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

[Fighter]

Ukrainian fun.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-SJEJYF2fg

[Woldan]

Looks like there was like only a meter between the lamp post and the belly of the plane.

[Gfted1]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/forget-water-on-mars-astronomers-may-have-just-found-giant-alien-megastructures-orbiting-a-star-near-a6693886.html

 

Astronomers may have just found giant, alien "megastructures" orbiting a star near the milky way. Theoretically related to the idea of a dyson sphere. o.O

 

 

Search For Intelligent Aliens Near Bizarre Dimming Star Has Begun.

[Raithe]

San Francisco Principle delays vote because winners aren't diverse enough...

 

 

 

When San Francisco middle school principal Lena Van Haren saw which kids on her campus had been elected to the student council, she was disturbed at the lack of diversity among the winners. There were no Latino or black candidates chosen for the top four spots.

Her concern for a representative student government, given the preponderance of students of color at Everett Middle School in the Mission District, may have been understandable. What she did about it, however, swiftly raised a different kind of alarm.

 

Van Haren decided to withhold the results of the Oct. 9 election for more than a week, saying the school community needed to figure out how to have a more representative government.

 

“This is complex, but as a parent and a principal, I truly believe it behooves us to be thoughtful about our next steps here so that we can have a diverse student council that is truly representative of all voices at Everett,” she told parents in an e-mail Thursday.

 

The response was immediate and at times vehement. Parents complained; students were angry. It appeared, some parents argued, that diversity was trumping democracy.

 

“My criticism of the Everett administration is their good intention got in the way of their common sense,” said parent Todd David. “It’s really, really disturbing to me that withholding the results somehow equals social justice or equity. That is where I totally disconnect. I’m like, ‘Whoa.’”

 

This was the first time in several years that Everett had held a student election. Votes were cast in homeroom, ensuring that all students voted. There was never any intent to cancel the election or nullify the results, Van Haren said Monday.

 

“We paused to have a conversation,” she said in an interview. “I never, ever said we wouldn’t share the results or they weren’t good enough.

Under pressure from parents and the district administration, the principal announced the election results Monday afternoon, going class to class with the information.

While there was some diversity among the 10 winners, no English learners were elected, even though they make up about a third of enrollment. African American and Latino students were underrepresented, while white, Asian and mixed-race students, who are in the minority at the school, took the top four spots.

 

“It’s not OK for a school that is really, really diverse to have the student representatives majority white,” Van Haren said. “The easy thing would have been to announce the results and move on. I intentionally did not choose the easy way because this is so important.”

 

Several parents vocally supported their principal, saying she had touched on a critical concern.

 

“I think the principal is great,” said Melissa Daar Carvajal, who has two sons in sixth grade at the school. “I think for me, I’m really glad the school went through the election and kids selected representatives and now they’re looking at how to represent underrepresented students.”

 

Carvajal said the student election mirrored the real world, where those with more resources and support are more likely to win and wield power.

“Here we are in a school and the same thing happens,” she said. “They’re living in the real world at Everett.”

District officials called the whole situation “a learning opportunity.”

 

“There are other ways to include all voices,” said school board President Emily Murase. “I think that’s what the school administration is looking into, how to do that.”

Van Haren acknowledged Monday that while she stands behind her effort to increase diversity in student leadership, there was probably a better way to do it.

“Of course I look back and we should have communicated the winners right away,” she said. “I could never have predicted things would get to this point.

“I think,” she added, “it still can be a teachable moment.”

 

 

[Volourn]

From the looks of it the hispanics have the majority there so if they wanted a hispanic representative.. they would have got one right? Geez.

 

Nazi SJWs will be Nazi SJWs.

 

P.S. I love the line of 'resource and support' dtermine  elections? can I have a no **** on that? Uh.. it's a vote so support matters. And, resoruces? COME ON. it is high school. Unless  the people runing are doing actual bribes which I doubt I seriously doubt one side has more resources the others.

