Russian Sledges

blissfulsirensong:

love-and-radiation:

I need to reblog this when I see it.

I wish someone had taught me how to sword fight. I had two stoopid brothers who should have.

:)  I only made it to bo staff.  Swords are way too short.

When’s it ok to tell a badass black man in New Orleans he’s “pretty?” When he’s a Mardi Gras Indian! In fact, they demand it. As they chant and strut their stuff, bystanders respond with “Pretty pretty, you SO pretty Big Chief!”

“There are 4.7 million barrels of Bourbon aging in Kentucky – the largest inventory since the 1980s. That means there are more barrels of Bourbon in Kentucky than people (4.3 million).”

- Kentucky Distillers Association

Such charges have become more frequent in Zen Buddhism. Several other teachers have been accused of misconduct recently, notably Eido Shimano, who in 2010 was asked to resign from the Zen Studies Society in Manhattan over allegations that he had sex with students. Critics and victims have pointed to a Zen culture of secrecy, patriarchy and sexism, and to the quasi-religious worship of the Zen master, who can easily abuse his status.

A former Lehigh University graduate student is suing her alma mater over a bad grade, claiming it prevented her from pursuing her preferred career, according to The Morning Call, an Allentown, Pa., newspaper. After getting a C+ that prevented her from taking a required class, 27-year-old Megan Thode is suing the university, her teacher, and the program director for $1.3 million in damages for breach of contract and sexual discrimination.

In the final year of her counseling and human-services master’s, Thode’s grade was below the B she needed to take the next course for her degree. Her teacher, Amanda Carr, gave Thode a zero in the participation portion of her grade because, by “show[ing] unprofessional behavior that included swearing in class” and “having an outburst in which she began crying,” Thode demonstrated that she was “not ready to move on.”

Keep reading this post . . .

Maker’s Mark waters down its bourbon to meet rising demand - Quartz:

I’ve reached out to Beam to clarify whether the alcohol is being reduced by 3%, as the email says, or three percentage points, which would be more dramatic. The footer of today’s email suggests it’s the latter, describing Maker’s Mark as a 42% ABV beverage, which is also known as 84 proof; it was previously distilled to 45% ABV, or 90 proof. That would be a 6.7% reduction in the amount of alcohol.

Catalina de Erauso was daughter and sister of soldiers from the city of San Sebastián in Spain. Her father was Miguel de Erauso and her mother María Pérez de Gallárraga y Arce. She was expected to become a nun but abandoned the nunnery after a beating at the age of fifteen, just before she was to take her vows. She had not ever seen a street, having entered the convent at the age of four . She dressed as a man, calling herself "Francisco de Loyola", and left on a long journey from San Sebastian to Valladolid. From there she visited Bilbao, where she signed up on a ship with the assistance of other Basques. She reached Spanish America and enlisted as a soldier in Chile under the name Alonso Díaz Ramírez de Guzmán. She served under several captains in the Arauco War, including her own brother, who never recognized her.[citation needed] After one fight in which she killed a man and was wounded fatally, she revealed her sex in a deathbed confession. She however survived after four months of convalescence and left for Guamanga. To escape yet another incident, she confessed her sex to the bishop, Fray Agustín de Carvajal. Induced by him she entered a convent and her story spread across the ocean. In 1620, the archbishop of Lima called her. In 1624, she arrived in Spain, having changed ship after another fight. She went to Rome and toured Italy, where she eventually achieved such a level of fame that she was granted a special dispensation by Pope Urban VIII to wear men's clothing.[citation needed] Her portrait by Francesco Crescenzio is lost. Back in Spain, Francisco Pacheco (Velázquez's father-in-law) painted her in 1630. She again left Spain in 1645, this time for New Spain in the fleet of Pedro de Ursua, where she became a mule driver on the road from Veracruz. In New Spain she used the name Antonio de Erauso. She died in Cuetlaxtla, New Spain in 1650.

One suggestion we received on Twitter: “You can put it in a sweater and never drink it again.” Gary He

Quartz broke the news over the weekend that Maker’s Mark is reducing the alcohol in its bourbon by three percentage points, from 45% alcohol to 42%, in order to keep up with rising demand. The story ignited a small firestorm as customers criticized Maker’s and its parent company, Beam Inc., for watering down the drink.

I heard from lots of whiskey drinkers on Twitter who had follow-up questions, so I posed them today to COO Rob Samuels, who prefers his Maker’s Mark neat, and his father Bill Samuels, who ran the distillery until 2011 and drinks his bourbon in Manhattans, Old Fashioneds, and over ice. Here are highlights from the interview.

How much additional supply will be created by lowering the alcohol content in Maker’s Mark?

