December 6
December 5
"Heads were skinned and muscles removed from the brain case in order to remove the skullcap. Incisions and scrapes on jaws indicate that tongues were cut out." "Scrape marks inside the broken ends of limb bones indicate that marrow was removed." "Whatever actually happened at Herxheim, facial bones were smashed beyond recognition." -
Neolithic mass canibalism in southern Germany.
posted by Artw at 11:39 PM - 43 comments Jack Rose, guitarist extraordinaire and warm soul has passed on.
From the Arthur Magazine site :
I spoke with Jay this morning and the sad news is circulating that guitarist Jack Rose has passed on to the next realm. It’s with a heavy heart that I say this, but thoughts and prayers are with family and loved ones. He had fans around the world and everyone should know about Jack and his music. His style is like no other.J
posted by Liquidwolf at 5:24 PM - 24 comments
Window Farms is a DIY urban agriculture project started in New York. It's not just about changing the way we think about plants in urban contexts — it's also about creating a kind of "open-source" approach to solving eco-urban challenges. (
Treehugger has some more context.)
The folks behind Window Farms are
now trying to take it to the next level using everyone's favorite new funding platform, Kickstarter. (Including a cute intro video which is worth checking out.)
And if window farming ain't your thing, maybe
one of their other DIY projects is more up your alley...
posted by chasing at 4:08 PM - 10 comments
Stoney Knows How is a half-hour film by Alan Govenar and Bruce “Pacho” Lane that portrays Leonard "Stoney" St. Clair, tattoo artist and former sideshow performer. Affected with rheumatoid arthritis when he was four, and with stunted growth, Stoney left Appalachia at fifteen to join the circus as a sword swallower and learned to tattoo soon after. The film is about as safe for work as a 1970s tattoo parlor, which is to say, not very.
posted by hydrophonic at 12:00 PM - 11 comments
Sketchy Santas - This is mostly pictures of terrified kids being held by Santa. Occasionally there will be a photo that you wish you could
unsee.
posted by sciurus at 11:58 AM - 36 comments
The Soldier in later Medieval England is a historical research project that seeks to 'challenge assumptions about the emergence of professional soldiery between 1369 and 1453'. They've compiled impressive
databases of tens of thousands of service records. These are perhaps of interest only to specialists; but the general reader may enjoy the
profiles of individual military men: these run the gamut from regional non-entities like
John Fort esquire of Llanstephan ("in many ways a humdrum figure" though once accused of harbouring a hostile Spaniard!) to more familiar figures such as rebel Welsh prince
Owain Glyndŵr, who began his soldiering,
as did many compatriots, in the service of the English king. Between such extremes of high and low we find, for example,
Reginald Cobham, who made 6,500 florins ransoming a prisoner taken at
Poitiers and rests eternal in a splendid tomb; and various
men loyal and rebel who fought at the bloody
Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403.
posted by Abiezer at 10:41 AM - 11 comments
(American) Football
trick play video roundup: the
Statue of Liberty,
Fumblerooski (
2), the
Puntarooski, the
Hook and Lateral (
2), the
Flea Flicker (
2), the
End Around (
2), the
Double Pass, the
Fake Punt (
2) (
3), the
Fake Field Goal (
2) (
3),
Fake Field Goal/Fake Punt, the
Swinging Gate, and the
Bouquet Toss.
[more inside]
posted by starman at 9:38 AM - 48 comments Forecast calls for cold and warm. On January 22, 1943 in Spearfish, SD: The temperature rose 49 degrees in two minutes, from – 4 to 45; later the same morning, it dropped 60 degrees in 27 minutes, from 56° to - 4°. Plate glass windows cracked as a result of the wild fluctuation in temperatures caused by Chinook winds. The greatest 24- hour U.S. temperature difference in one place was set January 23- 24, 1916, in Browning, MT, at 100 degrees when it went from a low of -56° to a high of 44°.*
Snow eating is one way it's been described,
old tales too.. It's a seasonal wind, like the Mistral.
There is some overlap in the definitions but the Chinook can safely be labeled a Foehn wind. A Foehn wind is "a generic term for warm strong and often very dry downslope wind(s) that descend in the lee of a mountain barrier". That is the one illustrated above. My favorite wind though, is the katabatic. A downhill wind.
Cold and dense it blows here on
Earth especially in the
Antarctic, and there on
Mars too. (page 9 of 14.)
[more inside]
posted by vapidave at 4:07 AM - 32 comments
He was elected at the nadir of the worst depression in history; 25% of the workforce was unemployed, two million were homeless. Yet in the face of this, he made us an optimistic and far-reaching New Deal, creating among other programs a federal minimum wage, social security, and the FDIC. He pulled us out of dire financial straits and, when our country was called upon to fight in World War II, he brought us to the cusp of victory. In his unprecedented thirteen years in office, he cemented his undisputed legacy as one of the greatest presidents in American history. But before he could achieve any of this, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a promise to keep — a promise to the "wet vote," whose indispensable support he had
called upon in 1932 during his first presidential campaign when he promised to repeal the
18th Amendment and end
Prohibition. And thus, as legend has it, immediately after his
first fireside chat from the White House in March 1933, Roosevelt turned to his two top aides and said, "
I think it's time for a beer." And
yes, indeed,
it was.
[more inside]
posted by churl at 2:14 AM - 28 comments December 4
Beer Calculus is a freely available homebrewing recipe generator, which allows you to easily create, save and share your own beer recipe(s). The calculator includes hundreds of malt, hop and yeast varieties, adjuncts and other ingredients, different mash processes, and fermentation and storage variables, and can toggle between US and metric units. Also, if you associate your recipe with a
BJCP-recognized style, the calculator will give you guidance regarding your recipe's adherence to the style's
guidelines. Homebrewers, have at it!
posted by cog_nate at 12:26 PM - 22 comments
African Remix!
Put A Ring On It and
Lollipop have both been covered by the Naija Boyz who appear to be a couple of Nigerians living in America with dreams of home, hence the remixed lyrics, "...shorty I'm a fan of your super pounded yam...."
posted by pick_the_flowers at 11:56 AM - 10 comments Tim Perlich was the senior music writer for Toronto's
NOW Magazine for 20 or so years. The two parted company for unexplained reasons earlier this year. For those who love or hate him (and there are plenty in both camps), he's now blogging about all things music at
The Perlich Post.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:27 AM - 17 comments December 3
« Older posts
