The Weird, Random, and Interesting things that Fit Nowhere Else Thread..

[Humanoid]

Okay, now that's a games room. I don't know whether to be impressed and jealous, or think of all the other important things they could have invested in....

 

 

 

I don't think I'd be able to use that setup, I'd be paranoid of all that gear up there falling down and crushing the rest of my stuff, or indeed, crushing *me*.

 

 

 

(Also the speakers suck )

[JadedWolf]

Another example of incompetence at work in Iraq:

 

"Iraq Counts on Magic Wands to Stop ISIS

 

Despite warnings they didn’t work, Baghdad bought $85 million worth of gadgets that supposedly detect explosives. Today, two years after the British con man who sold them was jailed, Iraqi police are still waving them around.

 

Last summer, in the days after the group now known as ISIS began its assault across Iraq, many feared that Baghdad could soon fall. Car bombs regularly killed dozens inside the capital. Police and soldiers manned checkpoints across the city. They were Baghdad’s defense and symbols of the state’s power in the face of onslaught. To protect the capital, these cops and soldiers were armed with magic wands. They still are now, nearly a year later."

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/12/iraq-counts-on-magic-wands-to-stop-isis.html

Edited May 17, 2015 by JadedWolf

[JadedWolf]

Okay, now that's a games room. I don't know whether to be impressed and jealous, or think of all the other important things they could have invested in....

 

 

 

It's their money, if that is what makes them happy, fair play to them. If I had the money I would love a sweet setup like that. Probably not something as showy and I would keep it to a reasonable three monitors, but yeah.

 

There's people who have garages filled with cars they never drive. I once met a guy who claimed his job was to take these cars for a spin because the wealthy owners didn't have the time for it, and the cars needed to be driven once in a while. That sort of thing makes my head spin.

[Raithe]

NBCNews - Ex TSA Agent charged with faking cancer to take time off

 

 

 

A former agent of the Transportation Security Administration is free on bond on charges that he faked having cancer to take advantage of more than a year's worth of sick leave donated by federal employees, according to federal court documents.

 

The alleged scam by Marc Bess Sr., 42, of Riverdale, Ga., south of Atlanta, went on for more than five years — until he got sloppy last year and continued submitting paperwork from a doctor who'd unfortunately died several months earlier, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta.

Besides the letters from the unidentified doctor — who never treated Bess, who never had cancer, prosecutors said — Bess even scheduled a fake operation to persuade supervisors to give him time off, according to the complaint. He is due in court May 11 for a plea hearing on charges of embezzlement and theft of public money.

 

The program Bess is accused of having manipulated is the Voluntary Leave Transfer Program, under which federal employees can donate unused sick leave to colleagues who need extra time off for especially serious conditions.

 

Beginning in 2009, according to the complaint, Bess began submitting letters from the unidentified physician to substantiate that he was suffering from abdominal lymphoma, a relatively common form of cancer, and that he needed weekly radiation treatment.

In fact, "contrary to the form submitted to the federal government, Marc Bess did not have lymphoma cancer, nor did he receive any radiation therapy for tumors in his abdominal area," prosecutors said.

 

Bess "drafted the entire Verification of Treatment letter, including the false diagnosis of cancer, from a template on his home computer, and he forged Physician A's signature on the letter," according to the complaint.

 

Bess wasn't caught until sometime after Dec. 5 of last year, when he submitted more forms from the doctor reporting that he still needed weekly treatment on Fridays.

"But Physician A died in or about July 2014, several months before Bess submitted these forged letters to the TSA," prosecutors said.

From autumn 2009 to late 2014, Bess accumulated 2,240 hours of paid leave — often on Fridays — donated by his fellow federal workers, the government said. That's 280 days, or 56 five-day work weeks.

 

Bess didn't answer a call seeking comment, and the public defender's office, which is listed in court documents as representing him, was closed Thursday night.

 

In a statement, the TSA didn't specifically address the charges against Bess, but it said it had "zero tolerance for misconduct in the workplace."

