Laurel
Kitty Mama
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Good Reads
- Thread starter Laurel
- Start date
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/04/07/business/07-DIGI1/07-DIGI1-articleLarge.jpg
The Rialto study began in February 2012 and will run until this July. The results from the first 12 months are striking. Even with only half of the 54 uniformed patrol officers wearing cameras at any given time, the department over all had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study, to 3 from 24.
Rialto’s police officers also used force nearly 60 percent less often — in 25 instances, compared with 61. When force was used, it was twice as likely to have been applied by the officers who weren’t wearing cameras during that shift, the study found. And, lest skeptics think that the officers with cameras are selective about which encounters they record, Mr. Farrar noted that those officers who apply force while wearing a camera have always captured the incident on video.
The Rialto study began in February 2012 and will run until this July. The results from the first 12 months are striking. Even with only half of the 54 uniformed patrol officers wearing cameras at any given time, the department over all had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study, to 3 from 24.
Rialto’s police officers also used force nearly 60 percent less often — in 25 instances, compared with 61. When force was used, it was twice as likely to have been applied by the officers who weren’t wearing cameras during that shift, the study found. And, lest skeptics think that the officers with cameras are selective about which encounters they record, Mr. Farrar noted that those officers who apply force while wearing a camera have always captured the incident on video.
- read the full article Wearing a Badge, and a Video Camera (from The New York Times)
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
Go fuck yourself.
Mischka
Ms Snooby Pants
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- Mar 18, 2001
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HA!! *wipes tears from eyes* Love. It.
SkAoUt
Hullo neighbour.
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Don't feel too bad Mr. Johnson. Could've happened to anyone unfamiliar with the internet. Happily it was you and as such I'll revel in your misery for a few more seconds. Not wallowing just revelling. Ah, I'm good now.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
http://www.newyorker.com/images/2013/07/22/p233/130722_r23739_p233.jpg
The ferry ride the next morning was choppy; clouds hung almost to the water. Everitt, a moonfaced man of forty-six, wondered what kind of day lay ahead. In Victorian times, egg collecting in England was the quaint province of natural historians, but, as laws protecting endangered birds were passed, the activity became a criminal act. Collectors had gone underground; some communicated with one another using code numbers as aliases. In his ten years on the job, Everitt had never encountered a collector.
Halfway across the sound, Everitt was contacted by radio. It was the Northern Constabulary: the suspect was on the jetty. As Everitt disembarked, he saw a rangy man dressed in camouflage leaning against a bulging rucksack. He looked to be in his late forties, with sunken brown eyes. Everitt approached and asked his name. “As soon as he said it, I thought, We’ve found our person.”
The man was Matthew Gonshaw, the most notorious egg collector in Britain. An unemployed Londoner, Gonshaw had already served three prison terms on egg-collecting charges. When he was last apprehended, in 2004, investigators had seized nearly six hundred eggs, a hundred and four of them hidden inside a secret compartment in his bed frame.
The ferry ride the next morning was choppy; clouds hung almost to the water. Everitt, a moonfaced man of forty-six, wondered what kind of day lay ahead. In Victorian times, egg collecting in England was the quaint province of natural historians, but, as laws protecting endangered birds were passed, the activity became a criminal act. Collectors had gone underground; some communicated with one another using code numbers as aliases. In his ten years on the job, Everitt had never encountered a collector.
Halfway across the sound, Everitt was contacted by radio. It was the Northern Constabulary: the suspect was on the jetty. As Everitt disembarked, he saw a rangy man dressed in camouflage leaning against a bulging rucksack. He looked to be in his late forties, with sunken brown eyes. Everitt approached and asked his name. “As soon as he said it, I thought, We’ve found our person.”
The man was Matthew Gonshaw, the most notorious egg collector in Britain. An unemployed Londoner, Gonshaw had already served three prison terms on egg-collecting charges. When he was last apprehended, in 2004, investigators had seized nearly six hundred eggs, a hundred and four of them hidden inside a secret compartment in his bed frame.
