Philip K. Dick and Our Predicament

Any fellow fans out there?  I really enjoyed this article. As they say, read the whole thing:

Dick, it seems, was a far superior prophet than the colleagues who disdained him, because, unlike many of them, he had a line on human nature, which never changes.

So what does Dick have to say about surviving and prevailing in this world?

Dick had no political solutions. His personal politics was as convoluted as the rest of his personality. He was a man of the "left," but, like Orwell, very much a left of his own devising. He was once thrown out, within a period of weeks, of meetings by the local GOP and the Communist Party, in both cases for asking penetrating questions. He had no use for authoritarian systems (His short story "Faith of our Fathers" is one of the eeriest condemnations of communism ever written, in which the leader of a victorious worldwide communist party is indistinguishable from death itself. When he grips the protagonist's arm, he leaves stigmata that continue bleeding and refuse to heal.)

Dick's political awareness was not so much undeveloped as developed to a point where he fully recognized the futility of politics.

via Instapundit.

"Man Who Thought He Just Had a Runny Nose for a Year-and-a-Half Finds Out It Was Really His Brain Fluid Leaking"

He finally went to the doctor to be told his runny nose was far from run-of-mill allergies: his brain was leaking.

What It's Like To Ship 3.2 Million Bees Across State Lines

There aren't enough honeybees in the wild to pollinate all the commercial crops these days, so John Kraus steps in as a migratory beekeeper. He sends hives of bees to agricultural areas that need them during each crop's pollination season. That means shipping hives in big trucks, two trucks at a time, for a total load of over three million bees!

It’s different at different times of year. When we ship them to California, we don’t leave home. We just hire somebody to unload them down there and put them on a ranch up towards the gate of Yosemite. Then we go down to California in January and we spend about three weeks there. We go through the hives, check them for queens, for strength, and then put them in the almond groves. And then we’re back home for five or six weeks depending on the season. It takes about a week to go down and gather them all together and ship them back north.

After almonds, we go through again and move them into the soft fruit. That’s probably the worst move because we load them ourselves, beat feet and drive all night, and then unload. Load them up on a semi at dusk, drive 300 miles, and then unload them.

Read more about the intricacy of shipping bees across country in an interview with Kraus at Modern Farmer. Link -via Neatorama.

VA school strikes blow for gun safety by suspending 7yo for making gun noises with his pencil

A spokesperson for the school indicated that a pencil is considered to be “a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made.”

Dog picture du jour

via

Cheese and Onion Chocolate Bars are a Hit

The bars are made from the famous Irish Tayto cheese and onion crisps mixed with Irish chocolate - all in one bar.

A winning combination or a controversial mix? The jury is out but the response has been overwhelming.

Taste Ireland CEO Eamon Eastwood is the holder of the elusive chocolate bars and decided to raffle them off in a Facebook campaign.

"I couldn't believe the reaction, it went off the richter scale with almost half a million impressions," said Mr Eastwood.

The last five bars were given away Friday. Link -via Neatorama

If you didn't get one, you can make your own.

Headline du jour: Man arrested for abusing parakeet after police dog eats his hamster

Read the whole thing: When police raided a home in Werneth, Oldham, looking for drugs, the sniffer dog knocked over a hamster cage. The creature escaped. The police dog ate the hamster. Police then forced the dog to vomit up the dead hamster.

Police then arrested the hamster’s owner, one Muza Khan. No, not for any drugs offences. He was booked to appear at Oldham Magistrates Court because having killed his hamster, police found a bald parakeet during their raid. They said Miko the parakeet was “in distress”.

There's an American Gerbil Society, and they have an annual pageant

The American Gerbil Society’s annual pageant brought dozens of rodents scurrying to New England this weekend for a chance to win ‘‘top gerbil.’’

Check Out This Horrifying Brazilian Testicle Mascot

The mascot, we are told, goes by the "Mr. Balls," and he works to raise awareness about testicular cancer. According to the AAPC website and courtesy of some Google-translating, "Both children and adults loved taking pictures with the mascot , a friendly snowman in the shape of testicle."

Is it the pubic hair that is so off-putting or the buckteeth? Definitely the buckteeth. Or maybe it's the bowl-cut. God, he (it?) is disturbing.

Here's a photo of Mr. Balls and a child:

Wallet made out of whale foreskin

Via Daily Caller: Because no two whale foreskins are alike, “As with a fingerprint, each Minke Dork has a unique hue, pattern and texture, ranging from a smooth sheen to a coarse cracked hide. Upon ordering, a series of images of each available finish will be presented for selection.”

The minke dork wallet comes at a whopping €1,850 — or $2,440.