 

 

[Raithe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw&index

[Raithe]

Well, does this one surprise anyone really?

 

Huffington Post - Fox News Actually Hurts Republicans

 

 

 

Fox News is hurting the Republican Party, according to a study conducted by a top official in the first Bush administration.

 

The study, authored by Bruce Bartlett, who worked in the Treasury Department under George H. W. Bush and was also a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan, found that Fox viewers tended to be less informed about current affairs than people who watch mainstream news -- and even people who don't watch the news at all.

 

"Republican voters get so much of their news from Fox, which cheerleads whatever their candidates are doing or saying, that they suffer from wishful thinking and fail to see that they may not be doing as well as they imagine, or that their ideas are not connecting outside the narrow party base," Bartlett said.

 

Citing a host of other studies, Bartlett found that Fox News viewers tended to have misguided beliefs about the Iraq War, the Affordable Care Act and other major issues. He also noted that Fox's audience tended to hold a bias against Muslims.

 

"It appears that right-wing bias, including inaccurate reporting, became commonplace on Fox," Bartlett said.

This is especially problematic, he said, because "many conservatives now refuse to even listen to any news or opinion not vetted through Fox, and to believe whatever appears on it as the gospel truth."

 

The Daily Show recently put together a compilation of some of the network's most egregious inaccuracies. Among them: NASA scientists fabricated data to prove climate change exists, Obama sent more forces to fight Ebola than ISIS, and the Affordable Care Act will eventually lead to single-payer health care.

Many within the Republican Party have expressed concern with Fox News in recent years.

 

In 2012, then-presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said that he found other networks to be less partial. “I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through," Gingrich said. "In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That’s just a fact."

 

Then-Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said last year that some Fox shows are "totally not fair and totally not balanced." Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), who often appears on the network, has said that its immigration coverage "makes it harder for me to get people on my side."

 

 

[Raithe]

Heh, after that slight internet kerfluffle after his interview, Simon Pegg has clarified his comments via a blog post..

 

Peggster - Big Mouth Strikes Again

 

 

 

 

From the wonky opening that brought you “**** you Star Trek fans” and “Phwooar, Princess Leia”, comes this … “Nerd culture is the product of a late capitalist conspiracy, designed to infantalize the consumer as a means of non-aggressive control.”

 

It has come to my attention (thank you google), that the excellent website, Io9 picked up on some controversial comments I made to the Radio Times, which can be summed up in the above headline. Now, maybe I was being a little bit trollish, I can be a bit of a Contrary Mary in interviews sometimes. When you do lots of them, you get sick of your own opinions and start espousing other people’s. Having said that, the idea of our prolonged youth is something I’ve been interested in for a very long time. It’s essentially what Spaced was about, at least in part.

 

One of the things that inspired Jessica and myself, all those years ago, was the unprecedented extension our generation was granted to its youth, in contrast to the previous generation, who seemed to adopt a received notion of maturity at lot sooner. The children of the 70s and 80s were the first generation, for whom it wasn’t imperative to ‘grow up’ immediately after leaving school. Why this happened is a whole other sociological discussion: a rise in the student population, progress in gender equality, the absence of world war; all these things and more contributed to this social evolution. What fascinated Jess and I was the way we utilised this time. For Tim and Daisy, not having to grow up in the way their parents did, simply meant a continuation of their childhood. For Daisy, it was the pursuit of her girlhood dreams and fantasies. For Tim, he channeled his childhood passions into his adult life, cared about them as much, invested in them, the same level of time, importance and emotion. His hobbies and interests defined who he was, rather than his professional status.

 

In the 18 years since we wrote Spaced, this extended adolescence has been cannily co-opted by market forces, who have identified this relatively new demographic as an incredibly lucrative wellspring of consumerist potential. Suddenly, here was an entire generation crying out for an evolved version of the things they were consuming as children. This demographic is now well and truly serviced in all facets of entertainment and the first and second childhoods have merged into a mainstream phenomenon.

