New submitter MrBingoBoingo writes "Recently it was announced here on Slashdot that OpenBSD was facing an impending shortfall that jeopardized its continued existence. A sponsorship to save OpenBSD has been announced, and it wasn't one of the usual culprits that saved OpenBSD, but a Romanian Bitcoin billionaire."
What do you get when you apply the kindly, whimsical emoji you know and love to actual human faces? Nightmare fuel for days. But also very clever ad campaign that aims to stop sexual predators from occupying your child's open tabs.
We all know that proper hydration is important. Every cell in your body depends on water to function properly and, when you run low on H2O, systems start crashing. Most of us drink enough fluid to stave the bad stuff off, but when you exercise and start sweating, the equation gets a little more complicated.
by Jesus Diaz on Sploid, shared by Brian Barrett to Gizmodo
You don't need to travel into a brown dwarf star's atmosphere or Saturn's hexagon to see colossal lightning. Just look at these photographs taken by Francisco Negroni of the eruption of the complex volcano Cordón Caulle, in Chile. He told me that, while scary, there was no immediate danger:
My mother died of Alzheimer's disease, and my dad is disappearing in a similar way. He's not been diagnosed with Alz., but what's the difference? His memory and personality are both diminishing, just as hers did. Looking at all the literature, it seems that he is in the final stage, in fact.
Very severe cognitive decline (Severe or late-stage Alzheimer's disease) In the final stage of this disease, individuals lose the ability to respond to their environment, to carry on a conversation and, eventually, to control movement. They may still say words or phrases. At this stage, individuals need help with much of their daily personal care, including eating or using the toilet. They may also lose the ability to smile, to sit without support and to hold their heads up. Reflexes become abnormal. Muscles grow rigid. Swallowing impaired.
These details are mostly true for my dad, although he still holds up his head. So far, he eats well, although sometimes must be prompted to do so. He lives in the wheelchair though, and rarely if ever moves his body.
When my mother was losing her mind, she had some bizarre theories of her problems and quite destructive paranoia, and I mourned her loss constantly. When she died, I found that all that grief was just a waste; I had to grieve her death anyway. So when my dad started down the same road, after my first rebellion against it, I thought it through, and decided to do things differently this time. I uncluttered my life, and started doing that to the house too. I said no quite a bit, and shed jobs and tasks like crazy. Until I got bored! That was the point at which I started reading email again, started visiting IRC more often, and began pitching in as I had time and interest.
So as my dad is slipping away, we're making progress on the house, and life is pretty peaceful and delightful. I'm able to enjoy the time I spend with Dad, and also the days I have to skip my visits, whether it's for a local meeting or a trip to Europe. When he goes, I'll grieve his death, but I'm not finding this process painful. It helps a lot that I alternate visits with my sister, so the pressure is shared, and he's in a nursing home, so neither of us is changing his diapers or brushing his teeth. I don't think suffering is a healthy response to his slow death, so I'm choosing instead to enjoy the time I have left with my dad.
Oddly enough, it helps to read up on Alzheimer's; what it is, and what progress is being made in the fight against it. This is important, because my generation, the baby boomers, are entering their sixties. This disease could bring the health care establishment to its knees, all around the world.
