Kara Jean

stevenbarry:

space shit.gif  - scanned and collaged :: flickr :: tumblr :: shop :: 2012

danemartin: Summer Sketchbook #4

via avowalsanddenials

wickedgaming:

Decisions, decisions…..SD Snatcher

SD Snatcher (Konami - MSX2 - 1990)

OK, so there’s this guy in Texas. He’s not a great fella, so to speak, as he has spent a lot of time getting convicted of stuff like cocaine possession and aggravated assault and leaving the scene of an accident. Not a saint.

But he’s done his time in prison, “paid his debt” or whatever, and now he’s a free man. But then, he does something dumb — he tries to steal some food. Walks into a grocery store and shoves a rack of ribs into his shirt, because, who knows, if you really like ribs, maybe that sounds like a good idea.

But it isn’t, because people are like, “Hey, that guy is clearly stealing meats,” and then the guy gets arrested. Can you guess what is going to happen? Because it is Texas, maybe you can! They’re going to lock him in a small concrete room until he dies.

Yup — Waco resident Willie Smith Ward was arrested back in 2011 after getting caught with stolen ribs and telling a store clerk to stay away because he had a knife. Because he has previous convictions and he happened to be stealing ribs in Texas, this is how he was treated by a jury of his “peers,” per the Waco Tribune:

Ward’s theft of the $35 rack of pork ribs turned into a robbery when he threatened a grocery store employee who saw the huge bulge under Ward’s shirt and tried to stop him in the parking lot. [...]

Jurors took two minutes Wednesday to convict Ward on robbery charges and about an hour to decide his punishment.

62 minutes, to go from “Did this guy steal some ribs?” to “He should never again see daylight.” JUSTICE.

“This verdict shows that the citizens of this county will not tolerate a continued disrespect and disregard for other people and their property,” said Assistant District Attorney J.R. Vicha, who prosecuted Ward with Chris Bullajian. “People who choose to do so will be dealt with seriously and appropriately.”

In case you missed it: A white teen drinks some beers, gets in a pickup and kills a guy, he gets probation and mandated church attendance. A black guy in Texas steals ribs, 50 years in prison. This is how we deal with people “appropriately.”

And yes, let us praise the super-tough “citizens of this county,” who imprisoned Willie Smith Ward to teach him a lesson, a lesson he did not learn all the other million times he was in prison, but this time it will stick, because they will lock him in there and forget about him and let him go crazy and then bury him in a bag. The wonderful people of Texas, who can look at the issue of repeat offenders and say, rather than “Hey, maybe something is wrong with our prisons,” only that the people who offend again just haven’t gotten enough prison yet.

It’s the only logical solution, really. If prison didn’t teach Ward a lesson before, the answer is clearly PRISON FOREVER. We have given up trying to rehabilitate this person, he stole some meat so now he will rot, because sometimes when a habitual offender steals some meat you just have to say “That’s enough, no more meat-stealing, your life is over.” This is Texas. We’re tough.

[Waco Tribune via Gawker]

vinylespassion: Ernie Bushmiller - Nancy, 1968

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 28, 2013 is:

sky pilot • \SKY-PYE-lut\  • noun
: clergyman; specifically : chaplain

Examples:
"A pastor with just about as many pictures of Elvis as he has of Jesus in his office is probably not your typical fire-and-brimstone sky pilot." — From an article by John Grant Emeigh in the Montana Standard, March 25, 2013

"Not until the lifeboat had ended its perilous work did the men on board her realize that their captain had allowed a 'sky-pilot' to take a hand at the oars." — From the story "The Sky Pilot" by Mary S. Hancock, published in The Living Age, October 17, 1896

Did you know?
"The designation 'sky pilot' … has only been in use for a few years, say ten…." So wrote George William Foote in the 1893 book Flowers of Freethought. He was right. Our earliest evidence dates the term to 1883. Foote compared the sky pilot to the more familiar pilot of his age: the helmsman whose job is to steer a ship. And he faulted the former, tongue in cheek, for lacking the follow-through of the latter: "The honest salt boards the ship, and takes her out to sea, or brings her into port.… But the sky-pilot does not go with you. Oh dear no! That is no part of his bargain." "Sky pilot" has never been a very common term, but it's actually a tad more common today than it was when Foote's book was published.