 

Before Star Wars, the big Hollywood studios were making art movies, with morally ambiguous characters, that were thematically troubling and often dark (Travis Bickle dark, as opposed to Bruce Wayne dark)*. This was probably due in large part to the Vietnam War and the fact that a large portion of America’s young men were being forced to grow up very quickly. Images beamed back home from the conflict, were troubling and a growing protest movement forced the nation to question the action abroad. Elsewhere, feminism was still dismissed as a lunatic fringe by the patriarchal old guard, as mainstream culture actively perpetuated traditional gender roles. Star Wars was very much an antidote to the moral confusion of the war, solving the conundrum of who was good and who was evil. At the heart of the story was an ass kicking princess who must surely have empowered an entire generation of girls. It was a balm for a nation in crisis in a number of ways and such was that nation’s influence, the film became a global phenomenon.

 

Recent developments in popular culture were arguably predicted by the French philosopher and cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard in his book, ‘America’, in which he talks about the infantilzation of society. Put simply, this is the idea that as a society, we are kept in a state of arrested development by dominant forces in order to keep us more pliant. We are made passionate about the things that occupied us as children as a means of drawing our attentions away from the things we really should be invested in, inequality, corruption, economic injustice etc. It makes sense that when faced with the awfulness of the world, the harsh realities that surround us, our instinct is to seek comfort, and where else were the majority of us most comfortable than our youth? A time when we were shielded from painful truths by our recreational passions, the toys we played with, the games we played, the comics we read. There was probably more discussion on Twitter about the The Force Awakens and the Batman vs Superman trailers than there was about the Nepalese earthquake or the British general election.

 

The ‘dumbing down’ comment came off as a huge generalisation by an A-grade asshorn. I did not mean that science fiction or fantasy are dumb, far from it. How could I say that? In the words of Han Solo, “Hey, it’s me!” In the last two weeks, I have seen two brilliant exponents of the genre. Ex Machina and Mad Max: Fury Road, both of which had my head spinning in different and wonderful ways and are both very grown up films (although Max has a youthful exuberance which is nothing’s short of joyous, thanks George Miller, 70) I’ve yet to see Tomorrowland but with Brad Bird at the helm, it cannot be anything but a hugely entertaining think piece.

 

I guess what I meant was, the more spectacle becomes the driving creative priority, the less thoughtful or challenging the films can become. The spectacle of Mad Max is underpinned not only multiple layers of plot and character but also by an almost lost cinematic sense of ‘how did they do that?’ The best thing art can do is make you think, make you re-evaluate the opinions you thought were yours. It’s interesting to see how a cerebral film maker like Christopher Nolan, took on Batman and made it something more adult, more challenging, chasing Frank Miller’s peerless Dark Knight into a slightly less murky world of questionable morality and violence. But even these films are ultimately driven by market forces and somebody somewhere will want to soften the edges, so that toys and lunch boxes can be sold. In that respect, Bruce Wayne’s fascistic vigilantism was never really held to account, however interesting Nolan doubtless found that idea. Did he have an abiding love of Batman or was it a means of making his kind of movie on the mainstream stage?

 

Fantasy in all its forms is probably the most potent of social metaphors and as such can be complex and poetic. No one could ever accuse Game of Thrones of being childish. George RR Martin clearly saw the swords and sorcery genre as a fertile means to express his musings on ambition, power and lust. Perhaps it milieu makes it more commercial though, would a straight up historical drama have lasted so long? Maybe Game of Thrones wouldn’t have been made at all ten years ago. A world without Game of Thrones?! if Baudrillard had predicted that, I probably would have dropped out of university and become a cobbler**.

 

The point of all this is just to get my position clear. I’m not out of the fold, my passions and preoccupations remain. Sometimes it’s good to look at the state of the union and make sure we’re getting the best we can get. On one hand it’s a wonderful thing, having what used to be fringe concerns, suddenly ruling the mainstream but at the same time, these concerns have also been monetised and marketed and the things that made them precious to us, aren’t always the primary concern (right, Star Trek TOS fans?)

