Habanerocouscous

I mentioned an unusual retraction from Organic Letters here last year, and here's some follow-up to the story:

Nearly six years after Suvi Orr received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Texas, the university told her it has decided to do something that institutions of higher learning almost never do: revoke
the degree. Orr, in turn, has sued UT in an effort to hold onto the doctorate that launched her career in the pharmaceutical industry.

Her lawsuit in state district court in Travis County contends that revocation is unwarranted and that the university violated her rights by not letting her defend herself before the dissertation committee that condemned her research long after she graduated. In addition, she says, the committee relied heavily on her former professor, who, she claims, was motivated to “cast the blame elsewhere.”

What a mess. More details as things develop. . .

According to geologist Hans Amundsen—of the Natural History Museum in Oslo—you're looking at the first ever film of a meteorite falling through its dark flight stage. The lucky guy who filmed it was skydiver Anders Helstrup, who survived the encounter unscathed.

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This may be one of the best joke research papers I've ever seen. Via David Ng.

Do not click on this post if you don't want to see a hockey player's mangled mouth. OK, the rest of you can proceed.

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These emoji-fueled interpretations of pop culture are all over the place nowadays, but this one is particularly inspired. You done good, creator of Game of Phones.

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Vladimir Guerrero threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Angels game against the Mariners and while trying to catch it, Don Baylor seemed to hyperextend his leg and possibly suffer even further injury.

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Brad sez, "Trusty Sword, an Olympia, WA-based RPG developer, has posted hundreds of scanned D&D cover art from dndclassics.com [a site where you can buy all the classic D&D modules and books as ebooks, though some are larded with DRM] to Pinterest. It's awesome."

D&D 1.0 (AD&D) Cover Art on Pinterest (Thanks, Brad!)

Here’s all ten episodes of Game of Thrones Season 1, translated into a death per episode (except for episode three which had no deaths and for which we used a fetching three eyed raven).

The most challenging aspect of all this has been trying to think of different kinds of ‘ideas’ for each picture, without simply recreating the scene as was filmed. There’s been ‘graphic’ ideas – the map of Westeros in blood, the blood on the claws of The Mountain’s shield, the giant boar’s head waiting for Robert Baratheon in the woods – there’s been extreme compositions – Jory’s eye with the Kingslayer looming, Arya’s sword skewering the stable boy – and there’s been ‘collage’ ideas – Ned’s blood turning into birds, the butcher boy running in The Hound’s hot breath.

I hope they work as a set, with the border and typography helping to bring some consistency to what is a disparate set of images. I’ve been helped by a great team over at 360i who have been massively encouraging (and tolerant!) and who have weighed in with ideas, direction  and thoughts along the way.

I’m already halfway through season two but the rate at which they’re being posted at beautifuldeath.com  is chasing me down as relentlessly as The Hound…

 

At halftime of Virginia's ACC tournament semifinal, Danny had an idea. He noticed all the Cavaliers staff members hovering around the team, and discerned what exactly gave them to the power to roam freely around the court: a suit with a Virginia-orange tie. One day and one trip to Walmart later, Danny was down on the floor, celebrating a conference title and shaking hands with a dejected Coach K.

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While you MLS truthers and Eurosnobs were watching soccer last weekend, this absolute gem of a goal happened in the Jordan Premier League.

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This...this is a mess. In the second inning of today's Reds-Indians game, Brandon Phillips uncorked a rocket right into umpire Brad Myers's dick. Myers tried to jump out of the way and instead positioned his dick right in the line of fire. He would remain on the ground for some time as both Cleveland and Cincinnati trainers checked him out.

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We probably should have seen this coming. At the Ivanpah solar power plant near Las Vegas, a massive glittering field of 170,000 garage door-sized mirrors reflects sunlight. And all those mirrors are making flying near Ivanpah not so fun—or safe.

