Russian Sledges

Alright Japan, now you’re just toying with us. Your relentless onslaught of weirdness and cuteness has us glued to our monitors lest we miss the next awesome thing you create or do. We’re putty in your hands. Now you’ve gone and made a series of photographs of cats dressed up as creative interpretations of sushi toppings, resting comfortably atop giant mounds of sushi rice, secured by enormous strips of nori. This one has pretty much rendered us speechless.

These “Sushi Cats” or “Neko-Sushi” are the work of Japan-based company Tange & Nakimushi Peanuts. Who needs to shower or go to work when there is stuff like this to see?

“According to the History of Sushi Cats video, the cats are a magical and historical creature that have been influencing humans since the beginning of time. Tange & Nakimushi Peanuts has released a mobile game app for iPhone and Android phones featuring the Sushi Cats. They also have an online store that offers photo prints, postcards and more (only available in Japan).”

Neko-Sushi is an extremely unusual life-form consisting of a cat on top of a portion of sushi rice. Although several references have come down to us through history from various researchers and witnesses, their existence is still shrouded in mystery and actual sightings remain rare.

There are several academics who have devoted their lives to the study of these creatures. According to a number of these, Neko-Sushi make use of gaps in space to come to us from an alternate dimension. Beyond these “gaps” lies the world of the Neko-Sushi in which, it is recently understood, lies the true identity of the cats that dwell with us here in the human dimension.

We can’t look away. It’s just too cute… too strange… too awesome.

Visit Laughing Squid for even more Neko-Sushi goodness.

kellymagovern:

Summer Glau practicing fight choreography for the movie, Serenity (2005). Her kicks are amazing for not having any martial arts experience. She only did ballet. It makes me wish that more ballerinas got into martial arts. Their flexibility is perfectly suited for it.

[Video Link]

The lead story on CNN’s “Belief Blog” at this moment concerns a former National Football League player who apparently lost a church speaking engagement after tweeting support for basketball player Jason Collins, who this week revealed that he’s gay. Stop the presses! Seriously, this is national news?: Washington (CNN) – LeRoy Butler, a former safety for the [...]

Universe, you are officially not fired. At long last, there's a brand new Janelle Monáe single — "Q.U.E.E.N." featuring Erykah Badu — and a kick-ass music video, featuring musical rebels in a dystopian future. Hell yes.

Read more...

Admirers have bought the crumbling laboratory on Long Island where Nikola Tesla worked and are planning to raise $10 million to restore it to house a museum and memorial.

An inquiry of can-it-be-done knitting through and on something so fragile as a leaf. The result is a an eaten away exoskeleton or the web of pest consuming the plant. Materials used included paper, wool and viscose yarns.

On the most-read encyclopedia in the world, the history of the tiny Swedish city of Kungälv is written by a mass murderer.

Ry Rivard, "Duke Faculty Say No", Inside Higher Ed 4/302013:

“This had more to do with the politics of telling the provost he didn’t consult enough with the faculty, which I feel was bologna,” [Professor of Physics Steffen] Bass said. “But, yeah, that’s how it went.”

I strongly suspect that Prof. Bass actually said "baloney", pronounced something like [bə'loʊ.ni]. I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the pronunciation [bo'loʊ.ɲjə] for the meaning "nonsense", though I sometimes see it spelled "bologna". But this word (or words) is (or are) an orthographic, phonetic, and semantic mess.

All the dictionaries that I've checked agree that bologna has two senses, one a kind of sausage and the other an Italian city. Thus  Merriam-Webster has (1) "a large smoked sausage of beef, veal, and pork; also : a sausage made (as of turkey) to resemble bologna", and (2) "commune N Italy ∗ of Emilia-Romagna at foot of the Apennines pop 379,964″.

The dictionaries also all agree that baloney (sometimes spelled "boloney") has two senses, one a kind of sausage and the other a kind of nonsense. Thus Merriam-Webster has (1) "variant of bologna", and (2) "pretentious nonsense : bunkum —often used as a generalized expression of disagreement".

The dictionaries also generally agree that the sausage can be pronounced [bə'loʊ.ni] even when it's spelled "bologna".

And finally, the dictionaries agree that these two (orthographic) words have three senses between them, with "sausage" being shared, and the other two not:  baloney isn't an Italian city, and bologna isn't nonsense.

The traditional view is also that the "baloney" spelling (and pronunciation) are derived in some obscure way from the Italian city and its eponymous sausage. Thus the OED glosses baloney | boloney, n. and int. as "Humbug; nonsense" and gives the etymology as

Commonly regarded as < Bologna n. (sausage) but the connection remains conjectural.

