Category: Real News

Hazard on the Pitch

Sure it’s a funny picture, but the story is anything but.

Spectacular project of Sebastian Errazuriz in 2006 (“Memorial of a Concentration Camp”, Santiago, Chile):

“A 10-meter magnolia tree is planted in the center of Chile’s National Stadium where dictator Pinochet in 1973 imprisoned thousands of political prisoners who were tortured and killed.

After planting the tree, the stadium doors are open to the public as a park, offering a space to stop, look again, and remember.

An impossible, cathartic soccer match played before 20,000 people, closes the project after a week of activity.”

[Story with more images can be found here.]

1,292 Posts = 3rd Year Blogoversary!

Wow. Didn’t think we’d still be around this long. Mostly, we didn’t think at all, just got up did it, starting on 3 August 2007, and we’ve since passed 671,000 views!

The year certainly had its highlights. We had our busiest day, 18 October 2009, with over 20,500 hits. I was invited to post on both AmyOops and The Blogmocracy. Amy’s site is kind of a cornocopia of oddness, and The Blogmocracy is more about current events where I provide innocuous fodder for the Overnight Open Thread. It’s all a lot of fun.

We opened up The Tacky Raccoons Store for TR paraphernalia. Our new FaceBook page was hacked and deleted, but it’ll be up again soon. Thanks to all who logged in.

This post is a retrospective of our past year, listing the Top 10 greatest hits of Tacky Raccoons from August 2009 to August 2010. Previous years’ greatest hits are here and here.

So here are the Top 10 of the past twelve months, with last year’s rankings separated by an appropriate slash. NR = no rating,  indicating that the post either didn’t make rank or wasn’t posted last year. Click on the images to see the original posts.

Hey Ho! Let’s go!


No 10/NR: Steampunk Rabbit Hunt


No. 9/NR: The .Gif Friday Post No. 129 – Compound Pendulum, Nematode, Cat Slide


No. 8/6: Southern California Fires –  October 2007


No. 7/NR: Bloody Mushrooms With Teeth


No. 6/NR: How to REALLY piss off a golden retriever


No. 5/9: Lesbian Amputee Dwarf Porn
[The title of this one was pure blogwhoring at its best, and it’s still paying off.]


No. 4/1: Lol Ferret Episode 1
[This was the 2nd most popular post since this blog done be borned, with over 30,6oo hits since 8 November 2007.]


No. 3/3: Giant Woolly Bear Caterpillar Discovered Near Las Cruces, NM, Predicts Global Warming for Decades to Come
[Don’t miss the comments on this one.]


No. 2/NR: Amy’s Motivational Poster Collection

AND THE NUMBER ONE POST OF THE YEAR IS:

No. 1/NR: An Expensive Ignosecond
This post got close to 21,000 hits before we realized that the pictures didn’t show an accident. Those guys knew exactly what they were doing, and they did it with precision.

Thanks gobs to all of you who joined up and stayed with us these past years, keep on clicking on. Let’s hope and pray that the results of this year’s November elections bring us all back to prosperity.  –Bunk

[Tip o’ the tarboosh to this site that produced the top image.]

Casa de Coprolite

It’s a house. It’s a very ugly house. It’s a very ugly house created for a competition by people who have no concept of aesthetics, let alone standard construction practices. Here’s a partial description justifying the brilliance of the design:

DISTRIBUTED INTELLIGENCE
Faced with the typical house model of a “box construction” made up of standard industrialized components, we chose to build a clever house with systemic logic components, rising into what we call a distributed intelligence. This means that each component of the prototype contains the same level of technology, energy, structural, etc… With this we say that the logic of all is found in each of the parts, and not vice versa.

That is, distributed intelligence can be understood as the development in fusion research systems and materials, implying a change of procedures, multi functionality in the construction field. Opening the possiblities of digital parametric design from the traditional assembly of standardized industrial components of the home-computer.

In other words, they’ve not only designed one of the ugliest dwellings ever imagined, they’ve invented a brand new lexicon to justify it. Archibabble at its worst. Phew.

