Oddities and Humor

Veteran Deep-Water Sub Alvin To Get Face-Lift
www.npr.org
The 46-year-old research submarine will be taken out of service for the next year and a half for modernization after more than 4,600 dives. Among its feats, Alvin found a hydrogen bomb, explored the Titanic and most recently visited the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico...

You go Alvin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dern tootin' and lock n load.

Utterly fascinating the imagination and creativity this guy has in animating his films:

http://www.eatpes.com/index.html

Coping with modern technology:

For three decades, Old Man selflessly helped scientists unravel the mysteries behind Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, cancer and other age-related diseases.



Born in Kenya, he lived an active life — including siring offspring — until early Thanksgiving morning, when his body was discovered in a lab at the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies on the campus of the Texas Research Park in Bexar County.

A naked mole rat, Old Man was believed to be 32.

Often called the ugliest animals on the planet, naked mole rats are positively beautiful in the eyes of researchers on aging such as Rochelle Buffenstein, a professor in the department of physiology.

"In many ways, they confound what scientists think they know about how diseases progress and why living things age," she said.

The Barshop Institute, part of the University of Texas Health Science Center, maintains the world's largest mole rat colony. About 2,000 of the tiny, burrowing rodents whose most distinctive feature is their sharp, protruding teeth, live and breed in four basement labs. With their long, hairless bodies and translucent pink skin, they look a bit like Vietnamese spring rolls with legs.

Because these natives of East Africa live an average 26 years (compared to the 2- to 4-year lifespan of other rodents), they're well suited for studies of age-related disease.

A single finger bone found in this Siberian cave led to an amazing discovery. Early humans and Neanderthals co-existed with another humanoid species called Denisovans. And many present-day humans carry genes that prove our ancestors had children with Denisovans, too.

The new species is named after the cave where the 30,000 year-old finger bone was found. Researchers had been searching for Neanderthal bones in the area, and were surprised to discover what they initially thought was a fossil from an early human's little finger. To find out more, they shipped the bone off to the Max Planck Institute in Germany, where evolutionary biologist Svante Pääbo had already sequenced several Neanderthal genomes. Pääbo's tests gave a shocking result: The genome sequence they got from the bone showed that it was neither human nor Neanderthal.

And yet it was undeniably a human relative, who had clearly lived among humans and Neanderthals thousands of years ago in the caves of Siberia. After careful analysis, a team of genomics experts figured out where the Denisovans fit into the puzzle of human ancestry. Most likely they are descended from a common ancestor shared with Neanderthals. When early humans left Africa about 300 or 400 thousand years ago, the spread out across Europe and Asia. Those who went west to Europe became the heavy-browed, squat Neanderthals. And those who went East became Denisovans.

Genomics expert Richard Edward Green worked on analyzing the Denisovan DNA. In an email to io9, he explained:

The genome of the Denisovans is more diverged from modern humans than any two humans are from each other. It's almost exactly as diverged as the Neanderthal genome was. That's one of the reasons that we think the Denisovans and the Neanderthals are descendants of a single migration event into Eurasia.

bad-ass midgets

http://www.popcrunch.com/10-most-badass-midgets-in-history/

and scary tattoos

http://itthing.com/tattoos-that-demand-one-question-what-the-hell-were-you-thinking?utm_source=scribol&utm_medium=exchange&utm_campaign=scribol

FRED FOY, long time radio/TV announcer, who was the last surviving Lone Ranger on the radio has gone to that big round-up in the sky at 89.

Starting his career at radio station WXYZ in Detroit, Foy voiced the narration for the Lone Ranger with the famous lines "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty, 'Hi! Yo! Silver!' The Lone Ranger!" as the William Tell overture blared.

Not only did Foy open the show but he did also wore many hats - narrating the story, read the commercials and moonlighted for radio heroes Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and The Green Hornet as well.

Foy was the official voice of "Lone Ranger" announcer on radio from 1948 until it went off the air in 1954, and then reprised his intro when the Ranger crossed over to TV

On the radio show he performed the title role just once, on March 29, 1954, when Brace Beemer, the actor who played the Lone Ranger, came down with laryngitis.

It was only one episode, but it gave Foy the distinction of being the last living actor who performed the Lone Ranger on the radio, after Beemer and other Rangers had passed.

Later in his career, Foy was the announcer for The Dick Cavett Show and he often warmed up the audience doing his classic Lone Ranger intro.

