I should bring that photo with me on my next date : " see that? its a birthing stool. If you want to be my girl expect to get reeeal familiar with it!"
Maybe we insulate our kids too much by pretending such things dont occur. Even very young children are naturally curious about the physical consequences of accidents, especially young boys, and do not shy away from the gory details. This book was written before medevac helicopters and safety-tested childrens toys, when minor cuts could lead to life-stopping infections. I can see the psychological risks of such frank descriptions, but I can't laugh the book off. There is some wisdom in it.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, with the wild supposition that the Daily Mail might be sensationalizing and even possibly exaggerating this story (hard to believe, I know). I don't know what kind of funny business is going on here, but outside the world of television and stage hypnotists, such powers do not exist. It is the social setting and expectations that encourage people to 'act out' being hypnotized on stage, but the notion of being instantly hypnotized against one's will at a supermarket is purely fanciful, even for a charismatic Saddam impersonator. Occam's razor would be appropriate here: I'd look first to bumbling and overly-imaginative detectives, store clerks in collusion, mass-delusion, etc.
This is interesting. Neatorama blogs on the lighter side of life, yet so many of its readers act as if they have lemons in their sphincters when it comes to supposed "waste". If its a cheese sculpture, its guaranteed that 3 people will express moral outrage that the cheese wasn't donated to the poor and needy. If its a Large Hadron collider, surely the money could have been donated to the poor and needy. The trolls of Neatorama are all Debbie Downers, who begrudge any form of playfulness.
I never understood the ghost-riding the whip fad, but hey I'm not 19 years old. VonSkippy, as you sit with your calculator tallying the tax insult these fellows have rendered you, realize that they are putting in 10 hour days in that vehicle, busting their asses in 130 degree heat, and dealing with the possibility of being blown to smithereens or otherwise mangled at any moment. Try to find room in your stony heart to allow them a moment of merriment.
By the way, my grandfather was in WWII, and I can assure you that clowning together helped build unit cohesion and helped us win that war.
People, people. You need to relax, and lay off the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo fearmongering. Should a Large Hadron be ejected from the facility, there is a 70% probability that it will go straight up in the air and safely into out of space, and a 20% probability that it will emerge through one of the earths oceans after tunnelling through the Earth.
So basically there is only a 10% possibility that a Large Hadron will be ejected into a populated area, where death will be instantaneous. You would not suffer, you would be converted into an ionized plasma within nanoseconds. Those in a 6 km radius of the exit trajectory would be exposed to an effective radiation dose of 25 dental xrays - a lot, but by no means deadly.
So lay off the crazy talk and stay tuned for a new frontier in science: the biggest, baddest man-made black hole known to man!
BoingBoing is "Highbrow" ?? I guess some people are impressed by the self-righteous banter of bien-pensant techno-hipsters, but I'm not one of them. Some interesting links are found there, but it does deserve a ribbon for being the most overrated blog in existence.
I love Mythbusters, but I have to agree here w/ Sid Morrison and Von Skippy. Whenever I watch the show I think "would it have killed them to hire an engineer or scientist as a consultant?". I know scientific rigor isn't the purpose of the show, but Adam regularly throws the word "science" around and jokes about "science in progress". They often tackle very interesting myths, and miss out on great opportunities to make science and engineering interesting to the general public because they lack basic scientific literacy to do so.
I hate to be the perpetual critic here, because I love this site so much and I appreciate the effort. But the problem with this type of post is that it is not unique or novel news; every media outlet in the country is on top of this story. I'd guess that most Neatorama visitors enjoy the site when we want to take a break from mainstream news. I think the NYTimes and Drudgereport pretty much have a lock on political scandals.
It doesn't seem like they worshipped the teapot itself as a divine being, but rather revered it as a sacred symbol (read the links from the Wikipedia article). They also apparently used a giant umbrella as another sacred symbol.I'm sure this subtlety made little difference to her shariah persecuters and novelty-seeking Western commentators who love sensational copy. But I think the real story is more interesting than "crazies worship teapot".
I never understood the ghost-riding the whip fad, but hey I'm not 19 years old. VonSkippy, as you sit with your calculator tallying the tax insult these fellows have rendered you, realize that they are putting in 10 hour days in that vehicle, busting their asses in 130 degree heat, and dealing with the possibility of being blown to smithereens or otherwise mangled at any moment. Try to find room in your stony heart to allow them a moment of merriment.
By the way, my grandfather was in WWII, and I can assure you that clowning together helped build unit cohesion and helped us win that war.
So basically there is only a 10% possibility that a Large Hadron will be ejected into a populated area, where death will be instantaneous. You would not suffer, you would be converted into an ionized plasma within nanoseconds. Those in a 6 km radius of the exit trajectory would be exposed to an effective radiation dose of 25 dental xrays - a lot, but by no means deadly.
So lay off the crazy talk and stay tuned for a new frontier in science: the biggest, baddest man-made black hole known to man!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18CoI-GH4VM
"Staying sober for 6 months, 2 days"
I'd love to deliver that with a beaming grin and see their response.
Just my two cents.