Saturday, July 18, 2015
Friday, July 17, 2015
Amputee War Veterans Show They’re Confident Enough To Be Hot Calendar Models
Michael Stokes, a fine arts photographer in California, takes a bold new approach to veteran portrait photography by taking powerful and sexually charged calendar-style photos of confident veterans posing proudly with their amputated body parts and prosthetics.
The project began with Alex Minsky, a U.S. Marine whose leg was amputated after suffering a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2009. After Minsky set the tone for a confident and proud photoshoot as opposed to a somber one, other veterans began to sign up, leading to a book by Stokes called “Always Loyal.”
“Some people will say to me ‘Oh, this is really helpful to their self-esteem,’ or, ‘You’re making them feel like men again,'” Stokes told MTV. “These guys have come to me very healed and ready to take the world on. I’m not giving them back their confidence. They already have it.”
Via Bored Panda, where they have more photos.
How We Got Duped Into Believing Milk Is Necessary for Healthy Bone
Interesting read at Vox. Excerpts below, but go there and read the whole thing.
Several years ago, Alissa Hamilton investigated America's love affair with orange juice in her book Squeezed. She uncovered all sorts of misconceptions about the breakfast staple's virtuousness (most of the health claims about orange juice and vitamin C are inflated) and its origins (most OJ actually comes from Brazil, not Florida).
Now Hamilton has trained her sight on another much-loved beverage: milk. In Got Milked? she argues that milk is not the healthy bone-builder governments and the dairy industry have led us to believe.
Milk is the only food that makes up an entire food group. If you look at it logically, it doesn’t deserve that special status any more than pumpkin seeds deserve that just because they’re high in magnesium — which is an essential nutrient Americans are low in.
Even the dairy industry recognizes that milk is not essential to health. They can’t counter that fact. Their comeback is that milk and milk products are the most convenient form of calcium. But that argument doesn’t hold anymore.
Why are we so gullible about unfounded health claims?
It’s not all that surprising, because that’s all we’ve heard. We’ve only heard from the dairy industry and government agencies that are built to support agricultural commodities like dairy. So you have the USDA creating the dietary guidelines — but it’s also there to support agriculture. There’s a conflict there.
We accept health messages from the dairy industry. But they’re a food business like any other, like Coca-Cola. In general, we don’t think Coke is out to better the world. We know they’re a company and the bottom line is what they’re after. But we don’t think about that when we read dairy industry advertising.
Stop Everything: There’s a New Seaweed That Tastes Like Bacon and Is Better for You Than Kale
Time:
Researchers from Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center say they’ve created and patenteda new type of seaweed that has the potential to be sold commercially as the next big superfood.
The reason? It tastes just like bacon, they claim.
The bizarre but tasty creation is actually a new strain of red marine algae called dulse that is packed full of minerals and protein and looks like red lettuce.
Dulse normally grows in the wild along the Pacific and Atlantic coastlines and is harvested, dried and sold as a cooking ingredient or nutritional supplement.
“Dulse is a superfood, with twice the nutritional value of kale,” said Chuck Toombs, a faculty member in OSU’s College of Business and a member of the team working to develop the product into a foodstuff. “And OSU had developed this variety that can be farmed, with the potential for a new industry for Oregon.”
The team began researching ways of farming the new strain of dulse to feed abalone, but they quickly realized its potential to do well in the human-food market.
“There hasn’t been a lot of interest in using it in a fresh form. But this stuff is pretty amazing,” said chief researcher Chris Langdon. “When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon, not seaweed. And it’s a pretty strong bacon flavor.”
They’ve received a grant from the Oregon Department of Agriculture to explore dulse as a “special crop” and are working with the university’s Food Innovation Center in Portland and several chefs to find out ways dulse could be used as a main ingredient.
Though there is currently no commercial operation that grows dulse for human consumption in the U.S., the team is confident the seaweed superfood could make it big. If it really does taste like bacon, that would be no surprise at all.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Add some bling to your cat’s bum with Twinkle Tush, a jewel you hang from your cat’s tail
Add some bling to your cat’s bum with Twinkle Tush, a jewel you hang from your cat’s tail, and watch them strut their stuff.
Have you ever thrown a respectable cocktail party at your home only to have your feline family member come out and proudly display their uncovered rear? While kitty might enjoy showing off their brown eye, we’re sure your guests don’t like to see that one eyed monster while munching on their caviar. Give your cat some class. Hang a Twinkle Tush from their tail and cover that butt in bling.
Come with the following warnings:
CONTAINS SMALL PARTS
Contains small parts – keep away from small children. Only cats can handle this much bling.
REMOVE IF DAMAGED
Remove if damaged, do not let pet eat any part. Twinkle Tush only looks good on the outside.
DON’T LEAVE UNATTENDED
Don’t leave your cat unattended with Twinkle Tush. They might be hatching a plot to kill you.
Russian mosquito festival seeks 'most delicious girl'
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| A reveler at the 2014 Mosquito Festival in Berezniki dressed in costume as a tribute to the insects. |
Organizers of a Russian town's annual mosquito festival said this year's event will include a "most delicious girl" contest for women who don't mind bug bites.
Natalya Paramonova, an organizer of the three-day event starting July 17 in Berezniki, said the festival will feature a "most delicious girl" contest, with women in shorts and vests stand still for 20 minutes to allow the bloodsucking insects to feast.
"An expert panel of judges, including a doctor, will examine their bodies and the winner will be the one with the most bites," Paramonova told Interfax.
Organizers said the winner of 2013's "most delicious girl" contest received more than 100 bites during the 20-minute competition.
