Cary

Why do freeways come to a stop?

I used to hide in a back room in our basement where I had a stash of roadkill, and I’d … study … anatomy without telling my parents.

Parents, talk to your children. Don’t let them go down my path. You can point to me in public and whisper, “If you keep playing with bones, you’ll end up like him.”

Cleopatra was Greek, not Egyptian

Cleopatra is perhaps the most commonly known and most famous Egyptian Queen.  In fact she is so famous that the legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor (above) was chosen to portray her on the silver screen.  Cleopatra was also very famous in the ancient world as well, courting both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.  However it may be surprising for many to learn the the last Pharaoh of Egypt was not actually Egyptian.  Cleopatra’s full name was Cleopatra VII Philopater.  In Greek “Cleopatra” means “The Glory of Her Father”.  Believe it or not Cleopatra was not Egyptian, she was Greek.

So how was it that a Greek ruled Ancient Egypt?  Back in the 300’s BC, Alexander the Great had conquered a vast empire stretching from Greece to Northern India.  Egypt was included in his empire.  In 323 BC Alexander the Great died without a legitimate heir.  Without anyone to inherit his empire, it was decided that Alexander’s former realm would be divided up among his generals.  The general who was awarded Egypt was Ptolemy Soter, who in 305 BC took the title “pharaoh”, thus founding the Ptolemaic Dynasty.  While the Ptolemies took Egyptian titles, they behaved like Greeks; speaking Greek, eating Greek food, and living like Greek royalty.  Highly xenophobic, the Ptolemies refused to speak the native language, assimilate with Egyptian culture, walk like an Egyptian, or even intermingle with the natives.  In fact it was not uncommon for the Ptolemies to practice incest in order to preserve their Greek bloodline. Cleopatra herself carried on this practice, marrying her two brothers. As a result the Ptolemaic Dynasty would remain a Greek Dynasty.

Cleopatra was a 12th generation direct descendant of Ptolemy Soter and the last pharaoh of the Ptolemaic Dynasty.  One of the reason’s why Cleopatra is mistaken for an Egyptian was that Cleopatra tried to look like an Egyptian.  Unlike her previous ancestors, Cleopatra began to assimilate with the local culture.  She learned how to speak Egyptian, started dressing like an Egyptian, and even claimed to be a reincarnation of an Egyptian god.  

Unfortunately for Cleopatra, she had little time to become a proper Egyptian Queen.  By 43 BC the Roman Republic was embroiled in a civil war between the three most powerful men in Rome, Marc Antony, Octavian, and  Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.  Cleopatra chose to side with Marc Antony, a disastrous decision since it would be Octavian (Augustus) who would defeat Marc Antony, conquer Egypt, and become the first Roman Emperor.  Cleopatra committed suicide by being bitten by a poisonous asp in 30 BC.  Egypt would then become a province of the Roman Empire.

Jasper Johns and James Meyer in the studio. Photo by Hans Namuth. (image originally appeared in an interview by Matthew Rose on The Artblog and used by permission of Roberta Fallon)

According to documents released this morning, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the New York Office of the FBI have charged a former studio assistant to Jasper Johns with the theft of 22 “unauthorized” Johns works. The assistant, 51-year-old James Meyer of Salisbury, Connecticut (pictured above), worked for Johns from 1985 to 2012, and allegedly stole the pieces from a file he was responsible for keeping of artworks specifically prohibited by the artist from being sold. The works grossed $6.5 million when Meyer unloaded them through an unnamed Manhattan gallery from September 2006 to February 2012, netting him $3.4 million. Neither the indictment nor the press release name the gallery involved, presumably because they are not suspected of any wrongdoing — the accused provided sworn statements of authenticity and a host of other falsified supporting documents.

The seven-page indictment unsealed this morning details how, as an insider at the Johns studio in Sharon, Connecticut, Meyer was able to provide persuasive documentation certifying the legitimacy and provenance of the works to both the gallery and prospective buyers. Although Jasper Johns had never intended for the works to leave his studio, Meyer sold the works under the pretext of them having been gifted to him by the artist, and to complete this fiction he allegedly “blatantly misrepresented to the Gallery Owner, and others, that certain of the Unauthorized Works would be included in an upcoming catalogue raisonné … ”

James Meyer is also himself an artist, and is represented by the Fifth Avenue gallery Gering López. The gallery declined to comment when reached by phone this morning. According to Meyer’s LinkedIn page, he is also the CEO of International Encaustic Artists (IEA), “the oldest and largest professional membership organization for encaustic art.” That organization presented a lifetime achievement award to Jasper Johns in 2012. He is also a board member of Artgarage. Calls made to the studio line listed on his website went straight to voicemail.