"My father would be asked to do that introduction in social situations, at the doctor's office, at the grocery store, at the post office," Fred's daughter Nancy told The Boston Globe.

"He was never happier than when people would ask him, 'Fred do the intro.'

"He would put his hand to his ear like he was at the microphone, dig down, and out would come that beautiful, rich, baritone voice.

"It WAS magical."

Adios, Kemo Sabe.

I dunno how I've gone nearly fifty christmases and missed hearing from this guy...

Krampus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krampus

vid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAGKOA3LmzI

Well, here's a story -

WWII enemies now allies with aid of Internet, time


photo, Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

Frank Arsenault, shown as a 19-year-old sailor, helped sink a German sub in 1943.


Two old enemies, separated by time and the bitterness of war, have been reunited by the Internet.

They had encountered each other only once, on a winter's day in the Mediterranean during World War II. Wolf Danckworth was an officer on a German U-boat attacking an allied convoy, while Frank Arsenault was a sailor aboard a Canadian corvette trying to prevent the attack. Arsenault's ship rammed and sank the German submarine. Danckworth was the only survivor.

The battle between the U-boat and the corvette was swift and deadly. It happened a lifetime ago, on Jan. 13, 1943.

So Arsenault, who is now 86 and living in Santa Cruz, was astonished last summer when he got a letter he never expected. It was from former Leutnant zur See Danckworth, once first lieutenant aboard the submarine U-224, now 93 and living in near Hannover in Germany.

Danckworth had seen a 2009 Santa Cruz Sentinel interview with Arsenault that turned up on the Internet. In it, Arsenault talked about his wartime experiences aboard the Canadian ship Ville de Quebec and how the ship had rammed a German U-boat. Arsenault described how he had seen a single survivor of the submarine swimming for his life.

Danckworth wrote to say that he was that man and that he was still alive.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/24/BANI1GQKED.DTL#ixzz19A2DpxKn

Or this Guy

A message in a bottle delivered to a Confederate general during the American Civil War has been deciphered, 147 years after it was written.

In the encrypted message, a commander tells Gen John Pemberton that no reinforcements are available to help him defend Vicksburg, Mississippi.

"You can expect no help from this side of the river," says the message, which was deciphered by codebreakers.

The text is dated 4 July 1863 - the day Vicksburg fell to Union forces.

The small bottle was given to the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, by a former Confederate soldier in 1896.

Earlier this year the museum's collections manager, Catherine Wright, decided to investigate the wrapped note it contained.

It was "just sort of a curiosity thing", she told the Associated Press news agency.

When Ms Wright found that the message was coded, she asked retired CIA codebreaker David Gaddy to crack it - which he did in several weeks. A Navy cryptologist later confirmed the interpretation.

Historians regard the fall of Vicksburg as an important victory for Union forces. The Confederates were finally defeated in 1865

DALLAS — Never has Serita Agnew's faith been so shaken.

Police told her that the person who stole fur coats and laptop computers from her home was not a random criminal... but her trusted pastor.

The alleged crime took place on Christmas Eve.

"I'm still having a hard time," Agnew said. "I don't know what it was about."

She said her pastor, Sandy McGriff, called her on Christmas Eve, shortly before the break-in. A short time later, police said a neighbor spotted the 52-year-old preacher breaking a window and climbing in.

Arriving officers said they caught McGriff loading her car with Agnew's furs and purses — and then resisted arrest.

"It's not like she needed them; she didn't need them, she has fabulous things," Agnew said.

McGriff has been preaching for years; she's part of a well-known spiritual family in South Dallas. She recently began holding services in a small chapel in the back of her husband's furniture store.

"My biggest mistake was going through... going through the window," McGriff told WFAA, KENS 5's sister station, explaining that she was checking on Agnew on Christmas Eve and she caught two men breaking in.

McGriff said she climbed through the window so she could protect Agnew's property. She said she couldn't find the key to the house.

But why not just call the police? "My mistake," she said. "I should have."

Record show McGriff has a lengthy criminal past and goes by several aliases.

Police booked her under the name "Kathy Robinson," which McGriff concedes is a fake.

"Everyone has a past," she said. "I am a giver, not a taker. I'm not a burglar."

McGriff admits taking pain medication, but insists she's been clean since the late 1980s.

Serita Agnew has her belongings back, but she worries about what's been lost.