- read the full article Operation Easter: The hunt for illegal egg collectors (from The New Yorker)
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/voynich-1-290.jpg
Stored away in the rare-book library at Yale University is a late-medieval manuscript written in a cramped but punctilious script and illustrated with lively line drawings that have been painted over, at times crudely, with washes of color. These illustrations range from the fanciful (legions of heavy-headed flowers that bear no relation to any earthly variety) to the bizarre (naked and possibly pregnant women, frolicking in what look like amusement-park waterslides from the fifteenth century). With their distended bellies, stick-like arms and legs, and earnest expressions, the naked figures have a whimsical quality, though their anatomy is frankly rendered—something unusual for the period. The manuscript’s botanical drawings are no less strange: the plants appear to be chimerical, combining incompatible parts from different species, even different kingdoms. Tentacled balls of roots take the forms of animals, or of human organs—in one case, sprouting two disembodied heads with vexed expressions. But perhaps the oddest thing about this book is that no one has ever read it.
That’s because the book—called the Voynich manuscript after the rare-book dealer who stumbled upon it a century ago—is written in an unknown script, with an alphabet that appears nowhere other than in its pages.
Stored away in the rare-book library at Yale University is a late-medieval manuscript written in a cramped but punctilious script and illustrated with lively line drawings that have been painted over, at times crudely, with washes of color. These illustrations range from the fanciful (legions of heavy-headed flowers that bear no relation to any earthly variety) to the bizarre (naked and possibly pregnant women, frolicking in what look like amusement-park waterslides from the fifteenth century). With their distended bellies, stick-like arms and legs, and earnest expressions, the naked figures have a whimsical quality, though their anatomy is frankly rendered—something unusual for the period. The manuscript’s botanical drawings are no less strange: the plants appear to be chimerical, combining incompatible parts from different species, even different kingdoms. Tentacled balls of roots take the forms of animals, or of human organs—in one case, sprouting two disembodied heads with vexed expressions. But perhaps the oddest thing about this book is that no one has ever read it.
That’s because the book—called the Voynich manuscript after the rare-book dealer who stumbled upon it a century ago—is written in an unknown script, with an alphabet that appears nowhere other than in its pages.
- read the full article The Unread: The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript (from The New Yorker)
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/oscar-meyer-wienermobile-body1.jpg
Every year, a dozen Hotdoggers drive six Wienermobiles around the country, and each almost-identical giant hot dog van (the fleet gets updated in waves; the newest models are 2012s, but 2009s are still on the road) is assigned to a particular region. According to Oscar Mayer, thousands of recent college graduates apply to be Hotdoggers, giving it a lower acceptance rate than Princeton, Harvard, or Yale. This has been going on for 26 years, and Hotdogger alumni occasionally meet for reunions, to reminisce about days on the road and intone puns of yore.
Every year, a dozen Hotdoggers drive six Wienermobiles around the country, and each almost-identical giant hot dog van (the fleet gets updated in waves; the newest models are 2012s, but 2009s are still on the road) is assigned to a particular region. According to Oscar Mayer, thousands of recent college graduates apply to be Hotdoggers, giving it a lower acceptance rate than Princeton, Harvard, or Yale. This has been going on for 26 years, and Hotdogger alumni occasionally meet for reunions, to reminisce about days on the road and intone puns of yore.
- read the full article Behind the Hot Dog: What Goes on in the Wienermobile (from Bon Appetit)
glynndah
good little witch.
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- Jun 25, 2005
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The Wienermobile stopped by my school a few years ago. One hundred fifty wiener whistles make an incredibly shrill noise.
pete
Literotica Guru
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- Jul 31, 2007
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glynndah
good little witch.
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As I recall, they didn't pass out weiners. The kissmobile probably does give samples of their product. Who could pass up a free kiss?
pete
Literotica Guru
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glynndah
good little witch.
