row from the front. It tries to maintain its individuality, but even he eventually bows to the pressure of the sympathetic vibration on the suspended surface and falls in line with the horde. -via The Daily What Geek
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Autumn’s Bounty Can Turn Carnivores Into Carb-loving Vegans
What would you expect a Grizzly Bear to eat when fattening up for winter? Caribou? Salmon?
How about a nice fruit salad? Turns out some of our most celebrated carnivores become vegetarians in the fall.
Even our largest terrestrial predator, the Grizzly Bear, turns into a berry specialist at this time of year.
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Enemas have been around for centuries, as have hazing and alcohol, but leave it to the innovative members of University of Tennessee's Phi Kappa Alpha fraternity to combine them all.
Now enemas have been around for a long time. In fact, they are still popular in certain circles for their therapeutic properties. Popular enema "recipes" include coffee, chamomile or green teas or even a dilution of lemon juice. Who am I to say what a person should or shouldn't squirt up his or her backside?
However, alcohol is a different matter altogether since whatever is in the enema is absorbed straight into the bloodstream through the colon while bypassing the liver's filters.
This important little datum was learned the hard way by 20-year-old Alexander Broughton who was admitted to UT Medical Center unconscious and unresponsive. He had a blood alcohol content level greater than 0.4, which is considered toxic and potentially deadly. Legal intoxication is 0.08.
Investigators determined the incident happened at Phi Kappa Alpha's house on campus where they found several other people, including three men, still passed out the next morning.
Investigators are working to determine if Broughton was assaulted or made the decision to engage in the behavior himself. UT suspended the Phi Kappa Alpha chapter for 30 days or until a decision is made about the chapter's future.
The one thing the story didn't specify is what kind of alcohol was used for the enema. That really makes me wonder. What do you think would make a good enema? Beer? Wine? Almost certainly not hard liquor, although with a BAC of 0.4 I wouldn't rule it out. I think personally I would go with a nice, sparkling wine.
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Darwin by Sean Williams
Darwin by Sean Williams
This wall piece contains a large portrait of Charles Darwin and many different real and imaginary animals and characters floating in the surrounding air. Many of the animals are derived from my other paintings. Darwin serves as the bridge between reality and imagination inviting the viewer to peek in, but not to disturb.
The piece speaks to the importance of combining creativity with hard perseverance and diligence. Creative thinking was necessary to synthesize Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection and explain evolution, and it is our unique ability to think creatively that has allowed us to evolve as a successful and productive species. Creativity is necessary for us to evolve and progress. The painting also reveres Darwin’s stoic characteristics, while opening a world of dreamy playfulness. The hand gesture suggests a humble, quiet, and introspective nature, while his eyes exude an air of confidence, strength, and wisdom. Darwin serves as an ideal model for positive attributes, whose seriousness is balanced by the necessity of creativity, imagination and playfulness.
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Presenting the 101 most useful websites of 2012.
These sites, well most of them, solve at least one problem really well and they all have simple web addresses (URLs) that you can memorize thus saving you a trip to Google. Here's the top 10.
  1. screenr.com – record movies of your desktop and send them straight to YouTube.
  2. ctrlq.org/screenshots – for capturing screenshots of web pages on mobile and desktops.
  3. goo.gl – shorten long URLs and convert URLs into QR codes.
  4. unfurlr.come – find the original URL that’s hiding behind a short URL.
  5. qClock – find the local time of a city using a Google Map.
  6. copypastecharacter.com – copy special characters that aren’t on your keyboard.
  7. postpost.com – a better search engine for twitter.
  8. lovelycharts.com – create flowcharts, network diagrams, sitemaps, etc.
  9. iconfinder.com – the best place to find icons of all sizes.
  10. office.com – download templates, clipart and images for your Office documents.
If you enjoyed the above list, also check out the expanded version The Most Useful Websites which now offers a collection of 150+ undiscovered and incredibly useful websites to enhance your productivity.
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"Every man is the builder of a temple called his body." - Henry David Thoreau
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QUOTE: "A leader leads by example not by force."

HINT: (544 BC-496 BC), ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher.

ANSWER: Sun Tzu.
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NASA's Curiosity has found evidence for ancient streams on Mars.
"NASA's Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named "Hottah" after Hottah Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It may look like a broken sidewalk, but this geological feature on Mars is actually exposed bedrock mad
e up of smaller fragments cemented together, or what geologists call a sedimentary conglomerate. Scientists theorize that the bedrock was disrupted in the past, giving it the titled angle, most likely via impacts from meteorites.

The key evidence for the ancient stream comes from the size and rounded shape of the gravel in and around the bedrock. Hottah has pieces of gravel embedded in it, called clasts, up to a couple inches (few centimeters) in size and located within a matrix of sand-sized material. Some of the clasts are round in shape, leading the science team to conclude they were transported by a vigorous flow of water. The grains are too large to have been moved by wind.

A close-up view of Hottah reveals more details of the outcrop. Broken surfaces of the outcrop have rounded, gravel clasts, such as the one circled in white, which is about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) across. Erosion of the outcrop results in gravel clasts that protrude from the outcrop and ultimately fall onto the ground, creating the gravel pile at left.

