Advertisers spend as much as $4 million for just 30-seconds of air time during the Super Bowl. They'd probably be better off just setting that money on fire.

I’m also a clothing designer, model/mogul, and mother of three

Saddled by salary cap burdens, Dallas may have to consider parting with its long-time defensive star.

Defensive end DeMarcus Ware has long been a cornerstone of the Dallas Cowboys defense, but declining production, advancing age and a swollen salary cap could force the team to reevaluate his standing moving this offseason, according to a report by Todd Archer of ESPN Dallas.

The Cowboys are roughly $25 million over the projected 2014 salary cap of  $127.6 million, and need to make serious cuts to their swollen pay roll to get back under (and even more if they plan on making free agent signings). Ware is scheduled to make $12.25 this season and will cost $16.003 against the cap. The Cowboys will undoubtedly have to address his contract -- the question is whether they will do so by restructuring it or dumping it altogether.

Archer reports the Cowboys could free up $7.4 million by releasing him. They could gain $8.6 million by restructuring, though that would increase his cap amount in future years.

Had Ware put up his customary double-digit sack total in 2013, the decision to restructure would likely be an easy one. Instead, he posted a career-low six sacks, the first time he has been under 10 since his rookie season in 2005. Ware dealt with nagging injuries all season, and at 32-years-old, those issues may only increase with age.

Head coach Jason Garrett said the team would approach offseason moves by first evaluating players from a football persepective, then consider their financial burdens.

"Money matters in the salary-cap era we're in right now. But I do believe the football evaluation is primary, and then you add that [financial] element into it, and then you make your best decisions for your team in regards to that player and how he fits in your team."

How much say Garrett actually gets in Jerry Jones' micromanaged organization is up for debate, but it will certainly be Jones who has the final say in Ware's future. The owner was critical of Ware during a slump in December, saying he expected more production from the star defender.

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• 2014 NFL Draft order set for picks 1-24 after Wild Card Weekend

• 2014 NFL mock draft: Offseason planning begins for 20 teams

• Death of a football player: Helmet-to-helmet hit killed Derek Sheely

Good heel turn Ric.

Ric Flair is kind of a big deal in the Charlotte. The former WWE superstar locked the figure four on the city's heart long ago, and since has become a rallying cry for professional sports around the state.

Don't believe us? Check out how the Carolina Panthers have been celebrating all season long.

Then something happened. The Panthers never should have trusted "The Dirtiest Player in the game." Flair took a heel turn and flew to Green Bay to motivate the San Francisco 49ers before their playoff game.

This was a man who was the source of an online petition so he could be put back on the stadium jumbo-tron. (via @billvoth)

HOW COULD YOU NAITCH?!

Naturally folks in the Carolinas were a touch upset with their prodigal wrestling son.

Initial reactions on Twitter were harsh. Some refused to believe in the betrayal.

How was Facebook fairing?

The Panthers play the 49ers in the playoffs and suffice it to say he's got a few fans to win over if he intends to watch the game at Bank of America Stadium.

Andrew Luck leads a comeback for the ages, the Saints squeak out a road win, and Andy Dalton falls on his face. Plus: Does Jim Harbaugh deliberately take his foot off the gas when the 49ers play well early, or are comebacks and close games simply the way of the modern NFL?

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Scientists from Harvard, MIT, University of California and various other institutions were polled by Popular Mechanics on their favorite scifi flicks, and the results may surprise you.

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karenhealey:

snafu-moofins:

I feel sick. How can a computer compare to that earthy smell of books? The way they feel in your hands?

For many people, they function very well.

Books, as printed paper objects, are not the essential thing. The physical act of reading isn’t even…

I was born with optic nerve atrophy and have had trouble seeing my whole life. It’s only gotten worse, and, over the last five years or so, I’ve basically lost my ability to read “real” books with “normal” text sizes. I could use a magnifying glass, but that’s a huge hassle that gives me a roaring headache. I could use  a CCTV video magnifier but those cost a few grand and provide the only action in my life that’s ever given me motion sickness.

That’s left me with my computer. I’ve got Firefox all sorts of jacked up so I can see everything I need to see, read everything I need to read, and interact on Twitter or what-have-you. Nobody really knows I’ve got eyesight as bad as I do, certainly not online, and most times not even in the “real world”—until they see me squint at something held an inch from my face. I can read books on my computer, which I’ve done for years, even before my eyesight worsened, thanks to Project Gutenberg, and which opened up immensely with the hard-scraped purchase of a Windows 8 PC and the Kindle and Comixology apps.