Feds going door-to-door to seize illegal immigrants’ Obama amnesty approvals
via the Washington Times - excerpts below, but read the whole thing:
Goosed into action by an angry federal judge, federal immigration authorities will go door-to-door demanding illegal immigrants return the three-year amnesty approvals the Obama administration issued to them in defiance of a court order.
Those who don’t return their three-year permits will have them terminated at the end of this month...
The move comes as Homeland Security officials, fed up with slow-walking by illegal immigrants, are finally playing hardball after months of less forceful measures.
They’re scrambling to meet an end-of-month deadline set by Judge Andrew S. Hanen for recapturing thousands of three-year amnesties the department issued even after the court had entered an injunction halting the new amnesty program.
Unless all of the permits are recovered, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson could personally have to appear in court to explain the foul-up.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Guinness World Record du jour: Watch this guy kick himself in the head 134 times in 1 minute
Via the Guinness World Records people:
We kick off this week's episode with an extraordinary feat from Puskar Nepal who recently set a new record for Most kicks to the head in one minute (self) at Kantipur City College in Kathmandu, Nepal. Puskar managed a total of 134 kicks to his own forehead in just sixty seconds. Watch him in action in the video below.
My word of the day is from @BradThor's latest: contumelious
Brad Thor's latest is Code of Conduct, and this, in particular, jumped out at me:
"Country class” had replaced “fly-over country” as the new contumelious term used to describe the great unwashed living outside D.C. or the nation’s other Megalopoli.
It's part of this excellent description of senior Federal bureaucrats' view of the rest of the country:
He knew a thing or two about power, small truths that others often failed to realize. Heads of agencies and their immediate underlings would come and go, subject to election cycles and political approval. The same was true of politicians. Their influence was only worth so much.
The truly powerful were those deepest inside the government. Like the Wizard of Oz, they were the ones behind the curtain. They were the ones who knew which ropes to pull. Their hands were on the very levers of power.
They could not only raise or lower the sets but also brighten or dim the house lights. They weren’t just inside the machine as middle managers, they were the machine. They knew the game. They knew the system. They had been masters of it for years.
Theirs was a modern Rome, Rome on the Potomac—an empire in miniature—a land in and unto itself.
New Rome knew no economic vicissitudes. There were no vacant storefronts, no depressed housing prices, or reductions in take-home pay.
Taxes, fees, fines, and lines of credit that stretched to the stars and back made sure that the treasury was awash in coin. Things in New Rome were positively booming. The future was bright indeed.
That didn’t mean, though, that the empire was secure. As its fortunes grew, it seemed to come under a more regular and more prolonged assault by the country class.
“Country class” had replaced “fly-over country” as the new contumelious term used to describe the great unwashed living outside D.C. or the nation’s other Megalopoli.
Through social media, a handful of sympathetic news organizations, and grassroots activism, the country class waged incessant guerrilla warfare, demanding that the New Rome be put on a diet and scaled dramatically back.
As far as the New Romans were concerned, it was an odd, stupid little war waged by odd, stupid little people. They were most definitely in the minority. All of the polling showed it. Instead of shoving their faces full of McDonald’s drive-thru and watching reality TV like the rest of the country-class Hobbits, they were strangely obsessed with what was happening in Washington and how things should be changed.If they were so eager to dictate how it should be done in Washington, why were they sitting on their asses in Tennessee and Texas, Idaho and Indiana? Why weren’t they trundling their fat little children onto buses and coming to D.C. to help lend a hand? The answer was simple—because it was beyond them.
They had no idea how government worked, much less how important government workers were to its continued function. Without Federal employees, it all stopped—all of it. Fees at National Parks didn’t get collected, school lunch regulations didn’t get enforced, borders were left unprotected, and that was only the beginning. The inmates wanted to run the asylum. There was no way that could ever be allowed to happen.
Anything that grows is, by definition, alive. Washington, D.C. was no exception.
As a living organism, the Federal Government’s number one job was self-preservation. Any threat to its existence had to be dealt with.
When the country class came with its pathetic rhetorical torches and meddling electoral pitchforks, New Rome was ready.
It fought back with tools no one had ever seen coming. New Rome weaponized its own Federal agencies. The Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms—they all swatted away each and every attack.
The country class could storm the battlements over and over. They didn’t stand a chance. Not only could you not fight City Hall, you couldn’t survive a fight with the Federal Government. New Rome could take every single thing you have and put you in prison. It wasn’t even a fair fight. (It wasn’t supposed to be.)
Happy Bastille Day. Here's an old Jonah Goldberg article on the subject
Read the whole thing: The French are Revolting:
Today is Bastille Day, which commemorates the capture of an almost entirely empty prison, the cold-blooded murder of six unarmed soldiers, and the execution of one French governor already captured by the mob. Of course there is symbolic importance to the sacking of the Bastille. The French (really the Parisian) poor rose up in a spirit of democratic rage, to overthrow the ancien regime and demand the ability to misgovern the country themselves.
The French Revolution was a disgusting affair of tyrannical ego, greed and power-lust, made all the worse because it took a good idea and corrupted it, like making a BMW into a low-rider.
The single most disgusting aspect of the French Revolution was its attitude toward tradition. In effect, the Revolutionaries looked at the old house of custom, monarchy, and the Church, and said "Well, I don't like the drapes and this carpeting is pretty bad. That dinette set should go over there. And you know, that chaise lounge looks like something out of Greg Brady's swank attic bachelor pad so let's just burn the whole place down, murder the staff, execute the architects and imprison anybody who ever said anything nice about the place — and their families too, just in case."