Really, really big cow
In fact, the Guiness-certified largest cow that ever lived. I stole that link from Jonah Goldberg. Moreover, the cow died seven months ago.
Because it’s Friday and I’m damned if I’m going to put any effort into it.
Here’s something interesting I didn’t know: the Iron Law of Prohibition. (Link goes to LA Times article).
Also, the Royal College of Physicians is putting John Dee’s library on display. Dee was court magician to Liz the First and a highly Google-worthy fellow. His library was scattered across the country and this is, as far as I know, the first time it’s been reassembled since his death. We have a rule against going into London these days (’nuff said) but we may make an exception.
Finally, this just arrived in my inbox from the John Kasich campaign:
Fellow Conservative, during last evening’s debate, not only was Jeb Bush’s team running ads against me, but Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Chris Christie attacked me online as well. We must have them really worried!
Always leave ’em laughing, as my old mither used to say. Good weekend, all!
January 15, 2016 — 9:36 pm
Comments: 11
Not sure about this.
Can’t Hark sent me this link, and I’m still not sure what I think of it. See, this outfit thinks lat and long, or UTM, or any of our other number-based navigation systems are just too gosh-darned hard for human beings to remember. So they’ve proposed an alternate scheme that slices the world into 57 trillion three meter squares and assigns each of them a unique three word address.
They avoid rude words, homophones and very long words. High population areas get short, punchy words, middle of the ocean not so much. It functions, so far, in nine languages. If you’re curious how it works beyond that, their FAQ is good.
To be honest, though, the main point is exploring the map to find inexplicably amusing word combos. I cannot, of course, give you the three word code for where I’m sitting right now. One of you jokers would surely call in a tac nuke on me, just for shits and giggles. It’s pretty funny, though.
I can tell you — depending on the exact location of the maternity ward — I was born at either kings.meal.punch, frosted.feast.nation or crash.upgrading.artist.
Is this a good idea? I don’t know. Go play with the map. And thank you, Can’t Hark.
January 14, 2016 — 10:59 pm
Comments: 18
You won’t lose any weight eating *that*
Nurse left ‘traumatised’ after finding baby WEASEL in her supermarket salad
She’s a nurse. How traumatized can she be?
(Ha HA! You thought an animated .gif at the top of the pages was annoying).
January 13, 2016 — 10:37 pm
Comments: 4
Identity theft.
I finished Hearts of Stone tonight, which is an add-on to Witcher III. It’s a game. It’s a big ol’ slice of more-of-the-same pie. If you liked the base game (I did), you’ll like this expansion (I did).
If you don’t give a shit about video games and you’re wondering why I even bring it up, it’s because LOOK AT HIS FACE. Familiar?
This is a main character in Hearts of Stone. He gets lots and lots of face time, and he’s so totally modeled on David Beckham, it isn’t even funny. The only thing I know about Beckham is that he played football, he wears a mean pair of underpants, he married that Sulky Spice bitch and his mug is all over the Daily Mail all the time. And that is totally his mug.
I’m hardly the only one to notice. If you do a search of “Beckham” and “von Everec” you get a ton of hits.
Question is, did they pay for his likeness? I haven’t found the answer.
If they did, it must’ve cost them a packet. Why aren’t they bragging about it?
If they didn’t, what a risk! Er…isn’t it?
January 12, 2016 — 10:53 pm
Comments: 5
It’s a toy that makes toys
Any of you gadget hounds fallen for the 3D printer yet? I keep getting flyers at work for a £500 model and a £1,000 model. A little poking around and it looks like the consumer/hobbyist versions are in the $100 to $2,000 range.
Like laser printers, I gather the manufacturer makes their money off the ‘ink’ — in this case, a plastic filament that looks like fat fishing line whereof this grade of 3D ‘print’ is made.
I must say, the arty prints from this class of printer look pretty jaggy and crude to me, but I have no way of knowing if that’s the printer, the model or a user-selectable switch of some kind. I get the impression you can make useful things if you try.
This is a pretty interesting overview of one man’s first year with a 3D printer. FYI, the printer he’s using is around $500. A reel of filament for it is about thirty bucks.
You may recall, I love love LOVE me some 3D modeling. It’s only a matter of time. Just not, perhaps, any time soon.
January 11, 2016 — 11:30 pm
Comments: 12
Take that, eskimos!
