Cary

Last year we hired a company to build us some additional fencing in our yard.  Nothing fancy, really.  Just a few straight lines to make a dog run area, and a couple gates to move around.  Pretty boring stuff, really.

But the company in question did something so astoundingly strange — so straight up… bizarre — I just had to share it.

What you see on the right is a picture of one of the “gates” that they built for me.

I know this is supposed to be a gate because it has that diagonal piece of wood on it.  Also because they told me it was a gate.

Note the absence of some of the defining characteristics of a gate.  Namely:

1) Hinges to allow it to open.  … like a gate.

2) The wood being cut in such a way that opening it would be possible without a chainsaw.  … like a gate.

3) Actually being, you know, a gate.

But, hey, who am I to judge?  There is, after all, a big diagonal beam nailed to the fence.  Surely that must turn it into a gate.

If any of you could look at the picture (click it for the bigger version) and figure out how to open this “gate”, please let me know.  I have a yard behind there that I currently have to scale the fence to get to.

And, as awesome as Parkour is, sometimes I like to be lazy and not need to leap 6 feet into the air to get to my side-yard (which is now totally inaccessible from the rest of my yard).

Side note: The fence company that built this “gate”, on our quaint little home north of Seattle, has threatened me with legal action if I tell people about their work — and they refuse to “gate-i-fy” it.  So I am going to leave their name out.  Suffice to say that this company promotes themselves as being quite “premier”.  One could almost say that they would consider themselves to be a very “premier fence company”.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go nail a diagonal piece of wood to my car and tell everyone that it’s a gate.  Then I’m going to threaten anyone who calls it a car with legal action.  Oooh, I could also try that with a pizza.

Pizza + Diagonal Board = Gate

That’s actually a rather fun game.  What would you nail a diagonal board to in order to magically turn it into a gate?

Police in Lake Mary, Florida, arrested George Zimmerman Monday afternoon after being notified by his wife that he was allegedly threatening her and her father with a gun.

WKMG-TV reported that police were called to the home of Shellie Zimmerman’s parents, David and Machelle Dean, and were investigating the incident.

Shellie Zimmerman’s lawyer announced on Thursday that she had filed for divorce, and she told ABC News in an interview that he had been behaving recklessly since being found not guilty of murder in June 2013 after shooting and killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012.

“I have a selfish husband,” Shellie Zimmerman told ABC. “And I think George is all about George.”

[Image via Fox News]

Here are a couple of posters that summarize my ideas on the scientific method. Please feel free to download them and put on your wall. As the first poster shows, the scientific method is indeed simple.

PDF for the first poster available here.

PDF for the second poster available here.

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be Tim.

Survey asks men and women to rank parts of the body by pleasure – and some of the results prove surprising

The mind, said Raquel Welch, is an erogenous zone. And it is the brain, and how it organises our erogenous zones, that has intrigued scientists for decades. Why is a nuzzled neck sexy when few would be turned on by a nuzzled nose? And why do men seem to have fewer erogenous zones than women? A new study has measured just how erotic our body bits are – and there are a few surprises for neuroscientists.

The research, a joint project between two British universities and one in South Africa, is billed as the first “systematic survey of the magnitude of erotic sensations from various body parts”.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that feet were not considered sexually attractive by the 800 people, mostly from Britain and sub-Saharan Africa, who took part in the study.

Three quarters gave their feet the lowest, zero rating – alongside knee caps – which might disappoint those who have invested time and energy in developing their foot massage or toe-sucking techniques.

The fact that people consistently placed feet so low on their rankings of sensitive areas seems to completely undermine previous explanations for the distribution of our erogenous zones, which have suggested that the sensors in our brain that deal with the feet were right next to the sensors in charge of our genitalia.

Another surprise was the consistency of responses. “A lot of people assume that women’s bodies are just full of erogenous zones and that men have only one, the obvious one,” said Professor Oliver Turnbull of Bangor University’s School of Psychology, who led the study and worked alongside scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

“But this is clearly not the case,” said Turnbull. “It’s pretty equal, with just perhaps a modest advantage to women – but certainly nothing like the way the sex differences have been so hugely exaggerated.”

The scientists were also surprised to see that there were “remarkable levels of correlation” between the ratings for all the people who responded, no matter their age, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or race. Men and women listed the 41 body parts they were asked to rate in remarkably similar order. The obvious bits of genitalia were at the top of the rankings, as were lips, ears and inner thighs, followed closely by shoulder blades.

There were a few major differences between the sexes – the back of the leg was barely acknowledged by women, for instance, while men rated it as important as their ears. Hands were also more erotic for men than for women, researchers found.

“We have discovered from this that we all share the same erogenous zones in at least two very different continents, whether we are a white, middle-aged, middle-class woman sitting in a London office or a gay man living in a village in Africa. It suggests it is hardwired, built in, not based on cultural or life experience,” said Turnbull.

This is in stark contrast to earlier theories, among them that of the neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran who first suggested that feet are sexy because of the neighbouring sensors in the cortex, though he made a crucial error in mistaking a fetish – “where one enjoys looking at high heels and stockings, etc”, said Turnbull – with an erogenous zone. “He may have made a mistake between touch and looking at things.”

The central issue is not so much where the erogenous zones are, but why non-genital ones are erogenous.

“The Cosmopolitan magazines of this world have been running half-baked surveys on this for years and years,” said Turnbull. “But we wanted to look at the question of why the side of the neck is interesting if nibbled but not the forehead or head, when both have the same sensory receptors.”

This study would seem to suggest that there is a completely different part of the brain controlling our saucy spots, he said.

“I think there is a good argument for it being the insula [cortex], although there are a few ethical issues in trying to take the next step and measure that, as it obviously means that someone has to be stroking someone else whilst the brain is monitored.