Oh, comics. Yeah, I can’t read those any more, not even a little bit. Not the ones I learned to read with as a tiny child, not the ones I read as a teenager, and certainly not the ones being published now. I’ve pirated my share of comics over the years, but Comixology gives me a legitimate way to buy comics so I don’t feel like a jackass and a thief. (Monkeybrain’s being the only comics worth buying is another rant entirely.)

And, finally, I got a Nook Simple Touch very cheaply on Cyber Monday. Since then I’ve read a book and a half, which is more than I’ve read in about five years. I can borrow books from our great local library system. All my downtime used to be spent reading; waiting for doctors, work breaks, lunch breaks, riding the bus. And I’d forgotten that. I felt like myself again.

Holding and smelling books is fine but it’s worthless if you can’t read ‘em.

Original Source

Why does a sonic boom ... boom? That is, why is it so loud? Above a plane flies at twice the speed of sound (it's Wonder Woman's plane, which is why you can't see it, just its sound waves), and we can see it sound waves dissipate over time/distance. (The sound waves get less dark to show the sound energy is dissipating.)

Compare this to a helicopter hovering in one spot:


A person standing at the red dot will hear the helicopter with a constant "loudness," or magnitude. Compare this to the person standing at the red dot when the plane flies by, in the picture at top, at mach 2. The guy at the red dot hears nothing until ... BOOM! ... and the plane has already passed him by. Then the magnitude decreases.

Below, we have a plane flying at half the speed of sound. Note how the guy at the red dot hears the plane with increasing, then decreasing, magnitude.


The plane is again loudest once it has passed the guy.

Notice that the sound waves are all distinct, as with the helicopter picture. Compare this to the plane flying at mach 2 above, or the still image of a plane flying at mach 1.3 below.

See how all the sound waves seem to converge at the red dot? Here is the simplest explanation of a sonic boom that I know, which avoids things like compressed pressure waves, etc.: in a sonic boom, you are hearing the sound of a plane from different places in the sky at the same time. In the above picture, there are 6 circles that go through the red dot, corresponding to the idea that that guy is hearing the sound of the plane from 6 spots in the sky at the same time. Of course, in real life, you don't hear sound from distinct, discrete places, but the concept is the same.

By the way, the "cone" that is formed by these circles is called a Mach cone. It is an example of a mathematical envelope, which we discuss in a previous post.

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Street artist and character designer Aiden Glynn of Pizza and Pixels wandered the roads of Liberty Village, Toronto and turned objects into funny googly-eyed creatures. We’ve previously written about Aiden’s clever street art creations.

images via Pizza and Pixels

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

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While it was certainly inevitable, Friday’s announcement that Dark Horse will lose the Star Wars license after more than two decades to Disney-owned Marvel nonetheless left many longtime readers dismayed, to say the least. To those fans, Dark Horse Vice President of Publishing Randy Stradley points out a silver lining: “[If] Dark Horse must lose [...]

Since the Department of Labor began keeping track in 1948, the US has rarely had more than two million workers go without a job for more than six months. At the height of the recent Great Recession, nearly seven million people who wanted jobs faced extended joblessness, and today that number sits at a cool 4 million. (That’s also historically large as a share of population or the workforce). Despite many positive signs in the economy, that stands as perhaps its largest failure: The US just can’t put its people to work.

As US lawmakers return from their winter vacation, president Barack Obama and the Democrats want to reverse the expiration of unemployment insurance for some 2 million of these people—1.3 million last week, and another 850,000 at the end of March. Typically, unemployment insurance only lasts 26 weeks, but during recessions the federal government offers extensions for as long as 99 weeks; the currently expiring extension is set at 73 weeks.

Republicans support the expiration, or at least want an equal reduction in spending elsewhere in the government. The economic question is whether taking away an average $300 a week from these people will make them more or less likely to wind up with jobs. With roughly three unemployed workers competing for every job opening in the United States and the long-term unemployed among the most-discriminated against potential hires, it’s not clear that unemployment insurance is the main obstacle to their hiring.

Still, critics of the payments contend that ending them will force people back to work at minimum wages. But at least one natural experiment suggests that’s not what’s going to happen: North Carolina cut its unemployment benefits significantly last summer, and since then, there hasn’t been a boom in employment. Instead, people are leaving the workforce in droves, putting stress on local charities and the economy there. Absent renewal of the benefits, we can expect the US workforce to stay shrunken—which doesn’t bode well for rebuilding America’s economic capacity or its middle class.