I've just finished a remarkable book, called The Forgetting - Alzheimer's: Portrait of an Epidemic, by David Schenk. It's a really great synthesis of history, experience, research, and thinking about dementia. Just for myself, I'm going to copy part of what he says in Chapter 16, called Things To Avoid, on page 228:
Doctors cannot yet cure Alzheimer's, or prevent it, or even mask its symptoms for very long. But hundreds of studies have begun to produce a pointillist portrait of how people can help themselves--things to do for the body, mind, and spirit that might reduce the risk of getting the disease, or at least delay its onset: Avoid head injuries, Avoid fatty foods, Avoid high blood pressure, Eat foods rich in antioxidants, which eliminate damaging free-radical molecules. Eat, specifically, prunes, raisins, blueberries, blackberries, kale, strawberries, spinach, raspberries, brussels sprouts, plums, alfalfa sprouts, broccoli, beets, oranges, red grapes, red peppers, and cherries. (Foods listed according to their antioxidant content, in descending order.) Eat foods rich in folic acid, and in vitamin B6, B12, C, and E. Eat tuna, salmon, and other foods rich in fatty acids. Don't drink too much alcohol. (A moderate amount might be slightly beneficial.) Don't skimp on sleep. (Sleep is rejuvenating to the brain and the body; sleep seems to play a very important role in long-term memory formation.) Exercise. Maintain a high level of social contact (and consider marriage--one study shows fewer married people getting Alzheimer's). If you are a woman past menopause, consider estrogen replacement therapy. (Some studies suggest it may reduce Alzheimer's incidence by as much as half.) If you like to chew gum, continue chewing gum..... If you regularly take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen for another reason, continue. (Some studies show a benefit.) Get a thorough education. Keep your mind active. Read, discuss, debate, create, play word games, do crossword puzzles, meet new people, learn new languages. Studies show that people with very high levels of education, while not immune from Alzheimer's, do tend to get the disease later than others.
That last paragraph supports the work I began when we first got our Coleco ADAM computer. I've learned how to use computers to edit newsletters, do genealogy research, use and administer mail lists, forums, newgroups, websites. I used Macs, some Windows machines, and then found my true home in FOSS, and the communities I found there: KDE, Kubuntu, Linuxchix, the Ubuntu Women, and Linuxfest Northwest.
The ice sheet that covers Antarctica is ancient, hiding a whole landscape of mountains and valleys that once teemed with life. Using radar and satellite footage, scientists are studying this hidden world—and they just found a two-mile-deep canyon down there.
Here's an interesting tidbit of food science I ran across this week and thought was worth sharing with you. Even if you're a coffee-lover, as I am, the caffeine jolt that first cup provides is admittedly as important as Fair Trade sourcing and the range of berry and floral notes. But science tells us that, while you may rush to the coffee pot (or pour over station) first thing in the morning, it's better to wait. Here's why.
by Jesus Diaz on Sploid, shared by Jesus Diaz to Gizmodo
I love the work artist/designer/mad doctor Jason Freeny. His Moist Productions shop has been showing us the fascinating humanoid anatomy of toys, animated characters and other objects for years. His new creations have reached new awesomely gross heights. Here's a collection of some of his masterworks:
snydeq writes "With the four-year anniversary of Oracle's Sun Microsystems acquisition looming, InfoWorld reached out to Java founder James Gosling to rate how Oracle has done in shepherding Sun technology. Gosling gives Oracle eyebrow-raising grades, lauding Oracle's handling of Java, despite his past acrimony toward Oracle over Java (remember those T-shirts?), and giving Oracle a flat-out failing grade on what has become of Solaris OS."
Nerval's Lobster writes "There may be a giant ring of dark matter invisibly encircling the Earth, increasing its mass and pulling much harder on orbiting satellites than anything invisible should pull, according to preliminary research from a scientist specializing the physics of GPS signaling and satellite engineering. The dark-matter belt around the Earth could represent the beginning of a radically new understanding of how dark matter works and how it affects the human universe, or it could be something perfectly valid but less exciting despite having been written up by New Scientist and spreading to the rest of the geek universe on the basis of a single oral presentation of preliminary research at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December. The presentation came from telecom- and GPS satellite expert Ben Harris, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas- Arlington, who based his conclusion on nine months' worth of data that could indicate Earth's gravity was pulling harder on its ring of geostationary GPS satellites than the accepted mass of the Earth would normally allow. Since planets can't gain weight over the holidays like the rest of us, Harris' conclusion was that something else was adding to the mass and gravitational power of Earth – something that would have to be pretty massive but almost completely undetectable, which would sound crazy if predominant theories about the composition of the universe didn't assume 80 percent of it was made up of invisible dark matter. Harris calculated that the increase in gravity could have come from dark matter, but would have had to be an unexpectedly thick collection of it – one ringing the earth in a band 120 miles thick and 45,000 miles wide. Making elaborate claims in oral presentations, without nailing down all the variables that could keep a set of results from being twisted into something more interesting than the truth is a red flag for any scientific presentation, let alone one making audacious claims about the way dark matter behaves or weight of the Earth, according to an exasperated counterargument from Matthew R. Francis, who earned a Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from Rutgers in 2005, held visiting and assistant professorships at several Northeastern universities and whose science writing has appeared in Ars Technica, The New Yorker, Nautilus, BBC Future and others including his own science blog at Galileo's Pendulum."
