Just got through looking at the special effects link. That was fun, but I wouldn't say any of those scenes were famous.

Soldiers' Itemized Military Kit - from 1244 - 2014.

Hi there. Is that a trench club in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

It would behoove them to take their valet along. :haha:

Re: 1916 private soldier, Battle of the Somme.

It tended to be the more experienced soldier who survived the first day of the Battle of the Somme due to having ditched his kit at the earliest opportunity.

This reduced the likelihood of his becoming bogged down in the mud and presenting the enemy with an easy target.

Vagina cookies.

Yep, vagina cookies.

Photos from behind the scenes of various movies, 2 below:

Attachment 49183
Attachment 49184

Seeking some light reading this morning, my gaze fell upon a newspaper article by the BBC’s Economics Editor, Robert Peston, about political leaders being less than willing to discuss the minor matter of the national debt in the months preceding a general election. I’ll just pluck this sentence from the article:

I suspect that few people would disagree with that sentiment. The UK National Debt is a horror story.

UK National Debt Clock

Equally horrific, perhaps more so, is the US National Debt.

Read and weep, gentle reader.

US National Debt Clock

If they've been mentioned before apologies are due.
One thing is for certain, neither will be the same as the last time you looked.

Debt per taxpayer (that's me) $152,941. I don't like that.

But I do like the fact that the big number on the federal deficit is going DOWN.

You don't hear that too often, but it's good news.

Death Map, Most Common Causes of Death, By State

Several maps relating to cause of death

Speaking of the impending election, I saw gasoline in NJ and MA for less than $3 a gallon this past weekend.

On my first visit to the US in 1999 I was staggered to find fuel at 94c/gal in deepest WY.

I don't think that it had increased that much the last time I visited in 2004.

ETA Irritatingly, in the UK fuel is priced as pence/litre. This morning I bought 29.30 litres @ 120.9p/l = £35.42.

I think that I have calculated this correctly, but that works out at $7.32/US gal. (£1 = $1.60)

I don't drive very often.

There was a lot of talk about $5 a gallon but it didn't happen.
There were MA stations less than $3 but the statewide average was something like $3.30ish.

Be still my beating heart!
September Pylon of the month was the site's 50th pylon.

She's a little on the thin side. Kinda bony.

Pffft... Chicken feed.

Now you're talking:

thebigtower.com :eek:

King of Click - The story of the IBM Model M, the greatest keyboard ever made.

There was this one gas station in DC, near the Kennedy Center, that went over $5.

The explanation I heard was that they wanted to be just a garage, but they had to be a gas station to keep the franchise, so they overpriced the gas to keep gas customers away (and, as a bonus, anyone who used them anyway would be extra-profitable).

They are now gone, and the new station is in line with others in the area. I.e. still expensive, but not as much.

edit - Here's a thread talking about this station. And a Washington Post article that mentions it.

Don't you mean Indigenous Peoples' Day?
"Italian heritage"??? what the heck?

That was a plot point on The Sopranos. The gangsters were all bent out of shape over an effort by Native American groups to stop celebrating Columbus.

I member dat.

The Oatmeal missed the point. Columbus was sent by European power, the same power that writes history, therefore the resident savages, and visiting Vikings, Asians, Africans and Polynesians don't count.

And Bartolome? "He gave up his land, freed his slaves, became a priest, and spent the rest of his life fighting the brutal colonization of the New World." What a dumb move, what European Monarch, you know, the ones with power, is going to listen to a pauper priest? I doubt the Vatican was much interested either.

As a wealthy plantation owner he might have been able put a bug in the ear of some players at court, at least brought up the subject with the "loyal opposition", but of course their life expectancy was almost as short as the Indians.

Tabletop Whale.

A science illustration blog using charts and animated GIFs. You'll like it or your money back.

I liked it.

Yep. Solid in my memory.

liked. thanks.

Hey, you know C.J. Wilson, pitcher for the Angels?

