Lawyers to earn higher legal aid fees for early guilty pleas
[url]http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/nov/01/lawyers-higher-legal-aid-fees-early-guilty-plea[/url]

It would seem the British government is living in your neighbourhood, or at least they are in cloud cuckoo land.

[URL="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/392295-5-surprising-benefits-from-chinas-haze-very-surprising-indeed/"]’5 Surprising Benefits from China’s Haze?’ Very Surprising Indeed[/URL][QUOTE]Below is the list of benefits Chinese people are enjoying from the increased air pollution, as summarized in an article on TeaLeafNation.com. The original list was quickly removed from CCTV due to overwhelming ridicule.

1. It unifies Chinese people.
Yes, complaining about smog is bringing Chinese people closer together.

2. It is making China more equal.
Even the filthy rich have to breathe the same filthy air. “Of course,” they can travel in their luxury cars and avoid the worst pollution in other ways, “but they are after all a minority,” and even they “have a hard time” avoiding it completely.

3. It raises citizen awareness.
“With the whole world playing up the Chinese miracle,” the pollution “reminds us that China’s status as ‘the world’s factory’ is not without a price.” It’s just a wonderful opportunity for people to realize the price of break-neck industrialization.

4. It makes Chinese people funnier.
It brings out the best in Chinese people when they are faced with deadly environmental problems like smog. The article lists some popular smog-jokes. Our favorite from the sorry lot is: “I never feel more distant from you than when were holding hands in the street —I can’t see you.”

5. The smog is making Chinese people more knowledgeable.
“Through the arguments and the jokes (about the air pollution) our knowledge of meteorology, geography, physics, chemistry, and history has progressed.” Another thing to be proud of: “English students have added words like haze and smog to their vocabulary.”

The List is Quickly Deleted

It’s hard to say what the intended effect of the list was: to actually have people see the bright side, or just to make them laugh, but it really backfired according to TeaLeafNation, which reported that “thousands of users on Sina Weibo, (China’s Twitter-like platform) have derided the effort.”

The story has disappeared from the major media outlets that had featured it, such as CCTV’s website and the state-run Xinhua, but it was too late to stop netizens from spreading it, and mocking it, far and wide on social media.[/QUOTE]

[url]http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-115[/url]

[SIZE="1"]PS - Warning! This site might consume a day of your life.[/SIZE]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;361841][URL]http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-115[/URL]

[SIZE=1]PS - Warning! This site might consume a day of your life.[/SIZE][/QUOTE]

There are a few SCP horror games, namely SCP Containment Breach.... play if you dare, I never did.

EDIT: Based on SCP-173.

According to a Fox News presenter, who doesn't allow her interviewees to contradict her on this point, not only Jesus Christ but also Santa Claus were/are white.
[URL]http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/dec/13/santa-white-jesus-white-fox-news-megyn-kelly-video[/URL]

[QUOTE=Brian-E;362051]According to a Fox News presenter, who doesn't allow her interviewees to contradict her on this point, not only Jesus Christ but also Santa Claus were/are white.
[URL]http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/dec/13/santa-white-jesus-white-fox-news-megyn-kelly-video[/URL][/QUOTE]

I am having to restrain an obscene tirade. What an ignorant, condescending piece of.....

Faux Noise Xmas party cartoon
 

[URL]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/12/1261793/-You-don-t-want-your-school-Christmas-party-to-go-like-this[/URL]

St. Nick responds for himself and Jesus
 

[QUOTE=Brian-E;362051]According to a Fox News presenter, who doesn't allow her interviewees to contradict her on this point, not only Jesus Christ but also Santa Claus were/are white.
[URL]http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/dec/13/santa-white-jesus-white-fox-news-megyn-kelly-video[/URL][/QUOTE]

[URL]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/12/1262236/--We-re-Not-White-Guys-Megyn-Kelly-By-Jesus-and-St-Nicholas[/URL]

[QUOTE] I'm not a jolly elf to a Fox News viewer. I am the freakin' bogeyman. And, I'd like to point out, so is my Nazarene buddy over here, whose birthday is coming up. Sarah Palin pretends she's ghost-writing for the guy, but she wouldn't get in a cab he was driving.
[/QUOTE]

Oh. And BTW-
[url]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/13/1262468/-War-on-Christmas-S-t-s-Getting-Weird-Edition[/url]

[QUOTE=Brian-E;362051]According to a Fox News presenter, who doesn't allow her interviewees to contradict her on this point, not only Jesus Christ but also Santa Claus were/are white.
[URL]http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/dec/13/santa-white-jesus-white-fox-news-megyn-kelly-video[/URL][/QUOTE]I wonder if Lorne Michaels/Saturday Night Live is agile enough to squeeze in a mocking re-enactment of this in tonight's live episode. They've moved quickly on current events before. They could run the exact same dialogue - unchanged; that would be the most effective and cutting. It would be timely too because SNL has been taking some heat quite recently on another ethnic diversity issue: not having any black female actors for some time. They've mentioned plans to address that and they are at least talking about it both on and off camera but they could be in a position to score a few points by highlighting this outrages Fox clip. I hope they take the opportunity. Satire is an effective form of commentary.

Not quite sure if I should laugh, or cry...
 