 

Also, it’s good to ask why we like this stuff, what makes it so alluring, so discussed, so sacred. Do we channel our passion and indignation into ephemera, rather than reality? Not just science fiction and fantasy but gossip and talent shows and nostalgia and people’s arses. Is it right? Is it dangerous? Something to discuss over a game of 3D chess, perhaps.

 

Speaking of which I better climb aboard the old hypocropter and fly back to writing Star Trek Beyond.

In short:

• I love Science Fiction and fantasy and do not think it’s all childish.
• I do not think it is all generated by dominant forces as a direct means of control…much.
• I am still a nerd and proud.

Love and rockets,
Simon

 

p.s. Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan are also Stormtroopers in The Force Awakens.

 

*Those type of films are made today but not by big studios. Before Star Wars, SciFi and Fantasy were seen as B movie fodder, that the big studios were wary of. Alan Ladd Jnr really doesn’t get the credit he deserves for backing George Lucas.

 

**No disrespect to cobblers, I merely intended to allude to a profession that would not fill my days with fantasy. Not that cobblers can’t enjoy fantasy, they can. After all, some of them are magic elves who only come out at night to save a poor husband and wife from destitution. Surely a metaphor for the invisible underclass, enabling social mobility among the executive echelons of the pre war working class.

 

 

[kirottu]

Oldest stone tools pre-date earliest humans.

 

They were unearthed from the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years ago.

They are 700,000 years older than any tools found before, even pre-dating the earliest humans in the Homo genus.

[Gorth]

Oldest stone tools pre-date earliest humans.

 

They were unearthed from the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years ago.

They are 700,000 years older than any tools found before, even pre-dating the earliest humans in the Homo genus.

 

I knew it! The Lizards ruled earth first

[Calax]

 

Well, does this one surprise anyone really?

 

Huffington Post - Fox News Actually Hurts Republicans

 

 

And yet the RNC are having Fox pick the candidates going to the various debates.

[Raithe]

And.. the Dancing Man Party...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn-DFPTPAJw

[Agiel]

Something that has kind of bugged me through the years about the seal of the Great State of 'Can't-afford-ya':

 

 

Is the grizzly bear a pygmy? Or is Minerva a Zentraedi?

[Amentep]

I knew THE HIGH CHAPPARRAL was a big hit TV Western in the US, but little did I know how popular it was elsewhere...

 

[Gfted1]

How to Build Your Own Muscle-Controlled Wolverine Claws.

[Raithe]

io9 - Carbon Nanotubes Were An Ancient Superweapon

 

 

There’s a reason why we call it the “march of progress” instead of the “moonwalk of progress.” Technology is meant to move steadily forward, but there are still plenty of times when tech has inexplicably reversed course on us. One of the most striking examples are Damascus swords.

 

Damascus swords are the stuff of legend – literally. When Richard the Great faced Saladin, Richard is said to have proved his sword’s might by chopping a tree trunk in half with a single blow. Saladin took a silk scarf, threw it into the air, and let it waft down over his sword, where it was promptly cut in two.

 

Saladin was not the last one to get a Damascene sword, but he was nearer to the last than to the first. Eventually, the knowledge died out, and people have been trying to recreate the swords ever since. This was obviously a step backwards in terms of science, but people didn’t realize how much of a step back until the early 2000s. When scientists took a look at the swords, they found carbon nanotubes and nanowires embedded in them.