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i wouldn't, especially if a good little witch was the one passing them out
A
from the good little witch.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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http://media.ft.com/cms/acec9b4c-26e3-11e1-b9ec-00144feabdc0.jpg
Russians have an oddly reverential attitude about their gangsters. For a small fee, tour guides will lead you through Moscow’s Vagankovskoye cemetery, where mafiosi of means are buried – some under life-sized statues or headstones etched with a likeness of the deceased standing next to his BMW. You can tune into Radio Shanson, named after a style of folk music devoted to ballads about prison life, which is currently Moscow’s second most popular station. Or notice the traditional thief’s gesture known as the raspaltsovka, extending the index and little finger, now as ubiquitous as gold chains and Rolexes in Moscow’s nightclubs.
But nothing demonstrates the veneration of all things gangster, like the untimely demise of a vor v zakone, or Russian mafia boss.
Russians have an oddly reverential attitude about their gangsters. For a small fee, tour guides will lead you through Moscow’s Vagankovskoye cemetery, where mafiosi of means are buried – some under life-sized statues or headstones etched with a likeness of the deceased standing next to his BMW. You can tune into Radio Shanson, named after a style of folk music devoted to ballads about prison life, which is currently Moscow’s second most popular station. Or notice the traditional thief’s gesture known as the raspaltsovka, extending the index and little finger, now as ubiquitous as gold chains and Rolexes in Moscow’s nightclubs.
But nothing demonstrates the veneration of all things gangster, like the untimely demise of a vor v zakone, or Russian mafia boss.
- read the full article Who runs Russia? (from Financial Times)
gravyrug
Jesus for Weird People
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http://thejunket.org/2012/04/issue-three/language-turned-convict/
Around the year 1566, a Kentish gentleman named Thomas Harman became a literary sensation. His Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors Vulgarely Called Vagabones offered the reader a chance to look into the world of the beggars who walked from town to town seeking alms or shelter and irritating respectable folk. Detailing the dupes and con tricks perpetrated by these vagrants, Harman pointed to a feature that set this community apart: a shared, secret language, known as Pedlars’ French, ‘an unknowne tongue to all but to these bolde beastly bawdy beggers and vaine Vagabonds, beeing halfe mingled with English when it is familiarly talked’. The thieves’ language became famous in the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: more simply, it was known as cant.
John Gallagher
Language Turned Convict
Around the year 1566, a Kentish gentleman named Thomas Harman became a literary sensation. His Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors Vulgarely Called Vagabones offered the reader a chance to look into the world of the beggars who walked from town to town seeking alms or shelter and irritating respectable folk. Detailing the dupes and con tricks perpetrated by these vagrants, Harman pointed to a feature that set this community apart: a shared, secret language, known as Pedlars’ French, ‘an unknowne tongue to all but to these bolde beastly bawdy beggers and vaine Vagabonds, beeing halfe mingled with English when it is familiarly talked’. The thieves’ language became famous in the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: more simply, it was known as cant.
John Gallagher
Language Turned Convict
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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- Nov 8, 2005
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- 25,593
I knew I'd seen this story somewhere before— the only question was where.
On NPR last Sunday
The book marketeers must be grinning from ear to ear.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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oooh I love these kinds of stories!
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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- Aug 27, 1999
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Seriously!
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/07/21/magazine/21handey1/mag-21Handey-t_CA0-articleLarge.jpg
When Jack Handey sold his first jokes to Steve Allen in 1977, Allen sent him a letter offering him $100 and telling him his name sounded like a product, not a person. “Say homemakers, take a look at the new Jack Handey,” Allen wrote. “Just the thing for slicing, dicing, mopping, slopping, stamping, primping. . . . ”
The longtime “Simpsons” writer Ian Maxtone-Graham, who worked with Handey at “Saturday Night Live,” recalled that everyone he told about Handey asked if that was a fake name. “I wonder why that is,” Maxtone-Graham said. “I guess because it sounds like, if your car breaks down, you should have a Jack Handey.”
“I hope your article can clear up all the confusion,” Senator Al Franken told me when I contacted him. “Jack Handey is a real person, and he wrote all the ‘Deep Thoughts.’ Not me.”
Jack Handey is a solidly built man of 64 with a swoop of graying hair; when he smiles, his teeth are blindingly white. We were sitting around the island in Handey’s Santa Fe kitchen as his wife, Marta, made huevos rancheros for breakfast. Jack and Marta have been together for 36 years. I asked if he helped out around the kitchen, and he said, “I can cook Cheerios.”
