And a car, but who cares about the car? Or, for that matter, the Super Bowl? It's the Muppets and Terry Crews, dammit.
(via: Bleeding Cool)
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Is there any way to fire a gun so that the bullet flies through the air and can then be safely caught by hand? e.g. shooter is at sea level and catcher is up a mountain at the extreme range of the gun.
Ed Hui, London
Yes.
The "bullet catch" is a common magic trick in which a magician appears to catch a fired bullet in mid-flight—often between their teeth. This an illusion, of course; it's not possible to catch a bullet like that.[1]This was confirmed by Mythbusters in episode 4 of Season 4.
But under the right conditions, you could catch a bullet. It would just take a lot of patience.[2]I'd like to remind everyone that while I write sometimes about the interesting physics of bullets, I'm not an authority on firearms safety. I was raised Quaker; I've never held a gun, much less fired one.
A bullet fired straight up would eventually reach a maximum height.[3]Don't do this. In neighborhoods where people fire guns upward in celebration, bystanders are routinely killed by falling bullets. It probably wouldn't stop completely; more likely, it would be drifting sideways at a couple meters per second. At that speed, as long as you were in the right place at the right time, you could snatch it out of the air.
If someone fired a bullet upward ...
... and you were hanging out in a hot-air balloon directly above the firing range ...
... it's possible that you could reach out and snag the bullet at the apex of its flight.
If you succeeded, you might notice something odd: In addition to being hot, the bullet would be spinning. It would have lost its upward momentum, but not its rotational momentum; it would still have the spin given to it by the barrel of the gun.
This effect can be seen, dramatically, when a bullet is fired at ice.[4]Floor water. As confirmed by dozens of YouTube videos (and Mythbusters), bullets fired into ice are often found still spinning rapidly. You'd have to grab the bullet firmly; otherwise, it might jump out of your hand.
If you don't have a balloon, you could potentially make this work from a mountain peak. Mount Thor, which you may remember from question #51, features a vertical drop of 1,250 meters. According to ballistics lab Close Focus Research, this is almost exactly how high a .22 Long Rifle bullet will fly if fired directly upward.[5]Close Focus Research, Maximum Altitude For Bullets Fired Vertically
If you want to use larger bullets, you'll need a much larger drop; an AK-47's bullet can go over two kilometers upward. There are no purely vertical cliffs that are that tall, so you'd need to fire the bullet at an angle, and it would have significant sideways speed at the top of its arc. However, a suitably tough baseball glove might be able to snag it.[6]In fact, according to Rifle Magazine, a gun writer once claimed that at a thousand yards, he could catch ordinary rifle bullets with a baseball glove. Of course, he was being figurative—you wouldn't see the bullet coming, so you'd be just as likely to catch it with your face as with your glove.
In any of these scenarios, you'd have to get extraordinarily lucky. Given the uncertainty in the bullet's exact arc, you'd probably have to fire thousands of shots before catching one at exactly the right spot.
And by that point, you may find you've attracted some attention.
via saucie: "there is a kolache place in PDX. it is really good."
the only good thing remotely associated with non-Austin Texas, and it's Czech
Like brisket and beer, the famous Texas kolache is a European import. Back in its Slavic homeland, the kolache is a dense dessert pastry that comes topped with dollops of fruit spread and sweetened cheese. But in the rugged Lone Star State, anything goes. Since Czech immigrants brought the kolache to Texas in the nineteenth century, locals have tucked everything from fried potatoes to venison into its sweet, pillowy embrace.
Photographs by Dean Dixon
Now, the kolache has made yet another journey—to Nashville, Tennessee, with the recent opening of kolache bakery Yeast Nashville. Over the past six months, Houston native Bill LaViolette and his wife, Sara, have attracted homesick Texans and new converts alike with fillings that run the gamut from old-fashioned to off-the-wall: think buffalo chicken, pimento cheese, and sausage-and-gravy. And in keeping with generations of kolache tradition, the two bakers are embracing their surroundings with recipes that make the most of local ingredients. “Right now, we’re using pulled pork from a local barbecue joint and honey from TruBee, in Franklin, Tennessee,” LaViolette says. “We’re even kicking around a hot chicken kolache.”