[URL="http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/16/1959259/exponential-algorithm-in-windows-update-slowing-xp-machines"]And they make a lot of money by doing this kind of thing....[/URL]

Shreddies underwear filters your farts
 

[url]http://www.gizmag.com/shreddies-underwear-filters-farts/29509/[/url]

Harnessing the wonders of activated charcoal seat panels. Starting at $40 and $30 for men and women respectively.

[QUOTE=chalsall;362224][URL="http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/16/1959259/exponential-algorithm-in-windows-update-slowing-xp-machines"]And they make a lot of money by doing this kind of thing....[/URL][/QUOTE]
Freaks! I banged my head against the wall last weekend for exactly this reason.... Taking ages to update a new winXP installation. You must update, otherwise the new stuff (like .net of the catalyst or misfit, which you need for mfakto) will not work, and it takes ages to update. I switched to win7_64 at the end, fed up with endless trials. I bet there is no mistake in the software, they are doing this intentionally! :razz: To force you using the new stuff..

[QUOTE=LaurV;362254]Freaks! I banged my head against the wall last weekend for exactly this reason.... Taking ages to update a new winXP installation. You must update, otherwise the new stuff (like .net of the catalyst or misfit, which you need for mfakto) will not work, and it takes ages to update. I switched to win7_64 at the end, fed up with endless trials. I bet there is no mistake in the software, they are doing this intentionally! :razz: To force you using the new stuff..[/QUOTE]They are not forcing you to use the new stuff. You have just said that you choose to use new stuff.

The original XP is just as good as it always has been.

[QUOTE=xilman;362267]They are not forcing you to use the new stuff. You have just said that you choose to use new stuff.

The original XP is just as good as it always has been.[/QUOTE]

I'd say "The original XP is just as it always has been."

Luigi

[QUOTE=ET_;362276]I'd say "The original XP is just as it always has been."[/QUOTE]Yup. Just as good and just as bad. It is what it is.

[QUOTE=only_human;362060]I wonder if Lorne Michaels/Saturday Night Live is agile enough to squeeze in a mocking re-enactment of this in tonight's live episode. They've moved quickly on current events before. They could run the exact same dialogue - unchanged; that would be the most effective and cutting. It would be timely too because SNL has been taking some heat quite recently on another ethnic diversity issue: not having any black female actors for some time. They've mentioned plans to address that and they are at least talking about it both on and off camera but they could be in a position to score a few points by highlighting this outrages Fox clip. I hope they take the opportunity. Satire is an effective form of commentary.[/QUOTE]
Just popped in to say that Christianity and racism don't automatically go hand and hand, despite what a lot of anti-Christians like to think.

There are very few outright statements that talk about Christ's appearance, so the assumption is that He looked the way people expected Him to look. So we can make guesses about His appearance, with one of the most obvious guesses being that He wasn't Caucasian.

Bus passengers disarm gunman
 

I am amazed at the instant response of the man first threatened.....EDIT: and what's with the woman fanning her hand in front of her face?

[URL]http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/dec/19/seattle-gunman-bus-passengers-cctv-video[/URL]

Protecting Elves From Highway Construction
 

Protecting Elves From Highway Construction Is A Thing In Iceland
[URL="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/31/iceland-elves-construction_n_4178150.html"]Huff Po Link[/URL]:davieddy:

Gee! Can't be too careful! :drama:

Elves might refer to retail worker hired just for the end-of-year season.

One-off fat trike attempts world record Antarctic trip
 

[url]http://www.gizmag.com/one-off-fat-trike-antarctic/30179/[/url]

[QUOTE]Last winter, polar explorer Eric Larsen attempted to become the first person to cycle to the South Pole. Continually stymied by deep, unrideable snow, Larsen fell behind schedule and was forced to abandon the attempt. This year, several others are taking up the challenge. Thirty-five year-old British adventurer Maria Leijerstam is hoping the ticket to success is a fat-tired recumbent trike built to task.[/QUOTE]

I was almost really excited when I read the following headline:

[URL="http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/12/amazon-hints-at-huge-prime-numbers-following-its-new-feature-reveals/"]Amazon hints at huge Prime numbers after news of drones & Sunday delivery[/URL]

I was really hoping they had put large swaths of their EC2 service to work running Prime95! Unfortunately, this had nothing to do with huge prime numbers. :no:

One-off fat trike attempts world record Antarctic trip -SUCCESS!
 

Good on ya, Maria! :tu:
[url]http://www.gizmag.com/south-pole-fat-trike/30245/[/url]
[QUOTE]Shortly before Christmas, we heard about 35 year-old British adventurer Maria Leijerstam's [URL="http://www.gizmag.com/one-off-fat-trike-antarctic/30179/"]planned attempt[/URL] to ride to the South Pole on a recumbent fat-tired tricycle. On December 27th at 1am GMT, she achieved that goal, becoming the first person to ever successfully cycle from the edge of the Antarctic continent to the Pole.[/QUOTE]

[URL="http://www.gizmag.com/one-off-fat-trike-antarctic/30179/"]http://www.gizmag.com/one-off-fat-tr...tarctic/30179/[/URL]

Quote:
Last winter, polar explorer Eric Larsen attempted to become the first person to cycle to the South Pole. Continually stymied by deep, unrideable snow, Larsen fell behind schedule and was forced to abandon the attempt. This year, several others are taking up the challenge. Thirty-five year-old British adventurer Maria Leijerstam is hoping the ticket to success is a fat-tired recumbent trike built to task.

