The events of 9/11 remain the most photographed in history. It’s from out of that mass witness and record that one image, the 9/11 photograph that still hardly anyone has ever seen, seemed to challenge our deepest notions of not only what it meant to die – and eventually be partially reconstructed – in the new data age, but what confronting death, as witnesses or consumers of information, said about ourselves as witnesses or consumers of information. Making it all the more arresting, perhaps, was its stark, almost calm anonymity. Nobody had a clue as to who the photo’s subject, seen plummeting from the very top of the North Tower, could be. Countless newspapers and wires ran the image the following morning, but almost immediately got so much shit from readers that for most outlets there became no other option but to pull the photo. Eleven years on, the Falling Man is still suspended.In deference to the sensitivities of some readers, I'll place the photo and some additional text below the fold...
The U.S. has waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan justified, at least in rhetoric, by the claim that people deserve the right to vote for their leaders. Most of us assume that the right to vote has long been enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Not according to the Supreme Court. In Bush v. Gore (2000), the Court ruled that “[t]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.”..Two Congressmen from Minnesota and Wisconsin want to change that:
The right to vote is the foundation of any democracy. Yet most Americans do not realize that we do not have a constitutionally protected right to vote. While there are amendments to the U.S. Constitution that prohibit discrimination based on race (15th), sex (19th) and age (26th), no affirmative right to vote exists...
Two members of the House of Representatives, Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., and Representative Keith Ellison, D-Minn., announced on May 13 that they would introduce an amendment to the federal Constitution guaranteeing the right to vote in America. Here is their proposed amendment:There's more at the Salon source.
SECTION 1: Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.SECTION 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.
‘‘Flatus Profuse Present in the Muscles’’: Subcutaneous Emphysema of the Lower Abdominal Wall and Thighs, Described in 1593 by Fabricius HildanusThose familiar with the word flatus being used only in reference to farts will recognize now that it can also be applied to other collections of air or gas, and is derived from the Latin verb flare ("to blow") which gives us inflation.
Between 1598 and 1641, 600 medical and surgical observations made by the famous German surgeon Guilhelmius Fabricius Hildanus (1560–1634) were published in his Observationum et curationum chirurgicarum centuriae I–VI. One of the case reports, published as Observatio LXX in the fifth Centuria, bears the title (in translation) Of flatus, profuse present in the muscles. This case report probably is the earliest accurate observation of subcutaneous emphysema of the lower abdomen and thighs attributable to a retroperitoneal abscess.
Here is an English translation of the most essential part of this case report:
In the year 1593, in Keulen, I was sent for a boy of about ten years old, who has suffered heavily from smallpox, of which he was almost cured, but now his belly, down from the umbilicus, and his hips and thighs were peculiarly extended with flatus, which was present between the skin and the muscles, and partly in the muscles, and when these parts were touched with our hands, they rustled, just as fresh calf’s meat, that the butcher has inflated with air. He felt no pain, his internal parts were comfortable, and with almost no effects of the previous illness. We used several means, internally, to strengthen the noble internal organs, and externally, to make the flatus disappear, which ultimately resulted in a favourable outcome.
That this was a barbaric and horrendous act goes without saying, but given the legal, military, cultural and political significance of the term "terrorism", it is vital to ask: is that term really applicable to this act of violence? To begin with, in order for an act of violence to be "terrorism", many argue that it must deliberately target civilians. That's the most common means used by those who try to distinguish the violence engaged in by western nations from that used by the "terrorists": sure, we kill civilians sometimes, but we don't deliberately target them the way the "terrorists" do.More at the link (those who reflexly dislike Glenn Greenwald's column can give it a pass).
But here, just as was true for Nidal Hasan's attack on a Fort Hood military base, the victim of the violence was a soldier of a nation at war, not a civilian. He was stationed at an army barracks quite close to the attack. The killer made clear that he knew he had attacked a soldier when he said afterward: "this British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
The US, the UK and its allies have repeatedly killed Muslim civilians over the past decade (and before that), but defenders of those governments insist that this cannot be "terrorism" because it is combatants, not civilians, who are the targets. Can it really be the case that when western nations continuously kill Muslim civilians, that's not "terrorism", but when Muslims kill western soldiers, that is terrorism? Amazingly, the US has even imprisoned people at Guantanamo and elsewhere on accusations of "terrorism" who are accused of nothing more than engaging in violence against US soldiers who invaded their country.
He is proud of the GIF, but remains annoyed that there is still any debate over the pronunciation of the format. “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Mr. Wilhite said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”
Professor S.K. Gupta has been working on creating a robotic bird for over 8 years now, and other engineering groups across the world have also been working on robotic birds. And while the RoboRaven isn’t the first robotic bird to take flight, it is the first robotic bird to have two independently functioning wings. That gives it a huge advantage in flight, since the independent operation gives it more aerodynamic configurations and more practical applications.At 1:49 in the video the robotic bird is attacked by a hawk.
"...everyone has special needs, like Father, who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Mrs. Peters, who wears a beige-colored hearing aid, or Siobhan, who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs.
But Siobhan said we have to use those words because people used to call children like the children at school spaz and crip and mong, which were nasty words. But that is stupid too because sometimes the children from the school down the road see us in the street when we're getting off the bus and they shout, "Special Needs! Special Needs!""
The longest drive ever was 515 yards.
The longest putt ever was a monstrous 375 feet.
The longest golf course in the world is the par 77 International Golf Club in Massachusetts which measures a fearsome 8325 yards.
The longest golf hole in the world is the 7th hole (par 7) of the Sano Course at the Satsuki Golf Club in Japan. It measures an incredible 909 yards.Found at The First Tee.
125,000 golf balls a year are hit into the water at the famous 17th hole of the Stadium Course at Sawgrass.
It is thought the word golf comes from the Dutch word "kolf" or "kolve", meaning "club". Historians believe this was passed on to the Scottish, whose own dialect changed this to "golve," "gowl" or "gouf".
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On a recent Venue visit to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, I was captivated by a gallery filled with scrimshaw items, carved by American nineteenth-century whalemen as gifts for mothers, wives, and sweethearts during their long sea voyages... scrimshanders carved baleen, walrus tusks, and whale teeth into hundreds of thousands of pie crimpers.More photos at the Edible Geography source. And a new word for me: scrimshander. Not in my Random House dictionary, but I found it along with scrimshandy, and scrimshoner as a referent under scrimshaw.
Serious pastry chefs today still crimp the edges of their pies using their fingers. Some might go as far as using a fork or spoon to create decorative patterns; and the truly gadget-obsessed, or those with no limitations on their kitchen storage space, might even own a simple stainless steel crimping wheel.
Nineteenth-century scrimshaw pie crimpers, however, are not just useful for sealing pies with an attractive flourish. They incorporate forks for punching air holes, knives for cutting off excess pastry, tart tampers that double as decorative stamps, and, most importantly, two, three, or even four crimping wheels, each of which would imprint a different pattern on your pie crust.