“It is interesting, though. A lot of people think that science shouldn’t be looking at such things, but if it’s something that human beings are interested in – and we clearly are around sex and intimacy – then it’s something scientists should study,” Turnball added. Neuroscientists, he said, had already come up with the optimal speed to stroke human skin (5cm per second if you wish to test it out at home).

So even if many can be accused of having sex on the brain, it’s unlikely we have it in our cerebral cortex.

The full report appears in the neuroscientific journal Cortex

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013

[Young couple making love in bed. Focus on hand via Shutterstock.com]

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of arthritis, and is caused by wear and tear of protective joint cartilage over time. While there is no currently known cure for OA, there are several treatment options available to patients. Among them is Moximed‘s newly developed implant designed to relieve excess load on the afflicted joint. While the California-based company’s KineSpring Knee Implant System is currently only designed as a knee implant, the technology could be adapted for other commonly afflicted joints in the future. The procedure is designed to be the first step in invasive OA treatment, as it does not alter the anatomy of a patient. On the contrary, the KineSpring system can prolong the usefulness of an afflicted joint and delaying the need for knee replacement surgery.

At the core of the technology is a spring loaded system designed to function alongside the existing knee anatomy. According to Moximed’s website, “As the knee extends, the spring compresses and absorbs joint overload. As the knee flexes, the spring relaxes and becomes passive.” The procedure is fully reversible, and largely noninvasive, making it a particularly attractive option for physically active OA patients. Although this technology is designed to be an option for OA patients, it is not designed to be a permanent solution. It is intended to put off invasive surgery for as long as possible, however eventually it is intended to be removed.

Product Page: KineSpring Knee Implant System: A First Surgical Option…

Read more: Shock absorbers for the human body? Implant could help active patients avoid total knee replacements longer…

Christian televangelist Pat Robertson is threatening legal action against a Canadian documentary team over their film alleging that Robertson used a bogus charity as a supply line for his diamond mining business in Africa. Right Wing Watch reported Friday that Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network are threatening to sue Lara Zizic and David Turner, whose film “Mission Congo” is set to premiere this weekend at the Toronto Film Festival.

“Mission Congo,” according to the Guardian, details how Robertson reportedly used aid money donated to his foreign ministry program Operation Blessing International to provide mining equipment and other services to his diamond-mining operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Robertson also used images of doctors and tents provided by the international medical aid group Médecins sans Frontières (MSF aka “Doctors Without Borders”) to promote Operation Blessing, saying that his group had provided the tents and the doctors and that donor money from his Christian empire was the main source of aid to the war-torn region.

Operation Blessing, says the film, still pulls in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, money that Robertson is using to enrich himself and his family. The film contains damning testimony from former Operation Blessing workers, who say that humanitarian mission flights were routinely diverted hundreds of miles off course to deliver mining equipment and other supplies to Robertson’s diamond mining operation in Kamonia.

Jessie Potts, the operations manager for Robertson in Goma, Congo in 1994, told the filmmakers that when Operation Blessing did provide medicines to the thousands of refugees who had streamed from Rwanda into Zaire, it wasn’t the right kind. Medics needed drugs to fight the cholera epidemic which was spreading like a killer wildfire through the refugee population.

“We got a lot of Tylenol” instead, he said. “Too much. I never did understand that. We got enough Tylenol to supply all of Zaire. God, I never saw as much in my life.”

Then, late in 1994, said Potts, the medical supply flights stopped coming altogether. A former pilot told the documentary team that he was told to stop hauling medicine and start hauling mining supplies.

“They began asking me: can we haul a thousand-pound dredge over? I didn’t know what the dredging deal was about,” said pilot Robert Hinkle. “Mission after mission was always just getting eight-inch dredgers, six-inch dredgers…and food supplies, quads, jeeps, out to the diamond dredging operation outside of Kamonia.”

A dredger is a piece of equipment used to remove diamonds from riverbeds. The flights were ordered and paid for by the African Development Company, a Robertson-owned firm based in Bermuda.

The documentary controversy comes fresh on the heels of a recent gross misstep by Robertson, who said in a broadcast of his “700 Club” program that gay men infected with AIDS were “special rings” that cut people and infect them with HIV. CBN scrubbed the video from its website within hours of the show’s broadcast and has aggressively lobbied YouTube and Daily Motion to remove the video on the grounds of supposed copyright infringement.

tastefullyoffensive:

[@thatramosgirl]

If walking at a treadmill desk seems a little too boring or repetitive, you can try hacking the treadmill to scroll web pages.

Read more...

(via National Flags Created From the Foods Each Country Is Commonly Associated With)

I continue to use my food lens when looking for posts. These flags from Australian advertising agency WHYBIN\TBWAT were created to promote the Sydney International Food Festival. The flags use foods native to each nation: basil, pasta and tomatoes on Italy’s flag, Kalamata olives and feta cheese for Greece, tuna and rice for Japan. (That’s France with cheese and grapes.)

Russian professor thinks the U.S. will break up into these four countries, PraxisLD:

Mark McEvoy, Five words

batamotel:

BOYCOTT FOREVER 21

Retail company Forever 21 sent this letter to all full time/non-management employees informing them that they will be demoted to part time, they and their families will lose their health and dental benefits, and they will no longer qualify for paid time off. Employees believe the company is punishing them to retaliate against Obamacare.

We were asked to share this by one of our fans, and now we are asking you to do the same. Don’t underestimate the power of your SHARE. Two weeks ago, US Uncut was the first place to widely publish McDonald’s now notorious budget, and it went viral across mainstream media.

Thank you.

MAKE IT VIRAL