got this link from slate.
yakusa, human exploitation and money, everything you love, for the new year.
[url]http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1231/Fukushima-radiation-cleanup-Send-in-the-homeless[/url]

[code]
Fukushima radiation fallout in northern Japan requires a $35 billion cleanup
that's behind schedule and lacks workers. Police say Japanese gangsters
rounded up homeless men to clean up Fukushima radiation and paid them
less than minimum wage.
[/code]

Interesting title for an op-ed piece:
[URL="http://news.yahoo.com/koch-brothers-still-trying-break-wind-op-ed-173844913.html"]The Koch Brothers Are Still Trying to Break Wind[/URL]:ick:

[URL="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/us-usa-crime-texas-woman-idUSKBN0DV1W620140515"]Texas woman, 31, arrested for posing as high school teenager[/URL]

A case of life imitating [URL="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1148204/"]art[/URL]!?

[QUOTE]A case of life imitating [URL="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1148204/"]art[/URL]!?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1966604/[/url]

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;363657]Interesting title for an op-ed piece:
[URL="http://news.yahoo.com/koch-brothers-still-trying-break-wind-op-ed-173844913.html"]The Koch Brothers Are Still Trying to Break Wind[/URL]:ick:[/QUOTE]

[quote]Given that the planet needs to transition as quickly as possible away from coal and natural gas to carbon-free energy to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, who would be against renewing wind's tax credit?[/quote]
Um, people who don't equate "carbon footprint reduction" with "wind energy is the future!" ? Just saying, that's a classic rhetorical ploy the op-ed uses there. I could similarly ask
[quote]Given that the planet needs to transition as quickly as possible away from oil to carbon-free energy to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, who would be against renewing corn ethanol's tax credit?[/quote]

=====================

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;373679][url]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1966604/[/url][/QUOTE]

And [url]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102583/[/url] ... wonder how many in this genre our readers can come up with.

[URL="http://news.yahoo.com/bosnia-flooding-triggers-landslides-unearth-mines-165826726.html"]Bosnia flooding triggers landslides, unearth mines[/URL]

[QUOTE]Beyond the immediate danger to Bosnians, any loose mines could also create an international problem if floodwaters carry the explosives downstream. Experts warned that mines could travel through [B]half[/B] of southeast Europe or get stuck in the turbines of a hydroelectric dam.[/QUOTE]

Grrr... Guess who is [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Gates"]down the river[/URL]... A bit of Murphy Law and the SE of Europe runs in the dark for a while...

Via Bruce Schneier's [URL="https://www.schneier.com/"]blog[/URL]; TrueCrypt has been burned by its author(s):[URL="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/05/truecrypt_wtf.html"][B]TrueCrypt WTF[/B][/URL][quote]I have no idea what's going on with TrueCrypt. There's a good summary of the story at [URL="http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/05/truecrypt-is-not-secure-official-sourceforge-page-abruptly-warns/"]ArsTechnica[/URL], and [URL="http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/05/28/2126249/truecrypt-website-says-to-switch-to-bitlocker"]Slashdot[/URL], [URL="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7814725"]Hacker News[/URL], and [URL="http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/26pz9b/truecrypt_development_has_ended_052814/"]Reddit[/URL] all have long comment threads. See also [URL="http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/05/true-goodbye-using-truecrypt-is-not-secure/"]Brian Krebs[/URL] and [URL="http://boingboing.net/2014/05/29/mysterious-announcement-from-t.html"]Cory Doctorow[/URL].

Speculations include a massive hack of the TrueCrypt developers, some Lavabit-like forced shutdown, and an internal power struggle within TrueCrypt. I suppose we'll have to wait and see what develops.[/quote]

Have suitcase, will travel
 

[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27636476[/url]

[QUOTE=xilman;374675][url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27636476[/url][/QUOTE]

Nice, but does it have room for [url=www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7-6nXGflec]this kind of travel accessory[/url]?

[QUOTE=ewmayer;374724]Nice, but does it have room for [url=www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7-6nXGflec]this kind of travel accessory[/url]?[/QUOTE]

A sincere question: have you ever spent any time out of the United States of America?

I would highly recommend Thailand. Very nice people -- amazing food.

[QUOTE=chalsall;374731]A sincere question: have you ever spent any time out of the United States of America?[/QUOTE]

Nearly a decade in total - but not in Thailand. Was not a US citizen until age > 20.

(Not even gonna bother with a "your point?")

[QUOTE=chalsall;374731]I would highly recommend Thailand. Very nice people -- amazing food.[/QUOTE]My parents traveled to several eastern Europe countries, and twice around the world, during the 1970s. My mother's favorite country of them all was Thailand, by far. (Dad liked them all.)

(Old news)
[URL="http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/02/prior-fart-legal-stink-up-over-iphone-flatulence-apps/"]Prior *art: legal stink-up over iPhone flatulence apps[/URL]

[URL="http://gizmodo.com/quantum-computers-still-arent-faster-than-your-average-1593365494"]Quantum Computers Are Still No Faster Than Your Average PC[/URL]

[QUOTE]The D-Wave 2 is the second commercially available quantum computer—"commercially available" if you have something like $15 million lying around. Lockheed Martin bought one that is now housed at the University of Southern California, where the current study was performed, for example, and Google bought one too.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE][URL="http://gizmodo.com/quantum-computers-still-arent-faster-than-your-average-1593365494"]Quantum Computers Are Still No Faster Than Your Average PC[/URL][/QUOTE]The first automobiles were slower than horses. The first airplanes were slower than trains.