 

Did a hispanic perosn run/ If so, why didn't the hispanics not vote for them? if not, why didn't they?

 

EVIL.

Edited October 20, 2015 by Volourn

[Hurlshort]

Heh, probably a charter school.  

[Gromnir]

"While there was some diversity among the 10 winners, no English learners were elected, even though they make up about a third of enrollment."

 

am suspecting this is a big part o' their "problem."  most folks is not comfortable speaking in public.  esl students is understandably tending to be less comfortable speaking in front o' groups.  any school election we can ever recall had the candidates do speeches and some even had to answer student body questions. regardless o' the demographics o' the student body as a whole, to win election you need have kids run for the offices that is popular enough to win and is willing to speak in front o' some large group o' fellow students.  

 

regardless, seems obvious that you fix the "problem" before elections next year.  administrator made an error. seems clear that hiding/delaying current election results would be viewed as unfair and we suspect that if there is any racial tensions at the school, such issues (dislike that word) would only be exacerbated by highlighting the "problem." 

 

was a teachable moment *snort* for the administration more than students.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited October 20, 2015 by Gromnir

[Volourn]

How could their be a problem that whitey and asiany won the elections? Obviously, the majority o which are hispanicy, are fine with that. It's why they voted them in.

[Raithe]

[Raithe]

The Last Testament of Flashman's Creator
 
 

When 30 years ago I resurrected Flashman, the bully in Thomas Hughes's Victorian novel Tom Brown's Schooldays, political correctness hadn't been heard of, and no exception was taken to my adopted hero's character, behaviour, attitude to women and subject races (indeed, any races, including his own) and general awfulness.
 
On the contrary, it soon became evident that these were his main attractions. He was politically incorrect with a vengeance.
 
Through the Seventies and Eighties I led him on his disgraceful way, toadying, lying, cheating, running away, treating women as chattels, abusing inferiors of all colours, with only one redeeming virtue - the unsparing honesty with which he admitted to his faults, and even gloried in them.
 
And no one minded, or if they did, they didn't tell me. In all the many thousands of readers' letters I received, not one objected.
 
In the Nineties, a change began to take place. Reviewers and interviewers started describing Flashman (and me) as politically incorrect, which we are, though by no means in the same way. This is fine by me. Flashman is my bread and butter, and if he wasn't an elitist, racist, sexist swine, I'd be selling bootlaces at street corners instead of being a successful popular writer.
 
But what I notice with amusement is that many commentators now draw attention to Flashy's (and my) political incorrectness in order to make a point of distancing themselves from it. It's not that they dislike the books. But where once the non-PC thing could pass unremarked, they now feel they must warn readers that some may find Flashman offensive, and that his views are certainly not those of the interviewer or reviewer, God forbid.
 
I find the disclaimers alarming. They are almost a knee-jerk reaction and often rather a nervous one, as if the writer were saying: "Look, I'm not a racist or sexist. I hold the right views and I'm in line with modern enlightened thought, honestly." They won't risk saying anything to which the PC lobby could take exception. And it is this that alarms me - the fear evident in so many sincere and honest folk of being thought out of step.
 
I first came across this in the United States, where the cancer has gone much deeper. As a screenwriter [at which Fraser was almost as successful as he was with the 12 Flashman novels; his best-known work was scripting the Three Musketeers films] I once put forward a script for a film called The Lone Ranger, in which I used a piece of Western history which had never been shown on screen and was as spectacular as it was shocking - and true.
 
The whisky traders of the American plains used to build little stockades, from which they passed out their ghastly rot-gut liquor through a small hatch to the Indians, who paid by shoving furs back though the hatch. The result was that frenzied, drunken Indians who had run out of furs were besieging the stockade, while the traders sat snug inside and did not emerge until the Indians had either gone away or passed out.
 
