firehose

(via Erlenmeyer Mug | Lab Equipment and Safety science experiments, teaching & education tools: Educational Innovations)

He is still due a $3.25 million signing bonus, but the Patriots are expected to fight that payment. When asked the reason the team nullified a guaranteed portion of the contract, a Patriots exec told Vollin, "It was guaranteed for skill and injury. It wasn't guaranteed for personal conduct that cast the club in a negative light."

“The Ark In Space” (season 12, episodes 5-8. Originally broadcast Jan. 25-Feb. 15, 1975.)

Now, then... where was I?

Ah, yes: Hopelessly lost, surrounded by monsters, and cut off from all escape. Right where I should be.

Before we dive into “The Ark In Space,” I’ll just say I’m glad to be back on the police-box beat after taking some time off for our newborn twins, Beatrice and Zoe, who just turned four months old. It’s taken me most of that time just to learn the Venusian lullaby from “The Curse Of Peladon.” (Aroon aroon aroon...)

Tom Baker’s second adventure as the Fourth Doctor, “The Ark In Space” is in many ways more of a true start to his era than the transitional “Robot,” his actual debut. “Robot” had actually been filmed by the Third Doctor-era production team the year before, and thus features Baker in ...

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 People in the Middle Ages did keep pets – dogs, cats, birds, monkeys and many other kinds of animals. Although they often had particular duties – i.e. hunting or catching rats – there are many accounts that showed affection and love between these pets and their owners.

Scattered in various texts and remains from the Middle Ages, one can find that people gave names to their pets.

Medieval Dog Names

In England we find dogs that were named Sturdy, Whitefoot, Hardy, Jakke, Bo and Terri. Anne Boleyn, one of the wives of King Henry VIII, had a dog named Purkoy, who got its name from the French ‘pourquoi’ because it was very inquisitive.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest Tale has a line where they name three dogs: Colle, Talbot and Gerland. Meanwhile, in the early fifteenth-century, Edward, Duke of York, wrote The Master of Game, which explains how dogs are to be used in hunting and taken care of. He also included a list of 1100 names that he thought would be appropriate for hunting dogs. They include Troy, Nosewise, Amiable, Nameles, Clenche, Bragge, Ringwood and Holdfast.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland a list of 80 dogs that took part in a shooting festival in the year 1504 has been preserved. They reveal the most popular name was Furst (Prince). Other names included Venus, Fortuna, and Turgk. Some dogs got their names from the work being done by their owners: Hemmerli (Little Hammer) belonged to a locksmith, while Speichli (Little Spoke) belonged to a wagoner.

The 14th century French knight Jehan de Seure had a hound named Parceval, while his wife had Dyamant. Leon Battista Alberti, the Renaissance philosopher, said his dog was sired by Megastomo (Big Mouth). Ludovico III Gonzaga, ruler of the city of Mantua from 1444 to 1478, has at least two dogs – Rubino and Bellina. When Rubino died, Ludovico ordered that he buried in a casket and that he would make sure that the animal would also get a tombstone. Isabella d’Este, a famous Italian lady and also a ruler of Mantua, was known to have many little dogs, two of which were named Aura and Mamia.

There is also the story of Guinefort, the saint dog – in the 13th century Stephen de Bourbon explains that the peasants near the French city of Lyons were saying prayers at the grave of a dog named Guinefort and reporting that he was doing miracles, especially for infants. He inquired with the peasants and learned this story:

There was a certain castle whose lord had a baby son from his wife. But when the lord and lady and the nurse too had left the house, leaving the child alone in his cradle, a very large snake entered the house and made for the child’s cradle. The greyhound, who had remained there, saw this, dashed swiftly under the cradle in pursuit, knocking it over, and attacked the snake with its fangs and answering bite with bite. In the end the dog killed it and threw it far away from the child’s cradle which he left all bloodied as was his mouth and head, with the snake’s blood, and stood there by the cradle all beaten about by the snake. When the nurse came back and saw this, she thought the child had been killed and eaten by the dog and so gave out an almighty scream. The child’s mother heard this, rushed in, saw and thought the same and she too screamed. Then the knight similarly once he got there believed the same, and drawing his sword killed the dog. Only then did they approach the child and find him unharmed, sleeping sweetly in fact. On further investigation, they discovered the snake torn up by the dog’s bites and dead. Now that they had learned the truth of the matter, they were embarrassed that they had so unjustly killed a dog so useful to them and threw his body into a well in front of the castle gate, and placing over it a very large heap of stones they planted trees nearby as a memorial of the deed.

