The heinous green carpet at PDX has become more powerful than we could have ever imagined.
It's now a sock pattern. An ugly sock pattern, offered by Portland outfit The Athletic. Check it:
It's tough to know how to feel, right? The specificity of this is pleasing to me, but it also feels like something I'd be explaining to people with a tinge of shame.
I wanted to do a poll, but then I realized I've worked here seven months and still don't know how to create one. So let's do this without the benefit of rigorous social science. PDX Carpet Socks: What say you, Blogtown?
Two weeks after its billion-dollar IPO, we learn that Twitter is poised to take advantage of the same international tax loopholes as other large firms like Apple, Google, and Amazon. Citing Twitter Ireland documents, Valleywag reports that the company has all the requisite parts for the "Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich" — a scheme that can minimize a company’s tax exposure by enabling it to lease its intellectual property to foreign subsidiaries. The idea is to turn foreign profits into tax-free revenues, and everything from the existence of Irish shell companies to their Cayman Islands home base give ample insight into Twitter’s strategy.
It makes sense that [Twitter has] the structure in place up front
Valleywag quotes a corporate tax attorney who stressed the idea of getting the plan in place early. "The key to these structures is that you have to set them up when you are creating the [intellectual property]… it makes sense that [Twitter has] the structure in place up front," they explained.
Of course, there are a few things standing in the way of it taking its plan into action. First, Twitter isn’t yet profitable — it actually lost nearly $70 million in the first six months of 2013. But even more to the point, Ireland’s Finance Department is mulling the idea of closing the loophole altogether. The proposal wouldn’t take place until 2015, but finance minister Michael Noonan sounds convinced that it’s the right course of action, saying that he would submit "a change to ensure that Irish registered companies cannot be ‘stateless’ in terms of their place of tax residency."
I was shocked to see sexual violence when a cartoon character of an Israeli girl was using her knee to repeatedly strike a boy's (Bart Simpson) groin. It is amazing we would encourage our children during family hour to do such a terrible thing.
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Washington Post, 'Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he once feared that terrorists could use the electrical device that had been implanted near his heart to kill him and had his doctor disable its wireless function. Cheney has a history of heart trouble, suffering the first of five heart attacks at age 37. ... In an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, Cheney says doctors replaced an implanted defibrillator near his heart in 2007. The device can detect irregular heartbeats and control them with electrical jolts. Cheney says that he and his doctor, cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, turned off the device's wireless function in case a terrorist tried to send his heart a fatal shock.' More at CBS News."
Enlarge / You've probably caught at least one of these, right? (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
On August 27, 1998, Topeka, Kansas became Topikachu for one day—a ceremonial renaming to celebrate the US arrival of a new video game franchise, Pokémon. While popular previously in Japan, the franchise's impact has been felt in the US ever since. To remember this gaming landmark, we're resurfacing this classic Ars tale of franchise fandom over Labor Day Weekend. The piece re-emerged once before in February 2016 for the 20th anniversary of the original release of Pokémon Red and Green in Japan, and it originally ran in October 2013.
I’ve been playing Pokémon games since I was 13, and I’ve felt just a little too old for the games pretty much the entire time. Having an eight-year-old brother slavishly devoted to the games, and the anime, and the trading cards, told Young Andrew all he needed to know about the age of kids who were into Pokémon. Even once he (er, me) finally gave in to his curiosity and began playing Pokémon Blue (via the No$gmb emulator on the computer), he only played it with headphones in and the door to his bedroom closed. That experience set the tone for the next decade-plus of Pokémon playing: done in secret, kept to myself, a source of shame.
I’ve never watched the anime. I don’t collect the cards. I don’t play the weird offshoot games like Pokémon Snap, Pokémon Rumble, or Hey You, Pikachu! or whatever. My possession of Pokémon merchandise is limited to a handful of figurines I picked up when I went to Japan in 2010. But every time a new game in the main RPG series has come out, I’ve been there. The games have been with me through childhood into adolescence and adulthood, and while they’ve changed (and I’ve changed) the things I enjoy about them haven’t.
Britain continues its slide into official xenophobia: a government contractor sent nearly 40,000 texts reading "Message from the UK Border Agency. You are required to leave the UK as you no longer have right to remain." At least 400 of these reportedly went to people who had the right to be in the country, including some UK citizens. But the contractor says it's all OK, because people who received messages in error weren't deported -- all they had to do was convince a sloppy, faceless, mercenary corporation that they had the right to be in the country and the threats of deportation, deprivation of access to their homes, employment and families ceased. Theresa May, the government's Foreignerfinder General, says it wasn't her idea to send the texts -- just like all the ministers who disavowed the vans driving around London's browner neighbourhoods with giant billboards reading "In the UK illegally? GO HOME or face arrest!"