Microsoft sells Linux computers
 

This really made me think: WTF? :shock:
[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27992439[/url]

[spoiler]Android is Linux and phones are computers these dayus[/spoiler]

[url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-student-rescued-giant-vagina-sculpture-germany]US student is rescued from giant vagina sculpture in Germany[/url]

What a weenie...

A snarkster at the site where I first saw this posted adds [i]"In defense of the student, he looks like the type who has not been anywhere near a vagina before, neither real nor a sculptured one."[/i]

[Brilliant-idea-note-to-self: Get some gullible art-loving government to pay through the, um, nose, for [i]'Gina-henge[/i] (or perhaps [i]Vag-henge[/i], where the g is pronounced like the dg in 'edge'), a large sculpture garden in form of an open circle of vagina sculptures aligned in strategic ways with sunrise and -set at various key points of the astronomical calendar.]

[url]http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/27/az-residents-at-chemtrail-hearing-were-being-sprayed-like-were-bugs-and-its-really-not-okay/[/url]


I once spent an over-night shift working with a guy who had the most brilliant interweaving of basically every major conspiracy theory and as many minor ones has could be talked about in an 8 hour shift, even to the point of totally opposite world views being expressed right after each other as completely true. He should have been on TV.

[URL="http://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality"]Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong This Whole Time?[/URL]

[QUOTE]The experiments involve an oil droplet that bounces along the surface of a liquid. The droplet gently sloshes the liquid with every bounce. At the same time, ripples from past bounces affect its course. The droplet’s interaction with its own ripples, which form what’s known as a pilot wave, causes it to exhibit behaviors previously thought to be peculiar to elementary particles — including behaviors seen as evidence that these particles are spread through space like waves, without any specific location, until they are measured.[/QUOTE]

[url]http://www.empr.com/smallpox-discovery-leads-to-government-investigation/article/360009/[/url]

PA draft board sends notices to 1800s men
 

[url]http://hexus.net/tech/news/software/72041-millennium-bug-returns-us-draft-notices-sent-men-born-1800s/[/url]

The problem arises from using two digit year numbers. :gah:

[QUOTE=kladner;378287][url]http://hexus.net/tech/news/software/72041-millennium-bug-returns-us-draft-notices-sent-men-born-1800s/[/url]

The problem arises from using two digit year numbers. :gah:[/QUOTE]

We might laugh about this now, but at the time every bit mattered. Two extra bytes would have been very expensive, and no one imagined software written and data captured "back then" would still be in use.

Although, admittedly, one might have thought that in this modern age of effectively unlimited memory and storage the datasets might have been transformed.

Stupid Programmer Error (SPE). They happen.

(As an aside, I find it interesting that the Y2K bug was often referred to as a scam by the general media after 2000.01.01 because of how many billions of dollars were spent hiring COBAL and Fortran programmers to review and fix still running code. Do a job well, and no-one notices. Do a job badly, and everyone notices.)

[url]http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm[/url]

Even 25 years ago 4 MB of RAM cost $750, or $1438 in today's USD.

[URL="http://news.yahoo.com/300-vials-labeled-influenza-dengue-found-lab-203823561.html"]300 vials labeled influenza, dengue found at lab[/URL]

[QUOTE]The same federal scientist who recently found forgotten samples of smallpox at a federal lab also uncovered over 300 additional vials, many bearing the names of highly contagious viruses and bacteria.[/QUOTE]

That is very interesting. Thanks. Any observation of nature that frees the
 

[QUOTE=science_man_88;377091][URL="http://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality"]Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong This Whole Time?[/URL][/QUOTE] Any observation of nature that frees the mind to consider alternative approachs from indoctrination may result in advances towards more complete and correct understanding and theory. Did you know all medical students had to prove Galen by demonstrating before a panel of doctors that they had correctly located, touched, and individually identified the trees of Artemis and Venus in a cadaver?

[QUOTE=chalsall;378342]... Two extra bytes...[/QUOTE]
Actually only one, at the time they used packed-BCD or packed-EBCDIC codes, and not ASCII. :razz:
(gotcha :P)

[QUOTE=LaurV;378424](gotcha :P)[/QUOTE]

You did indeed! :smile:

But I believe my point still stands. In the day, every bit counted.

Even today, many of the deep programmers around here, and elsewhere, still count every bit and every cycle as precious, while more pedestrian programmers (myself included) simply throw more hardware at the problem so we don't have to worry about such things....

[QUOTE=chalsall;378513]In the day, every bit counted.[/QUOTE]
I think another problem was that people simply thought in two-digit years, including some who ought to know better - like programmers!