In Wales there is a similar legend regarding Gelert, the faithful hound of Prince Llewelyn of Gwynedd.

Click here to read more from the account of Stephen de Bourbon.

Medieval Cat Names

In medieval England domestic cats were known as Gyb – the short form of of Gilbert –  and that name was also popular for individual pet cats. Meanwhile in France they were called Tibers or Tibert was generic name fo domestic cat in France – Tibert the Cat was one of the characters in the Reynard the Fox animal fables.

Other names for cats included Mite, who prowled around Beaulieu Abbey in the 13th century, and Belaud, a grey cat belonging to Joachim du Bellay in the 16th century. Isabella d’Este also owned a cat named Martino. Old Irish legal texts refer to several individual cats and names them: Meone (little meow); Cruibne (little paws); Breone (little flame, perhaps an orange cat), and Glas nenta (nettle grey). An Irish poem from the ninth century describes how a monk owned a cat named Pangur Bán, which meant ‘fuller white’. The poem begins:

I and Pangur Bán, my cat
‘Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

Click here to read the poem Pangur Bán

Original Source

What.

The.

FUCK.

Guitar World‘s upcoming Jeff Hanneman tribute issue apparently has a whole lot of interesting info in it — like that fact that even Kerry King was worried about Hanneman’s drinking (which makes the fact that he’s been publicly toasting Hanneman as a way to “honor” the late guitairst that much more distasteful) — but the single best part may be this quote from Tom Araya, which is either gonna bite him in the ass, bite Kerry King in the ass, or bite them both in the ass:

“After 30 years, it would literally be like starting over. To move forward without Jeff just wouldn’t be the same, and I’m not sure the fans would be so accepting of that drastic a change. Especially when you consider how much he contributed to the band musically. And you can have someone sit in for him, but there’s no one on this planet that can do what Jeff did. There’s no replacing him.”

So even Tom Araya thinks Slayer should call it a day in the wake of Hanneman’s death. Which makes me wonder why the hell he’s even moving forward with the band’s summer touring plans. Does he see it as a farewell tour? By Hanneman’s ghost, I hope so. Although it would be hilarious (albeit depressingly so) if King tried to continue Slayer without Araya.

Elsewhere in the article, Hanneman’s widow, Kathryn, reveals that even Hanneman was initially against Slayer proceeding with a different guitarist, telling his wife, “No. No. There’s no way in hell this band is going out without me.” She says that he eventually “became okay with it, but it’s the implication that doesn’t sit well with me — because it means that initially Hanneman was told the band was going to tour with Gary Holt, not that he had any part in that decision. That’s pretty fucked up.

[via Metal Insider]

Original Source

San Francisco Chronicle

Atheists unveil Fla monument near Ten Commandments Albany Democrat Herald A group of atheists unveiled a monument to their nonbelief in God on Saturday to sit alongside a granite slab that lists the Ten Commandments in front of the Bradford County courthouse. As a small group of protesters blasted Christian country music and ... Athiests Erect A Public MonumentKCCU Unveiling America's First Public Monument to AtheismTIME Atheists install monument beside Ten Commandments in front of north Florida ...Fox News all 37 news articles »

Xfce 4.12 still hasn't been released yet and it's running months behind schedule. Xfce 4.12 will be a major update to the lightweight desktop that's becoming an increasingly used alternative to Unity and the GNOME Shell. Here's an update on some of the completed features...

Women and children can understand the language, but it is primarily used among men engaged in male domain activities like fishing and boat-building.

Instagram has prompted a large number of users to reset their passwords after the popular photo (and now video) sharing site came under attack from fruit-wielding spammers.

If you need a way to make openings in your project enclosures look nice just head on over to the 3D printer. In the image above [Alfred] is showing off the result of his Slic3r hack for printing mesh grills.

It’s important to note that you need to make sure you’re using Slic3r version 0.9.8. This won’t work with newer versions because starting with 0.9.9 the software will add a raft to the bottom of your design.

The grill can be in any shape you desire. It starts by modelling this outline, then extruding the edges downward the same distance as your desired mesh thickness. After importing the design file into Slic3r [Alfred] uses the support material settings to choose this honeycomb design. He then sets the fill density to zero. This means the design will not be printed at all, only the fill material, resulting in these honeycomb screens.