This image mosaic was taken by Curiosity's 100-millimeter Mastcam telephoto lens on its 39th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Sept. 14, 2012 PDT/Sept. 15 GMT). "

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Both image and caption courtesy of NASA. For more information, please see their release here:http://1.usa.gov/VQjWCp
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At a jury trial with the jury consisting of 8 men and 4 women:

Defendant: "Your Honor, I wish to change my plea."

Judge: "Is someone using undue influence to prompt you to change your mind?"

Defendant: "No sir, when I pleaded Not Guilty I didn't know there would be women on the jury. Since I can't even fool my wife, I'll never be able to fool the four women jurors."
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RANDOM TIDBITS

In September 1955, Dwight Eisenhower became the first sitting president to suffer a heart attack. He'd complained of indigestion while playing golf on the afternoon of September 23 and went to bed that evening still complaining of pain. He was rushed to the hospital after 2 a.m. on September 24.

Ronald Reagan began wearing a hearing aid in 1983; he'd lost a significant amount of hearing on a film set in 1940 when a fellow actor fired a pistol near his head.

Jimmy Carter's particularly personal ailment would've remained his own little secret had it not been for the good intentions of his friend Anwar Sadat. The Egyptian president announced to the world on December 24, 1978, that his good friend Jimmy had hemorrhoids and made a public appeal for all Egyptians to pray for his swift recovery.

Cigar-smoker Grover Cleveland was diagnosed with oral cancer in 1893. At his insistence, his ailment was kept secret, and surgery to correct the condition was performed aboard his yacht. This way, he didn't have to check into a hospital, and the press was never alerted to his condition.

Richard Nixon was first diagnosed with phlebitis in 1965. The condition later led to blood clots in his leg and on his lung.

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson suffered a catastrophic stroke that was hidden from the press and public. In truth, this was Wilson's third stroke; he'd suffered from atherosclerosis and bad teeth, a potentially deadly combination.
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44 Presidents Rap
http://archive.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=16672
Memorizing the 44 Presidents of the United States might take some effort. This rap song helps students learn the US Presidents in order of their presidential terms, from Washington to Obama
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The mother of a problem child was advised by a psychiatrist, "You are far too upset and worried about your son. I suggest you take tranquilizers regularly."
On her next visit the psychiatrist asked, "Have the tranquilizers calmed you down?"
"Yes," the boy's mother answered.
"And how is your son now?" the psychiatrist asked.
"Who cares?" the mother replied.
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A young couple drove several miles down a country road, not saying a word.
An earlier discussion had led to an argument, and neither wanted to concede their position.
As they passed a barnyard of mules and pigs, the husband sarcastically asked, "Are they relatives of yours?"
"Yes," his wife replied. "I married into the family."
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Do you work in a laboratory?
Lab Manager Magazine is currently offering free subscriptions.


"Lab Manager Magazine analyzes the strong link between business strategy, technological innovation and implementation. It is focused on the lab professional in a leadership role who is responsible for setting the lab’s direction and identifying, recommending and purchasing technology. It also offers a wide breadth of knowledge to the researchers in the field using lab equipment and seeking to learn about the latest in new technologies for their labs." To subscribe, go here: http://bit.ly/Q4oZfZ
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http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/28/neil-gaiman-8-rules-of-writing/
"Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving."
  1. Write
  2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
  3. Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
  4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you've never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
  5. Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
  6. Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
  7. Laugh at your own jokes.
  8. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
For more timeless wisdom on writing, see Kurt Vonnegut's 8 rules for a great story, David Ogilvy's 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller's 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac's 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck's 6 pointers, and Susan Sontag's synthesized learnings.
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Anaïs Nin on the Meaning of Life & the Dangers of the Internet (1946)

"We believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people… This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us."
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Minimalist Posters Celebrating Six Pioneering Women in Science

One designer's homage to Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, Rosalind Franklin, Grace Hopper, Rachel Carson, and Sally Ride.
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Q and A Quickies

Q: What is smarter than a talking bird?
A: A spelling bee!

Q: What do you get when you cross a dog with a phone?
A: A golden receiver!
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Budget Friendly Camping Recipes for Campfire Cooking Now that you're all set with our helpful tips on How to Get Started with Tent Camping, enjoy our delicious camping recipes that are easy to make and easy on the budget. No expensive ingredients needed. A big thank you to all our members who shared a recipe!... read more

Biscuits on a Stick
Use store bought can biscuits and pointed marshmallow roasting sticks. Take one biscuit and roll like a snake, put one end on the top of stick and wrap around, then toast over the fire. When golden brown, you can tell if its done by turning the biscuit and it will slide off the stick easily. Fill the inside with squeeze butter and honey. Yummy! The older kids put a precooked sausage link on the stick then wrap the biscuit around it and cook it, and they still add the honey and butter. My boys 28 & 30 are showing their kids 4, 5, 6, 7 how to do it. Things from Boy Scout camp still passed on! - Sharon
(You can also cook hotdogs wrapped with biscuits on a stick!)
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Apple: Weekend Sales Top 5 Million for iPhone 5
Apple on Monday said first weekend sales of the iPhone 5 topped five million, beating the opening weekend for the iPhone 4S nearly a year ago by 1 million units.
Demand has been "incredible," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. He also confirmed that the company sold out completely of its initial shipment. "We are working hard to get an iPhone 5 into the hands of every customer who wants one as quickly as possible," he said. While the phone is hard to come by, many early shoppers found a few things to complain about -- and a hidden feature that wowed many.
Read more at USA Today...
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There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavor and then leave it half done. This is what the West has done with its colonial system. It shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbor in the end. --Dame Barbara Ward
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We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart. --Blaise Pascal

You find peace by coming to terms with what you don't know. --Nassim Taleb, Author and Essayist
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Maturity is when your world opens up and you realize that you are not the center of it. --M.J. Croan

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul. --Arnold Bennett
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
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A reader named Gary sent the joke below to me with no explanation other than to read it out loud. I squandered five minutes of my life figuring it out, and now realize that Gary is a big dick.