However, Wiktionary suggests that baloney "nonsense" is "From the Polari slang word balonie", and provides a link that explicates the etymology of Polari as

From Italian parlare (“to talk”). The loss of the first r and the changing vowel quality of the non-stressed vowels is due to the non-rhotic UK accent which reinterpreted the phonemes. The adoption of the infinitive form means that the word probably came via a Romance-based creole or pidgin like Lingua Franca, which use the infinitive of source words to fill every grammatical purpose of the pidginised verb.

and give its meaning as

1. A cant used by the homosexual community in Britain, in the London fishmarkets, and in the theatre, attested since at least the 19th century and popularised in the 1950s and 1960s by the camp characters Julian and Sandy in the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne.

2. A cant used by the Romani people in the theatre, fairgrounds, and circuses of Britain.

However, there's no further explanation in the Wiktionary entry of where putative Polari balonie came from — other entries in Polari wordlists are variously associated with origins in languages such as Italian, Romani, Gaelic, and Yiddish. And the Polari citations in the discussion tend to be a bit, shall we say, diffuse: "Some old book a gay friend of mine has translates various phrases and lists "balonie" as meaning 'rubbish'" (but see the Hugh Rawson's About Words post, quoted below).

Other conjectures relate baloney "nonsense" to blarney, or suggest that it began as a joking way to start saying "bullshit" and then to switch to a more neutral word, like "fudge" for "fuck".

The OED's earliest citation for baloney "nonsense" is

1928   Sat. Evening Post 28 Nov. 21   Gee, that's a long shot. Boloney! That's not the ball—it's the divot.

Barry Popik explains that

Variety slang writer Jack Conway popularized the slang “nonsense” meaning for the word “balogna” or “baloney” in the early 1920s. Al Smith (1873-1994 [sic]), the New York governor who ran for president in 1928, frequently used the “baloney” slang term in 1928 and in the early 1930s.

and give a 1926 citation:

9 May 1926, Baltimore (MD) Sun, “No Matter How Thin You Slice It: Gab Of Collegiate Papas And Self-Starting Flappers Is Always Bolognie Anyhow And In Sort Of Code” by Katherine Scarborough, pg. MS1:

“NO matter how thin you slice it.” Which, as every flapper knows is merely, bologna (pronounced “bolognie") served in the grand manner.

The entry for "No matter how (thin) you slice (cut) it, it's still baloney",  in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, gives the same Baltimore Sun citation, and adds a 1927 Billy Rose song, "No Matter How You Slice It It's Still Bologney", giving also a 1928 quotation from Al Smith ("… says he will pose for no boloney pictures").

A 2011 post by Hugh Rawson in the Cambridge Dictionaries About Words blog attributes early uses to Rube Goldberg:

Rube Goldberg, whose cartoons featured wonderfully complicated mechanical contraptions, often concluded his comic strips in the 1920s with a “snapper” or “zinger,” such as “That’s the baloney,” “It’s a lot of baloney,” or a simple “Baloney!”

A quick search didn't turn up any such strips — if a reader can point us to some, I'll be grateful.

Rawson also offers a possible Polari etymology:

The origin of the nonsensical or foolish senses of baloney is not known for sure.  Governor Smith’s comment about slicing shows he assumed that the metaphorical baloney came from the bologna sausage, in turn, from Bologna, Italy. The linguistic connection has not been proven, however.  Other suggestions are that the extended sense comes from the Chicago stockyards, where a tough old bull, was known as a bologna because nothing else could be made from it, or from peloné, a Romany word for testicles.

Anyhow, etymology aside, I believe that the "nonsense" meaning remains pretty firmly associated with the "baloney" pronunciation; and I'm betting that it was Ry Rivard (or some copy editor at Inside Higher Ed, if they have any) who put "bologna" in Prof. Bass's mouth.

Update — Ben Zimmer details the early history of boloney/baloney: "How 'Baloney' Got Phony", Word Routes 5/3/2013.

Poster for the “Transport Publishers of the People’s Commissariat of Paths of Communications, North Caucasus and Trans-Caucasus agency, advertising rail, road and airport transport services.” ‘Right Across the U.S.S.R.’ V. Rakitina, Rostov-on-Don, 1926. From Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties (1987)

Original Source

Poster advertising road, rail and river transport services and related goods and services. “Autumn and Winter Transport. Everything that Dispatchers and Receivers of Goods Need to Know.” Anonymous 1926. From Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties (1987)