ABC News

Yellen punches through 'glass ceiling' at US Fed Reuters WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Janet Yellen - a skilled economist who likes to hike and cook - made history on Monday as the U.S. Senate confirmed her to be the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve in its 100-year history. Yellen, 67, the central bank's No. Janet Yellen to become first woman to lead the Federal ReserveSan Jose Mercury News Yellen Confirmed as Fed ChiefWall Street Journal Yellen faces challenges as Fed trims bond buysThe Herald Journal all 1,049 news articles »

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A few years ago, I wrote about the tiny houses of Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark. I was in Copenhagen again visiting family for the holidays and stopped by one of my all-time favorite communities again to photograph some of the tiny houses that dot this autonomous neighborhood. Christiania is a small community located within the city of Copenhagen where the 850 residents don’t pay property taxes, allowing them to build their own homes and create their own colorful architecture.

This place is a building inspector’s ultimate nightmare and a tiny house lover’s dream come true. Many of the tiny houses of Christiania were built utilizing already existing structures that were left over from when this area used to be a military base. The structures were added to with salvaged materials or items tossed out by non-Christiania residents. Other homes are created out of German bauwagens, boats, random windows, sheds or greenhouses. Since Christiania is also located in a park-like area with a large lake, residents take advantage of this and build some homes on floating platforms. I spoke to a Christiania resident about how to obtain a home or land in this free form community. He said it’s extremely difficult and you either have to know someone or you have to have grown up in the area to get hold of some land to build a house. Many residents stay for their entire lives and only give up their home to a friend or family member.

Photos by Christina Nellemann

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

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mutableman:

poupon:

staysandstories:

Revolving self-portrait, c. 1865

Self portrait by Felix Nadar

This is one caption written in Impact font away from becoming a reaction gif

I agree.

Ich hab’ mir im Leben noch keine Gedanken darüber gemacht, dass man Schuhsenkel auch anders schnüren könnte, als so, wie man das halt macht. Aber ich hab’ mir kurz vor Weihnachten schicke neue Treter gekauft und werde mir dafür jetzt rote Dingens kaufen und dann schnüre ich mir ein Pentagram auf meine schwarzen Schuhe. Satanisten-Schnürsenkel from Hell FTW! Auf Ians Shoelace Site gibt’s noch haufenweise weiterer Schnürsenkelmethoden.

Whilst mathematics tells us that there are more than 2 Trillion ways of feeding a lace through the six pairs of eyelets on an average shoe, this section presents a fairly extensive selection of 39 shoe lacing tutorials. They include traditional and alternative lacing methods that are either widely used, have a particular feature or benefit, or that I just like the look of.

39 Different Ways To Lace Shoes (via Hacker News)

Men's watches on women have been a consistent feature on Tomboy Style, from the Elgin A-11 to Pussy Galore's Rolex. What I love about vintage men's watches is the functionality—whether it's a pilot's watch, a diver's watch, or an astronaut's watch—it's fascinating to learn how the function informs the design. Although I do also love the size, weight, and statement of a men's dress watch on a woman too. Ken Jacobs, the owner of one of L.A.'s most beloved vintage watch stores, Wanna Buy a Watch?, talked vintage timepieces with me last week on the back patio of his Melrose store. If you're already up to speed on watches, this post may be a total snooze, if you're not into watches at all, it might also be a total snooze, but hopefully there are a few of you in the middle like me. It's important to note that these watches are expensive, no doubt about it, but they are not flashy and overt statements about money; instead the watches at WBAW? truly celebrate the craft and history behind a quality timepiece.

First things first, for women, 1960s-1980s men's Rolex Dates and Air Kings are the big mover in the shop right now. What used to be a completely normal watch size for a man (34mm) has been dwarfed over the past decade or so. But as men's watches swelled (sometimes to a ridiculous size), women's have grown as well, making these "grandfather watches" the perfect size for a lady. WBAW? sells them in gold, rose gold, and in steel, and can customize them with a painted Rolex dial in virtually any color.

Speaking of dials changing color, here's an example of a 1966 Rolex Date (left) with a "tropical" dial. "Tropical" signifies the rare occurrence of a dial aging into a marbled brown color due to some combination of humidity, sun, water...no one really knows the exact recipe, but since it's a rare defect, it has become something of a collector's item.