I was involved in reviewing company programs for Y2K compatibility at the end of the 1990s. The worst example I found was a then-recent program, written in maybe 1995 (no problem with storage space by then), which performed a function call to the UNIX operating system to get the date and time. The programmer had only acquainted himself with the code which brought up the final two digits of the year (there was an alternative code which would have given him the full year, but he apparently didn't know that one). He was required, quite properly, to output the date with a full four-digit year. His solution was to output "19" followed by the 2-digit year passed by the operating system.:cry:

[QUOTE=Brian-E;378519]I think another problem was that people simply thought in two-digit years, including some who ought to know better - like programmers![/QUOTE]

Ah, possibly...

[QUOTE=Brian-E;378519]I was involved in reviewing company programs for Y2K compatibility at the end of the 1990s. The worst example I found was a then-recent program, written in maybe 1995 (no problem with storage space by then), which performed a function call to the UNIX operating system to get the date and time. The programmer had only acquainted himself with the code which brought up the final two digits of the year (there was an alternative code which would have given him the full year, but he apparently didn't know that one). He was required, quite properly, to output the date with a full four-digit year. His solution was to output "19" followed by the 2-digit year passed by the operating system.:cry:[/QUOTE]

Dumb be him.

You're probably referring to tm_year in the tm structure as a result of the function call to ctime()?

[QUOTE=chalsall;378521]Ah, possibly...



Dumb be him.

You're probably referring to tm_year in the tm structure as a result of the function call to ctime()?[/QUOTE]I remember monitoring sundry websites as the start of the last year of the second millennium swept round the world. A clock in New Zealand displayed the year as 19100. It had been programmed in Perl and used string concatenation (the '.' operator) instead of arithmetic addition.

Incidentally I was (a) on-call for MSFT to deal with any critical problems and (b) had been bed-ridden with influenza until the previous day.

[url]http://jezebel.com/woman-shoots-lover-for-unsatisfying-sex-1607774272[/url]

[URL="http://news.yahoo.com/air-algerie-plane-disappears-radar-093919462.html"]Air Algerie plane disappears from radar[/URL]

[QUOTE]ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — The official Algerian news agency says an Air Algerie flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers has disappeared from the radar.

APS said air navigation services lost track of the plane 50 minutes after takeoff early Thursday, last sited at 0155 GMT.[/QUOTE]

US Border Patrol Pull Guns & Detain Boy Scout Troop For Photography.
 

[url]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/23/1316003/-US-Border-Patrol-Pull-Guns-Detain-Boy-Scout-Troop-For-Photography?[/url]

Gotta watch out for them Boy Scouts!

Indeed, the War on Photography has been going for at least 6 years now:
[URL]https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/06/the_war_on_phot.html[/URL]

cyclist collides with steam roller
 

Here's something you don't see very often: [url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-28514222[/url]

Not really WTF, It's about what I expect
 

[url]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/31/1318109/-Michele-Bachmann-Obama-keeping-migrant-kids-so-U-S-can-perform-medical-experiments-on-them[/url]

[QUOTE]Rep. Michele Bachmann has a new theory about the unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America who have come in large numbers to the southern U.S. border: they are future victims of a liberal plot to use unwilling children for medical experiments.[/QUOTE]

Note the Three Stooges lineup. Louis Gohmert to the one side says that the refugee children are lying about violence in their homelands.

Genuine W.T.F.
 

[url]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/01/1318397/-Homophobic-Paranoia-In-Utah[/url]

[QUOTE]Homophones, as any English grammarian can tell you, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings — such as be and bee, through and threw, which and witch, their and there. This concept is taught early on to foreign students learning English because it can be confusing to someone whose native language does not have that feature.
But when the social-media specialist for a private Provo-based English language learning center wrote a blog explaining homophones, he was let go for creating the perception that the school promoted a gay agenda.[/QUOTE]

Bwwaaa! Ha! Even for a non-native speaker, I can't believe that some people can be such idiots! Like a commentator to that article says, dairies beware when you advertize your homogenized milk :rofl:

[url]http://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/associated_press/news/national/otter-attacks-swimmers-in-washington-river/article_27c056a2-1a38-11e4-b7a1-0017a43b2370.html[/url]

Unrelated: [url]http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenkusek/2014/08/02/marijuana-ad-in-the-nyts/[/url]

US police detain giant tortoise after brief chase
 

[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28635902[/url]

Git around, git around, I git around
 

[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-28638586[/url]

[URL="http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/magnitude-45-earthquake-strikes-hawaii/33535/"]Magnitude 4.5 earthquake strikes Hawaii[/URL]

[QUOTE]Meanwhile, Hawaii is preparing to take its first direct hurricane hit in 22 years. A rare hurricane warning has been issued for the main Hawaiian Islands, the first time since Hurricane Fernanda in 1993.[/QUOTE]

Mother charged after son sets himself on fire for Facebook video
 

[url]http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/12/us-usa-north-carolina-fire-idUSKBN0GC18A20140812[/url]

Suggestion for better headline: "Latest crop of Darwin Award candidates shows that evolution really does work!"

[QUOTE=ewmayer;380314][URL]http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/12/us-usa-north-carolina-fire-idUSKBN0GC18A20140812[/URL]

Suggestion for better headline: "Latest crop of [U]Darwin Award [/U]candidates shows that evolution really does work!"[/QUOTE]

This statement would only really apply if the boy had rendered his genitals inoperative.

