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Friday, November 14, 2014

Check out this teacher's 40 years worth of pictures wearing the same clothes

I love this, but don't you wonder how this started? Maybe he accidentally wore the same thing 2 or 3 times and decided to pretend it was intentional, then kept going.

Update: Dallas News had an article on this last year:
In every school picture for the past 40 years, Dale wore the same 1970s-era polyester shirt and coffee-colored sweater.
It began as an accident — a product of his sparse wardrobe back in the day.
“I was so embarrassed when I got the school pictures back that second year and realized I had worn the very same thing as the first year,” said Dale, 63.
But his wife, Cathy, dared him to do it a third year. Then Dale thought five would be funny. “After five pictures,” he said, “it was like: ‘Why stop?’” 

via @_you had one job

Friday links

John Oliver's video report on the Salmon Cannon is the best thing you'll see all week.

Plato, Sartre, Derrida & Other Thinkers Explained With Vintage Video Games.


World's Foremost Bedpan Collector.

British border control vs the plague in 1663 may have lessons for ebola. Related, not sure how it works on ebola, but crystal meth may cure your flu (with bonus additional questionable medical advice). 


ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include the Bad Sex in Fiction award finalists, weird haircuts, fake ads from movies, and the gene that turned wildcats into housecats.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Very cool animated chart of North American butterflies


This week I made an animated chart of butterflies! These are all butterflies that you can find throughout North America, and I picked the 42 that I thought were the most colorful and unique. 
You can check out the full sized GIF here or pick up a poster for your room here :)
via It's OK To Be Smart.

John Oliver's video report on The Salmon Cannon is the best thing you'll see all week

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on HBO (wiki) is frequently (although not always) excellent - this weeks's episode is about a cannon that shoots salmon over hydroelectric dams.



As much as I like that, I think the best thing he's done (or, at least, the best thing I know of) is his report on civil forfeiture:



More at his youtube page.

Thursday links

This year's Bad Sex in Fiction award finalists (NSFW language).

Gallery of The Craziest Haircuts Ever. This is an open list, so you can add your own.

Folies Bergère: a collection of advertising posters for late 1800's music-hall cabaret shows in Paris.

Supercut video: Fake Ads in Movies.

Scientists Discover Genes That Helped Turn Fearsome Wildcats Into House Cats

A Data-Packed Map of American Immigration in 1903.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include a weird chicken-focused Chinese music video, 12 year old Christopher Walken in clown make-up, and an explanation of left-handedness.

Not sure how it works on ebola, but crystal meth may cure your flu. Bonus - more questionable medical advice

A group of scientists from the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan set out to study how methamphetamine interacts with influenza A virus in lung cells. Previous research has suggested that chronic meth abuse makes individuals more susceptible to pathogens such as HIV. The team wanted to investigate how the drug might reduce users' resistance to flu viruses.

Presumably this woman does not have the flu.
They took cultures of human lung epithelial cells, exposed them to different concentrations of meth and then infected them with an H1N1 strain of human influenza A. By 30 to 48 hours after infection, the meth-treated cells had a much lower concentration of the virus than the control group, the researchers reported. What's more, this reduction occurred in a dose-dependent manner, meaning the more meth, the less the virus reproduced.

Similar (sort of) posts:

How to Prevent Pregnancy, c. 1260 (the weasel/scorpion method), plus other dubious medical advice.

Advice from c. 530: How To Use Bacon, including for medicinal purposes such as "thick bacon, placed for a long time on all wounds, be they external or internal or caused by a blow, both cleanses any putrefaction and aids healing".



How to Stop Bleeding, 1664:
“To Stench a Bleeding Wound: Lay hogs Dung, hot from the Hog, to the Bleeding Wound.”
~Samuel Strangehopes, A Book of Knowledge in Three Parts (166[4])
Dubious medical device du jour - the prostate warmer.

Advice from 1380: How to Tell if Someone Is or Is Not Dead, with bonus Monty Python.


Urine-drinking Hindu cult believes a warm cup before sunrise straight from virgin cow cures cancer, baldness.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

This year's Bad Sex in Fiction award finalists (NSFW)

Please note that there are elements of these passages which are not safe for work (NSFW).