But still: No biggie!
A total of 39,100 text messages have been sent by Capita on behalf of the government as part of a contract to track down about 58,800 individuals who may not have the right to live in the UK.
The text reads: "Message from the UK Border Agency. You are required to leave the UK as you no longer have right to remain." Up to 400 complaints have reportedly been filed, including from individuals who have lived in the country for decades, and have the right to stay. The Home Office says the number of complaints is smaller.
The existence of the texting programme was revealed in a Freedom of Information request.
Spotted at Summer House, my local housewares shop in Mill Valley: doormats made from recycled fire hoses. Unexpectedly appealing and indisputably durable ("think what they've been through," says their maker, the Oxgut Hose Company), the mats range in price from $165 for a 2-by-3-foot size and go up to $250 for the 3-by-4-foot size. Go to Oxgut Hose Company for more information.
Above: A Black Trim w/1 Color Fire Hose Mat edged in heavy-duty black Polypropylene webbing trim. Emeryville, CA-based Oxgut sources decommissioned hoses from U.S. Fire Departments.
Above: A stack of fire hoses waiting to be made into mats.
The Falcons will be without both starting wide receivers because of a season-ending injury to Julio Jones suffered in the Jets game. In addition, running back Steven Jackson will miss his fourth consecutive game.
Start your day with a fried side of fun! Funny Side Up is a handy frame that shapes and molds two eggs into attractive egg art. Just place the mold in your frying pan, crack two eggs into the rings, and soon you’ll have a breakfast buddy to hang out with! It’s two eggs, funny side up.
For 75 years, Finland’s expectant mothers have been given a box by the state. It’s like a starter kit of clothes, sheets and toys that can even be used as a bed. And some say it helped Finland achieve one of the world’s lowest infant mortality rates.
It’s a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it’s designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they’re from, an equal start in life.
The maternity package - a gift from the government - is available to all expectant mothers.
It contains bodysuits, a sleeping bag, outdoor gear, bathing products for the baby, as well as nappies, bedding and a small mattress.
With the mattress in the bottom, the box becomes a baby’s first bed. Many children, from all social backgrounds, have their first naps within the safety of the box’s four cardboard walls.
Mothers have a choice between taking the box, or a cash grant, currently set at 140 euros, but 95% opt for the box as it’s worth much more.
The tradition dates back to 1938. To begin with, the scheme was only available to families on low incomes, but that changed in 1949.
“It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
Although the innermost planets, from Mercury through Saturn, were known since ancient times, it’s only since the advent of the telescope that we’ve discovered what really lives in our Solar System. Over the past four centuries, the wonders of not only the distant Universe, but also our nearby neighborhood, have been uncovered in spectacular detail.
Image credit: NASA and – I believe – G. Bacon (STScI).
The third and fourth largest planets were discovered, as were a plethora of moons around other worlds, a belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter (at the ice-line of our Solar System, or where the strength of the Sun is insufficient to move water out of its solid phase), and a Kuiper belt out beyond the final planet. (And the Oort cloud even beyond that!)
Image Credit: Oort Cloud image by Calvin J. Hamilton, inset image by NASA.
Image credit: Clyde Tombaugh’s images, with Pluto indicated by the arrows.
Even though it was the only world located out beyond the orbit of Neptune for nearly 50 years (until Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, was discovered), it was recognized relatively quickly that Pluto was a harbinger for many more such objects, now recognized (and confirmed, since 1992) to be just one of a great many located in the Kuiper Belt. The other bodies began to exhibit a variety of sizes, shapes, and orbital characteristics, although they all had a number of properties that threw Pluto’s “privileged” status as a “planet” into question:
similar, trans-Neptunian orbits in the same direction and with similar periods,
masses and sizes of the same order-of-magnitude as Pluto,
Pluto-like densities and surface properties, with lots of surface methane ice,
similar atmospheric compositions to Pluto, as seen by occultations, and
numbers that grew from “a few” to “dozens” to more than a thousand as of today.
This all came to a head in 2005, when it was discovered that Pluto isn’t even the most massive object in the Kuiper Belt!
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Lexicon; modified from the NASA original.
That distinction belongs to Eris, which weighs in at about 127% the mass of Pluto. That discovery paved the way for a new classification scheme that included an additional class of Solar System objects known as dwarf planets, of which Eris and Pluto are the two most massive at the present time.
But when it comes to the King of all Kuiper Belt objects, none of these little monsters can stake that claim. Because there’s one object that we don’t normally think of as a Kuiper Belt object that has them all beat.
