Wednesday links

Excellent site for DIY intelligent women's costumes.

Home invasion, Canadian style: RCMP reminds Nova Scotians to lock their doors after pair enter stranger's home, clean it. 

The Lighthouse That Wrecked More Ships Than it Saved.

This Chart Explains the Chemicals That Give Autumn Leaves Their Different Colors.

A self-cleaning house.

Lessons from the Sioux in How to Turn a Boy Into a Man.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include Trafalgar Day, Oktoberfest history, an 1880-era costume guide, how birds avoid crashing into each other in mid-air, and the history of Uranus jokes.

Monday links

Infographic: The Flowchart of Medieval Penitent Sexual Decision-Making.

We missed Dog Farting Awareness Day yesterday, but Scientific American's article on the science of dog farts is still worthwhile.

When Does Work Actually Get Done? Work gets done at 11AM on a Monday in October. At all other times of day, we're basically slacking.

A history of the joke "Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?"

The Physics Behind a Baseball Bat’s Sweet Spot. Related: Mark Steyn on the history of the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".

Inside the Secret Workshop of the Louvre.

ICYMI, the most recent links are here, and are all April Fool's Day related.

June 27 is Helen Keller's birthday. Here are quotes, links and a selection of (non-PC) jokes

Helen Keller (wiki). in addition to being an inspiration for millions (is there a better example of the overcoming of adversity in recent history?) was also the inspiration for a lot of jokes, mostly one-liners. These are wildly non-PC today, but a few decades ago they were quite popular. The jokes are at the bottom of the post, but first some quotes:

The mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew than that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, joy, set it free!

~ Helen Keller (The Story of My Life, Ch. 4)

The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger-tips, it seemed to me as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm. Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart.

~ Ibid., Ch. 23

Helen Keller and Mark Twain

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

~ Ibid., Ch. 22

I am charmed with your book - enchanted. You are a wonderful creature, the most wonderful in the world - you and your other half together - Miss Sullivan, I mean, for it took the pair of you to make a complete and perfect whole.

~ Mark Twain (letter to Helen Keller, 17 March 1903)

Of late our periodicals have been filled with depressing revelations of great social evils. Querulous critics have pointed to every flaw in our civic structure. We have listened long enough to the pessimists. You once told me you were a pessimist, Mr. Clemens, but great men are usually mistaken about themselves. You are an optimist.*

~ Helen Keller, (letter to Mark Twain - read the whole thing, via Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1)

June 27 is the anniversary of the birth in 1880 of American writer, lecturer, and humanitarian Helen Adams Keller (wiki) (1880-1968), who was blind and deaf from the age of 19 months. Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller was deprived of her sight and hearing by a childhood disease, but her private tutor, Anne Sullivan (1866-1936) - through a series of innovative teaching methods - gradually taught her to understand and communicate with others. 

Keller became a world-famous advocate for the blind and disabled, and in addition to The Story of My Life (1903), wrote Midstream, My Later Life in 1929 and lectured on the issues of blindness all over the world. Helen Keller seems to be fading from public memory, but the dramatization of her early teaching by Anne Sullivan in William Gibson's play, The Miracle Worker (1960), is still regularly performed, and the film version, starring Anne Bancroft as Sullivan and a young Patty Duke as Keller, is available. 

*Much more on the friendship between Helen Keller and Mark Twain at Open Culture.

Here's a video of Helen Keller visiting Martha Graham's dance studio - I'm not sure of the date on this:

Jokes after the jump. If you're offended by this kind of stuff, don't read it.

Monday links

Video: Pulling a loose tooth with a live squirrel, and lots of bonus squirrel links.

Which Is It: Prescription Drug or Tolkien Elf?

The Great Vampire Epidemic of the 1720s.

Today is Helen Keller's birthday. Here are quotes, links, some history, and a selection of (non-PC) jokes.

When Dali Met Harpo: Read Salvador Dali’s script for the Marx Brothers.

A Sumerian Walks Into a Bar… a history of dirty jokes (NSFW).

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include wine for cats, making 18th century fried chicken, accidents that changed the course of history, and what happens when a presidential candidate dies.

Ebola cartoon of the day

via Legal Insurrection

Related: The Onion's advice on protecting yourself from ebola starts with the invariably useful Boil All Bodily Fluids Before Consumption.

Tuesday links

Today is Erwin Schrödinger's (he of the famous half-dead cat) 127th birthday: explanation, quotes, jokes, video.

Valar Morghulis: A Statistical Guide To Deaths In Game Of Thrones

This Is a Spider's Brain on Drugs.

Yesterday was Presidential Joke Day - jokes by, not about presidents. They're pretty lame, but if you want a laugh, this video of a baby boy's rapture over the sight of a remote control will make your whole day.

Could Modern Troops Defeat Medieval Knights in Hand-to-Hand Combat?

How to detect speech in the vibrations of a potato chip bag, watched from a distance through soundproof glass.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the anniversary of the battle of Thermopylae, real-life werewolf origins, and some Guardian of the Galaxy science: what plants could Groot have evolved from?

So, today is Presidential Joke Day - jokes by, not about presidents

The holiday began in 1984, when Ronald Reagan made a joke during a sound check for a radio broadcast. "My fellow Americans,” he said, "I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." (audio only clip at youtube here).

Reagan was not aware, however, that his feed was live. And unfortunately, not everyone got the joke. Soviet officials got word of the broadcast and put the military on high alert.

Once the threat of nuclear war had abated, Americans found the situation hilarious, and decided to memorialize Reagan’s famous quip by instituting National Presidential Joke Day on August 11th. To get you geared up to celebrate this holiday properly, we’re saluting these presidential knee-slappers.

RONALD REAGAN

"I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself."

"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency -- even if I'm in a Cabinet meeting."

"Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

"Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his."

"I hope you're all Republicans." —Speaking to surgeons as he entered the operating room following a 1981 assassination attempt

GEORGE W. BUSH

"These stories about my intellectual capacity really get under my skin. You know, for a while I even thought my staff believed it. There on my schedule first thing every morning it said, 'Intelligence Briefing.'"

''Thank you for your email. This Internet of yours is a wonderful invention.'' —To Al Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign

“We’re studying safe levels for arsenic in drinking water. To base our decision on sound science, the scientists told us we needed to test the water glasses of about 3,000 people. Thank you for participating.” —At the 2001 Radio-Television Correspondents’ Association dinner

''The candidates are an interesting group, with diverse opinions -- for tax cuts and against them, for NAFTA and against NAFTA, for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act, in favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it. And that's just one senator from Massachusetts.'' —During the 2004 campaign against John Kerry

BARACK OBAMA (This list is from a Mental Floss article in 2012 - presumably there have been additional jokes from Obama since then)

''If I had to name my greatest strength, I guess it would be my humility. Greatest weakness, it's possible that I'm a little too awesome.''

”There are few things in life harder to find and more important to keep than love. Well, love and a birth certificate.”

''Many of you know that I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is Barack is actually Swahili for 'That One.' And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn't think I'd ever run for president.”

OTHERS:

''Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.'' —Lyndon Johnson

“I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy: Dear Jack, Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.” —John F. Kennedy, addressing complaints that his father’s money was buying the primary for him.

''My esteem in this country has gone up substantially. It is very nice now when people wave at me, they use all their fingers.” —Jimmy Carter

"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'present' or 'not guilty.'" —Teddy Roosevelt

''In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.'' —John Adams

"Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening." —Bill Clinton

“If I were two faced, would I be wearing this one?” —Abraham Lincoln