“Volume-wise, it’s not enormous,” Bill said. “It allows what Rob felt was an extra four years to fill the gaps that were causing us the biggest problems. The biggest ones are the bars and restaurants that have Maker’s Mark cocktails on their menus. We’re taking care of customers who have been with us for a long time.”

Is reducing the alcohol simply a matter of adding water?

Yes. Almost all bourbon brands “add water as it enters the barrel and as it leaves the barrel,” Rob said. Maker’s Mark will now just be adding just a little more.

Why not just raise the price? That’s another common solution to problems of supply and demand.

“Rob’s grandfather did not like ostentatiousness,” Bill said, referring to Bill Samuels Sr. ”It deliberately was not marketed as an image-transfer brand.” I pointed that out Maker’s Mark was once marketed under the slogan, “It tastes expensive…and is.”

Rob said that, yes, “for a period, it was a little more expensive than others,” but described Maker’s Mark as more a mid-market brand now. Jim Beam, owned by the same company, is a cheaper bourbon; Maker’s 46 is higher-end and higher proof. In that sense, lowering the proof of Maker’s Mark is diversifying the company’s selection of bourbon.

Pressed on the price issue, Rob said that distributors mostly control the pricing of Maker’s Mark but acknowledged, “Most years we’ve taken a modest price increase.” He also said the company is making investments to increase capacity.

What about other ways of increasing supply?

Bill said, “The one lever that we have had is age,” meaning that the bourbon could be aged in oak barrels for less time. But Maker’s Mark starts to taste too “grainy” when aged for less than six years, Bill said, so they couldn’t push it any further.

This question was submitted by Wired editor Ryan Tate, and I asked it word-for-word as representative of outraged customers: What will you do for a living after burning the American bourbon industry’s reputation to the ground and destroying your company?

“All we’ve asked is that folks keep an open mind until they taste,” said a somewhat chastened Rob.

First time accepted submitter Rawlsian writes "Great Falls, Montana, television station KRTC issued a denial of an Emergency Alert System report that 'dead bodies are rising from their graves.' The denial surmises that 'someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System...This message did not originate from KRTV, and there is no emergency.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

““In December, [Megan Phelps-Roper, formerly one of the Westboro Baptist Church’s most vocal members] went to a public library in Lawrence, Kansas. She was looking through books on philosophy and religion, and it struck her that people had devoted their entire lives to studying these questions of how to live and what is right and wrong. ‘The idea that only [[Westboro Baptist Church] had the right answer seemed crazy,’ she says. ‘It just seemed impossible.’””

-

Metafilter member “the man of twists and turns” said: I’m going to stick this quote into every discussion of why libraries are important.

I say: Amen to that.

Megan Phelps-Roper, formerly one of the Westboro Baptist Church’s most vocal members, has left the church. | MetaFilter

(via hadro)

Repeating: “I’m going to stick this quote into every discussion of why libraries are important.”

This week, the French National Assembly has been debating a bill on same-sex marriage and gay adoption. But a small scandal erupted after several lawmakers, who support gay marriage, were spotted playing Scrabble on their iPads during the parliamentary debate.

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I like almost everything about working in plain text and MultiMarkdown. However, after trying to do editorial reviews in plain text, I realized there was a major problem. How do you indicate deletions, additions and comments in plain text without mangling the text or making changes laborious.

After some failed trials with Github and file diffs, I decided I needed a new markup language.¹

Enter Erik Hess, my friend and part-time editor. We began a collaboration to solve our own problems. Within a couple of days of using the new markup, we realized that this was something that might have universal appeal. So it became a real project for us. CriticMarkup was born.²

What is it?

CriticMarkup is not a file format or proprietary application exchange format. CriticMarkup is a basic syntax that can be used in any application. Heck, it could be used with a typewriter. It's like Markdown but for denoting editorial changes.

• Addition {++ ++}
• Deletion {-- --}
• Substitution {~~ ~> ~~}
• Comment {>> <<}
• Highlight {{ }}{>> <<}

Here's a view of it in the context of a plain text document (colored for emphasis)

We carefully chose our syntax to avoid conflicts with MultiMarkdown, LaTeX and HTML. We wanted to be good citizens but we also want the syntax to make sense. I also, personally, think there is beauty in symmetry.

Where is it?

CriticMarkup has a home at criticmarkup.com.³ Easy right?

Some Tools

Because we actually use CM to do editorial reviews, we realize that good tools make everyone happy. So we made some. There's a Sublime Text package, which we demonstrate in the video. There's a BBEdit CLM, Keyboard Maestro macro, TextExpander snippets and system services for the Mac. Finally, there's a CLI tool that will convert a Markdown file that contains CriticMarkup into a really nice HTML document that can be used for reviewing.