Philip Ross writes "Fresh analysis of an extinct relative of humans suggests our ancient ancestors dined primarily on tiger nuts, which are edible grass bulbs, settling a discrepancy over what made up prehistoric diets. According to a new study published in the journal PLOS One, the strong-jawed ancient hominin known as Paranthropus boisei, nicknamed 'Nutcracker Man,' which roamed East Africa between 2.4 million and 1.4 million years ago, survived on a diet scientists previously thought implausible."
Despite being so user-friendly on the whole, computers are incredibly complex systems. So complex that sometimes—just sometimes—the only explanation for a fault is that it must be haunted or something. Just blame the ghost in the machine. [XKCD]
An anonymous reader writes "Kazakh news site BNews.kz reports that Mukhtarbay Otelbaev, Director of the Eurasian Mathematical Institute of the Eurasian National University, is claiming to have found the solution to another Millennium Prize Problems. His paper, which is called 'Existence of a strong solution of the Navier-Stokes equations' and is freely available online (PDF in Russian), may present a solution to the fundamental partial differentials equations that describe the flow of incompressible fluids for which, until now, only a subset of specific solutions have been found. So far, only one of the seven Millennium problems was solved — the Poincaré conjecture, by Grigori Perelman in 2003. If Otelbaev's solution is confirmed, not only it might be the first time that the $1 million offered by the Clay Millennium Prize will find a home (Perelman refused the prize in 2010), but also engineering libraries will soon have to update their Fluid Mechanic books."
For centuries, London's pubs have served as meeting places, social spaces, rooms to relax and unwind, places to talk business, to eat and drink, to find comfort for an evening or solace for an hour. These spots have notorious alumni and endless unknown stories, making stepping inside feel like a trip in a time machine. While many of the oldest pubs have been polished into new venues, some still retain their olde charms, giving visitors the chance to experience what a pub may have been like hundreds of years ago. Here are five of our favorites.
The George Inn
In Shakespeare's Local, writer Pete Brown spins a fascinating biographical tale of London through the prism of the 600-year story of the George Inn. The inn was a place to rest, to eat and drink, and its location in Southwark, near the Thames and London Bridge, made it a popular place to stop before embarking on further travels, either into or out of London. Dickens definitely drank here and he mentions the pub in Little Dorrit; Churchill dined here (and was charged corkage by the feisty landlady for bringing in a fancy bottle of port to drink); Pepys popped in for a pint; and with the Globe Theatre nearby we can guess that Shakespeare had the occasional pot of ale, though there's no actual record of this happening.
Today it's a busy pub by the bustling Borough Market and the beauty is the galleried front of the building. Inside, it lacks some of the imagined warmth and comfort of an old inn, but it still has much to admire in its many different spaces, allowing you to chance to daydream about who may have drunk here before you. It's run by Greene King so try their Abbot Ale for a classic pint of English bitter.
The George Inn: 75-77 Borough High Street, SE1 1NH (map) 0207 407 2056; gkpubs.co.uk
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
It's impossible not to be instantly impressed and overawed by the Dickensian darkness of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which hides down an alley off Fleet Street. Like many pubs in this part of town it was originally destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666 and then rebuilt, but it has history from before the flames and a pub called The Horn was here from 1538—before that, a monastery on this site dates to the 13th century.
