Friday Ephemera

Canned air, $19. // Cough syrup of yore. // Slow motion gargling. // Give good tongue. // Of Oz the Wizard. Because all films should be alphabetized. // How to store your bunnies. // Deter burglars with a fog cannon. // Wheeled robot climbs walls. // Mystery solved. // The Bigger Luke Wiki. (h/t, MeFi) // Meanwhile, in Iran. // Made of ice. // An app for the blind. It works on bananas and wine but not much else. // Erotic e-books sync to your sex toy. “Breathing on the screen will trigger vibrations.” // A stiff breeze. // Impress your guests no end with an Inception table. // Instant iced tea. Some travel involved. // No, after you. // Chip fingers. // Crime and correlation. // Discussing intelligence. // New Zealand has disappeared. // And finally, inevitably, moss watching is now a thing.

Comments

[Jimmy]

One day New Zealand will have its revenge.

[Jimmy]

"Meanwhile in Iran"

OK, well... I don't like the theocrats anymore than any other sane person, but sitting on a [b]carpeted[/b] floor in Iran is not unusual. You have dinner with your family sitting on a carpet. Most likely these women got tired of standing and decided to sit. Notice the men standing at the back? There aren't enough chairs. Feminists are bellyaching the in the press over this image because they love feeling like victims, especially on behalf of others. These are the same types of people (grauntards) who claim young Iranian women have no idea what periods are because [i]patriarchy[/i] - which is a lie - but it's good grist for the mill of the aggrieved female psyche in the liberated west.

[Hal]

Of Oz the Wizard.

. . . with rather a lot of people screaming Aaiee.

Cough syrup of yore.

The sniffling, sneezing, aching, coughing, stuffy-head, fever, why am I lying on the kitchen floor staring at the ceiling, medicine.

The Bigger Luke Wiki.

The Endor holocaust. And Darth Jar-Jar, as well.

[Chester Draws]

It was instructive to check Jimmy out. Type "Iranians eating" into Google Images.

[Hal]

OK, well...

Tags in HTML

[DAn]

Sitting on a chair doesnt seem to be unusual either, especially if you are male and there is floor space for the women to use.

[Mr_Eugenides]

"These days, I’m interested in what kind of striptease might be possible in our era. For my latest exhibition, I had cells taken from my body in a biopsy and cultivated them, then played with how they looked. So it’s a striptease with cells instead of clothes."

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/07/orlan-best-photograph-birth-of-venus-striptease-with-trousseau

[Wilbur Hassenfus]

If you let those Iranian women sit on chairs, they would instantly start complaining about how badly they were treated, and unanimously vote for somebody to flood the country with men who'd put them back on the floor again. And they would have absolutely no idea why they were doing any of it, but it would all be men's fault -- most particularly those men trying to talk them out of it.

If our women weren't so uniformly angry and miserable, we might have some standing to tell them what to do with theirs.

[The Sage]

Lauri Penny gets told : https://twitter.com/JetstreamR3V/status/684819420540235776

[sk60]

Crime and correlation.

I denounce these hate-facts.

[Mags]

An app for the blind.

What if the blind person can't find their phone?

[David]

Morning, all.

What if the blind person can’t find their phone?

In fairness, it’s a work in progress, but still, the effect can be quite comical. Over Christmas I tried it out at a family gathering. First, I pointed it at my niece’s face. After some rumination (and quite a lot of excited vibrating), my phone declared said object to be a wig. As my niece’s hair was immaculate and probably quaffed for Christmas at considerable expense, this raised a chuckle. I then pointed it at the face of another niece’s partner, a strapping chap of 6’4”. More vibrating. “Nipples,” it declared.

I denounce these hate-facts.

The concentration of unacceptable thought and unmentionable facts is quite high. Heads may explode. Ditto the discussion of intelligence.

[rjmadden]

The concentration of unacceptable thought and unmentionable facts is quite high. Heads may explode.

David, thanks for sharing those videos. They really show why politically correctness is harmful.