Here's what the Markup version looks like in the exported HTML document:

The page can also toggle between an "Original" view that hides all editorial comments:

Want to see how the article will read if you just agree with your editor? There's a view for that too:

There are also nice JQuery enabled on-hover effects for editorial comments. Just hover over the double-dagger next to the highlighted text to see the editor's comments.

Of course you can also override the builtin CSS/JS with your own file.

Oh, and of course, because CM is just plain text, it also works great in Kaleidoscope.app. The text is still readable but the markup is obvious.

Onward and Upward

We made this for us. We think other people that are like us will find it useful too. We're considering how this syntax should evolve over time to make it useful to a broader group. There are a lot of gaps in the syntax that will be a problem for professional copy editors. We hope to reduce the number of gaps over time but we have our eye on simplicity as a top priority.

If you want to contribute feel free to drop by the Github or support discussion site.

The best way to support this idea is to make it work in cool ways. There are some great apps on the horizon that will make working with CriticMarkup even easier.

So, CriticMarkup is a thing we like and a thing we use. If you like it too, that's cool. Either way, Erik and I are pretty proud of the results.

Thanks

There were many people that provided some great feedback as the project evolved. I'm very thankful that these folks exist and made time to provide feedback. They are all superheroes and kind souls.

Will Oemler

Fletcher Penney

Jonathan Poritsky

Michael Schechter

Jason Snell

Brett Terpstra

Bob van der Clay

Federico Viticci

Yuvi Zalkow

1. For the truly creepy and astute reader, you may have noticed a post with the CriticMarkup tag a little while ago. There's also been many bookmarks on Pinboard that I've tagged with my project nomenclature.  ↩

2. The acronym we like is CM ↩

3. Isn't that site a beauty? Erik made the entire thing from scratch. He's awesome and also available for hire. ↩

Google Reader has been having some issues.

Here’s the thing: a bunch of RSS readers rely on Google Reader for syncing — but Google Reader is not a syncing service, and its APIs are undocumented and unsupported.

TechCrunch describes Google Reader as “benignly abandoned” — which, for native RSS readers that use it, is worse than actual abandonment, because broken syncing is worse than no syncing.

My friend Jake asks if Google could spin off Reader. My guess: it’s not worth their time to pursue. What they’d get for it isn’t worth the time to consider it. (And that’s before you factor in the difficulty of transferring it.)

Google has learned to focus, and they’re doing some great work. (I especially like Google Maps for iOS.)

Part of learning to focus is learning how to shut things down. Google has done well at that — but I’m surprised that Google Reader hasn’t been shut down yet. Better a clean shut-down than an ungraceful end.

Brought to you by our friends at Westeroscraft!

[Via Nerd Approved]

Doctor Who is to be shown in 3D, it was announced this evening.

A press statement said that the programme would be broadcast in 3D, using some of the BBC's high-definition capacity, as part of the blockbuster celebrations to mark the show turning 50. Showrunner Steven Moffat said:
It's about time. Technology has finally caught up with Doctor Who and your television is now bigger on the inside. A whole new dimension of adventure for the Doctor to explore. The use of the advance in broadcasting technology for the programme was revealed during an event for writers, actors, industry, and press at which BBC drama controller Ben Stephenson set out his vision for BBC Drama, announcing new commissions, recommissions, and looking forward to new horizons:
Drama and the BBC are inseparable – it is written through the BBC like a stick of rock. No other broadcaster in the world has drama so firmly in its DNA . . . I want to make BBC drama a cultural institution – a touchstone for quality and modernity with all the excitement and glamour of a curtain going up . . . I want to make the BBC the hallmark of quality drama.
This isn't the first time the show has entered the 3D waters. Back in 1993 Doctor Who's 30th anniversary was marked with Dimensions In Time, broadcast in 3D for that year's Children in Need. And in 2010 the Eleventh Doctor's era was heralded by a 3D trailer shown in cinemas, as can be seen below (NB: 3D anaglyph red/cyan glasses are needed for the full benefit):

The 3D trailer from 2010 (BBC YouTube channel)
Also in 2010 a poll was undertaken by entertainment manufacturer Panasonic that revealed Doctor Who was the show that viewers would most like to see in 3D, with other favourites being Wallace and Gromit and Top Gear.
Related Articles: 3D Trailer For Doctor Who (18 Feb 2010); Doctor Who (3D) Is Required (12 Dec 2010)

Doctor Who News

The rumored Harvard Square restaurant called Conductor's appears to be happening. The city of Cambridge recently approved a liquor license transfer from the former Hoffa's to Conductor's, which is moving into the old Hoffa's space in the Conductor's Building on Mt. Auburn Street. [City of Cambridge (PDF)]

The last Pope to resign was Gregory XII, in 1415, and that was during a time of extreme turmoil—of Popes and anti-Popes—in which the Church was looking to break a standoff between three contenders to the throne of Saint Peter. Before that, in 1294, was the case of Celestine V, a highly religious hermit who was made Pope against his own wishes, and who hated the job. Celestine was immortalized by Dante as colui che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto (“who by his cowardice made the big refusal”). Dante faulted Celestine for giving in to the pressure of the ambitious cardinal Benedetto Caetani, his successor, who then became Boniface VIII and whom Dante placed in one of the lowest circles of his Inferno.