It appears that the fraudulent documents were compelling enough that the US Attorney is not pursuing charges against the gallery nor seeking the forfeiture of the $3.1 million of proceeds they are assumed to have realized from the sale of the works in question. In addition to seeking the forfeiture of his proceeds from the sales, the state is charging Meyer with one count of interstate transportation of stolen property and one count of wire fraud. The former carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, the latter a maximum sentence of 20 years.

I don’t know how I missed them, but somehow homeopathic first aid kits had not registered on my radar. They’re readily available. Even Amazon.com sells them, for $54.99. They contain 18 vials of tiny sugar pills, all with potencies of 200C, guaranteed by Avogadro not to contain a single molecule of the active ingredient. (For those of you who may not know, Avogadro was the Italian scientist who discovered the Avogadro constant, the number of atoms needed such that the number of grams of a substance equals the atomic mass of the substance.

If that paralyzes your brain, never mind. Just take my word for it that Avogadro’s discovery allows us to calculate that a 13C dilution (a 1 in 100 to the 13^th power dilution), is the equivalent of diluting 1/3 of a drop of the original substance in all the water on earth, and to reach a 200C potency you would have to continue to dilute it by 1 to 100 a total of 187 more times.)

What’s in the kits?

On homeopathy websites you can buy special first aid kits for the car, for hiking and camping, for horses, for pets, for pregnancy, for childbirth, and for travel. One website sells a first aid kit that “contains all the major homeopathic first aid remedies which work so amazingly well particularly when given immediately after an accident or injury.” Only $99.95, but you’re also advised to buy a book to explain its use, for an additional $18.95. It contains 15 remedies in a 30C potency:

• Aconite (the “queen of poisons): for colds, flu, sore throats, effects of fear, fright, chicken pox and croup
• Apis mellifera (honey bee): for burning and stinging pains, insect stings, swelling of the lower eyelids, edema, swollen joints
• Arnica: after injury, mental and physical shock, before and after operations or visits to the dentist. Stops bleeding, aids in the healing of wounds and reduces bruising and swelling. Good for general healing and shock, exhaustion, muscular pain, sprains from overexertion.
• Arsen alb (arsenic): stomach upsets from food poisoning, diarrhea, vomiting and acute hayfever. Good for some dry skin conditions.
• Belladonna (deadly nightshade): hot flushed face, sore throat, facial neuralgia, throbbing headache, earache, boils, chickenpox, measles and mumps
• Bryonia (a toxic weed): dry chesty coughs, muscular pains, which is better for resting [sic]
• Cantharis (a beetle, Spanish fly): burns and scalds before the blisters form, sunburn, constant urge to pass urine, urine passed drop by drop (cystitis)

I’ll spare you the rest, except to note that the list includes poison ivy to use for shingles, mumps, sciatica, herpes, etc.

It doesn’t matter what kind of poison is in them, because it’s all gone at that dilution. Which makes it really silly to choose one, because they’re all the same.

Scary advice

I was reassuring myself that people would mostly use these remedies while awaiting medical care, and then I found a website that horrified me.

For certain illnesses, it said “Depending on severity, seek medical care.” These included anaphylaxis, animal bites, bone injuries, third degree burns, carbon monoxide poisoning, cuts, drug overdose, electrocution, eye injuries, food poisoning, paint poisoning, pesticide poisoning, puncture wounds, and shock. It’s appalling to think that patients are left to their own assessment and might think these conditions were not severe enough to merit medical care.

For dislocated joints and heat exhaustion, there was no advice to seek medical care even if the condition was judged to be severe. What, you just leave your shoulder out of joint and non-functional?

In small print at the bottom you can find this disclaimer: “solely intended to provide a format in assisting the student in learning the principals of Homeopathy. It is in no way to be considered a substitute for a consultation with a health professional.”

No way to stop this dangerous nonsense, so you might as well laugh

The Quackometer was alarmed by the blurb accompanying these kits that said “to be used in even the most severe emergency and accident situations.” He describes the response (or rather non-response) of manufacturers and homeopaths to his concerns about them.

Myles Power has done a hilarious YouTube video about these kits

He says “It makes me so angry that it even exists.” But it gives him a fantastic idea. He goes out to save the world by dropping a pill from each bottle into a local stream that runs to the ocean and will eventually reach everyone on earth in an even more dilute form. He will eliminate all the diseases the kit instructions cover, from heart attacks and strokes to throttling and drowning.