[David]

They really show why politically correctness is harmful.

Well, it certainly can be. And obviously it’s hard to address a social problem realistically if you instinctively self-censor and can’t even refer to certain, rather pertinent, facts and variables.

It reminded me of a particularly fatuous analysis of littering and its concentration in rougher parts of town, mentioned here. In it, the five authors demanded “fairer outcomes in street cleanliness,” even though cleaning resources are typically concentrated in such areas, massively so, with councils spending up to five times more than they spend on cleaning more respectable neighbourhoods. The authors took extraordinary care not to consider how the litter came to be there in the first place. It seems they were anxious to avoid any suggestion that the local population, as a group, might be more inclined to littering and other antisocial behaviour.

A result of which being that the reader was left to suppose that the discarded nappies, food-smeared detritus and other unsightly objects just fell from the clouds mysteriously when the locals were asleep.

[Joan]

New Zealand has disappeared.

It was making the maps look untidy anyway. :-)

[David]

It was making the maps look untidy anyway. :-)

And yet Madagascar and the Malay Archipelago are more likely to be depicted, despite being at least equally fiddlesome to draw. It’s odd.

[Rob Fisher]

From the littering link: "Poverty and affluence are two sides of the same coin. One would not exist without the other." Wow.

[David]

Wow.

Oh, yes. The horseshit is neck deep. Both our socialist Urban Studies lecturer and the report he cites, witlessly, are examples of just how intellectually disreputable so much “social science” has become. The littering report is hugely misleading, practically comical. Apparently that’s the standard that will do.

[WTP]

One day New Zealand will have its revenge.

I suspect they already have...

It was making the maps look untidy anyway. :-)

I smell a Kiwi conspiracy. They're trying effectively to put the rest of us on the A-Y Arks so they can be left alone on the Z Ark. Somewhat similar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_as_Big_as_the_Ritz

Might also explain why they've been trying to hide/blend in behind Australia's flag for all these years as well.

[Ray]

Isn't it Brave New World where all the maps have been edited to remove the places not part of the One World Order or am I getting confused?

[svh]

Wheeled robot climbs walls.

??!

[WTP]

"Poverty and affluence are two sides of the same coin. One would not exist without the other."

Just as death and life are two sides of the same coin. One would not exist without the other. The obvious solution to the death problem is to kill all life. Then no one will every have to worry about death ever again. Genius. Can I get my PhD now?

Speaking of which, has anyone ever noticed that PhD's are not evenly distributed among the general population? They tend to be concentrated closest to universities and such. Perhaps if more PhD's were more evenly distributed, perhaps given to more people there wouldn't be so much ignorance in the world.

[rabbit]

Our bodies require a regular supply of premium oxygen in order to function at its peak performance.

Premium oxygen, mind you. Not that cheap stuff you get from breathing air.

[Henry]

Arrgghh please, not Stefan Molyneux...

[David]

Arrgghh please, not Stefan Molyneux...

Why arrgghh?

[Hal]

Apologies are demanded.

All over.

[mojo]

Uh-oh! : "What was remarkable in this particular batch of emails was one communication from Clinton in which she informed her aide, Jake Sullivan, to disregard sending sensitive information via “secure fax.” Instead, she requested that a document in question be turned “into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”"

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/american-society/bad-day-preferred-narratives/

[Chester Draws]

One day New Zealand will have its revenge.

And no-one will notice! [sigh!]

It is very annoying that we continue to be ranked #2 in the world by Transparency International for least corruption and repeatedly get left off the maps

http://images.indianexpress.com/2014/12/pti12_3_2014_000046b_kuma.jpg

[Chester Draws]

Sorry: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/india-improves-rating-on-global-corruption-index/

[ACTOldFart]

Well if you are that transparent, of course you won't appear on the map. As an Australian follower of Rugby Union, the sooner you melt into the empty air, the better, I say.

[Jen]

why politically correctness is harmful.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/010716-788747-government-wants-to-lend-more-to-high-risk-immigrants.htm?p=full

Politically correct mortgage lending. What could go wrong (again)?