"She seems to have this connection with God; she seems to be a woman of God," Agnew said. "I made a decision not to let it shake my faith."

McGriff said she will plead not guilty to the theft charge. She told WFAA her faith remains strong, and she even held Sunday services just hours after being released from jail.

CBS) An Internet law designed to protect the stealing of trade secrets and identities is being used to levy a felony charge against a Michigan man after he logged onto his then-wife's Gmail account and found out she was cheating.

Leon Walker, 33, of Rochester Hills, Mich., is being charged with felony computer misuse, and faces up to five years in prison after logging into the email account of now ex-wife Clara Walker on a shared laptop using her password, the Detroit Free Press reports.

He is facing a Feb. 7 trial. Leon and Clara Walker's divorce was finalized earlier this month, the Free Press reports.

Clara, who was married twice previously, was having an affair with her second husband, as Walker found in her email, according to the Free Press. The second husband had been arrested earlier for beating her in front of her young son from her first husband.

Walker was worried about more domestic violence from husband No. 2, so he handed the e-mails over to the child's father, the Free Press reports. He promptly filed an emergency motion to obtain custody.

Leon Walker, a computer technician with Oakland County, was arrested in February 2009, after Clara Walker learned he had provided the emails to her first husband.

"I was doing what I had to do," Leon Walker told the Free Press in a recent interview. He has been out on bond since shortly after his arrest. "We're talking about putting a child in danger."

Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper defended her decision to charge Walker, calling him a skilled "hacker" who downloaded the material in "a contentious way."

Electronic Privacy expert Frederick Lane told the Free Press that the case hinges in a legal grey area, and the fact that the laptop was shared may help Walker's cause.

About 45 percent of divorce cases involve some snooping -- and gathering -- of email, Facebook and other online material, Lane said. But he added that those are generally used by the warring parties for civil reasons -- not for criminal prosecution, the Free Press reports.

Well, I guess you can't trust anyone anymore?

This is ridiculous!

In today's increasingly mechanized world, where the bottom line so often takes precedence over human considerations, the working man never knows how long it will be before he is replaced by a machine. It's no secret that some in management at Gillian's Fish Products, where I work, feel that automation would improve productivity and quality control. But what they don't understand is that they will lose something far more valuable if employees are let go: the resentful human touch.

No mere machine can replace the embittered alienation of the flesh-and-blood worker. Sure, machines may be able to gut whitefish in the blink of an eye. But would they be able, as I am, to despise and bemoan their miserable lot? To seethe with the unbearable knowledge that this will be their sole livelihood until the day they die? To identify with the glassy, sightless eye of every fish as their sharp blades spill the innards out?

Whether it's scaling each cod and struggling to suppress the repulsion and loathing within, or de-boning each haddock while fighting the impulse to drop the knife and walk out of the factory as far as your legs can take you, such sentiments could never be reproduced in mechanical form. Those special qualities can only come from one source: exhausted men and women forced to feed and clothe their children on a pauper's wages.

Replacing us with machines will increase profits, but can a dollar value be placed on the labors of someone who drinks before his morning shift just to get through the day? And when the machines are sitting in six-inch-deep gore at day's end, will they go home and take out their frustrations on family members and loved ones? I think not.

A machine can only contain wires, diodes, and gears, not the living, breathing sum of life's screw-ups, heartbreaks, and regrets.

You can install machines, but you can't install the permanent smell of fish in your nostrils, or hands that have been roughened, swollen, and discolored from years of fish dismemberment. You can build a machine to replicate the same repetitive motions we perform five backbreaking days a week, but all the engineers in the world cannot build a machine that will repeatedly bang its head on a locker, silent tears streaming down its metal cheeks, as it contemplates its wasted life.

Can a machine fume about years without a decent vacation, or having to pay exorbitant rent in a company-owned tenement near the factory? This, surely, only a man can do—a deeply self-hating man who loathes every second of his working life.

A machine can break down mechanically, but can it break down emotionally, mentally, and spiritually?

I can, and I have. Every day, a little piece of me dies. Could a machine say the same?

I've worked at this unventilated ****-prison 12 hours a day for nearly 25 years. I have developed no skills other than that of silently counting down the minutes of each workday while cursing my misfortune.

No matter what else they take from me, my utter and total hatred of this nightmarish fish-stick factory will always be mine. After all, isn't that what makes us truly human?

Onion