[QUOTE=kladner;380316]This statement would only really apply if the boy had rendered his genitals inoperative.[/QUOTE]

No, that is the key point - evolution only requires "adverse effects on fecundity" to be reliably (in the large-sample-size sense) correlated with dumbassedness. While the "instantly fatal" incident variety is generally highlighted by the DA citations, evolution requires no such binary effect to do its thing.

In the above case, one hopes that burn scarring (and possibly the existence of a damning "dumbass" video clip to supplement the news story) will reduce the odds of the guy quickly finding a mate and thus having fewer offspring than he would have absent the dumbassery.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;380314][url]http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/12/us-usa-north-carolina-fire-idUSKBN0GC18A20140812[/url]

Suggestion for better headline: "Latest crop of Darwin Award candidates shows that evolution really does work!"[/QUOTE]
Seems like there was a faulty selection of fuels.:furious:

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;380323]Seems like there was a faulty selection of fuels.:furious:[/QUOTE]

Failure to do due diligence (heh, i said "doo doo") is a valid evolutionary selection metric, wouldn't you say?
[i]
p.s. to my pvs post - this is more "math" than "wtf?", but just to illustrate the extent to which tiny changes can have dramatic effects in this arena:

It's by now pretty well established that "invading" modern humans (call the species H) coexisted with the indigenous Neandertals (call this species N) in what is now Europe for on the order of 20000 years (please no quibble about the precise value, we're only interested in ballpark estimates here). Let us say for 1000 generations, and let's assume the initial N/H ratio was 100:1, and ignore further migrations for simplicity.

Question: What H/N fecundity ratio (roughly, average #offspring surviving to adulthood) is needed to completely flip the population ratios over 1000 generations (assume same average reproductive age for both species, again for purposes of illustration), i.e. for the humans to out-reproduce the Neandertals by a factor of 10000x?

Answer: [spoiler]Less than 1%. (More precisely, solve for A in (1+A)^1000 = 10000.)[/spoiler]

In other words, the extinction of the Neandertals as a species - as opposed to the genetic imprint left in modern Europeans by interbreeding, which appears to have been of benefit to the humans via a kit of "cold weather survival" genes - was likely so gradual that neither species noticed the ongoing populational shift, except perhaps in anecdotal "damn humans - couple decades ago there were just a handful, now they're everywhere" terms which likely had more to do with regional migrations than fecundity advantages.[/i]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;380325]Failure to do due diligence (heh, i said "doo doo") is a valid evolutionary selection metric, wouldn't you say?
[i]
p.s. to my pvs post - this is more "math" than "wtf?", but just to illustrate the extent to which tiny changes can have dramatic effects in this arena:

It's by now pretty well established that "invading" modern humans (call the species H) coexisted with the indigenous Neandertals (call this species N) in what is now Europe for on the order of 20000 years (please no quibble about the precise value, we're only interested in ballpark estimates here). Let us say for 1000 generations, and let's assume the initial N/H ratio was 100:1, and ignore further migrations for simplicity.

Question: What H/N fecundity ratio (roughly, average #offspring surviving to adulthood) is needed to completely flip the population ratios over 1000 generations (assume same average reproductive age for both species, again for purposes of illustration), i.e. for the humans to out-reproduce the Neandertals by a factor of 10000x?

Answer: [spoiler]Less than 1%. (More precisely, solve for A in (1+A)^1000 = 10000.)[/spoiler]

In other words, the extinction of the Neandertals as a species - as opposed to the genetic imprint left in modern Europeans by interbreeding, which appears to have been of benefit to the humans via a kit of "cold weather survival" genes - was likely so gradual that neither species noticed the ongoing populational shift, except perhaps in anecdotal "damn humans - couple decades ago there were just a handful, now they're everywhere" terms which likely had more to do with regional migrations than fecundity advantages.[/i][/QUOTE]

Ted Kosmatka, "N-words", 2008.

Although this is not exactly wacky news, I am troubled by the riots in Missouri .
Racial tensions still exist in the USA
Regards
Matt

[QUOTE=MattcAnderson;380834]Although this is not exactly wacky news, I am troubled by the riots in Missouri .
Racial tensions still exist in the USA
Regards
Matt[/QUOTE]It sucks. We fight and hunt in tribes and packs, bleat in our cities and are slavishly devoted to queens of social media. Us versus them is as primary as an infant's ability to uniquely recognize mommy.

We accomplish so much and have good ideals but lie to ourselves too much and even organize that lying in our civics classes. We have thin veneers very slowly accreted over ubiquitous ugliness and I am ever dismayed when we dismiss or discount that veneer as we have in our recent forays into torture justification.

[URL]http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/08/18/private-autopsy-on-michael-brown-reveals-that-was-shot-six-times-report-says/[/URL]

Thread about this in Soap Box. Details there, but two underreported aspects:

[1] The police shooting and overall thuggery in Ferguson may have more (or at least as much) to do with class warfare as it does with race.

[2] The massive (and ongoing) militarization of local police forces is a "happy side effect" of the U.S.' now-institutionalized "permanent war on terrorism (however the PTB choose to define it, natch)" all around the globe. It is increasingly clear that the aim of the GWOT is *not* to "win it", but to keep it going - via endless meddling abroad in a series of regional conflicts, many largely or entirely fomented by the U.S.[sup]*[/sup], in order to keep increasing the wealth and power of those involved in the waging. Keeping the domestic populace in a permanent state of "fear of terror" so as to cow them into accepting such state thuggery and continued erosion of their civil liberties is a key part of this dynamic.