To be fair, the design is clever in one respect, that the shape was generated based upon solar tracking, that is, a computer model engineered a shape that maximizes the amount of surface area that receives direct sunlight throughout the day and throughout the year, thus determining the configuration of the solar panels. Win.

Unfortunately, the maximum efficiency is compromised by site orientation, its global latitude, and, um, unpredictable cloud cover. And it’s ugly. Fail.

[More info and images here via here.]

Practical Geometry


Steamboat McGoo found this excellent study illustrating the importance of understanding basic geometry. Although the explanation is in Japanese, it’s of critical importance that angle TQS is equal to angle AQE in order to cause the schoolboy’s jaw to drop.

There’s a pun in there somewhere about an extra riser, but I’m not gonna go there.

[Whoa. Just found the source of that excellence. There are a series of  Manga textbooks, and they’re available in other languages including Portuguese. Tip o’ the tarboosh to mars for the update.]

TR Facebook Page Wanders Off, Missing Since Sunday, Authorities Have No Leads

Folks,

For some reason the Tacky Raccoons FaceBook page mysteriously vaporized. It’s possible that the password was hacked, but more likely I clicked on it and spooked it myself. Thanks to all of you who dropped by and linked to it, left comments, and we’ll have a new one up soon.

Bunk

Saturday Matinee – Dinocuts, Wanda Jackson, Louis Prima & Betty Boop, Spotniks and Ricky Skaggs

Awesome marketing concept, but it targets the wrong people, unless you’re into shrinkwrap. Nice appropriate soundtrack, though.

Wanda Jackson! Who says women can’t do rockabilly?

Whoever did this Betty Boop / Louis Prima mashup gets a hat tip from me.  Whoa. Hold on there. Looks like it’s time for some Spotniks!

Yep. The Spotnik’s Theme from 1963, a band from the UK, sounding an awful lot like lots of other bands from 1963.

Let’s wrap this up with some awesome gospel from Ricky Skaggs, the greatest mandolin player since Bill Monroe. Have a great weekend folks. See you back here tomorrow.

Dog Studies

The book Bowser’s boning up on? Cruft’s Working & Pastoral. Big test coming up in March 2011. Woof.

[Image found here.]

Cease and Desist

Recently, Snork emailed me a .jpg image of the infamous Unicorn Meat (as shown below left). Here is the full advertisement from Think Geek:

The Unicorn Meat advert went semi-viral after it was posted on April Fools’ Day this year. But there’s an update to the innocent prank.

I’d never heard of the National Pork Board, but apparently they sniffed out a clear case of trademark infringement. On 5 May 2010, the international law firm of Faegre & Benson faxed the owners of the Think Geek website a 12-page letter, excerpted below.

“This law firm represents National Pork Board in connection with its intellectual property rights.

We are writing to you in connection with your activities at the website http://www.thinkgeek.com, wherein you have been marketing a product called “Radiant Farms Canned Unicorn Meat” using the slogan “Unicorn- the new white meat.”

See, NPB owns the trademark “The Other White Meat” in the U.S., Canada, and the European Union. Unfortunately their lawyers didn’t realize that Trademark Infringement does not extend to parodies, and that unicorns don’t really exist. [Full story here, via here, and crossposted here.]

Sasquatch Sighting

[Found here.]

Hot Links of the Sarcophilus harrisii

Jack Harrison, the last survivor who participated in The Great Escape of WWII passed away on 4 June 2010. There’s an interesting interactive illustration of one of the tunnels here. [h/t to Wheels.]

Albino Raccoons.

Who is the Horseboy?

Disgusting prank is disgusting.

Awesome invention by a Ham radio afficionado that fights cancer.

Cadillacs and Album Covers here.  Two more here.

Google is getting so full of information it occasionally collapses under its own weight.

Need a chemical suit? Lookee here.

Live webcam in Amsterdam with sound here.

Speaking of sound, the Zambelli Family is awesome.

Amazing staring contest back stage at the Webby Awards. [via The Presurfer.]

What’s your American dialect? Here’s one test and here’s another.

The Sci-Fi Airshow has an online guided tour. I’m going next week. [via]