Idaho farmer John Barnes patented this “coyote alarm” in 1903. Near his sheep pens he mounted a man-shaped scarecrow wearing a metal breastplate. In the breastplate was a cylinder “analogous to the cylinder of a revolver of large size” holding blank cartridges. A clockwork mechanism turned the cylinder, and a plunger dropped at intervals and fired a cartridge. Barnes would wind up the mechanism with a key at dusk, and the artificial farmer would fire its imaginary gun “every quarter of an hour throughout the night.” I wonder what the sheep thought of this.
the world fantasy award decided to drop their award design that’s just a bust of lovecraft. it’s the right move. i like lovecraft’s writing a lot, and it was my first exposure to “cosmic horror” and the concept of a terrifyingly indifferent universe. but man, you’ll run smack into a super-racist passage and it yanks you straight out. bleah.
to borrow from longfellow: when lovecraft was good, he was very very good; but when he was bad, he was horrid.
Everyone should know, in the 70s Nichelle Nichols went to NASA and asked why there weren’t black astronauts in the pipeline, and they said, “Come recruit for us.” And she did.
“From the late 1970’s until the late 1980’s, NASA employed Nichelle
Nichols to recruit new astronaut candidates. Many of her new recruits
were women or members of racial and ethnic minorities, including Guion
Bluford (the first African-American astronaut), Sally Ride (the first
female American astronaut), Judith Resnik (one of the original set of
female astronauts, who perished during the launch of the Challenger on
January 28, 1986), and Ronald McNair (the second African-American
astronaut, and another victim of the Challenger accident).“ (x)
I was writing a money back web page for a major “eco-friendly” household cleaner brand. The client was explaining their refund process.
Client: So, if a consumer wants their money back, they have to visit our site where they’ll download a printable refund form. We’ll give them an address where they can send their completed form, along with the original receipt.
Client: Well, honestly, we don’t want to make the refund process easier. That would result in more refunds.
Me: Right. But we are a “green” brand, right? Seems odd that an eco-responsible company is asking consumers to print out a paper form, then send it through snail mail…
Client: Well, we’ve done this before and nobody complained, so it should be fine.
As the series developed, readers came to expect an ever more extensive drinks menu. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, for example, the eleventh book, Bond downs no less than forty-six drinks, the widest variety in any single book. According to one Bondologist, these include: unspecified quantities of Pouilly-Fuissé white wine, Taittinger champagne, Mouton Rothschild ’53 claret, calvados, Krug champagne, three bourbons with water, four vodka and tonics, two double brandy and ginger ales, two whisky and sodas, three double vodka martinis, two double bourbons on the rocks, at least one glass of neat whisky, a flask of Enzian schnapps, Marsala wine, the better part of a bottle of fiery Algerian wine (served by M), two more Scotch whiskies, half a pint of I.W. Harper bourbon, a Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whisky with water, on the rocks, a bottle of Riquewihr wine, four steins of Franziskaner beer, and a double Steinhäger gin. The same indefatigable researcher has found that although vodka martini has now become Bond’s signature drink, he only drinks nineteen of them in the books, compared to thirty-seven bourbons, twenty-one Scotches and a remarkable thirty-five sakes (entirely the result of his massive consumption of that particular drink in You Only Live Twice).
— Ben MacIntyre, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, 2008
I built a simple brochure website for a business-to-business client. They approved the final version on the test server, so I asked for the FTP password to move it into place. They refused, citing security concerns. I argued that a web developer is a bit like a car mechanic: you have to trust them with the keys to your car. No go. So I sent them the entire website as a .zip file. They could not figure out how to upload it, so they gave in and emailed me.
The FTP password for this security-conscious company turned out to be 12345678.