Per The Guardian, The Literary Review sets out to find "the most egregious passage of sexual description in a work of fiction", and describes itself as "Britain's most dreaded literary prize". Established by Auberon Waugh in 1993, its purpose is to draw attention to "perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction, and to discourage them"

BTW, my personal bad sex award would go to this spoof of cybersex from circa 1996. (also NSFW)

This year's finalists:

1. The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark

He said my name over and over as he lifted me up, my legs curled around him, and laid me down beneath him on the high bed. I had never imagined that I was capable of wanton behaviour, but it was as if a dam within me had burst and we made love that day and night like two people starved, slowly suffused with more and more pleasure, exploring and devouring every inch of each other, so as not to miss one single possibility of passion.

2. Desert God by Wilbur Smith

Her hair was piled high, but when she shook her head it came cascading down in a glowing wave over her shoulders, and fell as far as her knees. This rippling curtain did not cover her breasts which thrust their way through it like living creatures. They were perfect rounds, white as mare's milk and tipped with ruby nipples that puckered as my gaze passed over them.

Her body was hairless. Her pudenda were also entirely devoid of hair. The tips of her inner lips protruded shyly from the vertical cleft. The sweet dew of feminine arousal glistened upon them.

3. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Whatever had held them apart, whatever had restrained their bodies before, was now gone. If the earth spun it faltered, if the wind blew it waited. Hands found flesh; flesh, flesh. He felt the improbable weight of her eyelash with his own; he kissed the slight, rose-coloured trench that remained from her knicker elastic, running around her belly like the equator line circling the world. As they lost themselves in the circumnavigation of each other, there came from nearby shrill shrieks that ended in a deeper howl.

Dorrigo looked up. A large dog stood at the top of the dune. Above blood-jagged drool, its slobbery mouth clutched a twitching fairy penguin.

4. From 'DD-MM-YY' in Things to Make and Break by May-Lan Tan

She wriggles down under the blankets and pulls off my jeans and skivvies. I lie back and her hair tickles my stomach, her mouth wrapping over me. I'd forgotten this about her: she has the smallest, hottest mouth, as if she's storing lava in her cheeks. I shut my eyes, holding her hair by the roots. My bones start to liquefy.

When I'm about to come, I flip her onto her back and take off her underwear. I roll her nipple on my tongue and rub her clit with my thumb until her lips get slippery. I glide my middle finger in and out, then fold her legs up and push in. God. It's like sticking your cock into the sun.

5. The Hormone Factory by Saskia Goldschmidt

She was moaning softly now, her breath coming faster. She tasted of apples. Her soft warm flesh was driving me crazy – that dish of delight my tongue was now lapping at frenziedly. Her suppressed cries were coming faster and faster. I unbuttoned my pants, pushing them down past my hips, and my beast, finally released from its cage, sprang up wildly. I started inching my way back up, continuing to stimulate her manually, until the beast found its way in. She opened her eyes and said softly, 'I'm still a virgin, please be careful.'

I kept myself quiet for a moment, kissed her and said, "I'll be very gentle, all right?"

Running her tongue over her lips she nodded; she was as hot as boiling water in a distillation flask, and it wasn't long before I was able to really get going. We both came at the same time. I stayed inside her for a few seconds, gazed at her, and smiled.

6. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

The girls entwined themselves lithely around Tsukuru. Kuro's breasts were full and soft. Shiro's were small, but her nipples were as hard as tiny round pebbles. Their pubic hair was as wet as a rain forest. Their breath mingled with his, becoming one, like currents from far away, secretly overlapping at the dark bottom of the sea.

These insistent caresses continued until Tsukuru was inside the vagina of one of the girls. It was Shiro. She straddled him, took hold of his rigid, erect penis, and deftly guided it inside her. His penis found its way with no resistance, as if swallowed up into an airless vacuum. She took a moment, gathering her breath, then began slowly rotating her torso, as if she were drawing a complex diagram in the air, all the while twisting her hips. Her long, straight black hair swung above him, sharply, like a whip.

7. The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh

She closes her eyes. Shakes her head.

"We can't," she begins. His mouth is on hers; his tongue is jabbing around her gums, the wrinkled roof of her mouth. He pulls away a second time.

"Look at me," he says.

She looks him in the eye. She reaches out and cups his balls and squeezes gently. Nathan closes his eyes, bites his lip. Then he steps into her, furious. And when it hits her, it slams her hard and fast, as life once had.

8. The Age of Magic by Ben Okri

When his hand brushed her nipple it tripped a switch and she came alight. He touched her belly and his hand seemed to burn through her. He lavished on her body indirect touches and bitter-sweet sensations flooded her brain.

