Tag: miscellanea

Treading on Hot Links

Understanding Curling.

WWII in Tennessee [via].

“Free the Glutens. They’ve never had a country of their own.” Nick Clooney won’t sit next to Tom Waits on Letterman.

Headlights.

Dis is da Star Spangled Banner, mon.

Theme touring is a great idea, and these folks call them Pop Scavenger Hunts, like chasing down classic Monopoly gameboard pieces.

In my roadtrip days, I stayed off the Interstate as much as possible and found some fun stuff, like Loretta Lynn’s Country Kitchen and Museum. The food was country fried everything, and the museum was a room that displayed dresses Loretta Lynn wore at the Grand Ol’ Opry.

See Rock City.

See Ruby Falls.

Always stop for pecan logs at Stucky’s.

If you’re heading north or south through Tennessee, don’t miss the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg. Best tour ever.

Oh man. Not sure if this is bad news, or what.

[Top image: Black Panther‘s little brother found here.]

Chinese Year of The Hot Links

Exhaust system enhancement [found here via here].

If you give bees cocaine, they dance more vigorously and tend to overestimate how much pollen they’ve foraged according to this article. Why anyone needs to know how cocaine affects bee behavior (or why anyone would pay for such a study) is a puzzle.

This is my new favorite song. Oh wait. It’s this one. Oh wait…

I think she likes me.

The missus and I just watched “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon.” Excellent documentary from 2015. Here’s the trailer. So many flashbacks and clips took me back to my college childhood when nobody could afford a subscription, yet everyone had the latest issue.

Triboluminescence is an optical phenomenon in which light is generated through the breaking of chemical bonds in a material when it is pulled apart, ripped, scratched, crushed, or rubbed.

Man shoots Wintergreen Lifesavers with a pellet gun, creates triboluminescence, records it at 28,000 frames per second [via].

Static electricity fun: Trooch and I did this in college. When the winter humidity is down and even touching a door knob gives you a zap, get a fluorescent tube, turn off the lights. With a buddy holding the other end of the tube, start shuffling feet on the carpet. The tube will flash intermittently, and the stoners will go, “Whoa…. dude…”

TRUE. In 1504, Christopher Columbus thwarted a mutiny and saved himself and the lives of his crew by perpetrating a hoax [via].

This coconut crab commentary amused me.

How to annoy and frustrate students in 10 minutes. Imagine having to sit through an hour of that every day.

2018 is the Chinese Year of the Dog, also the Chinese Year of the Earth Dog and is also the Chinese Year of the Yang Earth Dog. Woof.

[Top image: Some time ago our friends adopted a one-eyed dog from a shelter, named him Popeye, then realized he was a she and renamed her Poppie. She’s now blind and deaf and bumps into things, kind of like a canine Roomba. h/t Alan & Clem]

Kim Jong Un’s Sister Isn’t Hot Links

From the “I Can’t Wait To Cite This” Department: Section A404 of the 2016 CEBC is titled “PRESCRIPTIVE MEASURES FOR WEAK STORY.”

The history of the Lally Column.

“You ain’t usin’ dis car tonight.“

This has something to do with college football. No idea what, but it does.

Very cool macro photography of bug faces.

Graphic comparison of some of the world’s notable bridges.

Extreme G-Forces can knock you out cold.

Family members say Mouzon was going into the National Guard in August [2016] and Campbell had joined the Navy. “These kids are not awful terrible kids.” Yeah, Right.

The Nudifier is the perfect ap if you want to pretend to be flashing the crowds during Mardi Gras.

“The shadow dissolved into vapors. The stench increased.” Ten creepiest two-sentence stories are creepy.

A placebo thermostat does nothing, but the person who adjusts it hears the noise of hissing or a fan running and consequently feels more content.

Kim Jong Un’s sister looks a lot like Kim Jong Un. Oh wait. That’s the brother who was assassinated.

According to CNN: “While military service for women has long been voluntary, it was reportedly made mandatory recently in a bid to bolster the armed forces.” Inside North Korea is not a CNN porno movie as far as you know, and yeah, she’s got a skin infection.

Military Parade: 1st Marine Band at Disneyland, Veterans’ Day 2014.

[Top image: Blinky Bill, found here.]

Super Bowl XXXXXII Hot Links

Yeah, I know it’s LII in Roman numerals, but the more Xes in a heading, along with the word “hot,” the more blog traffic. It’s kinda like deliberately posting an innocent descriptive just to see what happens. For example, “Lesbian Amputee Dwarf Porn” is holding steady as our 17th most popular post ever. Go figure. 😀

Things like this make me smile.

It’s all goats and mirrors.

How to make a hand axe to make a celtic axe to build a thatched hut.

Here’s what happens when you have a 70% off Nutella sale in France.

There’s a name for that nocturnal dance. It’s called the Hypnic Jerk.

Young orangutan cracks up at magic trick [via].

This idiot should be arrested for vandalism.

Emerson Quillin.

Get ready to puke. I just discovered that there is a puppy font.

What is the oldest surviving Hollywood film logo? Take a guess before you click. Here’s a big hint.

[Top image: Philadelphia Eagles (1948) & Boston Patriots (1960) logos found here.]

