The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth. Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.
Moscow announces a reduction in its armed forces by 300,000.
1967
Over 16,000 U.S. and 14,000 Vietnamese troops start their biggest attack on the Iron Triangle, northwest of Saigon.
1987
Astronomers report sighting a new galaxy 12 billion light years away.
2001
In one of the closest Presidential elections in U.S. history, George
W. Bush was finally declared the winner of the bitterly contested 2000
Presidential elections more then five weeks after the election due to
the disputed Florida ballots.
The headline says it all: after the Belarusian dictator Alexander
Lukashenko passed a law making it illegal to clap (because dissidents
began using applause as a form of protest), his cops began rounding up
and arresting people who applauded, or stood near people who were
applauding, or thought about applauding...
Anyway, once it became clear that clapping was dissent, clappers were
rounded up. And like all thuggish regimes this one was not too
particular about who it arrested. That included Konstantin Kaplin, who
said he was convicted of "applauding in public" despite fairly
conclusive evidence of innocence: he's only got one arm. "The judge read
out the charges [and] the police affirmed that I was applauding," said
the one-armed man. "The judge looked ashamed of herself," he said, but
imposed the fine anyway.
A journalist was also quoted as saying that a deaf-mute had been charged
with "shouting antigovernment slogans," but there was no independent
confirmation of that.
You know those cool commemorative coins that the US Mint keeps issuing?
Turns out that they're a handy way for Congress to get around the ban on
porky earmarks for their home district. As reported last April in The
Foundry:
Here’s how it works: In June of last year, Rep. Peter Roksam (r-IL)
introduced legislation authorizing a commemorative coin honoring the
Lions Club, a service organization based in Oak Brook, IL – part of
Roksam’s district.
The legislation dictates that proceeds from the coin sales be used to
pay for the cost of producing the coins, but adds: “all surcharges
received by the Secretary from the sale of coins issued under this Act
shall be promptly paid by the Secretary to the Lions Clubs International
Foundation for the purposes.”
In other words, assuming the costs of production are covered, the
legislation will steer federal funds to an organization in Roksam’s home
district. No earmarks required.
There's a long list of other commemorative coins, issued at repugican instigation (the coins all seem to emanate from the House).
Silicon
Valley's startup corporate culture is noted for its downscale fashion
and manners: flip-flops, office games and casual decor. If that's the
norm, how do you handle casual Fridays? How do you impress others as a
nonconformist? By dressing up formally, often with bowties and a
tophats:
The trappings of a nonconformist workplace
were on display recently at the headquarters of a startup here named
Pulse: There was the foosball table, the containers of free M&Ms,
the bottle of whiskey on top of the fridge.
And the guys standing around in suits and ties.
It
was Friday, after all, and to truly defy conformity at some tech
outfits on that day of the week, one must not wear jeans or flip-flops.
Pulse
employees were practicing "Formal Friday," dressing in their Sunday
best. "It is kind of flipped…because we're super casual the entire
week," says Akshay Kothari, co-founder of Pulse, a startup that makes a
news-organizing app. "You want to break the monotony."
Watch a video at the link, then go buy a bolo tie for next Friday. Because bolo ties are cool.
Swimmers Below the Waves Captured in Incredible Underwater Photography
Anyone who goes to the beach is familiar with the sight of people diving
beneath the waves, but these photos offer us a more unusual perspective
– from below. More
At various moments in its life, a word will hop languages, change
meanings, travel through sinister moments and land in pleasant ones. But
no matter how many times it's superimposed, and how far it gets from
its original source, a word doesn't let go of its memories easily. Here
are 11 modern English words with socially insensitive origins.
Why is English spelling so messed up? We get the same sounds spelled
different ways (two, to, too), the same spellings pronounced different
ways (chrome, machine, attach), and extra letters all over the place
that don't even do anything (knee, gnu, pneumatic).
There aren't always good reasons for these inconsistencies, but there are reasons. Here's a brief look at the history of English spelling told through 11 words.
As early as the Greeks and Romans people have been dieting. But while it
was largely about health and fitness back then, it's the Victorians who
really kick started the fad diet. It is during this time that things
tip over into dieting more for aesthetic reasons and the diet industry
explodes.
Childhood toys lost in a war-torn field have inspired an odd-looking
invention which its young Dutch inventor hopes can help save thousands
of lives and limbs in his native Afghanistan. Decades of war, notably
the 1979-89 Soviet invasion, have left the rugged Afghan countryside
littered with landmines that continue to exact a merciless toll, mainly
on children. Now, in a small workshop in the industrial heart of the
southern city of Eindhoven, 29-year-old Massoud Hassani screws in the
last leg of an ingenious, wind-driven gadget he built to clear
anti-personnel mines. He calls the device, the size of a golf buggy, a
“mine kafon”. “The idea comes from our childhood toys which we once
played with as kids on the outskirts of Kabul,” Hassani said. Short for
“kafondan”, which in Hassani’s native Dari language means “something
that explodes”, the kafon consists of 150 bamboo legs screwed into a
central metal ball.