Slic3r’s a fantastic piece of software. Check out this interview with Slic3r’s lead developer.

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks

I am a proud member of the Cult of Ruthie

Via: Unholy Adventures

I was surprised how serious a movie it is and also by how deeply politically incorrect it is, including on “third rail” issues such as immigration, ethnic conflict, North Korean totalitarianism, American urban decay as exemplified by Newark, gun control, Latino-Black relations, songs of peace, and the Middle East.  Here is one (incomplete) discussion of the Middle East angle, from the AP, republished in el-Arabiya (here is a more detailed but less responsible take on the matter, by a sociology professor and Israeli, spoilers throughout).

The movie is set up to show sympathy for the “Spartan” regimes and to have a message which is deeply historically pessimistic and might broadly be called Old School Conservative, informed by the debates on martial virtue from pre-Christian antiquity.  But they recut the final segment of the movie and changed the ending altogether, presumably because post-Christian test audiences and film executives didn’t like it.  Here is one discussion of the originally planned finale.  It sounds good to me.  The actual movie as it was released reverts to a Christian ending of sorts.  My preferred denouement would have relied on the idea of an asymptomatic carrier or two, go see it and figure out the rest yourself.

By the way, for all the chances taken by the film makers, they were unwilling to offend the government of China (see the first link), in part because you cannot trick them easily with subtle, veiled references.  Such tomfoolery works only on Americans — critics included — which I suppose suggests a lesson of its own.

Here is a Times of Israel review of the movie, interesting throughout, and it notes that the Israel scenes are simply translated to “the Middle East” for Turkish audiences.

A good film, I liked it.  How many other movies offer commentary on Thucydides, Exodus, Gush-Shalom, Lawrence Dennis, and George Romero, all rolled into one?

All tools are written in Python and have been tested with Python 2.7 on Mac OS X 10.8. To install them, download either the .zip or .tar archive. Expand the archive, and then open the resulting directory in your terminal. Command lines to invoke specific tools are listed below.

infinitenap:

hahahahahahahahahaha nope

(x)

Everyone who works for the government is a secret agent now. Their mission: spy on their coworkers just to make sure nobody leaks information — classified, unclassified or totally obvious — to the American public, but especially that Glenn Greenwald guy. (Yeesh, that guy. Amirite, General?) So, how does one educate these career civil servants and contracted employees in the Tippy-Top Secret Art of Intelligence Tradecraft? Basically: pamphlets, mandatory webinars, you know, the usual, maybe have them get together into groups later, do skits.

Last week, McClatchy’s Washington Bureau — the newsgathering arm of fast food giant McClatchy’s — made waves with an investigative report detailing President Obama’s Insider Threat Program: a sweeping crackdown on all government leakers, everywhere, all the time, period, no excuses, Sasha, Malia, your mom, Joe Biden, Bo, grandma inclusive. Initiated in October 2011, Insider Threat broadly expanded the internal profiling of potentially leaky employees, as well as increasing the penalties for either leaking or failing to report things that James Franco’s character in Spring Breakers would call “spicious.” In the intervening two years, FDA scientists, Peace Corp volunteers, Department of Agriculture bureaucrats and Social Security administrators have all been told to spy on one another or git burnt.

Referenced in the McClatchy piece is a pamphlet put out by the Defense Security Service (DSS) titled “Insider Threats: Combating the ENEMY within your organization.” The pamphlet calmly encourages snitching on coworkers who put in “repeated or un-required work outside of normal duty hours” or coworkers who suddenly can afford things like a Bugatti Veyron. But that pamphlet was just the tippy-top of the DSS pamphlet iceberg!

As an agency within the Defense Department, the DSS has been growing from a small counterintelligence auditor for the pentagon to a primary liaison between the national security state and its constellation of domestic and multinational corporate contractors ever since — if you can believe it — the sad times of 9/11. According to their website, DSS now also provides “comprehensive security training to DoD and other government departments and agencies,” like the USDA. God forbid Taliban poppy farmers get our soil-tilling secrets!

We think you’ll agree that we’re exaggerating when we say these pamphlets are EXPLOSIVE. They are mostly sad and pathetic — and frankly a little scary for it, given the stakes involved (e.g. the careers and pensions of nice people) — but occasionally they are, unintentionally, quite funny. A sampling:

From The “Insider Threats” Pamphlet

“This overly broad definition of an ‘insider threat’ is the main reason I don’t want you to use my name,” our source for these pamphlets told us. “I think, technically, I could be endangering the homeland just by stealing too many paper clips now.” The source — who declined to be labeled either vaguely by his government employer or by the pseudonym Daniel Smellsberg — also noted that the pamphlets might be available online somewhere. (They are.) “So, it really shouldn’t be a big deal.”

