Hpecker

Novelist Simon Raven was known as a bit of a bounder.

When his wife wired him WIFE AND BABY STARVING SEND MONEY SOONEST, he cabled back SORRY NO MONEY SUGGEST EAT BABY.

Fuck that bullshit, for sure.

jtotheizzoe:

skunkbear:

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the birthday of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev - the man whose ground-breaking work led to the creation of the modern periodic table of elements.

Here’s a fun look at his contributions from Lou Serico and TED-Ed:

I Mende-love that guy. Thanks for the table, D!

This book might be okay if it weren’t for Coolio’s insistence on referring to a tablespoon as a dime bag, and the publisher’s insistence on inserting what they seem to think is “rap talk” into each sentence.

- kodee-peyote 

Hahahaha oh boom

A chart of digger reach

-Sarah

georgetakei:

Some levi-tea, for your afternoon. http://ift.tt/1fsAw4d

Roaring hippo silhouetted in psychedelic storm of color. Did this art project today with 3-5 year olds.

Spray shaving cream on the table.
Add drops of food color.
Children mix it with their hands.
Place a cut out image on the dyed shaving cream.
Place blank paper over the cut out & press down.
Squeegee off the cream, the color remains.

Great art + sensory project!

If Napoleon had the shoulders of a similarly stout military tactician to sit on, he’d probably still be alive today! He’d literally be immortal due to the fundamental rules of short guy stacking. Surprised more people don’t know about this.

Speaking of stacking dudes on top of each other, how about some erotic videos! I’ve got a new series of videos starting over at Dorkly titled “Fan Fiction Theatre,” in which we bring to “life” actual fan fiction. The first installment is an adaptation of a masterful work of steamy Sherlock fan fiction, titled Sherlock Got the D. You can watch it here::

Hope that didn’t give your Ds too many Bs. Whatever that means.

T

Back in grade school I remember being threatened that misbehavior would show up on my PERMANENT RECORD. The permanent record was a terrifying concept, especially because they made it sound like it was, well, PERMANENT. I was afraid that I would be denied a promotion in my 30s because my boss could clearly see that I threw a grape at the back of my friend’s head in Social Studies class (“Not management material”).

But when I graduated high school, they dumped a big folder on my lap. “Here’s your permanent record.” It was bewildering and underwhelming, like my school had put together the lamest scrapbook ever for me. It made me wish I’d been a worse kid so my permanent record would have a little more color to it.

Now I’m just waiting a few decades to see if the government does the same thing with their own records. Maybe I should commit a few felonies to be safe.

wes

Psycho is certainly suspenseful on the first viewing. But why does it remain so on the second?

“How can there be suspense if we already know how things will turn out?” asks University of Michigan philosopher Kendall Walton. “Why, for example, should Tom and Becky’s plight concern or even interest a reader who knows, from reading the novel previously, that eventually they will escape from the cave? One might have supposed that, once we have experienced a work often enough to learn thoroughly the relevant features of the plot, it would lose its capacity to create suspense, and that future readings or viewings of it would lack the excitement of the first one. But this frequently is not what happens.”

The paradox extends to music. Why does a crescendo continue to “work” on repeated listenings? Why does it still move us?

(Kendall Walton, “Fearing Fictions,” The Journal of Philosophy 75:1 [January 1978], 26)

In the 19th century, feeling expansive, the Welsh village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll extended its name to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, meaning “The Church of Mary of White Hazel Pool quite near the rapid whirlpool, the church of Tysilio under a red cave.”

In the same spirit, the gift shop in Llangollen bears the name Ysiopfachgardiauwrthybontdrosyrafonddyfrdwyynllangollen. It means “The little card shop by the bridge over the river Dee in Llangollen.”

Image: Flickr

Palindromes:

• Sue, dice, do, to decide us.
• Do Good’s deeds live on? No, Evil’s deeds do, O God.
• Marge let a moody baby doom a telegram.
• No, it can assess an action.
• Poor Dan is in a droop.
• Repel evil as a live leper.
• See few owe fees.
• Niagara, O roar again!
• No, set a maple here, help a mate, son.
• Too far, Edna, we wander afoot.
• “Reviled did I live,” said I, “as evil I did deliver.”
• No, it is opposition.
• Revered now, I live on. O, did I do no evil, I wonder, ever?
• Madame, not one man is selfless; I name not one, madam.
• Draw no dray a yard onward.
• Yawn a more Roman way.
• Doom an evil deed, liven a mood.
• See, slave, I demonstrate yet arts no medieval sees.

J.A. Lindon devised this vignette, which is one long palindrome if words, rather than letters, are taken as the unit: “On radios with noisy speakers everywhere glass and china rattles; waiters, many of one race, move forks and knives, while knives and forks move, race; one of many waiters rattles china and glass, everywhere speakers noisy, with radios on …”

Maybe figures can’t lie, but liars can certainly figure, and that is why statistics can be made to ‘prove’ almost anything. Consider a group of ten girls, nine of them virgins, one pregnant. On the ‘average’ each of the nine virgins is ten per cent pregnant, while the girl who is about to have a baby is ninety per cent a virgin. Or, assuming that a fox terrier two feet long, with a tail an inch and a half high, can dig a hole three feet deep in ten minutes, to dig the Panama Canal in a single year would require only one fox terrier fifteen miles long, with a tail a mile and a half high.

– Stuart Cloete, The Third Way, 1947

Throwback Thursday

Hell yes.

Because we, as a nation, will do whatever it takes to prop up a White Rapper, no matter how middling his contribution.