Father to Son: A B C D duckies.
Son to Father: L M N O duckies.
Father: O S M R ... C D E D B D wings.
Son: Y I B ... M R duckies.

It'll probably make a little more sense to you if your family tree doesn't have too many forks in it.
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"Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to the prosaic, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an anthill." -Henry Louis Mencken
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"A new study found that dogs are smarter than cats because their friendliness has helped them develop bigger brains. Cat people would complain about the findings, but that would involve interacting with other humans." -Jimmy Fallon
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"Season 15 of 'Dancing With the Stars' premiered last night. Is it really the 15th season? Seems like just yesterday I wasn't watching the first season." -Jay Leno
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"In New York City, muggings for Apple products are up 40 percent. Even worse, if you have the new iPhone people camp out overnight to mug you." -Conan O'Brien
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"This week, a man in Missouri reeled in a live grenade when he went fishing. Or as one fish put it, 'That's for my brother.'" -Jimmy Fallon
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CUSTOMER'S GUIDE TO SUPERMARKET SHOPPING

1. When in the express lane, make sure that all items are rung up and bagged before you start looking for your check-book. Then, after you make a futile search for your pen, borrow one from the clerk and make sure your checkbook is balanced before giving up the check.

2. Never get into the 10-Items-or-Less line with less than 12 items. IT'S THE LAW!!!

3. When in the 10-Items-or-Less line and you have your 12 to 20 items, always ask the clerk if it's okay. That way, if he says "yes," then the people behind you will get mad at HIM, not you. If he says "no," then YOU can get mad at him. Either way, you win!

4. Save all your pennies and dump them in the bottom of your purse so that when you are in the express lane you won't be embarrassed by spending all that time looking for one and not finding any.

5. When asked if you want paper or plastic, take all the time you need to make the right decision. Don't be rushed. Get it right. If you're not sure just say, "BAG." That way they will have to ask you again, giving you more time to decide. You may want to practice this at home in case you are ever asked this question at a grocery store.

6. Always, and I repeat, ALWAYS tell the checker your reason for choosing paper or plastic. Checkers by nature are very curious and if you should fail to give them your reason for choosing paper over plastic, the clerk is liable to lie awake at night wondering why you didn't choose plastic.

7. Always keep this in mind: If something is heavy and you don't want to lift it out of the basket and put it on the belt. Don't fret whether the checker will automatically know the price. After all, everyone knows how smart those clerks are.

8. Since everyone knows how ignorant those clerks are, you must always remember to tell them to not put the eggs and bread in the bottom of the bag.

9. Feel free to ask your clerk anything you may want to know. All checkers are experts on how to prepare whatever meal you should decide to make that night. They can give you precise directions to anywhere in the state you might want to go. They can tell you the best restaurant around, the kind of wine you will like best or anything else you may need to know about life.

10. Don't forget rule NO. 8

11. After waiting in the checkout line for several minutes and it's finally your turn at the counter, be sure to tell the clerk that more help is needed. He will certainly ensure that there is plenty of help next time.

12. When the clerk greets you and asks how you're doing, don't feel pressured into answering him. After all the clerk has to be polite-- but you don't have to.

13. When the store is not busy and there is only one check-stand with a light on, be sure to ask the nearest clerk which check stand is open. You don't want to take a chance being tricked into the wrong one.

14. If the clerk asks you if you know the price of an item and you don't, tell him it's "2-something" or "3-something." The clerks love that because they don't get to use their SOMETHING keys very often.