Classic Doctor Who TARDIS Sleeping Bag

Again, via Plaid Stallions: http://plaidstallions.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/doctor-who-pattern-book.html

Marmite ran a pretty rocking campaign in South Africa not too long ago revolving around the big idea that ‘If Mother didn’t tell you about Marmite, what else didn’t she tell you?’. These 365 other things were repackaged in Marmite’s distinctive product packaging with their labels changed, then despatched to influential bloggers. Exquisite execution on this one, with ad agency Machine (Big Wednesday) at the helm.

The post 365 things (besides Marmite) your mother didn’t tell you appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Nugent said the media does not realize he is a "force to be reckoned with" and therefore he will "dominate them." 

On Tuesday, Rand Paul will fill a space previously held only by Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain: He’ll deliver the Tea Party’s response to the State of the Union address. There’s a little tension among activists over how he was chosen, but leaders of the “leaderless movement” seem to have come to a consensus on one thing: Rand is going to kill it.

James Valvo of Americans for Prosperity, who has worked extensively with grassroots organizations opposing  big government, says he thinks the choice is “fantastic.” The only area where tensions arise is around who did the choosing: The response speech is organized by the Tea Party Express, a group that some say has overstepped its bounds by claiming the authority to decide who gets to give the official response. Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, tells NRO he’s heard some “grumbling” about Tea Party Express’s control. He adds that he doesn’t have a problem with their leadership role and hasn’t heard any complaints about their choice.

Keep reading this post . . .

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — The Canadian government is reviewing humanitarian funding for an evangelical group that works in Uganda and has described homosexuality as perverted and sinful.

Our bet to win the 2013 Oscar for Best Animated Short, Minkyu Lee’s Adam and Dog is about the meeting of the first man and the first man’s best friend. Immerse yourself in its wonderful visuals.

• Hat Tip
• Link

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Stanley Pickle
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“I will be there with a deep, abiding respect for the office of the presidency,” he said. “I’m not here to represent any specific cause other than freedom and independence and ‘we the people.’ ” To illustrate his point, he noted that he would not be carrying any weapons as he usually does.

The first personal ad to appear in The New York Review of Books was published in the magazine’s July 11, 1968 issue. “WIFE WANTED,” it read. “Intelligent, beautiful, 18 to 25, broad-minded, sensitive, affectionate. For accomplished artist and exciting life. NYR box 1432.” Ever since then the Review’s personals have been a widely-followed (and much-parodied) part of the magazine. Associate Publisher Catherine Tice spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon for Weekend Edition Saturday about love sought, and found, in the pages of the Review.

The location clock found in the Harry Potter books makes for a really fun hack. Of course there’s no magic involved, just a set of hardware to monitor your phone’s GPS and a clock face to display it.

[Alastair Barber] finished building the clock at the end of last year as a Christmas gift. The display seen above uses an old mantelpiece clock to give it a finished look. He replace the clock face with a print out of the various locations known to the system and added a servo motor to drive the single hand. His hardware choices were based on what he already had on hand and what could be acquired cheaply. The an all-in-one package combines a Raspberry Pi board with a USB broadband modem to ensure that it has a persistent network connection (we’ve seen this done using WiFi in the past). The RPi checks a cellphone’s GPS data, compares it to a list of common places, then pushes commands to the Arduino which controls the clock hand’s servo motor. It’s a roundabout way of doing things but we imagine everything will get reused when the novelty of the gift wears off.

Filed under: gps hacks

“You might think that policymakers would take a keen interest in the amounts that are stolen, coerced, or extorted from the poor, but there are no official efforts to track such figures. Instead, we have to turn to independent investigators, like Kim Bobo, author of Wage Theft in America, who estimates that wage theft nets employers at least $100bn a year and possibly twice that. As for the profits extracted by the lending industry, Gary Rivlin, who wrote Broke USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc – How the Working Poor Became Big Business, says the poor pay an effective surcharge of about $30bn a year for the financial products they consume and more than twice that if you include sub-prime credit cards, sub-prime auto loans, and sub-prime mortgages.”

- How the poor are made to pay for their poverty | Barbara Ehrenreich | Society | guardian.co.uk

Some House Republicans object to allowing Native American police and courts to pursue non-Indians who attack women on tribal land.