 

As far as we can tell, the nanotubes were created by getting the impurity levels right in the steel-making process. Damascus steel is badly-named, as it originally comes from India. It has a 1.5 percent carbon impurity level, and is commonly known as Wootz steel – which, arguably, is an even worse name. The steel forms a banded structure. There’s a central band of Fe3C, an iron and carbon combination that is tellingly named cementite, surrounded by softer steel. As the sword is made, the maker criss-crosses these bands carefully, making a matrix of hard and soft that leaves the sword both strong and flexible. At the end of the process, the maker pours acid on the sword. This eats away some of the softer steel, but leaves the nanotubes and nanowires, and creates an ultra-strong, sharp outer layer. It also brings out a swirling pattern of dark and light bands that marks it as a Damascus sword.

 

Why did this process, so obviously useful, get lost? Nobody entirely knows. Some say that certain regions of India had an abundance of the iron and carbon deposits and formed the material naturally. When it was mined out, no one knew how to make it. Others think the knowledge was lost due to social upheaval. There’s also the possibility that the sword trade just died out over hundreds of years of declining relevance. Some swords from the 1800s bear some of the marks of low-quality Damascene steel. Arguably, the technique isn’t lost at all, as some scientists claim to have re-discovered the process. If we don’t have swords, we at least still have carbon nanotubes.

[Namutree]

My good friend and longtime SMASH BROS rival Coco recently got second place in a tournament in Chicago in singles and won doubles: 

 

 

This shows his (sadly) lost grand final match. Still, he did his best.

https://youtu.be/LKd9PDEdqpM

 

 

Zero is such a friggin' monster.

Edited May 31, 2015 by Namutree

[Raithe]

Office Has Cat Library...

 

 

 

Office Has Cat Library! Employees Can ‘Check Out’ Cats To Take To Their Desk

 

A County government office in the Southwest US have built a cat condo in their office and are allowing employees to take a cat or kitten back to their desk for an hour a day.

 

The cats are housed in the lobby of this two storey office and as so many people visit this government building on a daily basis, it gives them a greater chance of being adopted, after all, who can resist a fluffy kitten!

 

The office has 800 employees and each is allowed to take a cat back to their desk for an hour a day so that the cats get used to human interaction, it has also increased employee satisfaction and since the initiative started a year ago more than 100 cats have been adopted.

 

 

Reddit user Loocylooo, who works in the office, speaks of how her son fell in love with one of the kittens on a ‘bring your child to work day’ and so she adopted one herself.

 

She says: “The county work with the local animal shelter, and because we get so much of the public coming through our lobby every day, they put up a large enclosed cat condo and some of the shelter kitties come here so they have a higher chance of being adopted. Meanwhile, the employees get to enjoy them, and it gives the cats a chance to be socialised before they are adopted.”

 

The kitties have a reputation for meowing at people as they pass by and most people cannot resist stopping to say hello.

 

It’s very inspiring to see that a government office would come up with a great idea that gives these cats more of a chance of being adopted.

Do you think I could get a job there?

 

[Namutree]

I just found a cute little fuzzy monkey toy in my house next to my chair which I have never seen before and never purchased. WTF? My cat seems to love it so, whatever. I guess I'll keep it.

[JadedWolf]

I just found a cute little fuzzy monkey toy in my house next to my chair which I have never seen before and never purchased. WTF? My cat seems to love it so, whatever. I guess I'll keep it.

 

Yeah, about that... I'm afraid you may want to get in touch with an exorcist.

[ManifestedISO]

Perchance is this monkey toy in the shape of an ascot ...

[ManifestedISO]

Which Avenger are you?

 

http://marvel.com/whichavengerareyou/en_US/

 

 

 

I was 23% Hawkeye, 21% Nick Fury. The description was more or less accurate ...

 

 

The quiet retiring sort, you are comfortable in your own skin and your own company. Always willing to put others first, you don't crave attention and are quite happy in the background. 

 

[Bartimaeus]

I don't know anything about most of these characters, but..:

 

 

Okay, I guess.

[ShadySands]

Thor 30%

Nick Fury 21%

Hawkeye 21%

[Gfted1]

Iron Man 30%

Black Widow 21%

Cap & Thor 14%

[kgambit]

Iron Man 30%
Nick Fury 21%
Hawkeye 21%