January 14, 2010
Bad: Bear eats your airplane. Rad: You fix it with duct tape and fly it home.
If a bear destroys your plane in the woods you can use duct tape to fly it home. If you're crazy. Or brave. But it's more proof that duct tape can fix anything.
Best Science Blog Posts of 2009
The Open Laboratory 2009: The 50 best science blog posts of the year. The complete list of over 700 submissions. [more inside]
What's wrong with my Internet?
ICSI Netalyzr is a java applet that performs an impressive collection of tests on your Internet connection, and reports the results back to you (and to the ICSI) in an easily readable format. [more inside]
Maybe you'll get some, maybe you won't!
Rena Smaha and her trained rhesus monkeys on Late Night with David Letterman. The year is 1987. Rena Smaha brings her two rhesus monkeys over for a tea party and a few stupid pet tricks. Unfortunately, Dave and Sandy the Monkey don't quite see eye to eye...
You can't begin to tell the story....
Meet America's First Legal Male Prostitute
An interview with the first male gigolo of the Shady Lady Ranch:
I think for a male, if you want to be successful in this type of venture, you're not a prostitute. You're a surrogate lover. You encompass everything that's required of you—not only emotionally, physically—but psychologically. Because women are wired differently. They're much more sensitive creatures. You actually have to enjoy what you do. You can't necessarily say, "Oh, it's just a job." You actually have to say it's a passion.Background: Nevada has legalized male prostitution (LATimes)
Write less, do more
January 14th marks the 4th birthday of jQuery and also the release of jQuery 1.4. To celebrate the release of the latest version of the popular JavaScript library the jQuery team has created the 14 Days of jQuery site, which will be updated each day with a new announcement or release. There’s also prizes to be had for the coolest use of jQuery.
Unclean slate
An expert in Elizabethan handwriting is attempting to decipher the inscriptions on a 400-year-old slate tablet discovered by archaeologists working at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. Want to take a crack at it yourself? First, you're going to want to take English Handwriting, 1500-1700: An Online Course. Then, keep your skills sharp with a daily dose of Early Modern Paleography. (This week's images will be well known to a certain MeFite.)
Ever Wonder Why NFL Apparel Is So Expensive?
Is the National Football League a single entity or 32 individual businesses? That’s the question before the Supreme Court in the case of American Needle vs. NFL. American Needle (warning: heavy Flash), a Buffalo Grove, IL sport apparel manufacturer, claims the NFL’s exclusive contract with Reebok to manufacturer all NFL apparel is an anti-trust violation. The NFL counters that they are one entity, and thus, cannot conspire against themselves to restrict competition. [more inside]
Should you pay for the Internet? (YES)
The politics of Avatar
James Cameron has acknowledged that Avatar implicitly criticizes America's War in Iraq and the impersonal nature of mechanized warfare in general, although it's not the films main theme. American Conservatives have blasted Avatar for depicting U.S. marines as villains. Others see it as a "race fantasy" for white people. Over in China, Communists see parallels between the movie’s plot and one of the nation’s most prominent social issues: the forced removal of Chinese citizens from their homes for government development projects. The St. Petersburg Communist Party believes the film is an American apology for Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. “It is quite funny to watch how the activists of the national liberation movement of Pandora accept a Pentagon-made mutant instead of judging him by the laws of the revolutionary time,” the communists noted.
Teddy Pendergrass 1950 - 2010
Slow and Steady
B.B. King plays to a New York prison audience on Thanksgiving Day 1972 "How Blue Can You Get." Plus, bonus SRV inside. [more inside]
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