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paulesyllabic> *snerk* ref:fark(“The Army sniffer dog who swallowed a Taliban bomb... and SURVIVED. Your dog does not want an IED”);
<paulesyllabic> comment: “Arf..arf..arf. BOOOM! @$)(^%*^###/No Terrier.”
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<hoche> i don’t think i ever saw the abyss
<hoche> there was some other deepwater movie i saw
<hoche> sphere?
<midi> I’m sorry.
<web> *twitch*
<hoche> it was pretty bad
<web> My friend strongly recommended that book to me and listed it as the “best book he had ever read.”
<web> ... I told him to read a second book.
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<ang> geoff is going to costco. should I tell him to pick up anything in particular? <midi> hot-swappable redheads? <ang> are they in season? <midi> I forget. he can check. <Odd> they probably only come in 6 packs though <midi> feature!
(I swear I did not front-load the music.)
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Picture this.
Long zoom in on a Buddhist temple somewhere in China or Nepal. Camera flies into the great hall, where hundreds of shaven-headed Buddhist monks sit zazen in ranks. We pan around the room getting the thousand-year-old historic atmosphere before pulling in closely on the field of monks. As one, they reach down to the floor in front of them, picking up identical wrapped packages from the floor. We zoom in on one monk to see the distinctive wrapper of [insert major sandwich chain here], before the monks strip the wrappers off their sandwiches and hold them up before them with both hands.
As one voice, five hundred monks chant:
“NOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM....................”
...And bite.
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There was once a violin-maker, you see ... well, not just violins, he did cellos, violas, any of the bowed string instruments.
But I digress.
The violin-maker had a little shop on the main square of town, right by the town’s main cistern. The area got little rain, and all water was precious. Every drop of rain had to be saved in cisterns and catch-basins to get through the year.
One year, there was an earthquake. Many buildings were damaged, and no few people killed in buildings that collapsed, but worst of all, the main cistern was cracked badly. Not only were the cracks leaking, but a large section of the cistern wall between two deep cracks was unstable, and was threatening to give way under the water pressure.
Of course, the town guards’ first priority was to shore up the cistern wall. To this end, seeking the closest source of makeshift repair materials, they went around all the shops on the square, grabbing everything that wasn’t bolted down to support the wall ... tearing off doors and shutters, taking barrels, sacks of flour, the violinmaker’s supplies of wood, even the instruments he was working on and several finished instruments awaiting collection.
The violin-maker protested bitterly at them taking the finished and nearly-finished instruments, having put hundreds of hours of work into them, but needs must when the devil drives. The cistern wall had to be saved at any cost.
The violin-maker warned them, though, “You’ll regret taking those. It’s a very bad idea. You’ll see.”
Well, they successfully shored up the wall, and all was well until three days later, when a strong windstorm sprang up. The town was no stranger to wind storms, but this time the town square was filled with the most unearthly shrieking. It sounded like a hundred cats being skinned alive. It sounded like demons pulling each others’ fingernails out.
People leapt from their beds and ran into the square, looking around for the source of the terrible, wailing sounds. But the violin-maker walked calmly out into the middle of the square and pointed at the cistern, where the fierce wind was blowing through gaps and openings in the improvised shoring.
“See, I warned you!”, he said. ( ... )
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Pretty much everyone who pays attention to military history has heard of the story of the Navajo “code talkers” in World War II, thanks to whom the US Army had a code that the Japanese were totally unable to break. But this is not the first time the US Army has had valued assistance from the native American tribes.
Indeed, once upon a time, during some of the Indian wars in the Southwest, when the US Cavalry was fighting the Comanche, the US came to the Arapaho to ask for their help because the Army was having trouble even just finding the elusive Comanche. In response, the Arapaho chief offered the loan of three of his warriors as scouts.
“These are my three fiercest warriors,” he told the Army Major who had come to seek his help. “They will serve the Great White Father well. Let me introduce them to you.”
He called forward the first warrior, who wore a necklace of bear claws.
“This is Snarling Bear,” the chief said. “He fights the Comanche as fiercely and fearlessly as the great bear.”
The warrior stared at the Major, then inclined his head just the slightest fraction. The Major nodded, and the chief called forward the second warrior, who wore a headdress of horsehair.
“This is Leaping Horse,” the chief continued. “He pursues the Comanche as swiftly and tirelessly as our finest stallion.”