~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Schedule of a bachelor’s life, from the Yorkshire Observer, Nov. 30, 1822:
At 16 years, incipient palpitations are manifested towards the young ladies.
17. Blushing and confusion occurs in conversing with them.
18. Confidence in conversing with them is much increased.
19. Is angry if treated by them as a boy.
20. Betrays great consciousness of his own charms and manliness.
21. A looking-glass becomes indispensible in his room.
22. Insufferable puppyism exhibited.
23. Thinks no woman good enough for him.
24. Is caught unawares by the snares of Cupid.
25. The connection broken off from self-conceit on his part.
26. Conducts himself with airs of superiority towards her.
27. Pays his addresses to another lady, not without hope of mortifying the first.
28. Is mortified and frantic at being refused.
29. Rails against the fair sex in general.
30. Seems morose and out of humour in all conversations on matrimony.
31. Contemplates matrimony more under the influence of interest than formerly.
32. Begins to consider personal beauty in a wife not so indispensible as formerly.
33. Still retains a high opinion of his attractions as a husband.
34. Consequently has no idea but he may still marry a chicken.
35. Fails deeply and violently in love with one of seventeen.
36. Au dernier desespoir! another refusal.
37. Indulges now in every kind of dissipation.
38. Shuns the best part of the female sex.
39. Suffers much remorse and mortification in so doing.
40. A fresh budding of matrimonial ideas, but no spring shoots.
41. A nice young widow perplexes him.
42. Ventures to address her with mixed sensations of love and interest.
43. Interest prevails, which causes much cautious reflection.
44. The widow jilts him, being as cautious as himself.
45. Becomes every day more averse to the fair sex.
46. Gouty and nervous symptoms begin to appear.
47. Fears what may become of him when old and infirm.
48. Thinks living alone irksome.
49. Resolves to have a prudent young woman as housekeeper and companion.
50. A nervous affection about him, and frequent attacks of the gout.
51. Much pleased with his new house-keeper as nurse.
52. Begins to feel some attachment to her.
53. His pride revolts at the idea of marrying her.
54. Is in great distress now to act.
55. Is completely under her influence, and very miserable.
56. Many painful thoughts about parting with her.
57. She refuses to live any longer with him solo.
58. Gouty, nervous, and bilious to excess.
59. Feels very ill, sends for her to his bed-side, and intends espousing her.
60. Grows rapidly worse, has his will made in her favour, and makes his exit.
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It has been determined that having sex before participating in athletic activity, such as a marathon race, does not
impair the athlete's performance. In fact, men have known and displayed this for centuries. After sex, they glance
at their watches and say, "Oops, gotta run!"
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During the banquet celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, Tom was asked to give his friends a brief account of the benefits of a marriage of such long duration. "Tell us Tom, just what is it you have learned from all those wonderful years with your wife?" an anonymous voice yelled from the back of the room.

Tom responded, "Well, I've learned that marriage is the best teacher of all. It teaches you loyalty, forbearance, self-restraint, meekness, forgiveness -- and a great many other qualities you wouldn't need if you had stayed single."
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agamist
n. an unmarried person
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Monday night 11/14/2011 ~ Lambeau Field
ESPN completely shunned the fans effort to recognise our Veteran's. This just showed me what ESPN is really like in that they could not take a few seconds to shows the fans tribute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vHIKXJbKyQ
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2011/12/23/veterans-day-at-lambeau-field-11-14-11-this-was-censored-by-espn/
Thank You Cindy ~
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Falling for Fall Flavors,
There are SO many decadent and delicious treats that pop up this time of year. But you're right; many of these items have scary-high stats. Luckily, there are lots of HG swaps that allow you to indulge guilt-free! Check 'em out...
Pumpkin... If you're a sucker for pumpkin-flavored baked goods, check out this soft-cookie swap, this recipe for pumpkin bread, and these iced 'n spiced muffins! If you crave freezy fall drinks, whip up this pumpkin shake or this pumpkin pie smoothie. Or keep things warm with our take on Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Caramel apple... Here's another famous fall flavor that people go nuts for. This HG parfait will obliterate a craving for the gooey fruit treat. These pancakes are like dessert for breakfast, and this super-easy Deconstructed Caramel-icious Candy Apple will rock your face off! (Careful. You need that for chewing!)