She became aware of places in her that could only have been concealed there by a god with a sense of humour. Adrift on warm currents, no longer of this world, she became aware of him gliding into her. He loved her with gentleness and strength, stroking her neck, praising her face with his hands, till she was broken up and began a low rhythmic wail. She was a little overwhelmed with being the adored focus of such power, as he rose and fell. She felt certain now that there was a heaven and that it was here, in her body. The universe was in her and with each movement it unfolded to her.

9. The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd

I continued to tell her flesh of its gifts, such pleasure, gently but insistently given, even biting her earlobe with my front teeth, sweeping her hair from her face, her neck, as she cried, and breathed less jaggedly, "It hurts, it hurts." I did not stop until it stopped hurting, until I heard pleasure articulated from her. Her throat as open as her body, wet everywhere from tears and the coming, and I did hear it, a long high twisting cry and a twisting in my arms as my fingers dove up and up into the full expressive wetness of her. Hold me, hold me. Here and here, she said after she came, placing one of my hands between her legs to press again, another over her breasts. Hold me tight.

10. The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham

They both know they have to do this quickly. He slides his dick into her. She sighs more loudly, but it's still a sigh, not a sex moan, though this time there's a soft gasp at the end. Tyler is inside her, here's the heat, the powerful wet hold, and fuck, he's about to come already. He holds off, lets his cock rest in her, lies on top, his face pressed to her cheek (he can't seem to look directly at her), until she says, 'Don't wait.'

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

He thrusts once, cautiously. He thrusts again, and he's gone, he's off into the careening nowhere. He lives for seconds in that soaring agonizing perfection. It's this, only this, he's lost to himself, he's no one, he's obliterated, there's no Tyler at all, there's only… He hears himself gasp in wonder. He falls into an ecstatic burning harmedness, losing, lost, unmade.

And is finished.

More, if you can bear it, at the Literary Review. The Guardian has a poll at the end of this article.



Monday, November 10, 2014

ICYMI - this week's must watch video is Too Many Cooks

I've seen this posted in a few places over the weekend but was too busy to invest 11 minutes in it. Allahpundit at HotAir convinced me:
This would work better as a late-night palate cleanser but I’m already late to it after it broke big online Friday, so late-afternoon it is. There are two rules to watching. One: If you have a weak stomach for gore, even amateurish gore, skip it. You’ll find it hard to believe that a warning like that is necessary when you’re three or four minutes in, but trust me. Two: You must watch to the end. A friend told me he bailed out after a minute or two, thinking he’d gotten the joke. He hadn’t. Again: Trust me.
Here’s eleven minutes of cheese and blood. It’s an act of annihilation three times over, aimed at the nostalgia all of us of a certain age feel for corny 80s TV genres — the family sitcom, the cop show, the cheap sci fi and afternoon cartoons designed to sell toys to kids.

Supercut: Fake Ads in Movies



Most of these I didn't recognize, but the youtube page fills in the blanks:
Movies used: Robocop (1987), Goodfellas, Wreck-It Ralph, Anchorman, Tropic Thunder, Jack and Jill, Jingle All the Way, Toy Story, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Serenity, Ghostbusters, Happy Gilmore, Batman (1989), Lost in Translation, Anchorman 2, Prometheus, Punch-Drunk Love, Donnie Darko, Requiem for a Dream, Talladega Nights, The Running Man, Tommy Boy, Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Truman Show, UHF, Westworld, The Wolf of Wall Street, Total Recall, Beetlejuice, Coming to America, Dodgeball, Halloween III, I Robot, Robocop 2, Starship Troopers

Monday links

This Chinese music video is the weirdest thing you'll watch all day.



Here are some 1955 photos of 12 year old Christopher Walken in clown makeup.

This Walmart has a mausoleum in the parking lot.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include a Berlin Wall photoessay, telling temperature with crickets, and the rules for (and history of) wife carrying contests.

Why Are Some People Left Handed?

From Joe Hanson at It's Okay To Be Smart.

My mom was born left-handed at a time when they trained you out of it, so she ended up largely ambidextrous, although there were still things (like scissors, easy to acquire now, but less so then) that she wished were available for southpaws. Makes you wonder why we don't teach ourselves (and our kids) to use both.

By the way, if you need a Christmas present for a left-handed person, buy them a good pair of scissors specifically made to fit that hand.




via io9, which also has this in-depth primer on left-handedness.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

This Chinese music video is the weirdest thing you'll watch all day

What does the chicken say? 

No translation of the lyrics, but, as you'll see, it doesn't matter much since it's mostly chicken (and other barnyard animal) sounds:



The famous (and definitive!) Chicken scientific study.

Lots more chicken stuff.

via Neatorama.