This warrior too stared at the Major, then inclined his head just slightly. The Major nodded, and the chief called forth the third warrior. This warrior wore no decoration, but had the steely gaze of a hawk and the muscles of a tiger, and walked as softly as a shadow.
“This is Running Water,” the chief said proudly. “He is the best of all my braves.” The warrior glanced in the Major’s direction, stared through him, dismissed him as though he were an insect, and returned his gaze to the horizon. The Major blinked.
“How did he get his name?” asked the Major, curiously. “Does he sweep the Comanche away like a river in flood?”
( ... )
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Looked at Dspam’s status to clear out my spam quarantine from overnight... I call your attention to the highlighted message.
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... This whole SciFi rebranding thing, and the comment about wanting to "distance the SciFi Channel from science fiction".
Well — maybe they were inspired by Fox and news.
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With considerable snippage for relative brevity:
<strega42> wow... this credit card offer is Such A Deal! <chokes>
<strega42> annual fee $114, monthly service fee $11, and 23.9% interest
<strega42> a one time $4 internet access fee
<strega42> credit fee 50% the amount of the credit.
<strega42> of course i am waiving any right to a jury trial for arbitration
<strega42> i also waive any right to a class action suit
<strega42> oh, this thing is *shiny*
<strega42> First Premier Bank
<strega42> Hm. South Dakota. I should look up those state regulatory laws, and see if
there's any fine print about SD residents :-p
<Alaric> according to Deke all the real credit pirates incorporate in SD, because SD
banking laws practically allow them to seize your marriagable-age daughters as
collateral
<strega42> Really? They can have mine!
<paxed> Alaric: s/credit// and you have a lois mcmaster bujold novel in the making
(probably of the miles-series...) ;)
<paxed> and the daughters would kick butt, of course ;)
<paxed> heck, i'd read that.
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I honestly wasn't sure whether to tag this under technology or humor. I ended up settling for both. This is Icelandic blogger Smári McCarthy talking about the implosion of Microsoft's business (and Microsoft Certified partners) in Iceland. There's some great quotables, like this one:
The only important difference is that OpenOffice.org doesn’t support all of Microsoft Office’s weird macros, and it doesn’t come with a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Access, the only database software on the planet that’s better at printing mail-merged stickers than it is at storing data.
Or this one:
[...] And the MCP’s, struggling to stay topside, they go to extreme lengths to stay afloat. One Icelandic company, already embroiled in a massive antitrust scandal by way of their owners, just laid off their entire staff and offered to rehire them at deducted pay. The networking department, they said no. They weren’t going to take a pay cut.
So the management types, with Microsoft breathing down their neck on one side, and the Icelandic Competition Agency (samkeppnisráð) on the other, they think, oh shit. Oh shit. Our data hosting services department, these geeks, they’re the guys who are hauling in the real moolah. They’re selling the services, not just reselling dud licenses to software that could be free, and that at a loss. So let’s do anything we can to rehire them, let’s give them a raise.
And the hosting guys, true to their egelitarian [sic] hacker nature, they said no.
“We appreciate that you’re being skull-fucked, but we aren’t going to screw over our colleagues, our friends, by accepting your raise when they’re taking a cut. No sir, can’t do it.”
The following afternoon they were escorted out of the building by the police.
Go read. It's interesting and enlightening.
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PETA has approximately two million members.
PETA's ludicrous "sea kitten" campaign has attracted ... wait for it ... 6250 signatures.
That's a fraction over 0.3% of their own membership.
EPIC FAIL.
(Note: This screencap is actually from seakittens.org, which PETA doesn't actually own. Someone else registered it first, put the PETA "sea-kitten" site in a frame, and proceeded to have fun with it. The Omaha Steaks banner ad, for instance.)
(Screencap courtesy of elegantelbow)
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New Scientist reports that a shopper in New Zealand bought a small mailing box from the New Zealand Post to send a gift. The box was 140mm x 130mm x 25mm (inside dimensions), and bore a weight-limit warning on the outside, "Maximum weight 20kg."
. . . Which, by the way, is slightly less than twice the weight of a billet of solid osmium sized to completely fill the box. One has to wonder exactly what they're trying to warn people against shipping.
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City Crab and Seafood in New York City is releasing a 20lb lobster estimated at 140 years old. The lobster has been used as the restaurant's mascot for the past ten days, posing for photos with customers. The restaurant owner says there was never the least intention of cooking "this noble old-timer".