Conclusion

What can I say? “Aarrrgh!” is not very coherent, and “Good grief” doesn’t quite cover it. Treating an emergency with sugar pills that have once been in contact with water that was once in contact with poison is just offensive to all reason and logic.

weareallmixedup:

vegetablearian:

schirm:

Please re-blog because as someone who works in the field— this is something you want to know beforehand. 

pdsa is who you want in the uk, blue cross, dog’s trust, and the rspca can help too

your local vets might offer reduced rates for some people too and a lot of them have websites nowadays so it’s worth a quick check

This is awesome.

Honestly if I didn’t have animal companions throughout my life, I probably wouldn’t be here. They don’t care how white, black, or whatever I am or am not.

Truly unconditional love.

This question, from part of a joke from late comedian Mitch Hedberg, got me really wondering. Where do sesame seeds come from, and what would they grow into if we ever gave them a chance? Turns out the mysterious ol' sesame is more than a street and not just a way to open things.

More than 1,000 people have signed a petition that calls on California lawmakers to rename San Francisco’s Bay Bridge in honor of John Abraham Norton, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

The petition, drafted by San Francisco freelance writer John Lumea, seeks to have the Bay Bridge officially named “The Emperor Norton Bay Bridge.”

Norton, a successful businessman, immigrated to San Francisco from South Africa during the 19th century. After losing his fortune, Norton took the unusual step of proclaiming himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. He later added “Protector of Mexico” to his official title.

Though Norton could have easily been dismissed as a loon and lost to history, he is still remembered today because the people of San Francisco embraced him. Newspapers printed his proclamations free of charge and businesses accepted his imperial currency. He strolled through the streets clad in a blue army uniform and a beaver hat, inspecting his royal domain and speaking with his loyal subjects.

“He was a champion of racial and religious unity; an advocate for women’s suffrage; a defender of the people; and a general ambassador of San Francisco who embodied the values that came to be known as ‘San Francisco.’ And he was beloved by San Franciscans, in return,” Lumea wrote.

In 1872, he issued a proclamation calling for a bridge to be built from Oakland Point to Yerba Buena Island. He later issued two more proclamations calling for the bridge.

“Indeed, although Emperor Norton is identified as a San Francisco figure, his proclamations calling for a cross-Bay bridge embodied a profound recognition that Oakland needed San Francisco — and that San Francisco needed Oakland,” Lumea wrote.

Cartoonist Phil Frank previously sought to rename the bridge in 2004. His efforts ultimately failed.

“It just seemed that naming it for a character as interesting as Emperor Norton would be very fitting. We’re probably the only place in the country that would consider doing such a thing,” Frank explained to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004.

Some of the many images include works by (clockwise from top left) Jacques-Louis David, the “Brooklyn Painter,” Paul Cézanne, Rembrandt, 17th C. Chinese ceramics, and Nadar, are available for download at the Getty website.

Yesterday, the J. Paul Getty Trust announced that they will be “making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.” The post announcing the news on The Getty Iris, the institution’s blog, was penned by Getty President and CEO James Cuno. It’s a welcome announcement from a major institution that has over 121,000 objects in its museum collection.

“This decision is in keeping with the mission of the trust,” Cuno told Hyperallergic. “We got together [with the heads of our various divisions] … and concluded we have to get behind this initiative.”

“We always made our collection, such as they were, available for academic purposes or for publication for free. It was only commercial use that was restricted,” Cuno says.

The decision will free up 4,600 high-resolution images from the museum’s collection, including such major works as Van Gogh’s “Irises” (1889), Rembrandt’s “The Abduction of Europa” (1632), and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, for commercial and non-commercial use. The only requirement for downloaders is that they let the Getty know what the image will be used for and the stipulation that they include the citation for the image. All the images are currently from the museum but, Cuno says, they expect to tap the other collections, such as the conservation and research collections, for similar treatment.

Cuno explains that the decision seemed easy when they considered that the issue of providing the content for free to the public was at the “dead center at the vision of fusion of artistic and general knowledge,” which is the focus of the Getty Trust’s vision.

The Getty, Cuno says, will work to place its entire collection online but there are certainly challenges, include the photographing of the entire collection, including the thousands of pottery shards in the Getty Villa collection, and navigating the minefield of copyright laws, which may be particularly difficult in regard to their 72,799 object photography collection.

When asked what the financial cost for such an ambitious endeavor would be, Cuno replied, “We didn’t want cost to influence this decision.”

If you're looking to add a little depth and complexity to your photos, whether you're shooting with a smartphone or a point-and-shoot, the answer may already be on your face. Just take off your sunglasses, polish the lenses a bit, and hold them up in front of your camera before shooting. You might like what you see.