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Have you ever thought, "Hey, art is cool, but I wish it had more John Elway in it?" You're in luck, weirdo! [KSK]

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An anonymous reader writes "Smithsonian Magazine has an article about one of the non-obvious effects of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown: dead organisms are not decomposing correctly. 'According to a new study (abstract) published in Oecologia, decomposers—organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay—have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil. Issues with such a basic-level process, the authors of the study think, could have compounding effects for the entire ecosystem.' The scientists took bags of fallen leaves to various areas around Chernobyl and found that locations with more radiation caused the leaves to retain more than half of their original weight after almost a year. They're now beginning to worry that almost three decades of dead brush buildup is contributing to the area's fire risk, and a large fire could distribute radioactive material beyond Chernobyl's exclusion zone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this week in the South American Games, Chile faced Brazil in the bronze medal women's team sprint race. The starting horn sounded and both teams of cyclists exploded out of their respective starting gates, only for the officials to call a false start. That's when disaster happened.

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This was the first time ever Lady Gaga has performed at SXSW and the first time ever she has been publicly puked on. [ more › ]

Here's a great history of English mispronunciations that became the received pronunciations. The piece makes the important point that English has no canon, no unequivocal right way or wrong way of speaking -- a point that is often lost in Internet linguistic pedantry and literacy privilege.

I'm as guilty as anyone of thinking that my English is the best English, but the next time I wince at "nukular," I'll remind myself that "bird" started out as "brid" and "wasp" started out as "waps," but were mispronounced into common usage.

Adder, apron and umpire all used to start with an "n". Constructions like "A nadder" or "Mine napron" were so common the first letter was assumed to be part of the preceding word. Linguists call this kind of thing reanalysis or rebracketing.

Wasp used to be waps; bird used to be brid and horse used to be hros. Remember this when the next time you hear someone complaining about aks for ask or nucular for nuclear, or even perscription. It's called metathesis, and it's a very common, perfectly natural process.

8 pronunciation errors that made the English language what it is today [David Shariatmadari/Guardian]

(via Hacker News)

(Image: Double bitted felling axe, Wikimedia Commons/Luigizanasi CC-BY-SA)

It's so easy to find things wrong with 1994's Street Fighter movie, I thought that Chris Plante's epic feature about the flick wouldn't have any surprises. But it's wonderfully well-written, and packed with all sorts of morbid detail. Moroever, I feel like I understand something important about the mad thinking behind that whole early wave of Hollywood game-films, right down to the overpolished "blue steel" aesthetic they had.

Van Damme is shooting guns, causing all sorts of mayhem, and he shouts to Chun-Li and Balrog: "Go, go, I'll catch you later." Here's what Van Damme said the first time: "Go, go, I'll catch you later — cut, cut, cut!"

It's unusual for an actor to call cut; that's the director's role, but Van Damme was sure he'd said "ladder" instead of "later" and he demanded they do it over. [Stephen] De Souza, stunned, noted the crew would need to rematch the bullet holes, rerig the actors who fell from catwalks back on their wires, clean off the costume and replace the blood packs. But Van Damme ordered another take. While the crew reset everything, Van Damme listened to the audio and realized he'd had it right. De Souza — vindicated, albeit after losing time and resources — decided to shoot the scene again for backup. Van Damme got in position. De Souza called action.

"Go, go," shouted Van Damme, "I'll catch you ladder!"

So much went wrong that it's a credit to De Souza that he managed to make it to the end. Even so, the palpable disinterest in the source material starts at the very beginning; days into filming, the director and his stars stand around, and realize that no-one on set knows how to pronounce the name "Ryu."

Excuse the portrait mode video but this golf trick shot is so impressive that we can ignore the blatant disregard of proper cell phone video recording etiquette. Here's what goes down: the guy behind hits a golf ball to the guy in front who swings and hits the same ball without the ball ever touching the ground. It's like the golf equivalent of an alley oop dunk. Perfect timing, perfect execution, perfectly in sync.

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The story behind the painting

Today's first ski cross quarterfinal heat featured a big crash just before the finish, taking out three skiers and allowing Switzerland's Armin Niederer to cross first. But only second place would join him in the semis—who could slide the fastest?

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Sometimes, Winter Olympians from the tropics don't give us a heartwarming (and maybe overrated) tale of overcoming adversity. Sometimes, they simply inspire wonder, as in, how did this pilot not die?

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If you're a beard lover—and, hey, these days who isn't?—then here's the font for you, because it's made exclusively from images of facial hair.

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You probably don't want to look at these videos showing ingrown hair removal. Seriously, don't do it. But just in case. [Jezebel]

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