Tread over the worn entry step and it's like a museum set: dark wood, sawdust on the floor boards, myriad staircases taking you to snug and warm drinking rooms over different levels, a wood fire crackling in the winter, and barely a recognition of anything modern. Downstairs you sit inside a cellar bar, with the space thought to have been originally used by the monastery. When you visit your name joins illustrious drinkers who have been here before you: Charles Dickens, Dr. Samuel Johnson (who lived nearby and perhaps penned some of his dictionary in here), Mark Twain, Alfred Tennyson. It's now run by Samuel Smith Brewery, so order a pint of their Old Brewery Bitter, which is still drawn from wooden barrels.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese: 145 Fleet Street, EC4A 2BU (map)
Cittie of Yorke
In an ever-modernizing city with gleaming glass skyscrapers growing all around, the Cittie of Yorke reminds us of what London might have been in centuries past. A dark, wooden-interiored pub with a bank of cozy booths, it has the feeling of an old church or school hall with high peaked ceiling and the faint glow of light from outside catching in the dusty air. It offers a whispering kind of intimacy that's a jolt from the fast-moving surroundings of the street outside.
Look for the unusual three-faced fireplace in the middle which sends the smoke down instead of up, or see the giant wine vats over the bar which are from when a wine merchant owned the building in the 1920s. Choose between the bunker-like cellar bar, the living room coziness of the front bar, or the handsome antiquity of the main bar. As with other nearby buildings it's been demolished and rebuilt a few times, though a pub was first recorded here in 1430.
Like the Cheshire Cheese, and a considerable number of other impressively antique London pubs (including The Princess Louise which is a short walk from the Cittie of Yorke), this is owned by Samuel Smith Brewery. Their Pure Brewed Lager is a good beer if you don't fancy their Old Brewery Bitter; in the fridges you'll find their silky Oatmeal Stout. Try it with the fish and chips or shepherd's pie.
Cittie of Yorke: 22 High Holborn, WC1V 6BN (map) 0207 242 7670
The Old Bank of England
This pub is located on Fleet Street, which is named after the River Fleet, a subterranean river through the city. In 1702 London's first daily paper, the Daily Courant, was published on this street and the newspaper men stayed for almost 300 years (making it a notorious neighborhood for boozy lunch breaks) before their offices moved. Two pubs existed side by side on this site in the 16th and 17th centuries—The Cock and The Haunch of Venison. In 1888 the pubs were demolished (The Cock relocated over the road—it's now called Ye Olde Cock Tavern) and the Bank of England rebuilt it for their Law Courts. The space became a pub again in 1994 when Fuller's Brewery took it over. There's one more infamous link: the building is allegedly between what was once Sweeney Todd's barber and Mrs. Lovett's pie shop (or so the story goes), with the cellars beneath the pub being the gory location of Todd's butchery.
The bright and warm space has a cathedral-like grandness, with a central island bar beneath fairy tale chandeliers. There are elaborate murals and a spectacular ceiling, which is all best observed from the gallery level above the bar. The pies on the menu today are thankfully more wholesome than they might have been many years ago, and they are especially good with one of Fuller's ales: London Pride is their flagship brew, while Black Cab is a very good London stout.
Built in 1668 after the previous pub burnt down in the Great Fire, Ye Olde Watling is on what was once the main street through Roman London, with the name 'Aethling Street' (meaning Noble or High Street). Old ship timbers were used in its construction and Sir Christopher Wren is said to have built this as a pub and drawing room while he was working on many of the nearby churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral, which is the most prominent sight as you exit the pub.
Today the street outside is quiet and quaint and the pub is part of the Nicholson's pub group. All dark wood, inside and out, with a beamed ceiling, it feels more polished than rugged and old, though don't let that detract from the space: it has history etched into its walls. It's classic pub grub and a good selection of ales, so look out for beers by top British breweries like Thornbridge, Adnams, and St Austell.
Tasting liqueurs for reviews sometimes feels like a chore. (I know, I know, cry me a river. But...) Wading through saccharine, artificial-tasting bottles in search of that unicorn—a truly delicious liqueur—is most often unrewarding and gag-inducing. But today, I'm here to tell you that magical creatures do exist, if you only look hard enough. Two of the most exceptional examples I've found are the new honey liqueurs from Bärenjäger.