Political correctness stormed onto the scene, red in tooth and claw. The word came down from on high that the scene would offend "Native Americans". Their ancestors may have got pieeyed on moonshine but they didn't want to know it, and it must not be shown on screen. Damn history. Let's pretend it didn't happen because we don't like the look of it.
 
I think little of people who will deny their history because it doesn't present the picture they would like.
 
My forebears from the Highlands of Scotland were a fairly primitive, treacherous, blood-thirsty bunch and, as Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, would have been none the worse for washing. Fine, let them be so depicted, if any film maker feels like it; better that than insulting, inaccurate drivel like Braveheart.
 
The philosophy of political correctness is now firmly entrenched over here, too, and at its core is a refusal to look the truth squarely in the face, unpalatable as it may be.
Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis. It comes in many guises, some of them so effective that the PC can be difficult to detect. The silly euphemisms, apparently harmless, but forever dripping to wear away common sense - the naivete of the phrase "a caring force for the future" on Remembrance poppy trays, which suggests that the army is some kind of peace corps, when in fact its true function is killing.
 
The continual attempt to soften and sanitise the harsh realities of life in the name of liberalism, in an effort to suppress truths unwelcome to the PC mind; the social engineering which plays down Christianity, demanding equal status for alien religions. The selective distortions of history, so beloved by New Labour, denigrating Britain's past with such propaganda as hopelessly unbalanced accounts of the slave trade, laying all the blame on the white races, but carefully censoring the truth that not a slave could have come out of Africa without the active assistance of black slavers, and that the trade was only finally suppressed by the Royal Navy virtually single-handed.
 
In schools, the waging of war against examinations as "elitist" exercises which will undermine the confidence of those who fail - what an intelligent way to prepare children for real life in which competition and failure are inevitable, since both are what life, if not liberal lunacy, is about. PC also demands that "stress", which used to be coped with by less sensitive generations, should now be compensated by huge cash payments lavished on griping incompetents who can't do their jobs, and on policemen and firemen "traumatised" by the normal hazards of work which their predecessors took for granted.
 
Furthermore, it makes grieving part of the national culture, as it was on such a nauseating scale when large areas were carpeted in rotting vegetation in "mourning" for the Princess of Wales; and it insists that anyone suffering ordinary hardship should be regarded as a "victim" - and, of course, be paid for it.
  
That PC should have become acceptable in Britain is a glaring symptom of the country's decline. No generation has seen their country so altered, so turned upside down, as children like me born in the 20 years between the two world wars. In our adult lives Britain's entire national spirit, its philosophy, values and standards, have changed beyond belief. Probably no country on earth has experienced such a revolution in thought and outlook and behaviour in so short a space.
 
Other lands have known what seem to be greater upheavals, the result of wars and revolutions, but these do not compare with the experience of a country which passed in less than a lifetime from being the mightiest empire in history, governing a quarter of mankind, to being a feeble little offshore island whose so-called leaders have lost the will and the courage, indeed the ability, to govern at all.
 
This is not a lament for past imperial glory, though I regret its inevitable passing, nor is it the raging of a die-hard Conservative. I loathe all political parties, which I regard as inventions of the devil. My favourite prime minister was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, not because he was on the Right, but because he spent a year in office without, on his own admission, doing a damned thing. This would not commend him to New Labour, who count all time lost when they're not wrecking the country.
 
I am deeply concerned for the United Kingdom and its future. I look at the old country as it was in my youth and as it is today and, to use a fine Scots word, I am scunnered. I know that some things are wonderfully better than they used to be: the new miracles of surgery, public attitudes to the disabled, the health and well-being of children, intelligent concern for the environment, the massive strides in science and technology.
 
Yes, there are material blessings and benefits innumerable which were unknown in our youth. But much has deteriorated. The United Kingdom has begun to look more like a Third World country, shabby, littered, ugly, run down, without purpose or direction, misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic.
 
My generation has seen the decay of ordinary morality, standards of decency, sportsmanship, politeness, respect for the law, family values, politics and education and religion, the very character of the British.
 