Original Source

“Among the scores of brilliant and interesting women I’ve known is the late Katharine Graham, long the controlling shareholder and CEO of the Washington Post Co. (WPO) Kay knew she was intelligent. But she had been brainwashed — I don’t like that word, but it’s appropriate — by her mother, husband, and who knows who else to believe that men were superior, particularly at business.
When her husband died, it was in the self-interest of some of the men around Kay to convince her that her feelings of inadequacy were justified. The pressures they put on her were torturing. Fortunately, Kay, in addition to being smart, had an inner strength. Calling on it, she managed to ignore the baritone voices urging her to turn over her heritage to them.
I met Kay in 1973 and quickly saw that she was a person of unusual ability and character. But the gender-related self-doubt was certainly there too. Her brain knew better, but she could never quite still the voice inside her that said, “Men know more about running a business than you ever will.”
I told Kay that she had to discard the fun-house mirror that others had set before her and instead view herself in a mirror that reflected reality. “Then,” I said, “you will see a woman who is a match for anyone, male or female.”
I wish I could claim I was successful in that campaign. Proof was certainly on my side: Washington Post stock went up more than 4,000% — that’s 40 for 1 — during Kay’s 18 years as boss. After retiring, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her superb autobiography. But her self-doubt remained, a testament to how deeply a message of unworthiness can be implanted in even a brilliant mind.”

- Warren Buffett Is Bullish … on Women

The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings told F.B.I. interrogators that, as he and his brother plotted their deadly assault, they considered suicide attacks and striking on the Fourth of July, according to two law enforcement officials.

Continuing our explorations of the boundaries of beer and its interfaces with and influences by other fermentations around the world, Shadows and Light was conceived over nine years ago. Following research into solera systems and unusual winemaking techniques, madeirization caught our attention as a unique method for the production of wine. We have been taught that dramatic temperature fluctuations, oxidation, and sunlight are all detrimental to beer and wine. How, then, do we achieve successful and delicious products like Amontillado sherry, Malvasia madeira, and Banyuls mutage? And are these and counter-intuitive methods applicable to beer?

Philly.com

UPDATE 1-Suicide rate rose sharply among middle-aged Americans, CDC finds Reuters Fri May 3, 2013 1:32am IST. (Adds statistics comparing U.S. to EU, quotes CDC researcher). By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian. NEW YORK May 2 (Reuters) - The suicide rate among Americans aged 35 to 64 rose sharply between 1999 and 2010, a trend that ... Suicides among middle-aged Americans jump by nearly one-thirdCBS News Suicide Rates Rise Sharply in USNew York Times Economic downturn cited as suicide rate jumps for those between 35 and 64New York Daily News Los Angeles Times -RT all 144 news articles »

Kevin Jamieson, an electrical and computer engineering graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, put his work in active ranking into practice. The experimental app is called Beer Mapper.

The application presents a pair of beers, one pair at a time, from a list of beers that you have indicated you know or have access to and then asks you to select which one you prefer. After you have provided a number of answers, the application shows you a heat map of your preferences over the "beer space."

Around 10,000 beers with at least 50 reviews on RateBeer were used as the foundation of the recommendation system. The reviews were reduced to just the individual words and counts, which gives sort of a profile for each beer (or a "weighted bag of words"). You rate beers, and the system tries to find profiles that are mathematically most similar.

Two caveats. The first is that it looks like the app just gives you a heat map of the styles of beer you might like. A recommended list of actual beers would be way better. Second, the app is a research project that likely won't be in the app store any time soon, so the first point is moot. Sad face. Maybe Untappd should read Jamieson's paper. [via Fast Company]

Data Points: Visualization That Means Something is available now. Order your copy.

In a move which should surprise no one who's been following along, New York City livery car groups successfully won a bid yesterday afternoon for a temporary restraining order against New York City's smartphone-based hail pilot program ("e-hails," if you will). This effectively shuts down any (limited) plans UberTAXI and others had for getting back in business in Gotham -- both Uber and Hailo are being stopped from operating in NYC as a result. Under the pilot program -- approved earlier this year but mired in legal drama ever since -- services like Uber and Hailo could be used in NYC's approximately 13K yellow cabs. Livery cab businesses in NYC have sought to stop the program's implementation via legal means. Its latest effort, the "application for interim relief," was admitted via lawyer Randy Mastro of Gibson Dunn, and cites the following as its reason for the temporary restraining order:

"Absent emergency relief, petitioners and the public will suffer irreparable injury to their livelihoods, businesses and industry, fundamental rights and environmental interests, all of which will be impossible to remedy after this case is resolved in petitioner's favor."