Bärenjäger Honey & Tea
I've never had a good tea-flavored liqueur before (and I shudder at the thought of anything called "sweet tea vodka"), so it's safe to say the complexity and balance of Bärenjäger's Honey & Tea took me completely by surprise. It smells like deep black tea with golden honey, though there's a hint of citrus as a counterpoint. While there's a slightly perfumed quality to the scent, it manages to stay on the tasteful side. The honey takes the lead in flavor, with its sweetness well balanced by the tannins of the tea. There's a little bit of heat and subtle herbal spices which ground the leading flavors very well. It finishes a little sweet, in a weighty but not cloying way, but hey, we're talking honey liqueur, after all!
Hands down the best tea-flavored alcohol I've ever tried, it holds up very well on its own, but really shines as a mixer. Friendly with gin, tequila, and a variety of fruit-based cocktails, I particularly liked it as a complement to bourbon. I found that 2:1 bourbon to Honey & Tea left me with my favorite "flavored" bourbon in quite some time, and if you go heavier on the liqueur it becomes a tasty cold toddy. It's also a perfect complement to almost anyshrub.
Bärenjäger Honey & Pear
Pear-based spirits are more well-trodden territory, and there are quite a few good ones in the eau de vie category (everyone loves the pear-in-a-bottle trick.) But full strength pear brandy, even at its best, can be a muscular beast not suited for everyone's palate. Bärenjäger Honey & Pear, a blend of honey liqueur and a pear brandy from Germany, takes off all the edges without losing the defining pear character. The scent is incredible, like juicy, luscious, honey-dipped pears. The taste is more of the same, with the full complexity of tart and floral pear, and the deep honey supporting the effort. Though it's less complex than the Honey & Tea, it's nonetheless an impressive, delicious bottling.
Screaming out to be part of a floral gin picnic punch, the Honey & Pear gets bullied a bit by the darker spirits. However, it's a wonderful addition to Champagne cocktails, and is really stellar on its own.
Retailing at $29 per bottle and weighing in at 70 proof, these are liqueurs that give hope to an entire category. Let's all cross our fingers that others can follow in Bärenjäger's pawprints.
About the author: Andrew Strenio is a lover of all things potable. Since sneaking his grandmother's bourbon balls, he's moved on to touring distilleries and sipping snifters. He works by day making documentary television and films as an independent producer in Brooklyn.
Tasting samples provided for review consideration.
String theory a beautiful, elegant piece of science which claims to unify all the forces in the Universe by representing tiny point-like particles as one-dimensional vibrating strings. It's as clever as it is wacky but is—conveniently—untestable. Until, perhaps, now.
Hunter and WoW blogger Ghemit of The Pride of Stonewall on Proudmoore (US-A) lost his husband, Elloric, suddenly at a very young age last New Year's Day. His friends and guildmates organized a very nice ceremony that we covered last year. This year, determined not to slide into depression and wishing to convince the world that WoW players aren't always a bunch of jerks, they held another memorial. Notice the lack of anyone behaving like a jackass! Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.
New submitter Cochonou writes "In an unforeseen turn of events, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long is now stuck in heavy Antarctic pack ice, just a day after its helicopter was used for the rescue of the passengers onboard the ice-trapped MV Akademik Shokalskiy. The Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis, which is now carrying the passengers of the Shokalskiy, has been placed on standby to assist. The Chinese vessel is waiting for favorable tidal conditions on Saturday to make another attempt at freeing itself."
Martin Krzywinski is an artist. No, wait, he's a mathematician. Actually, scratch that: he's both, and he can make the number Pi look insanely beautiful.
by Annalee Newitz on io9, shared by Geoff Manaugh to Gizmodo
Forget UFOs — there are a lot of objects and events in space that are identified, but still completely incomprehensible. From planets in our solar system, to inexplicable energy bursts from across the universe, here are some of the enduring mysteries of the space and time we call home.
Hunter and WoW blogger Ghemit of The Pride of Stonewall on Proudmoore (US-A) lost his husband, Elloric, suddenly at a very young age last New Year's Day. His friends and guildmates organized a very nice ceremony that we covered last year. This year, determined not to slide into depression and wishing to convince the world that WoW players aren't always a bunch of jerks, they held another memorial. Notice the lack of anyone behaving like a jackass!
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.