Oh how Blimpish this must sound to modern ears, how out of date, how blind to "the need for change and the novelty of a new age". But don't worry about me. It's the present generation with their permissive society, their anything-goes philosophy, and their generally laid-back, inyerface attitude I feel sorry for.
 
They regard themselves as a completely liberated society when in fact they are less free than any generation since the Middle Ages. Indeed, there may never have been such an enslaved generation, in thrall to hang-ups, taboos, restrictions and oppressions unknown to their ancestors (to say nothing of being neck-deep in debt, thanks to a moneylender's economy). We were freer by far 50 years ago - yes, even with conscription, censorship, direction of labour, rationing, and shortages of everything that nowadays is regarded as essential to enjoyment.
 
We still had liberty beyond modern understanding because we had other freedoms, the really important ones, that are denied to the youth of today.
 
We could say what we liked; they can't. We were not subject to the aggressive pressure of special interest minority groups; they are. We had no worries about race or sexual orientation; they have. We could, and did, differ from fashionable opinion with impunity, and would have laughed PC to scorn, had our society been weak and stupid enough to let it exist. We had available to us an education system, public and private, that was the envy of the world. We had little reason to fear being mugged or raped (killed in war, maybe, but that was an acceptable hazard). Our children could play in street and country in safety. We had few problems with bullies because society knew how to deal with bullying and was not afraid to punish it in ways that would send today's progressives into hysterics. We did not know the stifling tyranny of a liberal establishment, determined to impose its views, and beginning to resemble George Orwell's Ministry of Truth.
 
Above all, we knew who we were and we lived in the knowledge that certain values and standards held true, and that our country, with all its faults and need for reforms, was sound at heart. Not any more. I find it difficult to identify a time when the country was as badly governed as it has been in the past 50 years.
 
We have had the two worst Prime Ministers in our history - Edward Heath (who dragooned us into the Common Market) and Tony Blair. The harm these two have done to Britain is incalculable and almost certainly irreparable. Whether the public can be blamed for letting them pursue their ruinous policies is debatable.
 
Short of assassination there is little people can do when their political masters have forgotten the true meaning of the democracy of which they are forever prating, are determined to have their own way at all costs and hold public opinion in contempt.
 
I feel I speak not just for myself but for the huge majority of my generation who think as I do but whose voices are so often lost in the clamour. We are yesterday's people, the over-the-hill gang. (Yes, the old people - not the senior citizens or the time-challenged, but the old people.) Those of ultra-liberal views may take consolation from this - that my kind won't be around much longer, and then they can get on with wrecking civilisation in peace.
 
But they should beware. There may well be more who think like me than the liberal Left establishment likes to think. When my views were first published in book form in 2002, I was not surprised that almost all the reviewers were unfavourable. I had expected that my old-fashioned views would get a fairly hostile reception, but the bitterness did astonish me.
 
I had not realised how offensive the plain truth can be to the politically correct, how enraged they can be by its mere expression, and how deeply they detest the values and standards respected 50 years ago and which dinosaurs like me still believe in, God help us. But the readers' reactions to the book were the exact opposite of critical opinion. I have never received such wholehearted and generous support. For the first time in 30 years as a professional writer I had to fall back on a printed card thanking readers for writing, apologising because I could not reply personally to them all.
 
Most of the letters came from the older generation, but by no means all. I was made aware that among the middle-aged and people in their 20s and 30s there is a groundswell of anger and frustration at the damage done to Britain by so-called reformers and dishonest politicians who hardly bother to conceal their contempt for the public's wishes.
 
Plainly many thought they were alone in some reactionary minority. They had been led to think that they were voices muttering to themselves in the wilderness.
 
Well, you are not. There are more of you out there than you realise - very many more, perhaps even a majority.
 
• Edited extract from The Light's On At Signpost by George MacDonald Fraser (published by Harper Collins)

[Elerond]

In Japan comic from popular cartoonist has been pulled because of online rage and political correctness.

