Good Reads

[Laurel]

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/international/filipinoseamenbanneredited.jpg

When Norwegian anthropologist Gunnar Lamvik first began living in Iloilo city, a seafaring haven in the southern Philippines, he sensed he wasn't getting the richest and most detailed information about the shipping experience from interviews with his neighbors, who were home on two-month vacations from 10 months at sea. To crack the cultural mystery of any total institution, you have to go inside, he reasoned. "If you [want] a feeling of a seafarer's life, you have to be at sea with them when they are open," said Lamvik, who now studies how cultural differences affect occupational safety at a Norway-based think-tank called SINTEF. "It's important to be on board for some time, and build trust. That's the crucial thing to do."

For the next three years, he was on and off ships, floating with his subjects from port to port and trying to make that connection.

At a raucous karaoke crew member party somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean, it began to happen. He belted out the lyrics to "House of the Rising Sun." Then, he insisted on singing it again. "That was a real ice breaker," he said.

It was in this type of loose, booze-flowing setting that he learned the most about the lives of his shipmates. And soon, conversations turned to perhaps the most fascinating part of the Filipino seafaring identity, the little-known and barely studied sexual practice of "bolitas," or little balls.

Many Filipino sailors make small incisions in their penises and slide tiny plastic or stone balls -- the size of M&M's -- underneath the skin in order to enhance sexual pleasure for prostitutes and other women they encounter in port cities, especially in Rio de Janeiro. "This 'secret weapon of the Filipinos,' as a second mate phrased it, has therefore obviously something to do," Lamvik wrote in his thesis, "'with the fact that 'the Filipinos are so small, and the Brazilian women are so big' as another second mate put it."​

- read the full article The Strange Sexual Quirk of Filipino Seafarers (from The Atlantic)​

 

[neci]

Have you ever tried any "space food" stuff? I ate "astronaut" ice cream I bought at a space museum. It was pretty gross. But I'll bet if I were out in space without a handy Dairy Queen or Haagen Daz, it'd be delicious.

i've eaten my share of "astronaut" ice cream. the article actually commented on it. i think it said it was only used on the '68 flight, then scrapped due to the astronauts not liking it. pasty in the mouth. like powdered sugar chalk. i would need milk. nasa should hire willy wonka. they probably did back in the day. child experiments and all. oh wait. we still do that.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary Era Women Who Married Political Radicals
Nancy Rubin Stuart

Two Revolutionary–era teenagers who defy their Loyalist families to marry radical patriots, Henry Knox and Benedict Arnold, and are forever changed

When Peggy Shippen, the celebrated blonde belle of Philadelphia, married American military hero Benedict Arnold in 1779, she anticipated a life of
fame and fortune, but financial debts and political intrigues prompted her to conspire with her treasonous husband against George Washington and
the American Revolution. In spite of her commendable efforts to rehabilitate her husband’s name, Peggy Shippen continues to be remembered as a
traitor bride.

Boston Globe
South section
August 15, 2013
Looking at the Revolutionary War from the flip side

"History has long blamed her for corrupting Arnold. But [Nancy] Stuart said that while Shippen was aware of her husband's intention, it's more
likely that the egotistical Arnold- who was twice her age- made his own plans."
- Robert Knox

Peggy’s patriotic counterpart was Lucy Flucker, the spirited and voluptuous brunette, who in 1774 defied her wealthy Tory parents by marrying a
poor Boston bookbinder simply for love. When her husband, Henry Knox, later became a famous general in the American Revolutionary War, Lucy
faithfully followed him through Washington’s army camps where she birthed and lost babies, befriended Martha Washington, was praised for her
social skills, and secured her legacy as an admired patriot wife.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15798776-defiant-brides

 

[lovetoread]

wtf does that mean ..... you're the mean stupid fucking suck up bitch....what the fuck is an alt?

What was your point in this thread?

 

[Lorilei]

Yeah, I guess some people just loveeee cartoons 2FF

What do "loveeee" and "2FF" mean? We speak English here.