Start your own kolache tradition with LaViolette’s master dough recipe, and read on for three can’t-miss fillings with serious Southern flavor.
Basic Kolache Dough
2 packages active dry yeast (½ oz)
½ cup warm water (103-110 degrees F)
½ cup plus 1 tsp. sugar
1 ½ sticks butter, at room temperature
1 tsp. salt
4 egg yolks
½ cup milk
5 cups sifted all-purpose flour
Combine yeast, warm water, and 1 tsp. sugar in a large measuring cup.
Cream butter, remaining sugar, salt, and egg yolks with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Then add yeast mixture, milk, and 3 cups flour. Using a dough hook, knead at medium speed for five minutes, occasionally scraping the bowl.
Begin adding the remaining flour to the mixture, a little bit at a time, until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl. You may not use all of the flour, or you may use a little bit more. The key is that the dough does not stick.
Move the dough to a lightly greased bowl, turning it to grease all sides. Cover and let rise in a warm area until it has doubled in size, 1-1 ½ hours.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work area. Using a ⅓-cup measure, scoop out and shape roughly 15-18 dough balls of equal size (2½-3 ounces each). Cover and let rest 10-15 minutes.
After the second rise, place dough balls on a greased baking sheet, spacing them roughly two inches apart. Press each dough ball with the bottom of a glass to make a ½-inch-deep indentation. (If you don’t want to use a glass, you can form the center with your fingers starting in the middle and working outward.)
Scoop 1-2 tablespoons of filling into each divot. Cover and let rest in a warm place for 30 to 40 minutes, or until doubled in size again.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake kolaches for 15-18 minutes until edges are golden brown.
The Bee’s Knees Kolache Filling
16 oz. cream cheese
2 egg yolks
½ cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
¼ cup honey
2 tsp. cinnamon
Blend all ingredients in a mixer until smooth. When ready to use, place approximately 1-2 tablespoons in each kolache and bake according to Basic Kolache Dough recipe.
Pimento Cheese Kolache Filling
4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
4 oz. cream cheese
2 ½ tsp. Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup mayonnaise
½ tsp. Sriracha sauce
¼ tsp. garlic powder
¼ tsp. onion powder
¼ tsp. salt
3 ½ oz pimentos, drained
1 ½ tbsp. diced jalapenos
½ tsp. sugar
Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and refrigerate mixture until ready to use. When ready to use, place approximately 1-2 tablespoons in each kolache and bake according to Basic Kolache Dough recipe.
Sausage-and-Gravy Kolache Filling
½ lb breakfast sausage
8 oz. butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups milk
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
Fry sausage and set aside to cool.
Melt butter in a sauté pan and whisk in flour until you have a pale yellow roux. Slowly add milk, one cup at a time, until the mixture thickens. (You want this gravy to be extra-thick.) Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir in cooked sausage.
Form the kolache dough balls into slightly flattened circles approximately ½-inch thick. Place 2 tablespoons of the sausage mixture into the center. Wrap the sides of the dough to form a tightly sealed ball, and then place the ball back on the baking sheet, seam-side-down, and bake according to the Basic Kolache Dough recipe.
'Mattingly asks Mercier—her name and face blurred out—for a lead on a project in development at another studio. They make some polite small talk. And then, suddenly, he starts offering to kiss her vagina. She tries to steer the conversation back on track and ignores his sexual comments; he escalates them.' ... 'At a gaming convention, one professional acquaintance cornered her into an extended and increasingly sexual hug. "I'd be thinking, 'please let me go,' but then there were a bunch of people around me, and the people that were around were people I'd be interested in working with, who worked for companies I'd love to work for," she tells me. She remembers what she told herself: "Try not to make a scene, because you don't want to be 'that girl,' and you don't want to ruin the overall mood."