Kodansha Ltd. has been forced to shelve a new manga centering around the training of "himo" (string), unemployed men who aspire to live off the purse strings of women, after its creator drew criticism on the Internet.

 

The publisher said it suspended “Himozairu” in the 12th edition of Morning Two monthly magazine, released earlier this month, after only two episodes at the request of popular cartoonist Akiko Higashimura, 40.

 

Higashimura created the recent installment with her male assistant and other men around her as models and the series is intended to describe “what actually occur to them after getting such training.”

But her work came under fire from critics who accused her of looking down on her assistant and other men.

 

 

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201510250026

[Hiro Protagonist]

Scientist finds a bird not seen in 50 years – then he kills it
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/scientist-found-a-bird-that-hadnt-been-seen-in-50-years--then-he-killed-it-20151012-gk7f25.html

 

[Gfted1]

Report predicts temperatures too hot for humans in Persian Gulf.

 

Looks like Europe better get used to refugees.

[Ineth]

Report predicts temperatures too hot for humans in Persian Gulf.\

A scientific study released Monday warns that at least five of the region’s great metropolises could see summer days that surpass the ‘‘human habitability’’ limit by the end of the century. Heat and humidity would be so high that even the healthiest people could not withstand more than a few hours outdoors.

 

Isn't the equivalent of that already true for cold winter days in some parts of the currently inhabited world?

Wouldn't want to be outdoors for too many hours in winter in Siberia, without specialized clothing.

 

People have adapted just fine to harsh conditions by building climatized homes and vehicles, making specialized clothing and gear, etc. - and I'm sure they'll continue to do so.

[Gfted1]

Air conditioning suits would be awesome but if the region sustains 95 degree wet bulb blahblah it going to be mass exodus time. Also in a longitudinal line from there is India and China so maybe Siberia will experience a population resurgence.

[Malcador]

[JadedWolf]

[Elerond]

http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/10/27/inenglish/1445948093_804967.html

The three Brazilian brides who are challenging the traditional family unit

 

A businesswoman, a female dentist and a female administrative manager have managed to turn the idea of a traditional Brazilian family on its head, after recently making their relationship official before a notary in Rio de Janeiro.

 

“We are a family and our union is the product of our love for one another,” said the businesswoman in an interview with the O Globo daily.

“I am going to get pregnant and we are preparing for this, including looking at it in financial terms. This legalization [of the union] is a way to prevent the baby, and us, from being left unprotected by the law,” one of the three brides told the press.

 

The union marked the second time that a trio has tied the knot under Brazil’s 2003 civil unions law, which has paved the way for legal recognition of same-sex partnerships. In 2012, two females – a cashier and an administrative assistant – decided to formalize their union with a male architect in São Paulo.

 

The three women, who have lived together for the past three years, signed a document that recognizes them as a family, establishes a prenuptial agreement, and gives them rights to make medical decisions for one another should any of them get sick.

 

According to the notary filing, they have agreed to allow the businesswoman to become pregnant through artificial insemination. The baby will take their three surnames. The brides also signed three wills that divide up their personal holdings in case of death.

 

[Amentep]

According to the article, there's a telenovella that has a three woman marriage on it.  Given that conservative politicians in Brazil are trying to put forth bills to define marriage as one man plus one woman, will they try to demonize the telenovellas like so often happens here when someone is convinced some media is ruining society?

[Malcador]

http://nypost.com/2015/10/28/nyc-hipsters-can-now-rent-a-mother/

 

Rent a Mom.

[Gfted1]

EU Parliament Clears a Path to Give Snowden Asylum.

 

 

This will make it significantly easier for him to have an "unfortunate accident".

[Raithe]

And still going strong...

 

Clarkson threatened with three years in jail as Argentina re-opens Falklands row probe...