 

[Laurel]

Superheroes are unbelievable, and that's the point. But technology is quickly closing the gap between what is human and superhuman. Advances in cybernetics, aviation, and other areas have created a convincing argument that these physical limitations are only temporary—that one day we can read minds, turn invisible, fly, and live forever.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/vZ/superpowers-01-0813-lgn.jpg

Invisibility

The once cosmic-radiated ability of the Invisible Woman is now within our grasp—in theory anyway. The concept behind real-life invisibility is that light travels in straight lines. To make something invisible, light must bend around the object and then realign itself. For example, the way a flowing river bends around a rock.

Researchers at Duke University led by John Pendry made the first significant step toward real invisibility in 2006, when the team announced that it had developed a metamaterial that can bend microwaves around objects, causing headlines to declare that Harry Potter's invisibility cloak had come to fruition. However, the technology has its limitations, one being that the invisible objects are relatively small, some no bigger than a coin, and that the cloak can only bend microwaves and radio waves, which have much longer wavelengths than visible light.

In June of this year, a team of scientists from Singapore and China developed a cloaking device that works in natural light. The device was able to successfully cloak a fish and a cat, but only from a few observational directions. The cloak itself is a little bulky and in no shape for everyday use.

There's no doubt that mastering invisibility still has a long way to go, but now it's just a matter of technology, and it's beginning to catch up.​

- read the full article 8 Superpowers Brought to You by Technology (from Popular Mechanics)​

 

[sweet_lusciousdesire]

......................

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Superheroes are unbelievable, and that's the point. But technology is quickly closing the gap between what is human and superhuman. Advances in cybernetics, aviation, and other areas have created a convincing argument that these physical limitations are only temporary—that one day we can read minds, turn invisible, fly, and live forever.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/vZ/superpowers-01-0813-lgn.jpg

Invisibility

The once cosmic-radiated ability of the Invisible Woman is now within our grasp—in theory anyway. The concept behind real-life invisibility is that light travels in straight lines. To make something invisible, light must bend around the object and then realign itself. For example, the way a flowing river bends around a rock.

Researchers at Duke University led by John Pendry made the first significant step toward real invisibility in 2006, when the team announced that it had developed a metamaterial that can bend microwaves around objects, causing headlines to declare that Harry Potter's invisibility cloak had come to fruition. However, the technology has its limitations, one being that the invisible objects are relatively small, some no bigger than a coin, and that the cloak can only bend microwaves and radio waves, which have much longer wavelengths than visible light.

In June of this year, a team of scientists from Singapore and China developed a cloaking device that works in natural light. The device was able to successfully cloak a fish and a cat, but only from a few observational directions. The cloak itself is a little bulky and in no shape for everyday use.

There's no doubt that mastering invisibility still has a long way to go, but now it's just a matter of technology, and it's beginning to catch up.​

- read the full article 8 Superpowers Brought to You by Technology (from Popular Mechanics)​

There are easier ways to be invisible. Hide in the sensory noise so that T-Rex cant see you or disguise yourself as what you aren't. Sublimation is a 3rd way but requires skills most don't have.

 

[trysail]

I thought I'd throw this story out for your reading pleasure. The author, Willis Eschenbach, is an autodidact, a polymath and a world class raconteur. Once upon a time, he took an unauthorized ride on the rails (warning: it's a long story).

Freighted With Memories


In my mind, freight trains have always held some kind of special mojo. As a kid, I’d read about them, and sung about them. I loved the story, “The Boxcar Children”. I’d seen freight trains, and I’d always wanted to ride them, but at the exalted age of twenty-two years, I never had hopped on board a freight train. However, my best friend Mel had. Around 1970, during one of my many early retirements I’d gone to New Mexico with Mel and his delightful wife Andrea. They were going to stay, so I decided to ride the freights back to California from New Mexico. Mel told me what to do, what to watch out for, and took me to the local division, in a town called Belén (Spanish for Bethlehem) near Albuquerque...​

Read the rest of "Freighted With Memories" (from the blog Watts Up With That)

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/knuckle-coupler.jpg?w=640&h=465​

 

[Laurel]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/blog/370/ScreenShot2013-08-13at6.46.19PM.png

Today Flamingo Air runs 4-5 flights a week. The pilot sits up front wearing headphones (“He’s busy flying the plane,” MacDonald assured us) while the couple enjoys the back of the plane, where the center row of seats has been removed and replaced with a big pile of cushions. Customers from around the US and abroad pay $425 for a 1 hour flight. “This lends itself so well to publicity,” MacDonald told us, beaming through the phone. “We were even on Letterman!”
[...]
The Flamingo Air website describes themselves as “Cincinnati's most outrageous airline.” But it calls its offerings “romantic flights” or “flights of fancy.” Macdonald stressed that “Nowhere on our site does it say mile high club.” Although every flight is for a couple, only women book the flights and they “take it very seriously and they’re all about the romance.”