Read more...

Three sheriff’s deputies in DeKalb County, Georgia have been suspended and a sergeant in the department could be demoted after video surfaced of their conduct while serving a civil warrant on a home in July 2013, WSB-TV reported on Monday.

The video shows a group of eight deputies entering Nantania Griffin’s home around 1:13 a.m. on July 26 to serve a civil warrant for failing to pay a $1,000 debt. Her sons secretly recorded the encounter on their phones and posted it online. Griffin and her family allegedly refused to let the deputies into the home for 30 minutes while telling them they had done nothing wrong.

“You acted like a 2-year-old, so we treated you like a 2-year-old,” one of the deputies can be heard saying in the video. Griffin’s son, Donovan Hall, told WSB that deputies kicked him in the head and that one hit him in the face with the butt of his gun.

“Fifteen days overdue,” Griffin told WSB about her debt. “Why would you come to my house with this unbelievable show of force?”

The sergeant in danger of being demoted might only avoid the penalty by retiring. A spokesman for the department said new regulations would be instituted governing when it may serve warrants.

Watch footage from the original arrest in this video aired on WSB on Aug. 7, below.

[Image: "Angry Police Officer With Nightstick Telling The Violent Crowd To Stop" via Shutterstock]

You can talk about the security of your personal information in a different ways, each of which suggests a different set of issues.

• If I call it "privacy" -- I think of walking around with my fly down. People can see something that normally they're not supposed to see. The risk of a privacy problem is embarrassment, or maybe worse -- you could get divorced because of a privacy problem.
• But what if what is exposed is illegal, something you could be prosecuted for, then jailed, or maybe even executed. Like treason for example. A word that's thrown around far too casually these days. That's how totalitarian governments work. They have all kinds of hooks into data about people, the more the better, and then they either use existing laws, or create new ones, that make the things ordinary people do all the time illegal, and punishable by jail or death. Couldn't happen in the US? People thought that about Germany all the way up to the point they "discovered" death camps all over Europe. We had slavery in this country, a time when human beings were considered property and could be killed whenever you wanted, if you owned them.

Obama said some easily misunderstood things in his press conference on Friday. He talked about the intentions of the current government.

• We know from Snowden that even a low-ranked analyst at a contractor can read your emails. So what do we know about the intentions of all of those people?
• And this tells us nothing about the intentions of future governments. Our emails are being stored in a big data warehouse where anyone at NSA, now or in the future, can get at them.

Either Obama is a con man or extremely naive. I don't think he's naive. I have no idea what motivates him. He must know that governments, even democratically elected ones, persecute citizens.

Imho, he's trying to cover up the biggest scandal since Watergate. Has he studied history? Does he really think this is a "phony" scandal, as he's said? That it will just blow over? I wonder if perhaps he was too young when Watergate happened, and didn't study the history of the attempted coverup that didn't work.

And all the reporters who talk about the value they add by investigation, it's time to pony up. And stop suggesting that people be jailed for doing the work you say you admire so much. This is serious business.

Via the Wall Street Journal:

Every hour, an active Google user can generate hundreds or thousands of data “events” that Google stores in its computers, said people familiar with its data-gathering process.

These include when people use Google’s array of Web and mobile-device services, which have long collected information about what individuals are privately searching for on the Web. It includes the videos they watch on YouTube, which gets more than one billion visitors a month; phone calls they’ve made using Google Voice and through nearly one billion Google-powered Android smartphones; and messages they send via Android phones or through Gmail, which has more than 425 million users.

If a user signs in to his or her Google account to use Gmail and other services, the information collected grows and is connected to the name associated with the account. Google can log information about the addresses of websites that person visits after doing Google searches.

Even if the person visits sites without first searching for them on Google, the company can collect many of the website addresses people using Google’s Chrome Web browser or if they visit one of millions of sites that have pieces of Google code, such as its “+1” button, installed.

Android-based phones and Google Maps can collect information about people’s location over time. Google also has credit-card information for more than 200 million Android-device owners who have purchased mobile apps, digital books or music, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Somewhat related bonus: The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership, via Bloomberg.

Image: What Google Knows, via the Wall Street Journal. Select to embiggen.

What Google knows about you could fill a data center.

Summon a shadowy outline of your online activity.

A federal judge has ruled that the New York City Police Department’s heavily-criticized “stop and frisk” approach to crimefighting is unconstitutional, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The ruling by Judge Shira A. Scheindlin is the latest blow to the policy, which data suggests has not been effective in actually preventing shootings in the city while being decried for targeting Black and Latino men almost exclusively.