On May 1, Kiera Wilmot, a Florida high school student, was arrested for mixing toilet bowl cleaner with tin foil, causing a small, harmless explosion. Though she had a spotless school record, she was expelled and charged with a felony as an adult -- a harsh penalty widely ascribed to institutional racism (Wilmot is black). On May 16, thanks to Wilmot's bravery, a crowdfunded project by former NASA engineer Homer Hickam, and the ACLU, the charges against Wilmot were dropped and Wilmot and her twin sister were awarded a full bursary to the Advanced Space Academy program at the U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala..

Now, Wilmot has written a must-read editorial for the ACLU on her experience with zero-tolerance, detailing the awful treatment she received and the thoughtless way in which the gears of the a discipline-obsessed educational system grind up its own students:

The principal and dean of discipline came over and asked me to tell them what happened. I was kind of scared, but I thought they'd understand it was an accident. Before that, I've never gotten in trouble this year other than a dress code violation because my skirt was two inches too short. I told him it was my science experiment. In my third period class I was called up to discipline. I wrote a statement to the dean of discipline explaining what had happened. Afterward I was told to sit on the resource officer's office. They told me I made a bomb on school property, and police possibly have the right to arrest me. I didn't know what they classified as a bomb. I was worried I accidently made a bomb. I was really hurt and scared. I was crying.

They didn't read me any rights. They arrested me after sitting in the office for a couple minutes. They handcuffed me. It cut my wrist, and really hurt sitting on my hands behind my back.

They took me to a juvenile assessment center. I was sitting in this room with no clock so it felt like years of me sitting there. When my mom came, she didn't say anything. She just had this really disappointed look, and told me I lost privileges. But she's really been supportive of me. I don't know what would have happened if I didn't have my mom. I would have dug a hole and sat there for the rest of my life.

I don't think police should have been involved because I'm a good student for one. And two, it was a big deal, but it wasn't like people were hurt and the school was in shatters. I maybe should have gotten 10 days suspension or a work detail where on Saturday you wake up early and pick up trash around the school.

An Unexpected Reaction: Why a Science Experiment Gone Bad Doesn't Make Me a Criminal (via The Mary Sue)

scrotumcoat: chineseripoff: Dat New new: Choke Slam Double Hand Flip

Read more...

thinkaboutelephants:

Ammonite

Septa detail in an ammonite.

Septa are the walls of the chambers of the shell. They were filled with seawater or air to change elevation. 

The process of fossilization is done through mineral replacement. Pyrite can replace the septa of an ammonite, as seen above. This ammonite is likely to have been treated with bismuth, causing the rainbow color of the crystals. 

Etsy seller CuriousBurrow will make you a sweet, sleepy sloth ring to order, in a range of colors.

Sloth Ring - Made To Order (via The Mary Sue)

baseballcardvandals:

i was daydreaming and then i was just actually dreaming.

Since You Asked, 9 May 2013:

Dear Cary,

I’ve followed you for what feels like 10 years, as I’ve traversed the quarter-life crisis and crises of creativity that speak powerfully to the blood that has always run through my veins.

So now I come to you with a more commonplace problem in some ways, but still so connected to the vein of creativity that you speak so well to.

There is a man. Isn’t there always? An older man, and one I work with. So banal, I know. But we’ve been as you might call it, “good,” or as good as one can be as two married people. We’ve admitted our attraction to each other, but agreed it would be reckless, careless and selfish to take it any further. I am not under any illusion that I love him, but I do enjoy his company. And that’s my dilemma.  After traveling with him for work this week, staying up just talking until the sun came up, I suddenly feel a wave of creativity rushing my every sense. It’s like being a teenager again, but one who’s actually read ee cummings, Whitman and Milton. I find myself scooping up old poetry books, reading Shakespeare and even writing down the colors of this strange, yet I imagine so universal, blend of emotions. It’s addicting in the way that any other vice might be, but I’m still young (so they tell me, at 28), so still learning the ways of this strange and wonderful world.

So my question is, what do I do about all this? The conflict in this emotional-but-not-physical affair is feeding my intense desire to feel human, to feel what it’s like again to struggle against my otherwise easy, carefree world. But of course, my rational side tells me there’s no good way this thing ends. But how do I murder the Muse? How does one say no to something that makes one feel so damn alive? And I’m happy, really, in every other way of the world. Unlike so many in my generation, I want for very little — so it seems entirely selfish to risk any of it for that piece of the artist in me that wants to experience everything, good and bad, that this world has to offer. I don’t think I’ve crossed any red line or any point of no return, but I suppose that’s why I’ve come to you before I do. I trust in your experience of this world, of the writer that wants to feel it all, but also of the human being that knows how other human beings can be hurt by these addictions.

Thank you, for this, and all of it always

Caught Between Conscience and Creativity