"That girl" is the bogeyman, a cautionary tale to keep the ladies in line. "That girl" is the woman who is iced out for speaking up and ruining everyone's fun. I hear about her from almost every woman I interview.' ... 'Mattingly's recent apology was long and apparently sincere. He cited a brother's suicide and subsequent struggles with depression and substance abuse. He broke down where he screwed up and described what he would do to fix it.
What he hasn't done, so far, is contact Mercier directly. She hasn't heard from him since he capped off a graphic description of the oral sex he wanted to perform on her with a blithe "hope you have a great Sunday!"
Mercier mentions this offhand in the same e-mail she sends to let me know that she's sent my editor the identity confirmation he requested—and to confirm, once again, that when this goes live, it won't include her real name.'
Today, Vringo got the payout it was looking for: a 1.36 percent running royalty on US-based revenue from AdWords, Google's flagship program. US District Judge Raymond Jackson had already ruled last week (PDF) that the AdWords program, which was tweaked by Google after the Vringo verdict, wasn't "colorably different" from the old infringing program. He gave Google and Vringo one last session to hammer out a royalty rate, and when they couldn't, he went ahead and set it (PDF)—at almost exactly the rate Vringo was seeking.
Because some aspects of Google's revenue are opaque, it's impossible to know exactly what Vringo's win would be worth—and the company is a long way from cashing a check. But if the royalty rate were to be upheld on appeal, Google would surely have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Dallas Cowboys made some changes to both the offensive and defensive coaching staffs on Tuesday. But ... they didn't fire anybody.
The Dallas Cowboys have elected to promote Rod Marinelli to defensive coordinator ... while also keeping Monte Kiffin on the team, according to Rowan Kavner of the team website. Marinelli was the defensive line coach this past season, while Kiffin was the defensive coordinator. But instead of firing Kiffin, they've named him the assistant head coach/defense.
Dallas allowed the most yards in franchise history and the second-most points in franchise history with Kiffin at the helm last year. The Cowboys made the switch from the 3-4 to a 4-3 under Kiffin and, as the aforementioned stats indicate, things did not go well.
"Rod Marinelli's production in terms of creating turnovers and changing field position as a defensive coordinator is well documented," coach Jason Garrett said in a statement from the Cowboys. "Monte Kiffin's overall knowledge and understanding of this defensive scheme will be put to use in mentoring all of the players and coaches on the defensive side of the ball. Monte was brought here to direct a transition in philosophy to the 4-3 scheme, and he will continue to oversee the development of our defense in this scheme."
It's clear Marinelli will now be in charge of the overall scheme and the gameplan going forward. It will be his defense as the Cowboys look to recover from an abysmal 2013-14 campaign, but even with that statement above, it's unclear what Kiffin will actually be doing in the end. It's not often you see these kinds of backwards or sideways moves and have the coach remain with the team.
Marinelli was the Chicago Bears defensive coordinator from 2010-12, and excelled in the role. That Chicago team was especially effective at creating turnovers and turning said turnovers into points before the ball ever got back into the offense's hands.
There were significant changes to the offensive coaching staff, as well. Dallas will now see its third play-caller in as many years as the team hired Scott Linehan to be its passing game coordinator. He takes the play-calling duties from offensive coordinator/offensive line coach Bill Callahan, who retains his position. Callahan originally took the play-calling duties from Garrett, who many thought could be fired this offseason.
Also from the report from ESPN, Garrett talked about Linehan, saying that the Cowboys "believe the combination of him and Bill Callahan working closely together will give us a great chance to build upon the strides we made offensively last years."
Still, the defense has a lot more work to do than the offense. Dallas had the No. 14 pass offense (247.1 yards allowed per game on average) and No. 24 rush offense (94.2 yards per game on average), but fielded the No. 30 pass defense and No. 27 rush defense. Marinelli has a much taller task than Callahan and Linehan, at this point.
Scientists have speculated for decades that Ceres — the planet-like heavenly body embedded in our solar system's asteroid belt — might contain water, still considered a rarity in our solar system. They haven't been sure, though, until now: researchers at the European Space Agency and the Observatoire de Paris (Paris Observatory) have used the Herschel space telescope to detect two "geysers" on Ceres' surface, blasting plumes of water vapor into the void. Further analysis indicated that some of the water ends up falling back onto the dwarf planet's surface.