Every flight of fancy includes chocolates and champagne. On Valentines Day, demand skyrockets and Flamingo books 8 flights a day as the date nears. Flamingo has done several weddings in the air (“They weren’t consummated,” MacDonald added hurriedly. “The priest was in the airplane!”) and 60th anniversaries (“Yes they did, to answer your question!”).​

- read the full article Join the Mile High Club (from Priceonomics)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/film_noir.jpg

Often responding to Philip or Sam, the private investigator (PI) may be identified by his coat and hat. His natural habitat: the wet street corner or, unauthorised, another person’s home. He is commonly accused of committing the very crime under his investigation. You will find him lit starkly, from the side. He is good at getting women into bed, but they often turn out to be malevolent villainesses. He is American.

The PI’s bloodlines flow deeply into the tradition of masculine heroes. His characteristics loom so large over Western popular culture that it can be hard to make him out. This is the problem facing any book on the film noir detective: being a chap, in a movie, trying to solve a problem, he is as inscrutably general a cultural trope as the femme fatale. What makes a PI a PI, and not just some other kind of leading man? You can’t even really chalk him up to an era, since he has existed since the early days of film.

Bran Nicol’s new book,The Private Eye: Detectives in the Movies (Reaktion) gets some real purchase on our man. For a start, Nicol clears away the generic red herring of noir. Although many of the greatest PI movies are films noirs—The Big Sleep (1946), say—the PI is not a simple stand-in for this difficult genre, first formalised by Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton in their classic 1955 study Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953. Even Borde and Chaumeton acknowledged that their famous five film noir traits—oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel—were neither clear cut nor all strictly necessary in order for a film to be noir. This genre is yoked together by a general ambience—an aura of darkness—rather than any true collective character. If the film noir is about one particular thing, I’d say it was about bad people. It is therefore about crime, and the investigators of those crimes. Enter the PI.​

- read the full article “Hired by a bitch to find scum” (from Prospect)​

 

[KRCummings]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/blog/370/ScreenShot2013-08-13at6.46.19PM.png

Today Flamingo Air runs 4-5 flights a week. The pilot sits up front wearing headphones (“He’s busy flying the plane,” MacDonald assured us) while the couple enjoys the back of the plane, where the center row of seats has been removed and replaced with a big pile of cushions. Customers from around the US and abroad pay $425 for a 1 hour flight. “This lends itself so well to publicity,” MacDonald told us, beaming through the phone. “We were even on Letterman!”
[...]
The Flamingo Air website describes themselves as “Cincinnati's most outrageous airline.” But it calls its offerings “romantic flights” or “flights of fancy.” Macdonald stressed that “Nowhere on our site does it say mile high club.” Although every flight is for a couple, only women book the flights and they “take it very seriously and they’re all about the romance.”

Every flight of fancy includes chocolates and champagne. On Valentines Day, demand skyrockets and Flamingo books 8 flights a day as the date nears. Flamingo has done several weddings in the air (“They weren’t consummated,” MacDonald added hurriedly. “The priest was in the airplane!”) and 60th anniversaries (“Yes they did, to answer your question!”).​

- read the full article Join the Mile High Club (from Priceonomics)​

400 bucks to join a relatively exclusive club without the hassle of a tiny bathroom and someone banging on the door? Yes, please.

 

[Laurel]

And then there's the people that blatantly suck up to the boss so they can shit and dump on the rest of the people.....

Hey now! I finally got people convinced that they can be nice to me without sacrificing cool points. Don't mess it up please!

 

[Laurel]

400 bucks to join a relatively exclusive club without the hassle of a tiny bathroom and someone banging on the door? Yes, please.

Seriously.

 

[KRCummings]

Seriously.

And it's in Cincy which is only a few hours away. I think I might actually try this out. I hate flying but even people who hate flying want to join the mile high club.

