January 11, 2012
Anti Marijana Arguments Go To Pot
A 20 year study involving 5115 participants shows that moderate marijuana use is not harmful to lung function.January 10, 2012
Hygienic Equipment for Men
Since most men usually wear their pants while using urinals, I can't imagine how this would work without getting their pants wet. Bonus weirdness is the cheesy music, heavily accented narration, and use of a plastic fish as a phallic stand-in.
Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue Jan 10, 2012 | Permalink |
Comments (4)
Category: Bathrooms, Hygiene, Baths, Showers and Other Cleansing Methods, Body Fluids
Category: Bathrooms, Hygiene, Baths, Showers and Other Cleansing Methods, Body Fluids
Doomed
Doomed from AllaKinda on Vimeo.
This is the world I want to live in.
Posted By: Paul | Date: Tue Jan 10, 2012 | Permalink |
Comments (2)
Category: Aliens, Animals, Surrealism, Cartoons, Fictional Monsters
Category: Aliens, Animals, Surrealism, Cartoons, Fictional Monsters
DNA
A 1991 Federal Way, Washington murder may be solved by DNA comparison with genealogy data bases. The DNA left at the scene by the perpetrator has been matched to a Massachusetts family from the 1630s. At least it gives police a place to start with a likely family name to trace. What a brilliant idea to run the comparisons.
The Bear Who Went to War
I've had this post queued up for weeks--then darn old Chuck goes and scoops me yesterday! But he didn't give you the visuals!
Full story here.
Posted By: Paul | Date: Tue Jan 10, 2012 | Permalink |
Comments (1)
Category: Animals, War, Documentaries, 1940's
Category: Animals, War, Documentaries, 1940's
Cat Staring Contest
"Staring at Cat Staring at Cat Staring..." by Steve Bishop
(via ignant.de)
January 9, 2012
Turn your Christmas tree into a deadly slingshot
More goodness from the slingshot channel. And potentially useful since a lot of people are disposing of their Christmas trees right about now.Last year I cut up my christmas tree into slices and made coasters out of it. But this is much cooler:
Kala and the Mystery
kala and the mystery ... _Part I_ (English Version) from meltingman on Vimeo.
This cartoon is a few years old now, and no sequel is apparent. Too bad! I wanted to see how an alcoholic beetle and a voracious spider did with their love match.
Posted By: Paul | Date: Mon Jan 09, 2012 | Permalink |
Comments (1)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Death, Insects, South America, Alcohol
Category: Anthropomorphism, Death, Insects, South America, Alcohol
Nice Universe
Craig Carver, in A History of English in its Own Words, reveals that the word 'nice' once meant something very close to 'weird':Its early history covers such disapproving and derisive senses as 'stupid,' 'lascivious,' slothful,' and 'unmanly,' all now obsolete. Its earliest sense, 'foolish,' 'stupid,' 'senseless,' appears in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ('He made the lady so mad and so nyce that sche whorshipped hym as the grettest prophete of God Almighty,' 1387, John de Trevisa, trans. of Higden's Polychronicon), and is from Old French nice (silly), from Latin nescius (ignorant), literally 'not to know,' a compound of ne (not) and scire (to know).
From there it is difficult to trace the convolutions of its senses, the next apparently being 'wanton,' 'lewd' ('These are complements, these are humours, these betraie nice wenches that would be betraied without these,' 1588 Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost), followed by 'strange,' 'rare,' 'uncommon' ('For there be straunge wonderous workes, dyverse maner of nyce beestes and whall fishes,' 1535, Coverdale Bible) and 'slothful,' 'lazy.'
From there it is difficult to trace the convolutions of its senses, the next apparently being 'wanton,' 'lewd' ('These are complements, these are humours, these betraie nice wenches that would be betraied without these,' 1588 Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost), followed by 'strange,' 'rare,' 'uncommon' ('For there be straunge wonderous workes, dyverse maner of nyce beestes and whall fishes,' 1535, Coverdale Bible) and 'slothful,' 'lazy.'
So in Shakespeare's time, Weird Universe might have been called Nice Universe, or Nyce Universe.
'Weird,' on the other hand, (according to Carver) originally meant 'fate' or 'destiny.' In this form, the word was used as early as the 8th century. In the plural, the Wyrdes, it signified the three female goddesses, the Fates -- which is how Shakespeare used it in Macbeth to characterize the three witches, the Weird Sisters.
It was only in the early 19th century that the Romantic poet Shelley first used the word 'weird' in its modern sense to indicate 'uncanny,' 'strange,' or 'unusual.' In his 1816 poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude he writes: "In lone and silent hours, / When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness."
And that's today's etymology lesson!
News of the Weird / Pro Edition (January 9, 2012)
News of the Weird/Pro EditionYou're Still Not Cynical Enough
Prime Cuts of Underreported News from Last Week, Hand-Picked and Lightly Seasoned by Chuck Shepherd
January 9, 2012
(datelines December 30-January 7) (links correct as of January 9)
Warren Jeffs Prescribes Hell on Earth (Rather Than Kool-Aid), plus Other Things to Worry About
★ ★ ★ ★!
Sex Alert for Texas, Utah, Arizona! Horny, Mormonish Women Increasingly Climbing Walls! Prophet Warren Jeffs has issued an encyclical from his prison cell: no sex for anybody . . because all marriages are void until he can return to "seal" them (which won't be for a while because his sentence is life plus 20). (Bonus: Jeffs has so far filed two kinda-amicus petitions in court from the Lord, himself, commanding that Jeffs be set free, but the judge has failed to grant them. Must be that they, y'know, were mis-formatted or in the wrong font, something like that.) (Double Bonus: Reportedly, many followers have fled the sect, but many continue to observe his every word.) World's Greatest Newspaper
NPR's Robert Krulwich possesses a perpetual supply of fascination about ordinary but complicated things, for example, how scientists learn about famously reclusive pandas. He has a screen shot of researcher Robert Schaller's notes on a particular panda in the wild and the tracking of its every bowel movement. Lots of bowel movements. Of course, the samples must be collected, catalogued, and analyzed, and inferences made. Yr Editor stands in awe of Krulwich's level of fascination, but Schaller's is more worrisome. NPR blog
Sweden's Missionary Church of Kopimism (whose mission, mainly, is to encourage computer file-sharing irrespective of things like "copyright") issued a press release last week, uncontradicted so far, announcing that it had fulfilled the legal requirements to be a religion and had been granted that status by the government. Torrent Freak via NPR
Absurdities
Arrested in Madison, Wis., on weapons and drug charges: Mr. (legal name) Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop, age 30. WISC-TV (Madison)
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