“I can see why you would think it’s funny, but please don’t do that ‘Daniel Smellsberg’ thing in the article,” Smellsberg added.

Suffice to say that Smellsberg is one of the nearly five million Americans who have been granted access to classified documents in a little over a decade’s time. With our nation’s most closely held information now in the hands of that many people, it’s inevitable that some of them will be criminally stupid or worse, making it therefore doubly important (we guess) to spell out even the most obvious bullshit. Like this, for example, from the same pamphlet:

From The “Foreign Travel Vulnerability” Pamphlet [.pdf]

Pay very close attention to the body on that flight attendant. Spies can use Mission Impossible-type masks to disguise their faces, so Our National Security could rest on your ability to recognize subtle differences between neatly turned calves or between dis ass and dat ass.

From The “Preparing for Foreign Visitors” Pamphlet [.pdf]

Fact: DARPA alone spends 2.8 billion dollarsign.jpg’s each year. We can’t afford to just flush dollarsign.jpg after dollarsign.jpg down the toilet due to poor security protocol. Those are taxpayer dollarsign.jpg’s.

There’s not a lot of context for this magical stock photo. Of the seven “techniques” that those sneaky foreign visitors might use to steal our precious American secrets, the one closest to describing this photo is called “Distraught Visitor.” You know, it’s that technique “when the visitor’s questions are not answered [and] he/she acts insulted or creates an uncomfortable scene in an attempt to psychologically coerce information from a target.” Gets ‘em every time. (Yes, most of the techniques have visitor in their name. And: No, there’s no explanation for why this guy is yelling into a phone.)

From The “Elicitation & Recruitment” Pamphlet [.pdf]

While all of these pamphlets would make a good sight gag on Archer, this one especially meets that criteria.

BUT HEY, SRSLY! Did you know these tidbits? “Despite their personal rationale for committing espionage, all [spies] had other means at their disposal for fulfilling their aspirations, needs, and desires. Most, if not all, spies eventually regret their actions and their decisions to commit espionage.” No? Then you especially should read this pamphlet. These are irrefutable facts because there never was a French Resistance in World War II and we’ve been really getting into that book The Secret.

Then there’s the summary on the back:

You really have to admire the gall of this. “Did we mention we currently have access to all of your phone metadata, Skype calls, emails and Facebook messages? Our PRISM and Boundless Informant programs have been real timesavers — at prices that won’t bust open the old piggy bank.”

The “Reporting the Threat” [.pdf] and “Counterintelligence Awareness” [.pdf.] Pamphlets

Nothing really funny about these apart from the graphic design, unless the xenophobic plot of Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun is your idea of a gut-busting chucklefest.

An Excellent Summary Analysis For All You

In the past two years, a lot of espionage-grade paranoia that made sense for (say) a Fort Meade janitor or some dinky nerd coding drone-piloting software has now been quietly introduced into every part of the government. Could there be a downside to spicing things up in the federal bureaucracy with more thrills and a little bit of suspense?

“Well, the work environment is already one where people who used to talk to me — and, I suspect, other reporters — are no longer willing to talk, simply for fear that they’re going to encounter retaliation for talking to a journalist,” McClatchy reporter Jonathan Landay told Democracy Now! hosts Severe Lady and the Mumblecore. “And not disclosing classified information, but simply trying to give us context — at least in my experience, trying to give me context about stories that we report normally.”

“So, the environment, as a result of this, seems to be pretty toxic.”

Ha, ha. Whatever, Landay. What’s toxic for the muckraking, “good government” Trotskyites in the LSM must be unequivocally great for the rest of us hard-working U.S.A. Taxpayers.

Bottom Line: Be Assertive. Be Alert. Be Aware. Report Anythang Spicious!

[Pentagon photo by Michael Baird, some rights reserved; typographical bullshit and pamphlet photographs by Matthew Phelan. Baird doesn't endorse these jokes. In fact, we've never met.]