At the other end of each leg, a round, white plastic disk the size of a
small Frisbee is attached via a black rubber car part for drive shafts,
called a CV-joint boot. Assembled, the spherical kafon looks like a
giant tumbleweed or seed head. And like the dandelion puff it moves with
the wind: the kafon is designed to be blown around, exploding
anti-personnel mines as it rolls on the ground. With the legs made from
bamboo, they are easily replaceable. Once they are blown off it’s simply
a matter of screwing on others, which means the kafon can be used over and over. Inside
the steel ball, a GPS device plots the kafon’s path as it rolls through
an area that may be mined and shows on a computerized map exactly where
it is safe to walk. Hassini is still in the testing stages, notably to
make sure there is 100 percent contact between the kafon’s “feet” and
the ground, so no mine is missed. But initial trials showed promising
results.
“We know this is a working prototype and that we need to do lots of
testing still,” said Hassani, saying the kafon would not be deployed in
real situations until it was 100-percent proven. The designer and his
brother Mahmud, 27, are now looking for sponsors, notably through an
online platform. They hope to raise £100,000 (€123,000 $160,000 dollars) in donations by next month to
fund development and take the device to Afghanistan in August for more
trials. It will be the brothers’ first time home after fleeing
Taliban-ruled Kabul, Massoud first in 1998 then Mahmud two years later,
in arduous treks through Pakistan and Uzbekistan. They finally made
their way to the Netherlands, where they were accepted as refugees and
today hold Dutch citizenship. Massoud landed a place at the Design
Academy Eindhoven – regarded as one of the world’s foremost industrial
design schools – where he first conceived the project in 2010.
“I had to design a toy from my childhood,” he said. “I went back into my
childhood in a dream. I saw the toys we made and how they rolled into a
minefield. We could never get them back.” Despite huge progress in
mine-clearing in Afghanistan in recent years, it remains one of the
most-mined countries in the world. Since 1989, around 650,000
anti-personnel mines, 27,000 anti-tank mines and more than 15 million
other pieces of unexploded ordnance have been collected, according to
the UN-funded Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (MACCA). In
June this year, the UN said there were still 5,233 “danger zones”
covering 588 square kilometers (227 square miles) putting more than
750,000 people at risk. At least 812 people were wounded or killed last
year by mines, victim-triggered improvised explosive devices and other
ordnance left over from the Afghan wars, Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization Handicap International said. More than half of the victims
were children.
North-western North Dakota is home to the Bakken
shale formation, where fracking has led to an oil boom. Most of the
bright lights are natural gas from wells being burned because the region
lacks the infrastructure to pipe all the gas away. Gas production has
increased rapidly in recent years but 30% is flared. Image: NASA Earth
Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon
VIIRS/SUOMI
As explained at The Guardian, North Dakota is now visible from space because of the light generated by fracking-related activity.
Northwestern North Dakota is one of the least-densely populated parts
of the United States. Cities and people are scarce, but satellite
imagery shows the area has been aglow at night in recent years. The
reason: the area is home to the Bakken shale formation, a site where gas
and oil production are booming.
On November 12, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP
satellite captured this nighttime view of widespread drilling
throughout the area. Most of the bright specks are lights associated
with drilling equipment and temporary housing near drilling sites,
though a few are evidence of gas flaring. Some of the brighter areas correspond to towns and cities including Williston, Minot, and Dickinson.
The image was captured by the VIIRS “day-night band,” which detects
light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses
“smart” light sensors to observe dim signals such as gas flares,
auroras, wildfires, city lights, and reflected moonlight. When VIIRS
acquired the image, the Moon was in its waning crescent phase, so the
landscape was reflecting only a small amount of light.
Like the 'mystery' shiny thing
Curiosity spotted in October 2012, the Mars rover has discovered another
oddity lodged in a rock that mission scientists haven't yet explained. Read more
Sir David Attenborough introduces us to the fish known as the Sarcastic Fringehead.
Not only is it ugly, it's quite aggressive. And wait until you see how
it uses it's mouth! This clip is from the BBC series Life.
If
you're hungry while on the ocean floor, don't chow down on these
fellows, no matter how tasty they look. The Chromodoris annae, like many
nudibranchs, is soft, colorful and poisonous. Wildlife photographer
David Doubilet took photos of many different species. You can view more
pictures here.
Jellyfish are some of nature's most beautiful and awe-inspiring
creatures. They live in every ocean on Earth and in some bodies of
freshwater as well. Still, if you can't see jellyfish in the wild, here are some other great ways to experience them.
Japan tuna fetches record $1.7m