What's less clear, though, is where the water is coming from. Scientists involved in the research speculate that an ocean could lie beneath Ceres' surface, or there could just be...
A recent bug in Gmail resulted in some users accidentally deleting emails and reporting others as spam when applying those actions to other messages. Google says the bug cropped up in a software update on just a handful of platforms — its iOS app, on mobile browsers, and the offline version of Gmail — and did not affect all users. The company also says the issue has since been fixed, though it's unclear just how many users experienced the issue and how many messages were impacted. In a notice (pictured above), the company urged users to take a second-look at their spam and trash folders to see if any messages sent between January 12th to the 21st were miscategorized.
Only on some platforms
News of the issue comes just days after Gmail and several other Google services went down for approximately 10 percent of users. That outage lasted for around 25 minutes, with the company attributing it to buggy code that went out to some of its systems.
By Kevin Poulsen, writing at Wired - Threat Level.
Image by Philipp Winter and Stefan Lindskog
Somewhere in Russia an eavesdropper is operating a network of wiretapped nodes at the edge of the Tor anonymity network. And he’s particularly interested in what you’re doing on Facebook.
That’s the conclusion of two researchers who used custom software to test Tor exit nodes for sneaky behavior, in a four-month study published yesterday.
'let's appreciate that the Umbrella Girl didn't get a Barbie-like makeover'
she's still incompetent at carrying salt, tho
When it Rains Sans Serifs Get Rounded
With roots as far back as 1848, Morton Salt (known as such since 1910) is the leader in salt products in North America, providing salt for "culinary, water softening, household and road deicing, food processing, chemical, pharmaceutical, and numerous industrial uses". Delivered in an iconic, dark blue, cylindrical package for household use, Morton Salt is, like Coca-Cola, one of the most enduring American products and its Umbrella Girl, introduced in 1914, one of the most well-known and longest-lasting characters from the early days of advertising. Last week, as part of her 100th birthday celebration, Morton Salt announced a slight redesign to the Umbrella Girl and an upcoming introduction of a new packaging system to be rolled out in the next couple of months. Two New York, NY-based agencies were involved: Pause for Thought designed the new logo and packaging (not shown, yet) and Addison developed the masterbrand positioning and 100 anniversary branding.
It was 1914 when the little girl with the umbrella was introduced on the familiar blue round package of Morton Salt and in a print ad in the October issue of Good Housekeeping. The Morton Salt Girl and "When It Rains It Pours®" slogan were created over a century ago for the company's national advertising campaign to help illustrate that Morton Salt could flow freely even in damp weather, a major product innovation at the time.
The Morton Salt logo is widely recognized for its bold "Morton Salt" word mark. The new logo now features a fresh and friendly font, while maintaining the leadership qualities of the original word mark, specifically the bold, all-caps type style. The letter "R" in the new "Morton" word mark also carries a slight kick to mimic the Morton Salt Girl's step.
To use Morton Salt's own copyrighted slogan: "When it rains it pours" — which was created to communicate that even in humid and damp conditions Morton Salt's salt would pour freely out of its container as opposed to other salts that would get all bunched up. That tagline is now used to express that many things have gone bad (or sometimes good) in quick and multiplied succession. Here it applies to yesterday's Triumph Motorcycles post where we saw the same typographic update going on with Morton Salt: moving from a flared sans serif to a rounded-corner sans serif. The flared serifs are less obvious here, but they are there and, as is the case with this maneuver, whatever the new wordmark gained in friendliness it lost in uniqueness and flavor. It may resolve some of the tight spacing of the old typography but, other than the swoopy tail of the "R", there isn't anything memorable about the new wordmark. Too much subtle quirkiness has been sacrificed with little in return.
In addition to the word mark, the company updated its Morton Salt Girl icon as part of its brand refresh — but in small, subtle ways. The new Morton Salt Girl has cleaner, simplified linework to fit better with the new "Morton Salt" word mark.