The Sussex dialect — like regional dialects everywhere — is disappearing. Radio and television, migration of peoples. Whatevs. But certain aspects of local speech are just too gosh-darned necessary to be lost. I give you, the 31 Sussexian words for mud:
cledgy – earth sticking to the spade when digging is cledgy.
clodgy – muddy and wet like a field path after heavy rain.
gawm (gorm garm) – especially sticky foul smelling mud.
gormed up – stuck seized with mud.
gubber – black anaerobic mud of rotting organic matter. (We have a lot of this — unrecycled prehistoric forest).
ike (hike) – a mess or area of mud.
paunch – to break up fairly coherent mud “those cows they do paunch about the mud so”.
poach – to tread the muddy ground into holes as do cattle.
pug – a kind of loam – particularly the sticky yellow Wealden clay.
slab – thickest mud.
slabby – sticky, slippery, greasy, dirty mud.
sleech – mud or river sediment used for manure – especially from the River Rother.
slob – thick mud.
slobby – a sate of muddiness where it is difficult to extricate the boot at each step “the way here was very wearisome through dirt and slobbiness”.
slough (slogh) – a muddy hole.
slub – thick mud – used as slush is elsewhere.
slubby – dirty with stiff and extremely tenacious mud.
slub-up – to make stiff with mud, he come ome all of a slub.
slubber – to slip in mud.
slurry – diluted mud distinct from slub, saturated with so much water that it cannot drain, churned up into a cream or paste with water.
slommocky – made dirty with mud.
smeery – wet and sticky surface mud, not clodgy or slobby.
spannel – to make dirty with mud as would a spaniel on a floor.
stabble – to walk thick mud into the house.
stoach – to trample ground, like cattle, also the silty mud at Rye Harbour.
stoachy – dirty, mildly muddy.
stoached – an entry to a field in bad weather is stoached (and poached).
stodge – thick puddingy mud.
stug – watery mud.
stuggy – filled with watery mud.
swank – a bog.
They tell us the rain and warm is about to give way to cold and dry. We shall see, we shall see. In the meantime, I’ve got enough new vocabulary words to make conversation. Good weekend!
January 8, 2016 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 20
Dang it, we missed Þrettándinn again
I have a thing about Iceland. Nobody can say if their present culture is ancient Northern Europe trapped in amber, or three hundred thousand blonde people abandoned on a rock in the North Atlantic to go mad. Bit of both, probably. Interesting either way.
Iceland’s version of Twelfth Night is called Þrettándinn, and it’s so much more than the day they take the tree down.
Tradition says it’s moving day for household fairies (moving out or moving in, either way you’d best be nice to them). If you wait at the crossroads, you might con some good stuff out of the fairies, too. Seals cast off their sealskin coats and dance, as naked ladies, on the beach. Water turns to wine.
It’s your last day to catch one of the Yule lads — the guys in the picture up top. The whole list is here . They arrive one by one at Christmas, and leave one by one. Last out is Kertasníkir the Candle Beggar.
Cows speak. In nonsense verse. In rhyming couplets. In Hebrew. Okay, I’m kind of leaning toward ‘abandoned on a rock in the North Atlantic to go mad’ now.
It’s a day of bonfires and fireworks. But — and this is the part I really think we should adopt — it’s a last celebratory hurrah!. You finish all the nice holiday food, drink up the liquor, burn up the candles, binge watch Downton on iPlayer.
Also, you take your Christmas tree down. No, we haven’t yet.
January 7, 2016 — 10:23 pm
Comments: 8
Huh. Not immortal after all
Richard Sapper, mastermind of the first IBM Thinkpad, croaked on New Year’s Eve. I had one of these and loved it to bits. Mine was the classic and bestselling — I think it was the T43 — and it was bombproof.
Reading the obit, I might have knowed he was a German working in Italy. You can see both those influences in the Thinkpad.
Well, the early Thinkpads, anyway. Uncle B paid a flippin’ fortune for one of the last models, and it was a dog.
January 6, 2016 — 11:04 pm
Comments: 11
Jesus already knows, honey
So, this guy apparently walked naked through St Peter’s Basilica yesterday. Judging from his tiny, out-of-focus junk, I think I know the miracle he was praying for.
b-dum-tss
January 5, 2016 — 10:46 pm
Comments: 13
Tea break over, back on your heads
Boo! Not Christmas any more. BOO!
In the absence of anything cleverer to say, that there is my new bicycle. It’s this one. No, I didn’t pay that much for it. Yes, it has a basket. No, I’m not going to put it on. Makes it too unwieldy in tight places.
It’ll do 15mph without touching the pedals. Illegal to sell electric bikes with a hand throttle like that in the UK since the first of Jan (thank you, EU regs!), so me and half of England rushed to get a grandfathered one before the hammer came down.
I love it. But it’s been windy or rainy (or both) every day since I started riding it to work, so it’s a real baptism by…ummm….water. Hm.
Say, that’s just a regular baptism, isn’t it?
January 4, 2016 — 11:35 pm
Comments: 20