 

[Laurel]

"I am not sure if you folks know what a Furry Rave is."

http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/screen-shot-2013-02-25-at-9-00-03-am.png

Furry Fiesta, a three-day summit for members of a subculture that love (and are sometimes sexually attracted to) anthropomorphized animals, is held every year at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in North Dallas-Addison. It’s full of panels, arts and crafts and stand-up comedy, and can also be a hotspot for raucous parties.
[...]
As it turns out, not every guest who stayed at the Crowne Plaza during the 2012 convention was as open-minded as the hotel staff about the nature of furrydom. A Florida father took his family to Dallas for a cheerleading competition and stayed at the Crowne Plaza during Furry Fiesta, and he was none too pleased with what he found. “Tony A” wrote a scathing review on Trip Advisor, condemning the hotel for allowing “these ‘people,’ if [you] can call them that” to stay there.

Mr. A had no idea what furries were until he decided to Google around for them:

I am not sure if you folks know what a Furry Rave is. A regular rave is a party where folks dance, drink, party and do their drugs. A regular rave would have been unacceptable then. A Furry Rave included more lude and lascivious behavior, along with the other factors included in a regular rave…. How did I find out all of these details about this “rave” and what these furry conventions are about? GOOGLE!!!!! How hard is it for someone to do a little due diligence before they schedule something like this? This research took me 5 MINUTES to do.​

A Crowne Plaza representative reached out to Mr. A on Trip Advisor and the review has since been deleted, though it lives on forever in our hearts (and Google Cache). Once Reddit got ahold of it, response reviews starting cropping up holding Tony A. accountable for his group’s behavior...​

- read the full article Man Leaves Scathing Trip Advisor Review After Hotel Stay Ruined By Furry Convention (from Betabeat)​

 

[KRCummings]

Furries creep me out. There's kinky and there's just plain fucked up.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

And it's in Cincy which is only a few hours away. I think I might actually try this out. I hate flying but even people who hate flying want to join the mile high club.

Paying for the specific privilege, however, seems to rob a critical element from the equation.

The typical mile high club story involved the unexpected thrill of hooking up with a stranger; maybe even a flight attendant. But even if one's partner was a steady bf or gf there was the assumption of the risk of being discovered by other passengers or crew. A big part of the thrill was getting away with the anti-social naughtiness of it all.

I mean, if they're going to provide you with coat hooks and wet wipes, what's the point?

The least they should do is fly some zero-G parabolas so you can bang away on top without the guy thinking about buying you a Jenny Craig membership.

 

[KRCummings]

Paying for the specific privilege, however, seems to rob a critical element from the equation.

The typical mile high club story involved the unexpected thrill of hooking up with a stranger; maybe even a flight attendant. But even if one's partner was a steady bf or gf there was the assumption of the risk of being discovered by other passengers or crew. A big part of the thrill was getting away with the anti-social naughtiness of it all.

I mean, if they're going to provide you with coat hooks and wet wipes, what's the point?

The least they should do is fly some zero-G parabolas so you can bang away on top without the guy thinking about buying you a Jenny Craig membership.

I agree the risk is one of the elements that make the whole thing fun but for those of us that don't like to even get out of our seats in a plane this offers a nice opportunity.
Never could figure out the bathroom thing anyway. How the fuck do two people fit in there in the first place much less fuck.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Never could figure out the bathroom thing anyway. How the fuck do two people fit in there in the first place much less fuck.

No shit. Whenever I have had the occasion to use the room for its intended purpose, it still was a bit too "intimate," if ya know what Ima sayin'.

 

[Laurel]

Once upon a time, Brooklyn musician j.viewz went to the grocery store, bought some eggplants and mushrooms strawberries and other stuff, and used them to connect a MaKey MaKey to his keyboard. Here’s the very cool thing that happened:​

- see the video The Best Massive Attack Cover Ever Played On Vegetables (from Buzzfeed)​

 

[Radiohead]

Hey now! I finally got people convinced that they can be nice to me without sacrificing cool points. Don't mess it up please!

I never had cool points.