Pope Francis told prelates Saturday to shun the "logic of human power," pressing his campaign to root out corruption and other wrongdoing from the Vatican's scandal-tainted power structures. The admonition came a day after the latest embarrassment for the Vatican hierarchy -- the arrest by Italian authorities of a Vatican accountant, in a probe of an alleged attempt by the prelate to secure the smuggling of 20 million euros ($26 million) in banknotes from Switzerland into Italy. The Italian monsignor, who was suspended a few weeks earlier from his job in the Vatican's finance office, is also under investigation in a separate money-laundering probe by prosecutors in southern Italy.

The world’s most popular Internet search engine has sued the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for a massive $83.5 million refund after it was denied a deduction for a 2004 stock transaction with America Online Inc. According to Google’s complaint in U.S. Tax Court, the IRS made a serious blunder in refusing a deduction claimed for the variance between the rate America Online paid to exercise a Google stock warrant and the actual value of the shares.

fluoracid:

actegratuit:

Scorpion Dagger,

on tumblr!

OHHHHHHHHHHWUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

“You’d look angry too if everyone wanted to eat you”

Archie McPhee, the creators of the Creepy Pig Mask, admit that it “looks a little demented and angry” and explains, “You would be too if everyone coveted your insides because they were made of bacon.” It’s available to purchase online.

…We recommend this mask while grilling at your BBQ this summer or just ordering at the butcher counter. Latex. Fits most adult heads.

“Pig Juggling Rubber Chickens“

A Reddit user named Brent Watson has posted an enormous photo album documenting the process of making his own shoes by hand. He taught himself the process by watching YouTube videos, and sewed every seam by hand because he didn’t have an industrial sewing machine. A pretty remarkable achievement.

(Thanks, A.M.)

Audrey Hepburn for ‘Charade’, 1963.

Russian police arrested several gay rights activists and Russian nationalists who confronted them at a rally Saturday that was declared illegal under a new law against "gay propaganda." Officials in St. Petersburg deemed that the rally, which took place in a space designated for public demonstrations, violated the law. The statute essentially prohibits public displays of homosexuality, as well as talking about it to children. About 200 nationalists also gathered at the rally, chanting slogans such as "Sodomy will not pass," and throwing eggs and rocks at the gay-rights activists, who numbered about 40.

“It certainly sounds like they believe Hernandez is the shooter,” said Ann McGonigle Santos, a Suffolk University law professor and former prosecutor at the Middlesex district attorney’s office. “And if they believe Hernandez is the shooter and the mastermind, prosecutors might cut a deal with the other men.” With all three men in custody, McGonigle Santos said investigators will now focus on finding the weapon used in the shooting, still unaccounted for. But even if they cannot recover it, she added, the evidence already revealed in court seems persuasive.

(via Ocean platform takes bed & breakfast to another level | Compass - Yahoo! Travel)

Another day, another arrest for the NFL. This time it's Colts safety Joe Lefeged, who the Indianapolis Star said was chased down by police and will be arraigned on multiple gun-related offenses. Somewhere, Goodell and the rest of the NFL is praying this nightmare week ends. And they'll probably be quite happy when the offseason as a whole is finished. This week has included Aaron Hernandez getting charged with murder, Ausar Walcott being charged with attempted murder and Josh Brent failing a second drug test while out on bond on an intoxicated manslaughter charge. Now comes the Indianapolis Star news that Lefeged and a friend were driving in Washington, D.C., and when police attempted to pull over their car and a chase ensued. The men were arrested after the chase and a handgun was found in the car.

“Hot” French Bread

Georgia-based Bethany Keeley-Jonker has been running the popular site, the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, since 2005 and it’s still going strong today. It features images of signs, products, and other items where quotation marks are used unnecessarily and thus, have an unintended comic effect. Readers of the blog are encouraged to submit their own findings. In 2010, she authored a book on the same subject, The Book of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks: A Celebration of Creative Punctuation.

From the sarcastic to the suggestive, here are quotation marks as we love them best, doing horrible damage to the English language. Who wouldn’t have second thoughts about ordering the “hamburger” on the diner’s menu? Would it be best to skip the “blowout” sale at the department store? What hidden price must be paid for something marked “free”? Assembled by the creator of the wildly popular “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, this book surveys the havoc wreaked by quotation marks on signs, menus, placards, and posters that leave reality upended by supposed “facts.” This smarty-pants guide is “perfect” for desperate grammarians, habitual air quoters, and anyone who appreciates a good laugh.

“meat”

“Free” and complimentary

images via the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

via Mike Elgan