([sup]*[/sup]Recent examples: ouster of a by-then-quite-compliant Gaddafi in Libya, false-flag gas-attack in Syria by U.S.-supported "moderate rebels" many of whom are now running amok as the decidedly-not-so-moderate ISIS in Iraq, coup in Ukraine. And someone remind me - whatever happened to those black boxes from flight MH17? Or the tapes of the comms. between the flight crew and Kiev air traffic control? Or that "mountain of evidence implicating Russia" alleged by US/UK? After all the noisy saber-rattling in the weeks following the crash, the absolute silence since then strikes me as ... odd. And I can't help being reminded of a very similarly orchestrated western-media campaign last year following the Syrian gas attack. When that failed to produce an immediate consensus for "humanitarian intervention", all of a sudden, silence. We had to wait for the non-MSM - specifically the London Review of Books - for the [url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line]inside story[/url] there, which also sheds some light on what the attack of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was really about. Hint: It has to do with the arming of those "moderate rebels" in Syria.)

[url=www.theweek.co.uk/us/59766/utah-teacher-fired-after-homophone-blog]Utah teacher fired after homophone blog[/url]: [i]Social media strategist lost job in Utah because school 'didn't want to be linked with homosexuality'[/i]

Next up: Man accused of racist hate crime after calling tightwad friend a "niggard".

[QUOTE=ewmayer;381720]Next up: Man accused of racist hate crime after calling tightwad friend a "niggard".[/QUOTE]

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22[/url]

[QUOTE=axn;381723][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22[/url][/QUOTE]

Thanks - I was too lazy to dig, but was reasonably certain that such analphabetism-fueled "incidents" had to have occurred. Props to NAACP head Julian Bond on expressing more or less my belief on the matter. (Though in spoken English I agree one should be careful due to the near-homophonism involved. But many of the collected incidents relate to literary, i.e. written, uses of the word.)

The second wiki-cited incident (UWis) is firmly in the "ironies abound" genre (boldface is mine):
[quote]Shortly after the Washington incident, another controversy erupted over the use of the word at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. At a February 1999 meeting of the Faculty Senate, Amelia Rideau, [b]a junior English major[/b] and vice chairwoman of the Black Student Union told the group how a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word [i]niggardly[/i]. She later said she was unaware of the related Washington, D.C. controversy that came to light just the week before. She said the professor continued to use the word even after she told him that she was offended. "I was in tears, shaking," she told the faculty. "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid."[9][/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;381720][URL="http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/59766/utah-teacher-fired-after-homophone-blog"]Utah teacher fired after homophone blog[/URL]: [I]Social media strategist lost job in Utah because school 'didn't want to be linked with homosexuality'[/I]

Next up: Man accused of racist hate crime after calling tightwad friend a "niggard".[/QUOTE]
I find the similarities between the problems with the words "homophone" and "niggardly" quite witty, but I feel compelled to note two aspects of the "homophone" incident which are not relevant in the "niggardly" incidents in the article linked by axn:

- Even if the teacher had been referring to homosexuality in his language teaching, the school would have been completely out of order in taking issue with it. I hope that that statement is (no longer) controversial here and that it doesn't require the Soap Box to make it.

- What an astonishing self-referencing theme this incident has! Presumably the teacher's blog was more or less about the very type of language misunderstandings which the school then itself displayed and used as a reason to fire him!

@Brian:

Another amusing/bizarre twist in the first "niggard" incident mention on the Wikipage is that there might not have been any appreciable backlash against the inanity/injustice except for the gay community:
[quote]On January 15, 1999, David Howard, a white aide to Anthony A. Williams, the black mayor of Washington, D.C., used "niggardly" in reference to a budget.[2] This apparently upset one of his black colleagues (identified by Howard as Marshall Brown), who misinterpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. As a result, on January 25 Howard tendered his resignation, and Williams accepted it.[3] However, after pressure from the gay community (of which Howard was a member) an internal review into the matter was brought about, and the mayor offered Howard the chance to return to his position as Office of the Public Advocate on February 4. Howard refused but accepted another position with the mayor instead, insisting that he did not feel victimized by the incident. On the contrary, Howard felt that he had learned from the situation. "I used to think it would be great if we could all be colorblind. That's naïve, especially for a white person, because a white person can't afford to be colorblind. They don't have to think about race every day. An African American does."[3][/quote]
With all due respect, I believe Mr. Howard is being overly deferential to the analphabetic PC morons who victimized him -- and who should have instantly backed down as soon as it was clear that Howard was using the word "niggard" and not "nigger". His last quote above implies that to be "colorblind" a person must abandon usage of perfectly innocuous English words which happen to sound similar to "bad words" when spoken.

What, next time I ask for shiitake mushrooms at the store I'm gonna get escorted out for saying "shit", and kowtow to the morons by blathering about "a shiitake eater can't afford to be swear-word-blind?" Bloody ridiculous.