Hot chocolate... There are so many irresistible hot cocoa drinks in autumn, and you don't have to miss out. Click here for a s'mores-inspired cup of cocoa, click here for salted caramel hot chocolate, click here for our hazelnut-infused sipper, and (last but not least) click here for a mega-easy minty hot cocoa!
Via Hungry Girl
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Mercury Thiocyanate Decomposition
So when can I order my "Grow Your Own Cthulu" kit?
Probably the most bizarre chemical reaction I've ever seen.
I fucking love science
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feedback from Phlax *(God-bless his pointy little brain)
Sex With Watermelons Certified to Be 100% Safe.
This is great news, but now my gal spits watermelon all over the place.
~~~~~
I cut out this top thingy, as instructed, and fucked up a perfectly good puter screen.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benham%27s_Disc.svg
Are We Really That Old??
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Are the any mind-blowing sentences that you know?
I feel more like I do now, than I did when I got here.
Thanks Phlax
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A new portrait of the founding father challenges the long-held perception of Thomas Jefferson as a benevolent slaveholder, painting a more troubling picture
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scientists reveal that surges of a chemical in an unexpected area of the brain might make us crave sweets
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"Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied."
In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 rules of writing published in The New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today's most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her 10 rules. My favorite is Zadie Smith's list – an exquisite balance of the practical, the philosophical, and the poetic.
  1. When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
  2. When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
  3. Don't romanticise your 'vocation'. You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle'. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
  4. Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can't do aren't worth doing. Don't mask self-doubt with contempt.
  5. Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
  6. Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.
  7. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.
  8. Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
  9. Don't confuse honours with achievement.
  10. Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.
What a fine addition to other timeless wisdom on writing, including Kurt Vonnegut's 8 rules for a great story, David Ogilvy's 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller's 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac's 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck's 6 pointers, and Susan Sontag's synthesized learnings.
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After sex snack
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If quiters never win, and winners never cheat,
then who is the fool who said "Quit while you're ahead"?
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Q and A Quickies

Q: What is a horse's favorite sport?
A: Stable Tennis!

Q: What did the digital clock say to the grandfather clock?
A: Look, grandpa, no hands!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wow. I guess it really is true that women just do not know how to use tools. Take the case of this Everett, Washington woman. 44-year-old Renee Bishop-McKean is accused of trying to decapitate her sleeping husband with an electric saw in a bizarre revenge plot.
The couple had been living apart but jurors were told the woman invited her husband over and told him to sleep on a mattress that she had wrapped in plastic. That should have been his first hint that something wasn't exactly right.
In the middle of the night the woman attacked her husband with the saw, but the noise woke the victim and he was able to fight her off. But she wasn't finished. Upon realizing the saw wasn't going to work she then attacked him with a hatchet and mallet, striking him on the head. But she was still unable to kill him.
Bishop-McKean told police an attacker must have entered the home through an open window, found the saw and attacked her husband, however Deputy Prosecutor Paul Stern noted the window was locked. He called the woman's theory the "Tinkerbell did this" defense.
Police found evidence that Bishop-McKean had purchased the saw, hatchet and mallet shortly before the attack and stock-piled bleach and a supply of large garbage bags.
Jurors needed less than three hours to find her guilty of first-degree assault and attempted murder.
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Student hit by falling mattress
NEW YORK - A New York college student said he suffered a sprained neck when he was struck by a mattress that fell about 30 stories to the sidewalk. Jesse Scott Owen, 18, said he was walking in the city around 12:45 p.m. Tuesday when the mattress fell from a building and hit him on the head, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday. "This was the most absurd thing that ever happened to me," the King's College freshman said. He said the impact knocked him unconscious. "I woke up and people were putting me on the mattress," he said. "I asked where the mattress came from and they said, 'You were knocked out by it.'" Witnesses said the mattress may have been carried by winds from the rooftop spa of the Setai Wall Street. A manager at the Setai did not respond to an email requesting a comment, the Daily News said. Owen was taken to the New York Downtown Hospital with a sprained neck and a possible herniated disc.
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Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott was visiting the Berlin Wall in 1969 when a curious thought occurred to him. His visit occurred at a random moment in the wall’s existence. So it seemed reasonable to assume that there was a 50 percent chance that he was observing it in the middle two quarters of its lifetime. “If I was at the beginning of this interval, then one-quarter of the wall’s life had passed and three-quarters remained,” he wrote later in New Scientist. “On the other hand, if I was at the end of of this interval, then three-quarters had passed and only one-quarter lay in the future. In this way I reckoned that there was a 50 per cent chance the wall would last from 1/3 to 3 times as long as it had already.”
At the time, the wall was 8 years old, so Gott concluded that there was a 50 percent chance that it would last more than 2-2/3 years but fewer than 24. The 24 years would have elapsed in 1993. The wall came down in 1989.
Encouraged, Gott applied the same principle to estimate the lifetime of the human race. In an article published in Nature in 1993, he argued that there was a 95 percent chance that our species would survive for between 5,100 and 7.8 million years.
When and whether the method is valid is still a matter of debate among physicists and philosophers. But it’s worth noting that on the day Gott’s paper was published, he used it to predict the longevities of 44 plays and musicals on and off Broadway. His accuracy rate was more than 90 percent.
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We're launching a brand new feature tonight! Drawn To Facts will be published every Sunday night, featuring some of the best up-and-coming illustrators from around the world. Tonight's illustrated fact comes courtesy of artist Margo Murphy. Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Fact: More than 35 lives were lost between 1878 and 1890 during the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud, which stemmed from a dispute over the ownership of a pig.
