Avast, ye sea dogs!

Shiver me timbers, matey, today do be Talk Like A Pirate Day again!  Dave Barry do be approvin' of it, so you can manage it too!  If ye be in Blighty, ye might lend a piratical hand to the grand buccaneers at yarr.org, who do be sendin' what dubloons they can plunder to the Marie Curie Cancer Cure.  If not, well, there do be booty a-plenty to be pillagin' and stowin' in yer sea chest.  So get ye on the account, handsomely now, and if anybody do be threatenin' ye with a rope's end over it ..... we'll keelhaul the scurvy knaves!

Pirate name meme, ganked from bfly

My pirate name is:

Iron Tom Read

A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person.  That's okay with you, though, since you are a tough person.  Even through many pirates have a reputation for not being the brightest souls on earth, you defy the sterotypes.  You've got taste and education.  Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.  (Some assembly required.)

Arr, me old wounds do be painin' me

Which do be to say that my left knee did do its electric-shock party trick again.  It wasn't as bad as it sometimes do be, and I did be sittin' down already.  'Twould have been very bad if I did be up in the rigging at the time, me hearties.

And that in turn do remind me that I was talkin' to me goodwife's mother the other day about me foot, and she did ask me how much it do hurt, on a scale from 1 to 10.  Well, says I, that do depend where the ends of the scale do lie, don't it now?  And I've always said, when anyone asked, that it was maybe a 3 to 4 at an old seadog's best guess.  "Well," says she, "what's the worst anything's ever hurt?"  I thinks, and I says, "Well, I don't be recallin' anything in the hospital, after me legs was smashed, that did hurt worse."

"Well," says she, "that's a 10, then."  "Oh," says I.  "So that do be how it works...."  And here was I thinkin' it couldn't be that high on the scale, because I could imagine things that might hurt worse.

Meanwhile, I did talk to the mechanics shipwrights about our Dodge the good ship Intrepid, and they did tell me they can find not one thing wrong.  So your Captain do be quite in the dark about what the problem do be that nearly left him and the girls his doughty crew o' young buccaneers stranded on Friday.  They do say that Friday be a day of bad luck for sea dogs, you know.  But seein' as they didn't do a lick of work on it except for lookin' at it, they do be chargin' us not one doubloon, mateys!  This do be a good and honest crew o'mechanics er, shipwrights.  (I almost do wonder how they ever did end up doin' business with pirates....)

Speakin' o'Fridays, I swear this do be a true story:  Once upon a time, there did be a merchant shippin' company as set out to disprove the sailor's stories about Fridays bein' bad luck.  So they did commission a new vessel to have 'er keel laid on a Friday, launched on a Friday, completed on a Friday, named 'er HMS Friday, and she set sail on 'er maiden voyage on a Friday, with a Captain Friday at the helm.  Neither ship, captain, nor crew were ever seen again.

(There be some as says as it might have been "insurance fraud", but my own personal theory do be Cap'n Friday hove to well out o'sight o'land, put a new name and new paint on his fine new ship, hoisted the Skull and Bones, and went on the account.  A sly dog indeed, he did be, if that be the right of it.)

Software piracy

Pirate code, from midiamin:

main(int arrrrrrgc, char **arrrrrrgv)

 

Putting on a brave face

Or more to the point, bravely putting on a face.  The BBC reports surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic are seeking volunteers for a whole-face transplant.  The procedure is estimated to have only a 50% chance of success, and even if successful, the recipients will have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives.

Britain's Royal College of Surgeons has urged doctors not to carry out face transplants, since future physical and psychological effects are unknown.

James Partridge, chief executive of the charity Changing Faces who was severely burned in a fire when he was 18, said more research is needed before any operations can go ahead.

"Psychologically, I think face transplants are very different to having somebody's kidney or liver," he told the BBC.

"To take somebody's face is to take part of their identify and to lose part of yours."

He added: "I would certainly want a lot more research into what the impact of that would be."

The technique is likely to be offered only to patients with severe disfigurement.  Surgeons say transplant recipients would have a distinct identity, and would not look like the donor; but would they come to accept that new identity as their own?

Double whammy

Never assume Nature's gonna take pity on anyone.  Tropical storm Rita is approaching both hurricane strength and the Florida keys, and is on a track predicted to take it pretty much straight up the Houston ship channel.  The poor bastards sitting in the Astrodome must really think Nature has it in for them.

A mandatory evacuation order has been issued for the Keys, and ziactrice, among others, reports that voluntary evacuation of Galveston has begun.  Right now, Rita is about 135 miles southeast of Nassau, and moving west by northwest at about 14mph.  Depending on weather conditions over Texas, it could stay on track for Houston, or could veer north and even hit Louisiana again.  Florida's probably going to get off lightly, but by the time it tracks across the 80°F-plus water in the Gulf of Mexico, Rita could potentially strengthen by several categories.