Things that make you go "Hmmmm…"

[kladner]

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-32121732

BBC Trending spoke to Sağırlı - now working in Tanzania - to confirm the origins of the picture. The child is in fact not a boy, but a four-year-old girl, Hudea. The image was taken at the Atmeh refugee camp in Syria, in December last year. She travelled to the camp - near the Turkish border - with her mother and two siblings. It is some 150 km from their home in Hama.

"I was using a telephoto lens, and she thought it was a weapon," says Sağırlı. "İ realised she was terrified after I took it, and looked at the picture, because she bit her lips and raised her hands. Normally kids run away, hide their faces or smile when they see a camera."

The picture below is far better than the one which made it to the BBC. H/T to DKos.

[retina]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gm12xViwRM

Why does it work?

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by retina

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gm12xViwRM

Why does it work?

https://youtu.be/0Uqf71muwWc

Short version: The water in your brain moves in phase with the electromagnetic waves of the key fob, amplifying it. A gallon of water next to it will do the same thing.

[Batalov]

Then it would work even better if one used one's stomach. I am compelled to go to the parking lot and try it! ;-)

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by Batalov

Then it would work even better if one used one's stomach. I am compelled to go to the parking lot and try it! ;-)

Please don't. You possibly had a burrito today... Farts setting off the burglar alarm in the car do not count, and gas in the stomach changes the resonance. (That's meant to be funny.)

[Batalov]

Hey, that's what parking lots are for, really.
Show me a person who don't fart silently on their way to the car, and I will show you a liar. :-)

But no, I had sushi today. Love it!

[retina]

Originally Posted by Batalov

Show me a person who don't fart silently on their way to the car, and I will show you a liar. :-)

I don't. I fart loudly. Don't be so shy about your farts. Be proud and bold, and make sure everyone knows you're what you're doing.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Batalov

Then it would work even better if one used one's stomach. I am compelled to go to the parking lot and try it! ;-)

Ya gotta be careful when your body unwittingly becomes part of the physics experiment -- snip from Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb detailing a near-disaster Otto Frisch (nephew of Lise Meitner) had while playing with just-subcritical U235 assemblies at Los Alamos, "tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon" as a young Richard Feynman dubbed it:

At Los Alamos in late 1944 Otto Frisch, always resourceful at invention, proposed a daring program of experiments. Enriched uranium had begun arriving on the Hill from Oak Ridge. By compounding the metal with hydrogen-rich plastic to make uranium hydride it had become possible to approach an assembly of critical mass responsive to fast as well as slow neutrons. ... Making a critical assembly involved stacking several dozen 1½-inch bars of hydride one at a time and measuring the increased neutron activity as the cubical stack approached critical mass. ... But it was impossible to assemble a complete critical mass by stacking bars; such an assembly would run away, kill its sponsors with radiation and melt down. Frisch nearly caused a runaway reaction one day by leaning too close to a naked assembly -- he called it a Lady Godiva -- that was just subcritical, allowing the hydrogen in his body to reflect back neutrons. "At that moment," he remembers, "out of the corner of my eye I saw that the little red [monitoring] lamps had stopped flickering. They appeared to be glowing continuously. The flicker had speeded up so much that it could no longer be perceived." Instantly Frisch swept his hand across the top of the assembly and knocked away some of the hydride bars. "The lamps slowed down again to a visible flicker." In two seconds he had received by the generous standards of the wartime era a full day's permissible dose of radiation.

Despite popular jokes about "nuclear" burritos and hot sauces and the memorable nether-miasmatic eruptions they inspire, let's at least try to restrain any parking-lot explosions to be of the chemical rather than the nuclear kind, shall we?

[retina]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Despite popular jokes about "nuclear" burritos and hot sauces and the memorable nether-miasmatic eruptions they inspire, let's at least try to restrain any parking-lot explosions to be of the chemical rather than the nuclear kind, shall we?

I agree. Those little milliwatt car remote thingies could cause a chain reaction in your stomach strong enough to unlock your car!

[Xyzzy]

Somewhat related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident

[only_human]

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Ruskin mailman lands gyrocopter on U.S. Capitol lawn to deliver campaign reform message to Congress

Someone inside his circle of secrecy had reported him, telling the Secret Service that Hughes was talking about committing a daring act of civil disobedience that also happened to be a federal crime.

The Secret Service won't confirm the agent's visit because there was no arrest. But Hughes says he was questioned for about 45 minutes, and he has an agent's business card. Two days later, Hughes said, the same agent showed up at the post office where Hughes works and asked more questions . He also talked to one of Hughes' colleagues with whom he had discussed his plan. The colleague told the Tampa Bay Times that he, too, answered questions. Hughes even gave the agent permission to talk to his doctor, to assure him he wasn't suicidal or homicidal.

And then, for months, nothing. That was it, Hughes said. No other questions. No other contact. So Hughes, who sees himself as a sort of showman patriot, a mix of Paul Revere and P.T. Barnum, put his plan into action.

He bought a burner cell phone and a video camera, and tested a livestream video feed from his gyrocopter ( tbtim.es/gpa). He built a website offline that explains who he is and why he's doing what he's doing. He bought $250 worth of stamps and stuffed 535 two-page letters into 535 envelopes, each addressed to a specific member of Congress:

"I'm demanding reform and declaring a voter's rebellion in a manner consistent with Jefferson's description of rights in the Declaration of Independence," he wrote in his letters. "As a member of Congress, you have three options. 1. You may pretend corruption does not exist. 2. You may pretend to oppose corruption while you sabotage reform. 3. You may actively participate in real reform."

He also learned how to fly.

Late last week, he loaded the gyrocopter onto a trailer and headed for an undisclosed location outside the nation's capital.

If you're reading this, Doug Hughes, a 61-year-old mailman from Ruskin, has taken flight. His stated intent: to buzz through the air at 45 miles per hour at about 300 feet up in an ultralight gyrocopter toward Washington, D.C., toward protected airspace, where, if his plan works, he'll land on the lawn of the United States Capitol building and deliver the mail.

Of course, Doug Hughes might be shot out of the sky. He knows this. He has thought about it day and night for more than two years, wrestling with the tiniest details of his insane plan.

"No sane person," he said, "would do what I'm doing."

He decided he wanted someone to tell his story in the event he was hurt or arrested. After the Secret Service visit, he sought out a Tampa Bay Times reporter and explained his plan and motivation. He says he has no intention of hurting anybody and that he doesn't want to be hurt either.

"I don't believe that the authorities are going to shoot down a 61-year-old mailman in a flying bicycle," he said. "I don't have any defense, okay, but I don't believe that anybody wants to personally take responsibility for the fallout."