And speaking of rare and collectable, on the top left is a 1970s Omega Ploprof (Plongeur Professional), the same model Jacques Cousteau wore—the epitome of a "tool watch" (designed strictly for a job or function). Next to it is a more ubiquitous 1968 Omega Speedmaster. The Speedmaster is also known as the Moon Watch because with NASA's endorsement it was the first watch worn on the moon and still is the only watch qualified for EVA. Collectors will designate Speedmasters made before Apollo 11 as "pre-moon Speedmasters" and can be identified as such by looking at the caseback. One interesting note is that Speedsters are manual winding watches because a perpetual winding watch would fail to keep time with gravity changes (#spaceproblems). On the far right is a 1975 Rolex "Double Red" Sea-Dweller with a faded bezel, one of their iconic diving watches. Submariners and Sea Dwellers that have red text printed on the dial are highly highly collectable, in fact I've overheard a customer at WBAW? say, "Got any Red Subs?", and this Double Red Sea Dweller will easily fetch a five digit price tag.

Another Rolex I really love is the GMT-Master (named for Greenwich Mean Time). They were designed in collaboration with Pan Am for pilots on long haul flights to manage multiple timezones. The "Root Beer" colorway was really popular in the 1970s and continues to be a hot collector's item (above is a 1979), but the original design featured a red and blue bezel, a.k.a. "The Pepsi Dial".

While WBAW? leans heavily on Rolexes, and other big names like Omega and Cartier, they also have a broad selection of vintage chronographs. Above you're looking at two 1960s Wittnauers, and a 1970s Breitling (also a big name in aviation) which features a white bezel that is a functioning slide rule. Thinking about using a watch as a slide rule makes me cross-eyed, but man does it look cool.

Ultimately what's hugely valuable about what Ken and the team at Wanna Buy A Watch? do is edit. You'll only find examples of beautiful, distinctive, vintage watches that can visually stand on their own but are also functionally in as perfect a condition as possible. It's worth noting how remarkably friendly the team at WBAW? is too, especially in what can be such a snob-ridden retail niche. They are as interested in helping the guy who has a collection of 50 rare watches as they are the watch novice looking for his or her first timepiece. If you're in L.A., check them out, in addition to watches they have great bands and vintage jewelry on offer (and during the holiday season some excellent hot apple cider), and if you're not in L.A. take a browse online. [Wanna Buy a Watch?, 8465 Melrose Ave. Los Angeles].

(by @GuiMurilo)

[Originally published January 6, 2014.]

Calm your tits. I understand your obsession, but you people are out of control. I’m cute. I’m silly. I’ve got attitude. I get it. But wake the hell up already! Every internet link I see, every commercial I watch, every hipster-ass music festival in a nasty-ass desert… there is always a cat. What’s the big deal?

In case you forgot, I’m only a pet. So get the fuck over it.

BREAKING NEWS: I’m ridiculously adorable. Listen up, Katie Couric: everyone already knows that. Get with the program. Us cats are not commercial worthy. “Cat Herders”? No thank you. “Cats with Thumbs”? Pass. “Telecom Kittens”? I want my money back. That Skittles commercial, “Cat Lick,” is the reason I attacked your ankles last week.

Apology not accepted.

Oh, you thought you’d post videos of me? Look, I’m having a panic attack in a box. Look, I’m in a costume made of fruit. Look, I’m ironically getting along with other animals. Guess what Spielberg? I made a few videos myself: Your face when I scratch the shit out of your mother’s first designer handbag that she’s “been waiting her whole life to own”; your face when I use your shoe as a litter box; your face when I refuse to leave while you’re mating.

Keep posting videos of me being vulnerable and I’ll start posting videos of you eating your feelings.

No, you cannot “has cheezburger.” You know what you can have? Toxoplasmosis. That’s right, asshole, I am not afraid to give you a parasitic disease. Keep messing with my shit and see what happens.

Test me. I dare you.

So go ahead, continue making those annoying-ass cat memes. We’ll see who the real victim is soon enough. Just stop freaking the fuck out over domesticated animals. It’s embarrassing. Get a grip and move on.

Now scratch my belly.

Ahem.

let facebook’s predictive algorithm say “happy birthday” in a manner consistent with what the person has previously had a positive reaction to

ALSO witness the amazing power of video as i draw this comic before your very eyes