The new Umbrella Girl has been updated for the better, removing some of the extraneous line work that muddied up the illustration when rendered small. Compared to the 1933 – 1941 and 1956 – 1968 updates, where new dresses and hairstyles were introduced, this is a very conservative update. With good reason. On the 100th anniversary of an icon, I don't think anyone — client or designer — wants to be responsible for potentially ruining a very good thing. I'm not promoting aversion to change but, let's face it, a drastic change to the Umbrella Girl, in the Huffington Post-era of logo journalism, would be catastrophic.
Close-up photo of the new logo.100th anniversary logo.
There is not much else to see at the moment. When the packaging comes out, if it's interesting, we will do a follow-up. In the meantime, let's appreciate that the Umbrella Girl didn't get a Barbie-like makeover.
I don’t know about you, but when the Batman himself turns to the camera and tells me he has a message from the President of the United States, I start paying attention pretty quick. It might actually be the most effective form of advertising ever invented, to the point where I’m really surprised that it’s only been used once, way back in 1966.
The Batman in question is, of course, Adam West, the President is Lyndon Johnson, and the product they were urging all the boys and girls to buy were Government Savings Bonds, raising money to support the Vietnam War. That’s, well, a little weird all things considered, but you can check it out for yourself in the video from the National Archives below!
I think my favorite thing about this ad is that Batman is straight up reading from a card — the same card that you can get in school! You can own something Batman also owns! First the savings bond, then the hotline phone and Batmobile are sure to follow!
Anyway, you might not think Batman would be all that cool with funding a war that did not involve the words “one-man” and “on crime,” what with all the guns and killing that tend to go into that sort of thing. Truth is, though, Batman has always been on the side of raising money through bonds, going all the way back to the Golden Age:
I, uh… I don’t think that last one’s in continuity.
I love this new web series, Reactions, from the American Chemical Society. In the first episode they offer several chemistry lifehacks, including one that can make bitter coffee drinkable and another to ripen bananas fast.
The third installment of the Riddick franchise may have turned our favorite antihero into a peeping tom, but that didn't stop it from being a huge hit on DVD. And because of that, Riddick is getting another movie!
“It’s like a Casio watch from the '80s.” -John Gruber of Daring Fireball.
If the smartwatch is a fad, then it's one that has made the rounds before. Long before Pebble or even Metawatch, there was the Casio Databank. The chunky model had multiple alarms, countdown timers, and a digital Rolodex that users populated through the built-in keypad. It was an unapologetically chunky, fussy device. Pebble Steel, the successor to the most successful smartwatch so far, is none of those things.
Design
The original Pebble isn’t unattractive, but it does stand out as something other than a regular wristwatch. The plastic body curves around the wrist and comes in several colors. Not all watches are jewelry, and the original Pebble is certainly in this "other" category (even if the device isn't without its merits). The Pebble Steel moves things stylistically further.
The Pebble Steel.
11 more images in gallery
The body is now boxier and made of CNC milled steel. The internals remain the same, as does the e-paper display. Gone is the sweeping piece of clear plastic. The face is now a proper watch glass—made of scratch- and crack-resistant Gorilla Glass in this case. The Steel is smaller than its predecessor in all dimensions, though a few grams heavier thanks to the metal and glass. Our matte black sample came with a matching steel band, though both silver and black models will come packaged with a black leather band. The squishy plastic buttons of the Pebble are replaced by much more satisfying steel buttons whose boxiness echoes the rest of the design. Even the charging connector has gone square to match the look of the Steel.
Officer shoots boy, 17, in wrist at Hawaii school Watertown Daily Times This Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014 photo shows the entrance to Roosevelt High School in Honolulu. A police officer shot a 17-year-old runaway in the wrist at the high school after the teen cut one officer with a knife and punched two others, authorities said.
• Position-by-position preview• Peyton's pitiless farewell tour • Dreaming of a grayish-white Super Bowl• Why are you mad at Richard Sherman? • Manning clear MVP betting favorite