In her decision, Scheindlin determined that the policy violated both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment and appointed an outside counsel, attorney Peter L. Zimroth, to monitor the department and make sure it moves further into compliance in the future.

Despite being protested by thousands of community members and called into question by the Department of Justice, Commissioner Ray Kelly defended the policy, calling it “a fact of urban life” in an August 2012 interview with a radio program geared toward teenagers.

[Image via Agence France-Presse]

tastefullyoffensive:

rabioheab: this is my favorite headline of all time 

explore-blog:

When André was 12, he was already over 6 feet tall and weighed 240 pounds. He was too big to fit on the local school bus and his family didn’t have the money to buy a car that could deal with his weight if it drove him to and from school.

Samuel Beckett, Nobel Prize winner (literature) and esteemed playwright, probably most noted for Waiting for Godot, bought some land in 1953 near a hamlet around forty miles northeast of Paris and built a cottage for himself with the help of some locals. One of the locals that helped him build the cottage was a Bulgarian-born farmer named Boris Rousimoff, who Beckett befriended and would sometimes play cards with. As you might’ve been able to guess, Rousimoff’s son was André the Giant, and when Beckett found out that Rousimoff was having trouble getting his son to school, Beckett offered to drive André to school in his truck — a vehicle that could fit André — to repay Rousimoff for helping to build Beckett’s cottage. Adorably, when André recounted the drives with Beckett, he revealed they rarely talked about anything other than cricket.

Who knew

DUDUDUDUUUUUN!

IT’S CAPTAIN MEOW

“My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.” -Orson Welles

I just completed my 35th trip around the Sun yesterday, which was a great time! But, it got me thinking, has my time in this world resulted in a build-up of toxic substances in my body? Is there any way to get rid of them? Is there anything, as Olenka & the Autumn Lovers might sing, that can get me

Clean?

Well, maybe there is, if you look in the right place!

Image credit: http://www.cleansevsdiet.com/. *NOT* an endorsement, by any means!

Think your kidneys and liver aren’t doing a good enough job of removing harmful toxins from your body? Tired of fads that don’t work? Worried that changing your lifestyle and food habits is just too hard and expensive?

Image credit: AisleTracker blog, via http://www.aisletracker.com/.

Then you need these sugar-free gummi bears!

Image credit: Haribo candies, via http://www.amazon.com/.

Made with five real fruit flavors and coming in crystalline, jewel-like, sparkling clear colors, you’ll delight at the taste of these delicious candies, all without any sugar at all.

Instead, of sugar, these are sweetened with Lycasin, a hydrogenated glucose syrup. And what a deal: this five-pound bag of deliciousness contains over 1,000 individual gummi bears!

And unlike other detox diets that only cleanse one organ in your body and require you to starve yourself, the Haribo sugar-free gummi bears will clear out your entire digestive tract, and do so in a splendidly violent manner!

Image credit: Screenshot from Amazon. Blue arrows added by me for emphasis.

But don’t take my word for it; let’s hear some real customer testimonies from Amazon:

Image credit: actual customer review of Haribo sugar-free gummi bears from http://www.amazon.com/.

Image credit: actual customer review of Haribo sugar-free gummi bears from http://www.amazon.com/.

Image credit: actual customer review of Haribo sugar-free gummi bears from http://www.amazon.com/.

Image credit: actual customer review of Haribo sugar-free gummi bears from http://www.amazon.com/.

Image credit: actual customer review of Haribo sugar-free gummi bears from http://www.amazon.com/.

With sixteen pages of customer testimony, you know you can’t go wrong with the Gummi Bear Detox Cleanse!

Image credit: actual customer review of Haribo sugar-free gummi bears from http://www.amazon.com/.

Image credit: actual customer review of Haribo sugar-free gummi bears from http://www.amazon.com/.

And if you’re ever in in Phoenixville, PA, make sure you stop by Andrew Schaefer’s office for a rollicking good time.

Image credit: actual customer review of Haribo sugar-free gummi bears from http://www.amazon.com/.

It’s even a selling point on the product itself!!!

Image credit: Haribo candies, via http://www.amazon.com/.

Warnings are features, too! Remember, folks, intestinal distress isn’t a bad thing, it’s just your body’s way of undergoing purification. Not since the Onion have I seen such a spectacular promise of weight loss and detoxification. So what are you waiting for? Order yours today!!

(Warning, the above post may contain satire. Also, toxins don’t actually work the way the “cleanse” image indicates; the wikipedia page on detoxification is fascinating. If you actually have serious problems with sugar and are looking for a tasty, sugar-free snack, these are apparently delicious. Just know what you’re getting yourself into.)