 

[Laurel]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/120227_r21871_p233.jpg

Dogs do not know probable cause, but they do know smells. The average dog has hundreds of millions more olfactory receptors in his nose than a human does, and has evolved a specialized method of exhaling to bring even more odorant molecules into the nose than we do. A dog’s nostrils can sniff independently—the right nostril investigates a new smell first—allowing him to smell in stereo. People are nearly anosmic by comparison. (What have you smelled today? Any amphetamines?) In an earlier case also involving a dog’s role in bringing about a search, United States v. Place, the Court described the “canine sniff” as “sui generis,” highlighting that the dog nose is a tool quite unlike any human investigative tools. And this is quite right. While his handler did not find any drugs in the defendant’s vehicle (he did, however, find plenty of paraphernalia for making methamphetamine), it is probable that Aldo smelled “residual odor” of drugs left on the door handle some hour, day, or two days before. That is, not only is the dog’s nose capable of discriminating the major volatile molecules of things like cocaine and ecstasy—themselves beyond our ken—but the dog also detects an odor when the original source of the smell is no longer actually there. Dog owners puzzle over this phenomenon daily, watching our dogs thrust their snouts deep into another dog’s fur, or loiter excessively at a spot on the ground where by all appearances there is “nothing” at all.

As important in a detection dog’s work is not only that he knows about specific odors, but that he does not know what humans know: the nature of a traffic stop, and what a driver’s moustache, or music, or sports jacket might tell a police officer about his likelihood for being a suspicious character. Dogs do not even know about “narcotics,” per se. Detection dogs learn to detect volatile molecules that are components of drugs, rather than detecting the whole drug. And, of course, the dogs have no idea that what they’re searching for is illegal; they just know that finding it earns them a reward.​

- read the full article What the Dog Knows (from The New Yorker)​

 

[gravyrug]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/120227_r21871_p233.jpg

Dogs do not know probable cause, but they do know smells. The average dog has hundreds of millions more olfactory receptors in his nose than a human does, and has evolved a specialized method of exhaling to bring even more odorant molecules into the nose than we do. A dog’s nostrils can sniff independently—the right nostril investigates a new smell first—allowing him to smell in stereo. People are nearly anosmic by comparison. (What have you smelled today? Any amphetamines?) In an earlier case also involving a dog’s role in bringing about a search, United States v. Place, the Court described the “canine sniff” as “sui generis,” highlighting that the dog nose is a tool quite unlike any human investigative tools. And this is quite right. While his handler did not find any drugs in the defendant’s vehicle (he did, however, find plenty of paraphernalia for making methamphetamine), it is probable that Aldo smelled “residual odor” of drugs left on the door handle some hour, day, or two days before. That is, not only is the dog’s nose capable of discriminating the major volatile molecules of things like cocaine and ecstasy—themselves beyond our ken—but the dog also detects an odor when the original source of the smell is no longer actually there. Dog owners puzzle over this phenomenon daily, watching our dogs thrust their snouts deep into another dog’s fur, or loiter excessively at a spot on the ground where by all appearances there is “nothing” at all.

As important in a detection dog’s work is not only that he knows about specific odors, but that he does not know what humans know: the nature of a traffic stop, and what a driver’s moustache, or music, or sports jacket might tell a police officer about his likelihood for being a suspicious character. Dogs do not even know about “narcotics,” per se. Detection dogs learn to detect volatile molecules that are components of drugs, rather than detecting the whole drug. And, of course, the dogs have no idea that what they’re searching for is illegal; they just know that finding it earns them a reward.​

- read the full article What the Dog Knows (from The New Yorker)​

Interesting, but a little vague. I've seen a lot about dog sniff reliability over the past few years, and from what I've read, they're not nearly as reliable, at least for drugs, as they've been claimed to be. The article does mention the study showing that handler cues account for most of that, but doesn't go into it very much.

 

[Laurel]

Interesting, but a little vague. I've seen a lot about dog sniff reliability over the past few years, and from what I've read, they're not nearly as reliable, at least for drugs, as they've been claimed to be. The article does mention the study showing that handler cues account for most of that, but doesn't go into it very much.

I think - like the article sort of says but doesn't really say - that while dogs have an amazing sense of smell and can pickup an incredible variety of scents, they have absolutely no understanding of what they're being asked to detect or why. If a human being with a dog's nose were sent in, they could sift through the data and ignore whatever's not important - rotten food, dead rats, whatever. But dogs are dogs, with dogs brains, and all they know is they get rewards for smelling stuff.