Recht has conjured up a number of bizarre accessories and clothing items for his collection.

During Paris fashion week this past January, Recht unveiled the “Forget Me Knot” ring, which is made out of 24-karat gold and the salted and tanned skin of his own abdomen. He underwent a plastic surgery procedure, which he of course videotaped for Fashion’s sake, and had a 4.3 inch piece of flesh cut off his stomach in order to make a ring that no one will ever buy.

For his 2011 debut into the Fashion world, Recht made his first collection out of 21 blackbirds and 27 stillborn lambs.

Debunking Obama's ‘Most of the guns used in Mexico come from the US’

President Obama used a speech at Mexico’s Museo Nacional de Antropología – the National Anthropology Museum – to claim that ‘most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.’

That concept has been debunked many times over - here's a analysis of the numbers from Stratfor from 2011, and many more are available.

This a a recycling of the old claim that "over 90 percent of the firearms originate from the U.S." when discussing seized weapons in Mexico in 2008.  What is left out, though, is that it's 90 percent of the traced guns - but a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.  The actual number was 3,480 out of 30K, or about 12%.

Must see: High Capacity Magazine PSA

Whale bone eating zombie worms

Science News:

So-called zombie worms — and yes, they actually exist — like to munch on whale bones for dinner. The creatures also use the bones for shelter. Spread throughout the world's oceans, zombie worms are quite adept at making the bones of whales and other large marine animals look like Swiss cheese.

But these worms don't have any mouthparts with which to gnaw the holes. So how do they do it? A study published in the May 1 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that rather than being "bone-drilling" worms, they're actually "bone-dissolving" worms: The worms’ skin produces acid in large quantities to break down bones.

via Badger Mike ‏

Friday links

Scientific American: Are Dogs Funnier Than Cats?

Why Firewood is Measured in Cords and the Origin of Other Odd Units of Measurement.

The history of men's underwear.

Excellent gallery of early science labs.  Somewhat related: here's Francis Crick's letter to his 12 yr old son describing his and James Watson's discovery of DNA.

17 Offbeat Holidays You Can Celebrate in May.

10 Incredible Camouflaged Animals.

How did feathers evolve?

view the full lesson at TED-Ed

The trumpet lady... sounds exactly like a trumpet

Textile Company Creates Men’s Shirt That Doesn’t Require Washing and Ironing

As a test, he wore the same magic shirt for 100 days straight, without washing or ironing it.

Obama Continues His War on the Fourth Amendment

The Obama administration wants legislation enacted that will punish Internet service providers who fail to cooperate with FBI requests and court orders. The FBI has revealed that its agents often "lack the time" to obtain search warrants, and so they have gotten into the bad habit of asking Internet service providers to let them in without warrants.

This was notoriously done in the Bush-era, during which the feds promised immunity to telephone service providers that enabled the feds to spy on their customers. That spying was criminal and gave rise to civil causes of action for damages, as well, until Congress changed the law retroactively and granted the promised immunity after the Bush administration spying was exposed.

Some telephone providers declined the government requests then, and some Internet providers decline these requests today. Hence, the proposed legislation would punish those providers who protect the privacy of their customers by telling the FBI to go home.

The second category of punishment sought by the administration is for Internet service providers as to which the FBI has obtained a warrant. A search warrant typically authorizes the government to enter private premises and look for the specific items designated in the warrant. But it does not require the custodian of those specific items to find them for the government. This proposed legislation would change all that.

The government has subtly revealed that when it comes to digital data it often does not know what it is looking for, and its agents lack the skills to hook into the Internet providers' systems. This raises another set of questions, likely to escape members of Congress as they examine this latest assault on the Fourth Amendment.

The Framers were very careful when they wrote the Fourth Amendment, as it imposes the most explicit requirements on the government found anywhere in the Constitution. It requires that all search warrants "particularly describ(e) the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." So, if the government follows the Constitution, it cannot seek what it is unable to identify, and it cannot compel the custodian of whatever records it is seeking to do its work for it.

Until now.

Festival-Goers Consume 110 Pounds of Testicles

Hey - this was local (Arlington, VA)! I can't believe I missed it!

The Montana State Society’s Testicle Festival in Virginia Square was a rousing success this year.

Festival-goers consumed 110 pounds of bull and bison testicles, 84 liters of Crown Royal and 1,500 cans of beer this year, according to event organizer and Society president Jed Link. All three were records for the event, now in its eighth year.

Organizers estimate that nearly 600 people attended the Testicle Festival, which was held at the American Legion post at 3445 Washington Boulevard. Even though the event didn’t start until 6:00 on Saturday evening, Link said a line started to form at 4:30 p.m.