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Apparently all the stress and strain of fixing pipes, jumping over barrels and saving princesses has gotten to poor Mario- he found a battle axe and he's about to lose his mind!
Will he ever find his way back to the Mushroom Kingdom? Do pixelated critters regenerate when they're chopped into little square bits? And what's with the turtle shell on your head Mario?!
(NSFW due to language) --via Obvious Winner
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Turkish rescue divers save inflatable sex doll from the Black Sea
Actually not so unusual – here’s a photo from a similar event in China
Turkish rescue workers retrieved an inflatable sex doll from the Black Sea after police were notified by panicked residents who mistook it for a woman’s body floating offshore…
Police cordoned off a wide stretch of beach in northern Samsun province and sent a team of divers into the water to rescue what appeared to be a drowning woman..
The team quickly discovered it was in fact a blow-up doll, which they deflated before throwing in the garbage…
It was not clear where the blow-up doll had came from. The Black Sea is a key tourism destination for Turks and also sees busy international maritime shipping traffic.
Was there a delegation visiting Turkey from the United States Congress?
Thanks, Ed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Rhiannon" was written by Stevie Nicks with inspiration from a novel containing reference to the Welsh legend of the mythical character Rhiannon.
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RANDOM TIDBITS

In 1944, the H.W. Lay Company became one of the first snack food makers to advertise on television, with a cartoon character called Oscar, the Happy Potato. It was never explained how Oscar was happy to be sliced wafer-thin and deep-fried in a vat of boiling oil.

Sweet potatoes aren't potatoes at all, but vine roots. They're also unrelated to yams.

After 35 years of puffing, Mr. Potato Head officially gave up his pipe in 1987 in conjunction with the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout.

Ore-Ida, the leading potato processor in the United States, is named for the Oregon/Idaho border, where most potatoes are grown. The company made a miscue in 2002 when they attempted to lure kids with colored Funky Kool French fries to match the colorful ketchup being produced by Heinz.

NBA star Anthony "Spud" Webb got his nickname because it was short for Sputnik, a nickname his grandmother had given him as a child.

To further distance themselves from other brands, Pringles began officially referring to its product as "potato crisps" in 1991.
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Three playing cards in a row.
Can you name them with these clues?

There is a two to the right of a king.
A diamond will be found to the left of a spade.
An ace is to the left of a heart.
A heart is to the left of a spade.
Now, identify all three cards.
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Purple Potato Salad Dressing - Stress Free Cookinghttp://archive.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=10532
For a really good potato salad dressing you're going to need balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and oil, among other things. Click to find out how these ingredients come together for a delicious dressing.
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You Lie, You Die

There once was a magic mirror which would kill you if you lied to it.
One day a brunette was doing her makeup and said to herself, "I think I'm the smartest woman ever!" She immediately dropped dead.
The next day a redhead was doing her hair and said to herself, "I think I'm the prettiest woman alive!" She immediately dropped dead.
Finally, the following day, a blond was flossing her teeth. She stopped and said to herself, "I think," and dropped dead.
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The drunk was floundering down the alley carrying a box with holes on the side. He bumped into a friend who asked, "What do you have in there, pal?"
"A mongoose."
"What for?"
"Well, you know how drunk I can get. When I get drunk I see snakes, and I'm scared to death of snakes. That's why I got this mongoose, for protection."
"But," the friend said, "you idiot! Those are imaginary snakes."
"That's okay," said the drunk, showing his friend the interior of the box, "So is the mongoose."
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Pic of the Day

Thanks, Ed
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The father of five children had won a toy at a raffle.
He called his kids together to ask which one should have the present.
“Who is the most obedient?” he asked.
“Who never talks back to mother? Who does everything she says?”
Five small voices answered in unison. “Okay, dad, you get the toy.”
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At this year’s Tokyo Games Show, Japanese purveyor of electronically-augmented fashion Neurowear unveiled the successor to its Necomimi brain-activated cat ears. It’s called Shippo, and it’s a brain-controlled motorized tail that responds to the user’s current emotional state with corresponding wagging.
Apparently a translation of tail in Japanese, Shippo requires a NeuroSky electroencephalograph headset, alongside a clip-on heart monitor, in order to observe brain activity and pick up on the user’s emotional state. This information is then translated to wagging, which will be soft and slow or hard and fast, depending on whether one is relaxing or excited/anxious. The EEG headset communicates with the fluffy appendage via a Bluetooth connection.
Shippo also features geotagging and smartphone sharing capability, which updates friends with the user’s current mood and location, in addition to allowing devotees of the wearable tech to seek out locations which like-minded people have flagged as making them feel relaxed and happy.
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The dance is goofy enough when one person does it. The Ohio University Marching 110 performed "Gangnam Style" Saturday before a huge crowd, and nailed it. Do not miss the "elevator scene." -via Daily Picks and Flicks
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Charlie Cavey, the Bin Man, plays "The Bare Necessities" from the safety of a garbage can in Cambridge, England. I would venture to guess that the garbage bin is more for the novelty effect than because of shyness. It's worked for Cavey, who is quite well known. -via The Daily of the Day
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Grandma's Badass "Do Not Resuscitate" Tattoo
81-year-old Joy Tomkins has got what probably is the most badass tattoo a person can get:
After her husband suffered a slow and painful death, she made the decision to let doctors know that she doesn't want to suffer the same fate when her time comes. Although she doesn't suffer from any terminal illness, the grandmother-of-six visited a tattoo parlour earlier this year and spent £5 on the two tattoos, which can be seen below.
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On his way out of church, Frank stopped at the door to speak to the minister. "Would it be right," he asked, "for a person to profit from the mistakes of another?"
"Absolutely not!" replied the pastor.
"In that case," said the young man, "I wonder if you'd consider returning the hundred dollars I paid you to marry my wife and me last July."
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Mom and Dad were trying to console Susie, whose dog had recently died. "You know, it's not your fault that the dog died. He's probably up in heaven right now, having a grand old time with God."