Well, I was reading this article at YahooAutos about the wild-super-awesome paint job on his McLaren P1 (cerberus pearl polychromatic paint, btw:right:). The article had a link to more photos of Mr. Wiiiiilson's car. The link goes to a photo archive of pics Mr. Wilson has taken during the off season(s).

Mr. Wilson is a fairly awesome photographer.

Scientists resurrect extinct 700 year old virus from frozen caribou poop.

Great. They brought back an old virus and tested it out and it successfully infected a modern day organism in a lab environment.

Why would you do this?

Because understanding this new virus in laboratory conditions allows us to learn more in a safer, controlled condition. Indeed, there are gazillions of viruses out there, we live in and amongst them literally all the time. Learning about this one in the lab doesn't mean we haven't already been exposed to it, we just know more about it. Also, "successfully infected" means transferred from one organism to another. "Infected" has emotional connotations that don't apply in the context of the lab experiment.

Additionally, this fellow does this as a hobby, finding new viruses. Apparently there's a lab coat for every petri dish too.

$
$
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A nice controlled virus sure could solve some problems for the military, just sayin...

Soaking Behemoth – The Mack Super Pumper Was A Locomotive Engined Fire Fighter That Could Extinguish Hell Itself

Attachment 49467

The water pump on this monstrosity was powered by a 2,400 horsepower engine.

:devil:

Live Polar Bear Cam from Canada.

Attachment 49529
Best image yet of planets being formed.

This image was made by ALMA, an array of radio telescopes in Chile. Those dark rings in the cloud are areas around the star where matter is clumping together into planets, pulling more nearby matter out of the cloud disk.

That chick that married Clooney? She's pretty good.

ETA: Nevermind, I got lysdexic for a moment...

:p:

Suicidal bunnies - from "The Book of Bunny Suicides" by Andy Riley. First in a series.

Example:

Attachment 49618
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Simple, but, funny cartoons by Shaghai Tango

Examples:

Attachment 49619

Attachment 49620

Love Tango, very original.

Oh they're really good! Love the wifi pizza slices.



[eta] Oh god, the suicidal bunnies. First couple were mildly amusing, but as you go through them they just get funnier and funnier.

This site featured in an article in one of today's newspapers.

Curiosity got the better of me so I had a look.

The site describes itself as 'an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard'.

Forgive me if it has been mentioned before.

http://postsecret.com/

OH dear, Marshall College has denied tenure to Assistant Professor Henry Jones Jr. ;)

heh heh. I always thought the same thing about him.

I spotted this article on the BBC website a couple of days ago:

BBC

Quite frankly, the video is a fairly lazy piece of journalism but the Reddit thread is worth reading.
I don't bother looking at Reddit all that often because navigating the posts is a pain in the arse. That's definitely British, by the way.

Non-British people of Reddit, what about Britain is stupid/baffles you?

That is a good read, Carruthers. I just learned, for example, that the pink bunny whose batteries last longer than anyone else's was originally the Duracell Bunny, until Duracell failed to renew their patent in the US, and Energizer stole it from them. In the UK they apparently talk about the Duracell Bunny in the exact same way we talk about the Energizer Bunny.

Of all the things that are difficult to accept, but I am learning to deal with, this one gives me an opportunity to exercise the right to refuse to believe something even when cited by a reliable source.

No, they do it with an accent.

Sir! I am an Englshman, everyone else speaks English with an accent. ;)

:D

That's because out of any random 10 Englishmen, you can't find more than three who sound alike. :p:

I see they gave Ellen DeGeneres credit for the picture that millions of people witnessed Bradley Cooper take.

Probably because it was her camera and her idea. The plan was to ask Streep to step out of the group and take the picture as a joke. Then Cooper insisted on taking it, and that bunch is like wrangling cats, take the shot, now or never.

I just did a site-specific image search using Teh Cellar.

Click this, and see if any of your photos are there. I saw several of mine.

It's kinda fun, remembering the pics, the convos that went them, and finding your own, of course.

Click the pic, and then click "visit page", takes you to the thread, and the page the pic is on, imagine that.

Yeah, a couple. ;)