The 24 People Who Decide Acceptable Speech On The Internet

Free speech on the internet decided by 24 key people:"Google, Twitter, Facebook and the new global battle over the future of free speech".

From the article: 

The deciders, of course, have blind spots of their own. Their hate-speech policies tend to reflect a bias toward the civility norms of U.S. workplaces; they identify speech that might get you fired if you said them at your job, but which would be legal if shouted at a rally, and try to banish that expression from the entire Internet.

But given their tremendous size and importance as platforms for free speech, companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter shouldn’t try to be guardians of what Waldron calls a “well-orderedsociety”; instead, they should consider themselves the modern version of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s fractious marketplace of ideas—democratic spaces where all values, including civility norms, are always open for debate.

via GeekPress.

Meet Drone Shield: $70 open-source drone detection system

The Drone Shield would combine a Raspberry Pi, a signal processor, a microphone, and analysis software to scan for specific audio signatures and compare them against what known drones sound like. (Because obviously a Predator drone is going to sound very different than a small quadcopter.)

Links and more information at Ars.

High schooler blows stuff up for science — ends up charged with a felony

BoingBoing: A Florida high school student with an interest in science mixed together aluminum foil and toilet bowl cleaner as an experiment. To her surprise, the mixture exploded. Unfortunately for Kiera Wilmot, she tried her experiment on school grounds.

It was a small explosion, and nobody was hurt. Wilmot was, otherwise, a good student with a perfect behavior record. But the school chose to expel her, have her arrested, and is supporting her being charged with a felony as an adult.

Scientists across the country are not amused. Biologist Danielle Lee writes about this incident in context with the discipline gap that treats minority kids more harshly for small infractions.

Through Twitter, scientists and educators speak up about the things they blew up for science, under the hashtag #KieraWilmot.

Why Firewood is Measured in Cords and the Origin of Other Odd Units of Measurement

Cord

Using the word as a unit of measurement, “cord” is traced back to the 1610s when wood was sold in bundles tied with a, you guessed it, cord. Today, it is well recognized that a cord of firewood must take up 128 cubic feet, traditionally in a stack 8′ x 4′ x 4′. As with other units of measurement, the size of a cord of wood is typically regulated, either by a state or national government.

Fathom

A measure of depth, fathom is derived from either or both the Old English word faeom or the Old Saxon word fathmos, both meaning the length of the outstretched arms. Like the other measurements, it was eventually standardized, this one to the length of two yards, which is approximately how far it is between the tips of a man’s fingertips when his arms are extended. Although international nautical charts have converted to meters, in the United States, measuring depth with fathoms and feet is still in vogue.

Bushel

Derived from the old French words boissel and boisseau, a bushel is a measure of dry goods, typically grains, equal to about eight gallons (or four pecks). Today, it is most commonly used to measure things by their weight, and that weight varies depending on the commodity measured. Typical goods sold by the bushel (and their weights) include oats (32lb), malted barley (34lb), corn (56lb), wheat (60lb) and soybeans (60lb).

Peck

How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? It turns out, by peck, Peter picked about two gallons worth of peppers. Peck probably derived from the Old French, pek or picot, and is also a measure of dry goods or commodities. Some retailers, farmers at markets and roadside stands still sell fruits and vegetables by the peck, particularly during canning season; however, it is much more common today to find them sold by either the quart or the pound.

Knot

Know has been uses to measure the speed of a ship since the 1630s. Knot derives from the word of the same spelling meaning “intertwined ropes”. To measure speed back in the day, a long rope had knots tied regularly, about every 50 feet, and a log tied to the end. The log was dropped into the water and a sandglass upended at the same time to time how many knots per time unit. Eventually, the speed of one knot became standardized at one nautical mile (6076 feet) per hour.

Mach

The baby of the bunch, the measurement Mach was named after Ernst Mach and coined in 1937. Not really a measure of speed, the Mach numbers represent the ratio of the speed of an object moving through a fluid (a gas, like the atmosphere, can be a fluid here) and the local speed of sound. With Mach numbers between 1.2 and 5, supersonic vehicles like the F-104 Starfighter and the Concorde travel at speeds between 915 and 3840 miles per hour. When the Space Shuttles re-entered the atmosphere, they initially traveled at a speed greater than Mach 25!

From Today I Found Out, which has related articles:

One Calorie is Equivalent to One Gram of TNT in Terms of Energy

Why We Divide the Day Into Seconds, Minutes, and Hours

A Jiffy is Used as an Actual Unit of Time

The Words Moron, Imbecile, and Idiot Actually Mean Different Things