MONDAY #2340

One Of My Very Own...

Some slants on an older news item...

The Russian T-14 Armata.

Armed with a remote-controlled turret and an automatic loading system, the tank is the product of Russia's ten-year armament program in which $400 billion is being spent on new weaponry. The tank is also the first to have an internal armored capsule to give added protection for its three-man crew. Russian and some Western military experts say the Armata will surpass all Western versions. 


(I wonder how many people will realize what it means that the Abram's tank is now second best)

Then there's this headline from their May Day Parade:

 It reads:

Music

So, while you listen to the most redneck song ever recorded, I have this newly learned fact. A man I met today likes to eat pork rinds wet......WET!! Like cereal bowl water instead of milk wet. For you people who don't know what pork rinds are, it is, literally, fried pig fat. And when you rehydrate them they transform (revert if you will) from crispy delicious snack back to, well, pig fat. Pig. Fat. Wet. In a bowl. And that, Gentle Reader, is the most disgusting thing I have ever considered putting in my mouth.

Let's make fun of people who, by accident of birth, are better than you are...

Why I take pride in being a Packer fan...

Besides humans, dolphins are the only animals to enjoy sex, and I had to fuck a lot of animals to figure that out.

How do you keep from scratching adjacent teeth?

PHOTOGRAPHY

Warsaw, 1946

Back when people cared about design...

 This next one is a near perfect photograph...

Now go back and just notice the "stacked things." End with that wonderful thing happening in the drain at the bottom left...still stack things. 

The sea fields of seaweed are grown on ropes strung along the southern coast of South Korea around Sisan Island.

 Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that happening on that scale.

"It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me it's just the contrary. Often it's something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague thought that you didn't bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours."

- Boris Pasternak

Doctor Zhivago

The microbes on your phone are different from the microbes on your shoes but the microbes on your shoes are similar to the microbes on everyone else's shoes and the microbes on your phone are similar to the microbes on everyone else's phone. In both cases, the microbes are cousins to bacteria that can make you really sick, but generally they're protecting you against worse bacteria.

From a collection of images that look photoshopped, but aren't...

Who knew that baseball could be so entertaining...

If someone doesn't text you back, don't read too much into it. Most people only have their phones in their hands 99% of their entire life.

Lost Lake in Oregon is being completely drained by a lava tube beneath the ground.

It does this every year and is refilled by melting snow. 

Apparent sizes of the planets relative to the moon (as seen from Earth)

FISH

 Sawfish in action.

 Do you have any idea how disappointed I was to find out that this isn't a full-sized submarine?

You can use a Piranha as scissors

(this is true)

 Craig Patty asked his employee Lawrence Chapa to help take one of his two trucks to the garage, not realizing that Chapa was a DEA undercover planning to fill the truck with weed, which ended in a firefight with a Los Zetas hit squad that killed the driver, who was a DEA informant.

The DEA says it doesn't owe Patty anything for the more than $100,000 in repairs that were required for the truck, and disclaim any responsibility for the death of Patty's employee. Also, they won't do anything about the fact that they led the Zetas to believe that Patty was a rival drug-runner.

A federal judge in Texas dismissed Patty's lawsuit against the DEA, because when the DEA is undertaking a "clandestine" operation, it can operate with total legal impunity.

I’m big into self-defecating humor.

Surprisingly it takes very little math. Answer tomorrow. 

"Your password must contain at least 6 letters" Hmm ok *starts writing* Dearest Catherine, it has been nearly a fortnight since I last wrote...

Let's see how Southern you are:

 Another disappointment. It's his pet and they are just playing chase...seriously.

Speaking of people with insane pets...

Stop tilting the Earth!

How delightful. 

What a wonderful image.

Sorry a lot of sand came out of my sleeve when I shook your hand; I went to the beach six years ago.

Oh, my...

The countdown begins...

Any of you smart people know why anyone would do this?

Then I heard about the Thieve's Step. At one time stairs contained a step or two that were a couple of inches narrower than the others. The people who lived there knew where they were and dealt with it, but anyone who broke in at night would not be aware of the alteration and would fall, thus alerting the family.

Well, now go back and look at that image. Imagine a foreign army or whatever trying to deal with that at night.

This sums up friendship and college in one short clip...

I can't think of anything worse than an over exaggerator.

 Stuff I say a lot...

Do these people deserve ridicule?

 Yes. Yes they do.

So, prove it. But looked at another way, he can heal but he just chooses to let children suffer. Oh, yeah, I forgot. He acts in mysterious ways. If you spell cruel mysterious, then I suppose you nailed it.