Filed under: Cellphones, Transportation, Software

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Via: Bloomberg

A former prostitute who claims that a dead Santa Clara County millionaire fathered her children recently made a claim on behalf of her two daughters to the man's estate. A judge ruled this week that the two girls, ages 7 and 9, were in fact his relations and were entitled to a stipend of $1,800 a month, apiece. [ more › ]

DENVER (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Thursday the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings shows how difficult and sensitive the issue of racial profiling can be.

multidjc:

j-ckie:

romamochi:

profmth:

Mitt Romney’s family misspell their last name in the greatest Freudian slip in history.

i just spit my drink everywHERE omfG

I’m not even sorry

As tightly integrated as Google's many services can be, the company has been dancing around a glaring omission: why couldn't we add times mentioned in Gmail messages as Google Calendar events? Logic is at last taking hold in Mountain View, however. Starting this week for those using US English, Google is rolling out a Gmail web update that automatically underlines dates and times; click on one and it will pop up a box to quickly add a calendar event scheduled for that time, with an option to edit basic details first. It's such a simple addition, but it could mean the world for those of us waiting for Gmail to catch up with our native email apps.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Official Gmail Blog

egjertse writes "A Louisiana law that opponents say leaves the backdoor open to teaching 'creationism' in public schools will stay on the books after a Senate committee Wednesday effectively killed a bill that would repeal the statute. After hours of testimony for and against House Bill 26, which repeals the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act, the senators narrowly deferred the legislation, effectively killing it in committee. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A legend and guitar god

This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

Moby Dick, or, The Card Game by King Post — Kickstarter:

A card game based on Herman Melville’s classic novel. Draft Sailors, explore the Sea and survive the terror of the White Whale!

As the tale of Kiera Wilmot -- the Bartow, Florida student expelled and charged with two felonies over a science project gone wrong -- went viral yesterday, a wide movement to support the 16-year-old blossomed from blogs to radio shows to Change.org petitions. Best of all, though, has been a Twitter campaign by scientists and science fans with a simple premise: writing about the craziest stuff they've blown up over the years, all in the name of science.

The difference, of course, is that they were congratulated on their curiosity or slapped on the wrist, not hit with life-altering felonies.

See also:
- Florida School Responds to Criticism for Expelling Student Over Science Project: "There Are Consequences to Actions"
- Florida Teen Girl Charged With Felony After Science Experiment Goes Bad

Wilmot was booted from school and criminally charged last week after mixing toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil in a plastic bottle on school grounds, despite the fact that no one was hurt and she told her principal she was conducting a "science fair experiment."

The details of the case have led to an outcry from science educators, particularly because Wilmot was apparently a good student with a good behavior record and because she's a young black woman -- a demographic severely underrepresented in the science world.

The campaign to support her may well have started with an eloquently furious blog from DNLee, a biologist who writes for Scientific American. She writes about the race aspects of Wilmot's case and then notes another important fact: Anyone with any scientific curiosity has had some experiments go wrong.

I can't name a single scientist or engineer, who hadn't blown up, ripped apart, disassembled something at home or otherwise cause a big ruckus at school all in the name of curiosity, myself included. Science is not a clean. It is very messy and it is riddled with mistakes and mishaps.

Andrew Thaler, a deep-sea biologist in North Carolina who writes as "Southern Fried Scientist," then challenged his Twitter followers to share tales of their own mishaps that went unpunished, with a #KieraWilmot tag.

What do you say, Miami? Ever blown anything up for science? Tell us about it in the comments or tweet @miaminewtimes with the tag #kierawilmot.

Follow Miami New Times on Facebook and Twitter @MiamiNewTimes.

Original Source

girljanitor:

bashi-bazouk:

peppercyanide:

sisterwolf:

via

I never even

c

wow

How did they get away with that

AH

I LOVE THIS

What do you mean how did they get away with it?

History isn’t one straight line progressing towards a liberal society.

Look how much Americans attitudes have changed between 1980 and today. 1980 was the first time most very religious people voted, they abstained before that at the behest of their churches. Now they dictate policy at every election.

In my family photo album there are pictures from the 20s of a woman called ‘uncle bob’. She dressed in men’s clothing, and had a ‘companion’. This was a rough industrial town, they were working class, nobody cared. It was her business.

This is why politics is important - the moment you think everything is better today than it was in the past, you let other people take control of the direction society goes in - with you sitting back presuming we’re going forwards.

reblogging for the commentary

There’s not enough love in the world. The sooner people stop stomping on it because it’s arrived in a shape they don’t recognize, the better.

“the big reason Doctor Who should meditate on Girls is because the only person on TV more self-involved than Lena Dunham’s Hannah Horvath is…the Doctor himself”

- What Doctor Who Could Learn From Girls About Character Development | Tor.com

Colors In The Sun.

The Infamous Windsors.

Alexander McQueen - “SAVAGE BEAUTY” {Exhibition} #1