In the above case, the mayor is the one who should have resigned.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;381764]

What, next time I ask for shiitake mushrooms at the store I'm gonna get escorted out for saying "shit", and kowtow to the morons by blathering about "a shiitake eater can't afford to be swear-word-blind?" Bloody ridiculous.
[/QUOTE]

What about all the place names in the UK incorporating "swear-words", such as Cockermouth, Scunthorpe, Shitterton (Devon) and Shittington (Bedfordshire), or not-so-swearing words, such as Penistone and Pratt's Bottom (this one is not too far from me)? Are we going to have to change them because people can't see sense?

At least the various [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane"]Gropecunte Lane[/URL]s were renamed some time ago.

[QUOTE=BudgieJane;381766]What about all the place names in the UK incorporating "swear-words", such as Cockermouth, Scunthorpe, Shitterton (Devon) and Shittington (Bedfordshire), or not-so-swearing words, such as Penistone and Pratt's Bottom (this one is not too far from me)? Are we going to have to change them because people can't see sense?[/QUOTE]Yes, of course. We should always pander to the sensitivities of those people that want to get offended by anything and everything and then demand action to punish the offenders. Naturally it is always the other people that are to blame and not those sensitive little snowflakes that hear and read such disgusting words. So let's all make a pact to never use such words ever again in order to avoid corrupting those morally pure little princes and princesses. And then everything will be right in the world. Yay. :rolleyes:

I seem to recall an entire "funny place names" thread on the forum some years back, too lazy to dig it out, but thanks for the reminder. :)

Said thread may have even started with - but definitely included, in any event - a place name from my country of birth: The lovely little town of Fuck, Austria. (Pronounced "fook".)

[QUOTE=Brian-E;381733]I find the similarities between the problems with the words "homophone" and "niggardly" quite witty[SNIP][/QUOTE]

A girl I knew in my high school years once outraged a teacher by saying "Stop being such a dastard."

[QUOTE=ewmayer;381773]I seem to recall an entire "funny place names" thread on the forum some years back, too lazy to dig it out, but thanks for the reminder. :)

Said thread may have even started with - but definitely included, in any event - a place name from my country of birth: The lovely little town of Fuck, Austria. (Pronounced "fook".)[/QUOTE]

I think you mean [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria]Fucking, Austria[/url]. It's on my bucket list of places to visit ;)

[Christopher Walken Voice]I think, you, mean, [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria"]Fucking, Austria[/URL].[/Christopher Walken Voice]

[QUOTE=Mark Rose;381841]I think you mean [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria]Fucking, Austria[/url]. It's on my bucket list of places to visit ;)[/QUOTE]

Fucking right I do. [makeshituponthespot]It used to be just "Fuck", though, until it "ing-corporated" a few years back.[/makeshituponthespot]

I always imagine it being said by Ozzy Osbourne.

[url=www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/03/us-usa-washington-baristas-idUSKBN0GY08020140903]'Java Juggs' coffee-stand brothel operator pleads guilty[/url]

Sounds like blatant state interference with free-market capitalism to me. (But seriously, driving the world's oldest profession underground tends to lead to worse outcomes than those afforded by tolerating the above kind of thing).

As Gregory House might say, "coffee ... boobies ... consenting adults ... where's the problem?"

[QUOTE=ewmayer;382059]As Gregory House might say, "coffee ... boobies ... consenting adults ... where's the problem?"[/QUOTE]Maybe something like this?
[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants"]MickyDee's Coffee causes horrible burns.[/URL]
An ex-coworker had something similar happen, it involved preparing tea and for a bath in the incorrect order and an unfortunate spill.

Round here we have a festival in May called Toad Suck Daze. The origins of the name Toad Suck are debatable(probably a mispronunciation of a French word meaning a narrow point in a river) but it definitely isn't a reference to getting high by licking certain species of toad.

Despite this, kids who go to other schools with the festival's t-shirts on are sometimes forced to change or wear their shirt inside out. Kind of ironic when you consider how popular Christianity is here in Conway. Most residents would definitely disapprove of getting high this way, but also realize it's just an unfortunate coincidence with the name. When you go to the festival, there's no indication whatsoever of the alternate meaning of the term, and I'm sure people have been discouraged for making jokes about it to their friends. This didn't stop a certain talk show host from making our town the butt of his jokes years back. Can't think of his name though, he's the one that pretends like the audience doesn't understand if the joke doesn't get a big laugh.

[URL]http://nos.nl/artikel/698277-jager-die-zwijnen-afschoot-zat-fout.html[/URL]

No English language version available to my knowledge, but I find it so ridiculous that I'll summarize it here.

This Sunday morning we were treated to the distressing news that eight wild boars had been successfully rescued from water, from which they could not get out by themselves, by the fire brigade, but had then - before the very eyes of those fire brigade heroes and to their amazement - immediately been shot dead one after another by an official hunter of the local authority. Apparently this shooting is required by law when wild boars stray from their official parks in order to prevent infection of cattle (with swine fever for example), damage to crops and gardens, and in the interests of traffic safety.

Now we read the above article whose title reads "Hunter who shot the boars was in the wrong". The article quotes the provincial authority as stating that the hunter would have been perfectly correct to shoot the just-saved wild boars normally, but not on a Sunday when such shooting is forbidden.

Vaguely related: [url]http://www.arkansas.gov/abof/pdfs/ABRF_hogs_jrushing.pdf[/url]

.

I sure lived up to the title of this thread when I saw those objects presented as food.