You Can Keep Your Doctor Hot Links

Never heard the term Crip walk until today. Apparently it could get you killed if you did it in some neighborhoods and you’re not a Crip.

Here’s a tutorial on how to Crip walk from the UK. Here’s what it looks like in action.

A McDonald’s Chicken Nugget Commercial (2007?) features Ronald McDonald Crip walking.

The Creighton Family produced many Creightons.

This is what you get if you Google “Dog General Green.”

Godzilla stalks, but

Celery Stalks at Midnight.

Alligator nose. “It is very, very abnormal” but “it is not abnormal.” Alligators “know they have to breathe.” Brilliant commentary [via].

The animals are experiencing brumation, a process cold-blooded animals go through that lowers their metabolism so they can survive cold climates, similar to warm-blooded mammals’ hibernation. “It is very, very abnormal for southeastern North Carolina, […] It is not abnormal for the [the alligators] to do this because they know they have to breathe.”

Weathercam photobomb amused me. Related post here.

Home Security for only $1.25. It permits ventilation, too. Guess what it is.

Who’s Your Doppelganger in Museum Portraits?  [UPDATE: Here’s a privacy warning.]

[Top image from here.]

 

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.”

The Catbird Seat.

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.]

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.

Some Assembly Required Hot Links

Here’s a nice collection of jazz artists with short bios.

Singer, songwriter, performer and actress Norah Jones was born Geetali Norah Shankar. Her half-sister is Anoushka Shankar. Their father is Ravi Shankar.

See what I did there? Gonna do it again.

The French term is mèche sur le front (wick in the front) or un épi (an ear of corn); German, it’s ein Werbel (vortex or whirl); in Spanish, chavito, mechon (tuft) or remolino (swirl); In Danish, it’s hvirvel i håret (whirl in the hair); Afrikaans, kuif (crest); Polish kosmyk (strand). The English term for an unruly spiral of hair is “cowlick” and it first appeared in 1538 according to this site.

I’ve had cowlicks all my life, and in recent years the one on the right gave birth to another that migrated to the left side of my forehead. Now I have Dagwood Hair.

Bob McFadden provided the voice for Dagwood Bumstead in a forgettable cartoon, and had a successful career as a voice actor. He also worked with Rod McKuen (credited as “Dor”) to record the classic song “Beat Generation” in 1959, covered in 1980 by Richard Hell & The Voidoids (“Blank Generation“) and re-covered in 1986 by The Beat Farmers.

Tommy Smothers nailed Johnny Carson.

Here’s what’s happening in Japan.

[Top image found here.]

 

 

Spontaneously Mutating Hot Links

Smell the bird.

The Weasel War Dance is a colloquial term for a behavior of excited ferrets and weasels.

The Russian Revolution occurred 100 years ago. “Harsh Realities of 1917 Revolution in Paintings of a Petrograd Police Officer” captures some of it.

North Korean defectors speak. Read between the lines because a lot is understated (by necessity). If these defectors’ identities are ever revealed, three generations of their families would suffer punishment.

“During planting and harvest season, we would wake up at 4 a.m. and walk three hours to reach the farmland. We’d take a little break for lunch or a snack, then work until 8 p.m. before walking home again. Doing the weeding was the hardest because we had to get rid of them by hand. And we’d buy beans from the market and make tofu that we’d sell from our house. Our profit was less than 5,000 won [60 cents at the black market rate] a day. But because the bean price fluctuates, sometimes we were left with nothing at all.”
Farmer from Hoeryong, escaped 2014.

“Who was America’s first President?” The answer is obvious.

New technology allows you to swing through a waterfall without getting wet.

The National Lampoon Suicide Hotline.

The Reuben Hair Shift.

Germany is No. 3 for internet domain name ownership by country.

Before I die I want to see Rome.

[Top image from here. h/t Alan U.]

Dark Side of the Hot Links

R.I.P. Malcom Young 1953-2017.

The horse knew what it was doing. One tried to pull that old trick on me when I was a kid, but I saw it coming and ducked.

Questions for stoners to ponder:

“What if nothing didn’t exist?”
“Where did barn owls live before barns?”
“What if there were no hypothetical questions?”

There’s a critter under the sink in the kitchen.

Wife: “I just got stung by a jellyfish! Quick, pee on it!”
Me: [peeing on jellyfish] “This is for stinging my wife!”

Regarding Windows 10: No sherlock, Shinola.

This article states,”Females are the victims of one-third of all sexual abuse cases committed by prison staff.”  Now about the other two-thirds…

According to Table 13 of the DOJ report Sexual Victimization Reported by Adult Correctional Authorities, 2009–11: There were 1,226 substantiated incidents of staff-on-inmate sexual abuse. Of the perpetrators, 51.5% were male, 48.5% female. Statistically even. Of the victims, about a third of males and two thirds of females were accosted by male staff, while 92.7% of male victims were accosted by female staff. Note also that  during this period, staff-on-inmate vs. inmate-on-inmate incidents were approximately equal – 49% to 51%. [h/t Needull]

Chaotic Pendulum is chaotic.
It’s the source of the top images. (Meerkats. They’re everywhere. Cutesy little weasel-lookin’ standy-uppy bastards.)