May 2018 bring you joy and prosperity
AND MORE!
Happy New Year from Tacky Raccoons!
May 2018 bring you joy and prosperity
AND MORE!
Category: Odd
Infrasonic Hot Links
Couldn’t find anything on snoring cow omens. According to Wiki, whistling on board a sailing ship is bad luck, it’s thought to encourage the wind to increase. On ships where whistling was taboo, the cook was usually excused, because as long as he was heard whistling he wasn’t stealing food.
Goats were more sure-footed on sailing ships than cows, and ancient mariners would leave breeding pairs on remote islands to provide food for future visitors. Oh, and goats snore, too.
Famed mariner Josh Slocum was once advised to purchase carpet tacks by a merchant. He balked until the merchant explained why he needed them. They were to be scattered over the deck after dark in case pirates attempted to board the vessel undetected. The tacks were a burglar alarm, and according to Slocum, they worked.
Tacks were employed in the design of “Turtle Boats,” Korean warships of the late 1500s for similar reasons.
I’d never heard of the Beano Grenade until now.
I read in a USNI publication that 90% of intercontinental communications are via submarine cable. The same was true in 1850.
Infrasound – the frequency of fear? [h/t Carl L.]
A Mumbo Jumbo was not a niceguy.
The 17 equations that changed the course of history. Pythagoras of Samos was good, but Leonhard Euler came up with the concept of the square root of negative 1, and much more. Also, Euler is not pronounced “yū’-lər.” It’s a Swiss surname, pronounced “ōē’-dər.”
Pheeew. Jingle Bells is a racist song because of minstrel shows?
[Top image is a panel from “Ploopy The Ghost” by F.O. Alexander, ca. 1940. Franklin Osborn Alexander was the cartoonist who provided the classic graphics for the board game Monopoly.]
The .Gif Friday Post No. 516 – The Bus to Hell, Nice Throw Bro, Fish Hug & Fish Smack
One or Two Faces
“This illusion was discovered in an old photograph of two lovers sent to Archimedes’ Laboratory, a consulting group in Italy that specializes in perceptual puzzles. Gianni Sarcone, the leader of the group, saw the image pinned to the wall and, being nearsighted, thought it was a single face. After putting on his eyeglasses, he realized what he was looking at. The team then superimposed the beautiful Venetian mask over the photograph to create the final effect.”
[Image and caption found in here.]
St. Paul Winter Sports Carnival 1937
[Image found here.]
Saturday Matinee – BR5-49, The Moron Brothers & Septura
What a pretty Christmas song.
BR5-49 took their name from Hee-Haw skits featuring Junior Samples as a used car salesman who proffered BR-549 as a five-digit phone number. It was also the number of an International Trucks engine used in tractors and fire trucks and the designation meant Broad-Ring cylinder 549 cu. in. It was a powerful heavy-duty low-rev gas hog that got 3 mpg max.
Sorry, I got distracted chasing down obscure modern-day trivia. Not.
The Moron Brothers are a hoot. They sell coffee, too.
Bach’s Christmas Oratorio Suite (1734) as performed by Septura. They’re a brass septet from London who don’t know how to dress properly, so turn your head away and listen instead. They are very good.
Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukah to all.
The .Gif Friday Post No.515 – Christmas EasyTree, Robotic Reindeer & Santadrenaline
Baby, It’s Cold Outside.
Nothing Much Happened Today.
Semi Polychromatic Hot Links
Kiviaq is an Greenlandic Inuit treat: auks fermented in a bladder of sealskin. The link includes this DIY video on preparing the auks. The fermentation takes about three months. Enjoy!
One-armed man won a lumberjack competition. TRUE.
“Large raccoon” knocked out power to 9,600 in New Mexico.
[h/t Alan U.]
There are four kinds of color blindness: protanopia, dueteranopia, tritanopia and achromatopsia.
The COBLIS Color BLIndness Simulator is kinda cool.
What if a color that you perceive as blue is perceived by your friend as red, yet you both call it purple? If you were a dog, what would your favorite shade of gray be? Stoner questions are awesome.
Actually dogs can see colors, according to this, just not all colors. Humans can’t see all of them either, and some have told me so.
I just Googled “hybrid freak animal.” Now I won’t to be able to sleep for a month.
[Top image found here.]
RIP Joji Tani (1922-2017).
Born in San Pedro, California, he graduated high school in 1942. He grew up on Terminal Island, and that same year all people of Japanese ancestry were given 48 hours to evacuate to internment camps. His father was taken to North Dakota and interrogated for six months. Allowed only two suitcases per family, Joji’s family was sent to the Santa Anita racetrack, where they lived in makeshift housing among the horse stables. From 1942 to 1944 Tani’s family lived in various internment camps in California, Arkansas and Texas.
He’s the father of one of my wife’s best friends and unfortunately I never met him.
Tacky Raccoons 