Susie, still crying, said "What would God want with a dead dog?"
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Driver Casually Exits Crushed Truck through Windshield During Crash
The "during" part is especially smooth. He doesn't wait a minute until after the crash. No, his truck is still moving as he steps out of it through the place where his windshield used to be. These are Russians--people who shave with shovels. This is what they do. -via Yababoon
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We're doomed! Doomed, I tell you!Humanity. It had a good run, wouldn't you say? Now it's over. According to the UK's National Pig Association, pig farms will be unable to keep up with production necessary to feed the world population the pork-based nutrients necessary to live:
New data shows the European Union pig herd is declining at a significant rate, and this is a trend that is being mirrored around the world. Pig farmers have been plunged into loss by high pig-feed costs, caused by the global failure of maize and soya harvests. All main European pig-producing countries report shrinking sow herds.
Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: ClaraDon
Do you love bacon? Enjoy it while it lasts
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I was chatting to this girl in the pub last night and telling her of my uncanny ability to be able to tell the day any woman was born by holding their breasts in my hands.
She thought I was having her on but was curious none the less. Eventually curiosity got the better of her and she said go on then give it a try!
I stood there feeling her breasts for about a minute before she finally lost her patience and asked, "So? When was I born?"
I replied, "Yesterday."
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"A new study found that government employees are the happiest workers. The study was not conducted at the DMV." -Conan O'Brien
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"There is a new survey out about the happiest professions. The city that has the happiest workers is Miami. Because Miami has both things people need to be happy. Thongs and rollerblading." -Craig Ferguson
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"Researchers in Japan are working on a new drug that could treat gambling addiction. But I'll bet you 2-to-1 it doesn't work." -Jimmy Fallon
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After the fall in Garden of Eden, Adam was walking with his sons Cain and Abel.
As they passed by the ruins of the Garden of Eden, one of the boys asked, "Father, what's that?"
Adam replied, "Boys, that's where your mother ate us out of house and home."
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QUOTE: "There is something self-defeating in the too-
conscious pursuit of pleasure."


HINT: (1883-1969), American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist.

ANSWER: Max Eastman.

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Excerpts from an extensive writeup at PBS Newshour:
“Bath salts” are nothing like the epsom salts often added to bathwater; it's just the most common code name given to a specific type of synthetic drugs made in underground labs and marketed as household items. The drugs have been camouflaged as plant food, stain remover, toilet bowl cleaner and hookah cleaner. They've been sold online and in "head shops," businesses that sell drug paraphernalia. The boxes usually contain a foil wrap or plastic bag of powder, though sometimes they take the form of pills or capsules. The color of the powder ranges from white to yellow to brown, the price from $30 to $50. And nearly every box has a label that says “not for human consumption.”...
Much more at the link, which also has a long comment thread. Via BoingBoing.
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Life is all about ass
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The world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. - Sean O'Casey
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Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the woods on her way to visit her grandmother, when suddenly The Big Bad Wolf jumped out from behind a tree.
"Ah-ha....," The Big Bad Wolf said, "Now I've got you and I'm going to eat you! EAT! EAT! EAT!..."
Little Red Riding Hood said angrily, "Damn it, doesn't anybody fuck anymore?"
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A student engineer in the office got engaged some time ago. At her wedding, I was reminding her of the first day she wore her ring. None of the other women in the office even noticed. Finally, in sheer and total exasperation, she said "Boy !!! It's so warm in here today, I think I'll take off my ring."
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I have a 16-ounce bottle of wine and want to make it last as long as possible, so I establish the following plan: On the first day I’ll drink 1 ounce of wine and refill the bottle with water. On the second day I’ll drink 2 ounces of the mixture and refill the bottle with water. On the third day I’ll drink three ounces of the mixture and again refill the bottle with water. If I continue until the bottle is empty, how many ounces of water will I have drunk?
It’s easy to get bogged down in calculating proportions, but there’s a simpler solution. If I continue until the bottle is empty, then eventually I will have drunk all the water that I’ve added to the bottle. I add 1 ounce on the first day, 2 on the second, and so on to the 15th day. (I drink off the entire bottle on the 16th day, so no water is added then.) So in all I’ll have drunk 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15 = 120 ounces of water.
(Another solution is to calculate that in the end I’ve drunk 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15 + 16 = 136 ounces in total, and then deduct the 16 ounces of wine.)
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Someone thinks this is funny...

The Hawaiian Happy-Face Spider (Theridion grallator) is a highly polymorphic species, producing a multitude of patterns on its abdomen, many which uncannily resemble the "yellow smiley-face" we all know from our youth. What's this all about? The prevalent theory is that the high likelihood of a pattern variant will help stop pattern recognition from predators, in
this case forest birds. But why the smiley-faces? Less than one-half of the spiders of this species have a smiley-face variant anyways, the spiders are incredibly small and not a worthy meal to most predators, and they hide under leaves during the day when any potential predators would be hunting. Scientists are hard-pressed to find an adaptive reason for the smiley-faces and are mostly left with the impression that nature just told a really good joke.

There are many impressive photos of this species on the internet. Spend some time laughing...

A scientist's anecdote: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5199409/British-scientists-study-Hawaiian-happy-face-spider.html
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“Never cry over spilt milk, because it may have been poisoned.” — W.C. Fields
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SIGN INSIDE OF LIFEBOAT:
"Some wetness is normal. If submersion occurs, move arms in a swimming motion."
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A note from mom
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I’ve accidentally turned the calibration dial on my bathroom scale, so its readings are skewed by a consistent amount. Apart from that it works fine, though. When I stand on the scale it reads 170 pounds, when my wife stands on it it reads 130, and when we stand on it together it reads 292 pounds. How should I adjust the scale?