[David]

Politically correct mortgage lending. What could go wrong (again)?

I wonder. Are they insane, or just intent on wreaking havoc?

[Quint&Jessel, Sea of Azof, Bly, UK]

I'm going with "wreaking havoc." It's the only thing that makes sense lately.

[Ten]

New Zealanders are known for their nautical history and accomplishments, not least among them their Americas Cup sailing prowess. The last Cup, taken in one of the greatest comebacks in sports by the Americans, first produced heaps of contempt in online conversations and then as the comeback emerged and victory slipped away, rage at the latter by the former.

The nature of this extraordinary negativity was a bizarre politically correct condemnation of all things American because, naturally, America. At no point did I see so much as the subject arise questioning such an automatic reflex rooted merely in geography - apparently, it is presumed to be a universal value, suitable to air when and wherever. And yes, the American team did in fact display an eventual mastery I do not recall seeing elsewhere in sport. Rather spellbinding in its resolve and tenacity, skill and domination, it was. The bastards.

[WTP]

Here's a smart person who gets paid to share her thinking and an example of some of the thinking this smart person shared:

I'm less afraid of the criminals wielding guns in Baltimore, I declared as we discussed the issue, than I am by those permitted gun owners. I know how to stay out of the line of Baltimore's illegal gunfire; I have the luxury of being white and middle class in a largely segregated city that reserves most of its shootings for poor, black neighborhoods overtaken by "the game." The closest I typically get to the action is feeling the chest-thumping vibrations of the Foxtrot police helicopter flying overhead in pursuit of someone who might be a few streets over, but might as well be a world away.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-bishop-0108-20160107-story.html

[Quint&Jessel, Sea of Azof, Bly, UK]

So, WTP, that ignorant git wants to ensure that only POOR PEOPLE are defenseless against gun-wielding thugs? Or that's what I gathered, anyway.

[JerryC]

OK. Since this person claims to be more concerned about her daughter getting killed accidentally at a "play date" with a legal gun owner's kid than she is about getting murdered in Baltimore, let's run some numbers.

Number of homicides in Baltimore in 2015: 344
Population of Baltimore: 622,000
Homicides per 100,000: 54.4

Number of accidental gun deaths in the US: 586
Population of the US: 318,900,000
Accidental gun deaths per 100,000:0.183

Hmmm. I know math is hard, but come on.

[The Sage]

@Ray
Isn't it Brave New World where all the maps have been edited to remove the places not part of the One World Order or am I getting confused?
That would be Ira Levin's This Perfect Day -- which hid the Falklands and the Balearics (amongst others).

[Jimmy]

@ Ten

"And yes, the American team did in fact display an eventual mastery I do not recall seeing elsewhere in sport. Rather spellbinding in its resolve and tenacity, skill and domination, it was. The bastards."

I suppose so, if you ignore the technical aspect of the boats. Perhaps next time the American team will feature more than one American sailor and we can see what they're really capable of.

[Ray]

The Sage,

Many, many thanks for that. I'd really been struggling to recall that one.

[Ten]

I suppose so, if you ignore the technical aspect of the boats. Perhaps next time the American team will feature more than one American sailor and we can see what they're really capable of.

Cute. None of which explains the NZLers back home themselves going completely PC ape at the prospect of 1) winning and then of 2) not winning versus the team on the American boat. As for the boat, sue them if they had V8s in each hull already...

[Tim Newman]

And yes, the American team did in fact display an eventual mastery I do not recall seeing elsewhere in sport. Rather spellbinding in its resolve and tenacity, skill and domination, it was. The bastards.

I suspect this was much to do with the fact that the Americans were skippered by an Australian, a supremely arrogant one (even by Australian sporting standards) at that. He is a good sailor, though.

[decnine]

"Erotic e-books sync to your sex toy. “Breathing on the screen will trigger vibrations.” // A stiff breeze."

An inspired juxtaposition. Well done!