"George", caught off Newfoundland, will be returned to the ocean off Kennebunkport, Maine, which is a no-lobster-trapping zone.
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Those of you who haven't discovered Irregular Webcomic yet ... what are you waiting for? Really, what other webcomic in the world will teach you how James Clerk Maxwell discovered the nature of light?
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By now, I'm guessing most people have probably seen this "Dear Red States" letter from Craigslist or elsewhere.
In the same less-than-entirely-serious vein...
Dear Blue States,
We'd like to point out that in a red/blue split, most of Washington State — the entire state from the Cascades east — would stay. Sure, Seattle, Everett, Tacoma and Olympia would probably leave with you. We're OK with that. I think much of New Hampshire and Vermont would have a few words to say about you taking the entire northeast, too, and I suspect a big chunk of upstate New York and Maine would stay — especially if we can have the real Republican party back, not these ex-Democrat neocon wackos who've subverted it. You're welcome to Massachusetts, though. (And Connecticut? "Don't tread on me", my ass.)
We're so glad you're taking Hollywood. Those people are completely delusional.
Enjoy Yosemite. We get to keep the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, Yellowstone, Natural Arches, the Bonneville Salt Flats, and the Black Rock Desert. We get the Rockies, the Cascades, the Grand Tetons, the Black Hills, the Appalachians, the Adirondacks, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Smokies. You can have the Hudson River, San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound; we get to keep Cape Hatteras and the Outer Banks, Chesapeake Bay, Daytona Beach, and the Florida Keys. You get the Needles; we get Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Mountain. You get the Hollywood sign, Interstate 5, the nation's worst traffic congestion, and the smog in the Bay Area and LA; we keep Hoover Dam and Boulder Dam. You get Mount Shasta, Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens; we keep Pike's Peak, Mount McKinley, and Denali.
We get pretty much all of the beef cattle, and pretty much the entire Wheat Belt and Corn Belt. (But you can make your bread from soy flour, right? We hope you can grow enough soybeans.) You take the California fruit with you; we get to keep Georgia's (better) peaches and Florida's (better) oranges.
Sure, you get most of the domestic pot. You're welcome to it. You get to keep most of the gangbangers along with it. (You get to take the majority of the nation's crime with you, in fact. We salute your noble sacrifice.) We, on the other hand, get to keep all of that lovely Kentucky bourbon — in fact, just about all of the domestic whiskey/bourbon production — and a few 'shiners. I'm pretty certain we get the better end of that trade.
But you're bloody well welcome to Illinois. Take it and Michigan both with our blessings. Please! You get the domestic auto industry, too. We hope that works out well for you. And Washington DC! Oh, please, please take Washington DC. We'll take all of your gun-owners off your hands, if you'll just take DC. You know you want to.
(Oh, and make sure you don't accidentally leave Maryland or Delaware behind. We'll even throw in New Jersey. How's that for a deal?)
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... if you get spam with the subject line "Organize him present" and your first thought is "Yeah, but Mr. Shine? He diamond."²
[1] Of course, really we all know there is no such thing as too much Terry Pratchett.³
[2] When I mentioned it, cymrullewes' response was "Isn't he an Omnian missionary?"
[3] This footnote is just here for reasons of tradition.
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More on those Somalian pirates:
After sticky negotiations, which several people involved likened to bazaar-style haggling, a deal seemed to be close in which the pirates would be paid millions of dollars and the ship would be freed.
The pirates on the Ukrainian ship have said that after the money is paid — in American dollars and preferably in $100 bills, they will release the ship, its cargo and the 20 sailors on board.
From an initial demand of $35 million down to $8 million, and they stipulate US dollars. SMART pirates would have demanded their ransom in a currency that isn't tanking....
(Still, I suppose it's better than the Zimbabwean dollar, currently inflating at 231 million percent. No, that wasn't a typo. The Zimbabwean dollar was revalued 1000:1 on August 1 2006, then again by ten billion to one on August 1 2008. Prior to that second revaluation, a single egg cost 50 billion ZWD, and the ATM withdrawal limit was 100 billion. From 2000-2002, the Zimbabwean dollar — now referred to as the "first dollar" — traded for about 55 to the US dollar; two revaluations later, one US dollar would now buy roughly 2x1019 Zimbabwean "first dollars", or two billion "third dollars".)
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Unclear on the concept:
Yeah, that'll work really well...
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