When Jack Handey sold his first jokes to Steve Allen in 1977, Allen sent him a letter offering him $100 and telling him his name sounded like a product, not a person. “Say homemakers, take a look at the new Jack Handey,” Allen wrote. “Just the thing for slicing, dicing, mopping, slopping, stamping, primping. . . . ”
The longtime “Simpsons” writer Ian Maxtone-Graham, who worked with Handey at “Saturday Night Live,” recalled that everyone he told about Handey asked if that was a fake name. “I wonder why that is,” Maxtone-Graham said. “I guess because it sounds like, if your car breaks down, you should have a Jack Handey.”
“I hope your article can clear up all the confusion,” Senator Al Franken told me when I contacted him. “Jack Handey is a real person, and he wrote all the ‘Deep Thoughts.’ Not me.”
Jack Handey is a solidly built man of 64 with a swoop of graying hair; when he smiles, his teeth are blindingly white. We were sitting around the island in Handey’s Santa Fe kitchen as his wife, Marta, made huevos rancheros for breakfast. Jack and Marta have been together for 36 years. I asked if he helped out around the kitchen, and he said, “I can cook Cheerios.”
- read the full article Jack Handey Is the Envy of Every Comedy Writer in America (from The New York Times)
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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There are exceptions. I believe this is one of them.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...erov-instructs-son-not-to-sell-his-stake.html
Lukoil Billionaire Alekperov Instructs Son Not to Sell His Stake
By Anna Shiryaevskaya
February 6, 2013
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/7/10/1373471653589/Arnold-AD-Harvey-at-home--010.jpg
When writer AD Harvey invented an 1862 meeting between Dickens and Dostoevsky, it was for years accepted as fact. So why did he do it – and why did he also create a series of fake academic identities?
When writer AD Harvey invented an 1862 meeting between Dickens and Dostoevsky, it was for years accepted as fact. So why did he do it – and why did he also create a series of fake academic identities?
- read the full article The man behind the great Dickens and Dostoevsky hoax (from The Guardian)
Laurel
Kitty Mama
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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/07/15/technology/15bits-online-review/15bits-online-review-articleInline.jpg
But who writes fake negative reviews, denouncing stuff without any obvious reason? The usual assumption is that the perpetrators are competitors of some sort, hoping to get an edge on other novelists or chefs or innkeepers. But are there really so many nasty people in the world who need to get some slight advantage by tearing down the restaurant one block over? The question has been shrouded in mystery.
Until now. A fascinating new academic study sheds light on the fake negative review, finding not only that the source is totally unexpected but also that the problem is much bigger than a few malicious operators.
It turns out that competitors are not necessarily the ones giving one miserable star to products they did not buy or experiences they did not have. Customers do it — in fact, devoted customers.
But who writes fake negative reviews, denouncing stuff without any obvious reason? The usual assumption is that the perpetrators are competitors of some sort, hoping to get an edge on other novelists or chefs or innkeepers. But are there really so many nasty people in the world who need to get some slight advantage by tearing down the restaurant one block over? The question has been shrouded in mystery.
Until now. A fascinating new academic study sheds light on the fake negative review, finding not only that the source is totally unexpected but also that the problem is much bigger than a few malicious operators.
It turns out that competitors are not necessarily the ones giving one miserable star to products they did not buy or experiences they did not have. Customers do it — in fact, devoted customers.
- read the full article Why Web Reviewers Make Up Bad Things (from NYT Bits)
girlsmiley
catastrophe
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2010
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- 22,148
I need to read something smart, stat!
Phew!
Phew!
Interesting. I believe it. Sometimes when you read negative reviews on products you're intimately familiar with, you can tell they either didn't try it OR didn't use it the way it was designed to be used.
Also, I'm still pissed about a cheap weed/pest control sprayer I bought 3 weeks ago that lasted all of 2 hours and didn't have the relief valve it should have had. Same company I bought the old one from that lasted 3 or 4 years for the same price. When I went back to the customer review site, complaints similar to mine had been removed.