When I’m standing on the scale and my wife joins me, the difference in the readings will show us her true weight, 292 – 170 = 122 pounds. So the scale is set 130 – 122 = 8 pounds too high.
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Three Pastors in the south were having lunch in a diner.
One said, “Since summer started I’ve been having trouble with bats in my loft and attic at church. I’ve tried everything–noise, spray, cats–nothing seems to scare them away.”
Another said, “Me too. I’ve got hundreds living in my belfry and in the narthex attic. I’ve even had the place fumigated, and they won’t go away.”
The third said, “I baptized all mine, and made them members of the church. Haven’t seen one back since.”
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How Government Works

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said someone may steal from it at night, so they created a night watchman position (GS-4) and hired a person for the job.
Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job without instruction?” So they created a planning position and hired two people: one person to write the instructions (GS-12) and one person to do time studies (GS-11).
Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?” So they created a Q.C. position and hired two people, one GS-9 to do the studies and one GS-11 to write the reports.
Then Congress said, “How are these people going to get paid?” So they created the following positions, a timekeeper (GS-09) and a payroll officer (GS-11) and hired two people.
Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of these people?”
So they created an administrative position and hired three people: an Admin. Officer (GM-13), an Assistant Admin. Officer (GS-13) and a Legal Secretary (GS-08).
Then Congress said, “We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over budget, we must cutback overall cost,” so they laid off the night watchman.
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Created at Florida International University’s International Hurricane Research Center, the "Wall of Wind" can create sustained winds of 157 MPH. It's used for testing structural integrity of building materials and techniques.

Via Technabob.
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Ann Arbor police Lt. Renee Bush said police were called at 10:30 p.m. to a home in the 2700 block of Packard Road for a report of a robbery. When investigators arrived, they found the man having a bit of trouble with a 19-year-old Ohio woman he had contacted online.
Bush said the man and the woman had agreed on a price for her services. But when the man gave her the cash, the woman reportedly took the money and informed him that the price had suddenly gone up.
Aggrieved, the man took the next step of calling police.
“So, she was arrested,” Bush said, shaking her head.
The stories the man and the woman told police regarding the night’s events were vastly different, Bush said. The man was not arrested, and it’ll be up to Washtenaw County prosecutors to determine charges in the case.
A delightful can of worms. Both parties are contracting for an illegal act – which IMHO shouldn’t be illegal. He says she raised the price unexpectedly – but there is no contract or published fee schedule – or is there?
The coppers really don’t sound like they want to be the arbiter of the case – but, they have to be according to silly-ass laws. So the hooker was arrested – but, not the John – which doesn’t make any sense at all to me.
Thanks, Ed
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She's a very special girl, as noted by her parents: We knew Clara loved the Coppélia ballet, but little did we know she memorized the whole thing! She performed this solely from memory!
This is just a small snippet of her dancing to it. We would see her doing some ballet moves around the house thinking it was ballet moves she learned in ballet class, till one day someone decided to whip out a computer and compare her moves to that of the Coppélia ballerina, and, VOILA, we realized she memorized it, and can dance it!
Clara has been diagnosed with DiGeorge Syndrome and Autism. She spent her first 16 months in hospital, has gone through multiple surgeries since she was two weeks due to the complications with her syndrome. Before she was two, we noticed that she had difficulty connecting with people, was in a world of her own, and two years later she was also diagnosed with autism. Clara also had a lot of physical complications, and could not walk till she was four. She never spoke until she was six...
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Doggy style
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Some of my performance at Micronesia Mall in Guam!
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A frustrated wife buys a pair of crotchless panties in an attempt to spice up her dead sex-life. She puts them on, together with a short skirt and sits on the sofa opposite her husband.
At strategic moments she uncrosses her legs, enough times that her husband finally asks, "Are you wearing crotchless panties?"
"Y-e-s-s," she answers with a seductive smile.
"Thank God - I thought you were sitting on the cat."
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"An 83-year-old male prostitute was arrested. Police say he only charged $20 an hour, but for most of that time, he just talked about his grandkids." -Craig Ferguson
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A three-year-old boy went with his dad to see a new litter of kittens.
On returning home, he breathlessly informed his mother, “There were two boy kittens and two girl kittens.”
“How did you know that?” his mother asked.
“Daddy picked them up and looked underneath,” he replied. “I think it’s printed on the bottom.”
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A group of Americans was touring Ireland. One of the women in the group was a real curmudgeon, constantly complaining. The bus seats are uncomfortable.The food is terrible. It's too hot. It's too cold. The accommodations are awful.

The group arrived at the site of the famous Blarney Stone. "Good luck will be followin' ya all your days if you kiss the Blarney Stone,"the guide said. "Unfortunately, it's being cleaned today and so no one willbe able to kiss it. Perhaps we can come back tomorrow."

"We can't be here tomorrow," the nasty woman shouted. "We have some other boring tour to go on. So I guess we can't kiss the stupid stone."

"Well now," the guide said, "it is said that if you kiss someone who has kissed the stone, you'll have the same good fortune."

"And I suppose you've kissed the stone," the woman scoffed.

"No, ma'am," the frustrated guide said, "but I've sat on it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A kangaroo kept getting out of his enclosure at the zoo. Knowing that he could hop high, the zoo officials put up a ten-foot fence. He was out the next morning, just sauntering around the zoo. A twenty-foot fence was put up. Again he got out.
When the fence was forty feet high, a camel in the next enclosure asked the kangaroo, “How high do you think they’ll go?”
The kangaroo said, “About a thousand feet, unless somebody locks the gate at night!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An opportunity just came up ~ to spend some time at one of my favorite 'rest, relaxation, renew, re-evaluate & re-centering' spots: Mountains, lake, fen, river & the ocean all within 1 mile.
No phone or computer ~ just me and some quiet time to reflect on lessons learned, my direction of growth, and which things are positive (to keep and nurture) and which are negative ~ to let go.
Cya soon ~
Ursa ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ursarodinia@aol.com
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