Image credit: NASA / Voyager 2. Aren’t you glad the shutdown is over?!
This is Neptune, the outermost planet in our Solar System. No, it doesn’t qualify as a Kuiper Belt object; it’s a planet, just like you’ve always learned. But back in 1846, there were some awfully powerful telescopes in the world, certainly much better and bigger ones than were around in 1781 (when Uranus was discovered) or at any time before that. Back in 1781, there was only one telescope in the world — commissioned in 1780 — that had a primary mirror of two feet (61 cm) or more in diameter.
By time 1846 came around, the largest telescope in the world had a primary mirror that was six feet (1.8 meters) in diameter, and amateurs with no formal training — like William Lassell — were building their own two foot diameter telescopes themselves.
Image credit: National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside; model of Lassell’s telescope.
The timetable for the discovery of Neptune was swift: Urbain Le Verrier announced his prediction for the undiscovered planet’s position on August 31, 1846, and composed a letter to Johann Galle, director of the Berlin observatory. Galle and his assistant, Heinrich d’Arrest, looked for the planet on September 23, and discovered it that very night in one of the greatest accomplishments of all-time in theoretical astrophysics.
But news traveled fast, and back in England, William Lassell was eager to view the newly-discovered world.
Image credit: Tony Kroes of http://www.astroacres.com/.
Just 17 days after the discovery of the hypothesized new world that had occupied many of the world’s greatest professional astronomers for decades, a virtually unknown and amateur telescope-maker discovered Triton, by far the largest satellite world of Neptune. (Although to be fair, it was the largest telescope in England at the time.) If all the Solar System’s moons were compared to one another, Triton would be the seventh largest in size, behind only Earth’s Moon, Saturn’s Titan, and the four Jovian moons discovered by Galileo.
But — up close — Triton doesn’t look like any other large moon in the entire Solar System! For one, every other large moon revolves around its planet the same way all the planets revolve around the Sun: counterclockwise, as viewed if you flew directly upwards above the Earth’s north pole. But not Triton, which revolves around Neptune in the opposite direction!
In terms of density, it resembles Pluto far more than it resembles either Neptune or any other Moon in the Solar System. And in terms of atmospheric composition, it’s virtually identical to the known worlds found in the Kuiper Belt.
Image credit: NASA / Voyager 2.
What does all this mean?
That Triton isn’t a naturally occurring moon of Neptune, but has been gravitationally captured (by the same mechanism described here last week) from its place of origin: the Kuiper Belt. Even though it isn’t currently in the Kuiper Belt, that doesn’t stop it from being the largest, most massive, most accessible, first-discovered, and in many subjective ways, greatest Kuiper Belt Object of them all!
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Lasunncty, under the GFDL.
But it’s real, it’s spectacular, and unlike every other Kuiper Belt Object (so far), we’ve been there! That was thanks to Voyager 2 in 1989; take a look at this photo mosaic of a large chunk of its surface!
Image credit: NASA / Jet Propulsion Lab / U.S. Geological Survey, via Voyager 2.
If it looks cantaloupe-like to you away from the poles, well done; that’s the semi-official NASA term for it! So the next time you think about worlds from beyond our planets, don’t just think of frozen ice-and-rock-balls orbiting in deep space, nor only of the comets disturbed by passing gravitational bodies and hurled inwards towards the Sun, but also of the rogue worlds that migrate inwards and wind up captured by gas giants.
After all, if you didn’t include them, you’d be missing out on Triton, largest of all the trans-Neptunian objects and the onetime King of the Kuiper Belt!
These curious radial animations are from discs used in the phenakistoscope, a 19th century animation toy invented by Joseph Plateau. The animated GIFs seen here are from the Richard Balzer Collection. For more phenakistoscope (and zoetrope) animations, check out their Tumblr.
Boogie, the chocolate lab who jumped in a half marathon earlier this month and subsequently received a finisher's medal, died on Tuesday.
Boogie became an Internet sensation after running almost all of the Evansville Half Marathon on October 5. He reportedly got free of his leash the night before, and joined the half marathon the next morning just after the start. Boogie ran the rest of the route, finishing in 2:15. He was then taken to animal control and reunited with his owner. Two days after the race, he was given a finisher's medal.
Runner's World Newswire has been unable to contact the owners. A veterinary technician at Cape Veterinary Clinic in South Portland, Maine told Newswire that, without knowing the dog's medical history, it's not possible to say whether running the half marathon on October 5 contributed to the heart attack on October 15.
Boogie was 10 years old and was reported to weigh 100 pounds. In some news accounts, he's identified as Boogie Butts; his owner's last name is Butts.
Correction: An earlier version of this article said that Boogie was 8 years old.