 

 

Jeremy Clarkson’s hopes of putting the infamous Top Gear Falklands row behind him were dashed last night after a court probe was reopened in Argentina.

A judge in the southern city of Ushuaia had thwarted attempts to have the former BBC presenter charged with falsification in April after the controversial number-plate on the Porsche he drove was swapped ahead of a riot.

 

But state prosecutors appealed Maria Cristina Barrionuevo’s decision not to press ahead with a full-scale criminal investigation against Clarkson and his ex-Top Gear team.

Last night the probe was back on - and Clarkson and programme chiefs facing a worst case scenario of three years in prison - after three appeal judges sided with prosecutors and ordered Barrionuevo to reactivate the case.

 

The decision raises the real prospect of the high-profile presenter and his former Top Gear co-hosts Richard Hammond and James May being summonsed to give evidence in the city they fled in October last year before programme technicians and camera crews were caught in violent disturbances as they tried to escape to Chile.

Falklands war veteran Osvaldo Hillar, who prompted the court probe by filing an official complaint over the number-plate change on Clarkson’s car, has already been called to give evidence.

 

The motormouth presenter sparked anger last year after driving through Argentina on a 1,400-mile road trip for a Top Gear Christmas special in a red Porsche with the number plate H982 FKL on it. War vets accused Clarkson, who once drove through an Indian slum in a Jaguar fitted with a toilet, of goading them over the Falklands.

 

An Argentine politician also claimed the the digits 269 on the number plate of the Ford Mustang Richard Hammond drove were close to the 255 Britons killed during the war - and the numbers 646 on James May’s Lotus could be taken as a reference to the 649 Argentinian casualties.

 

The Top Gear team ended up having to cut short filming and flee the country with a police escort after being told to leave by angry locals who stormed their five-star hotel in Ushuaia and threatened to kill him. Clarkson and his co-hosts flew to the capital Buenos Aires before returning to Britain. Nearly 30 other members of the film crew were stoned as they headed for Chile by road and had to abandon Clarkson’s Porsche and the other two cars by the side of the road.

 

The number plate that sparked calls for a full criminal probe - HI VAE - was found on the battered Porsche which was attacked by a furious mob after it was left at the side of the road.

The furore sparked a diplomatic incident with Argentina’s ambassador Alicia Castro calling the H982 FKL plate “malicious mockery” of those who fought in the 1982 Falklands War.

Maria Cristina Barrionuevo rubbished claims by the BBC and the controversial presenter the use of the plate H982 FKL on Clarkson’s infamous Porsche was an “unfortunate coincidence.”

 

She also dubbed the decision to drive through southern Argentina with the vehicle “arrogant and disrespectful.” But she rejected calls to launch an official probe into the Top Gear team over the number plate change, concluding programme chiefs had acted to avert more conflict and had not been motivated by “bad faith.”

 

The three appeal judges nullified her decision and ordered her to reopen the case - at the request of state prosecutor Daniel Curtale - after a private hearing in the nearby city of Rio Grande. One, Julian de Martino, described her decision in their joint ruling as “premature” and said her arguments were “insufficient to reject the criminal hypothesis outlined by state prosecutors.”

 

Prosecutors claim the Top Gear team committed a crime under article 289 of the Argentinian Penal Code which carries a prison sentence of between six months and three years for those who “falsify, alter or suppress the number of an object registered in accordance with the law.”

[Ineth]

State prosecutors do love to persecute people for political reasons - not just in Argentinia.

[Bartimaeus]

EU Parliament Clears a Path to Give Snowden Asylum.

A non-binding resolution. Neat.

[Volourn]

Wait. 3 eyars over an 'insulting' license plate/ WHAT. THE HELL.. And, how many millions are they spending such a ridiculous case? INSANE.

 

 

As for 'rent your mom'... she may not say you are stupid to your face but I bet she says its to herself after you give her the $40. LMAO

\

\

You cna't buy a parent - loving or otherwise.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Volourn