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Friday, September 18, 2009


Foto Friday: Hair-raising


Tripping through the photo archives for something neat, I came across this, and my hair stood on end (click on the image for maximum hair height):


Sunset on Haleakala, May, 2009Sunset on Haleakala, May, 2009


Then again, perhaps it was only static electricity.

P.S. Yes, I'm cheating on my Fridays again.

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Monday, September 14, 2009


Threat Condition: Chocolate


This just in: Research company Mindlab International has issued a press release (printed in its entirety by lazy media outlets all over the UK), announcing its findings about "biscuit" injuries. Apparently fully 50% of Britons are such klutzes that they can't have a nice cuppa and a sitdown without wounding themselves:

More than half of all Britons have been injured by biscuits ranging from scalding from hot tea or coffee while dunking or breaking a tooth eating during a morning tea break, a survey has revealed.

Hmm, what about afternoon tea breaks? Anyway, the company ranked "biscuits" (which are not really biscuits, but cookies of some type, by their potential for DEATH[1], thus creating the Biscuit Injury Threat Evaluation (geddit?).

This study was commissioned by the makers of "Rocky", some sort of chocolate bar cookie thing. I wonder whether they were happy or dismayed to find that their own product ranked as the third most dangerous.

It found almost a third of adults said they had been splashed or scalded by hot drinks while dunking or trying to fish the remnants of a collapsed digestive.

All together now: ewwww! (Seriously, digestives are the shiznit, as the kids say nowadays, especially when covered with dark chocolate.)

More unusually, three per cent had poked themselves in the eye with a biscuit and seven per cent bitten by a pet or "other wild animal" trying to get their biscuit...

One man even ended up stuck in wet concrete after wading in to pick up a stray biscuit.

[Insert Michael Moore joke here.] What kind of a spaz do you have to be to poke yourself in the eye with a cookie? Unless it's one of those star-shaped Christmas cookies...naw, you're still a spaz.

Hey! If you took one of the super-deadly "custard creams" to a Tea Party, would you get arrested? Would Obama paint you as a "bitter cookie-clinger", and Maureen Dowd call you a racist? Let's find out! You go first.

While "researching" this story, I came across a reference to an Australian cookie called "Iced Vovos". Sounds like an occupational hazard of figure skaters. I strongly urge you NOT to do as I did, and do an image search for Iced Vovos, especially if you are packing a Y chromosome. Seriously. There are some things better left unknown.

Via Rand Simberg.


[1] Or, you know, an injury of some sort.

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Friday, September 11, 2009


Foto Friday: On Liberty Island



Liberty Island, 1975



A somewhat better picture taken at the same time is here.

Lileks has a post, with a video at the bottom. Click on the link for the larger version, if your bandwidth permits.

InstaUpdate: I think Lileks's server has buckled under the load. Already. Check back later. It's important.

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Friday, September 04, 2009


Foto Friday: April Fool!


Ha ha! You thought there wasn't going to be a foto today, didn't you? You probably thought it was flippin' Tuesday already, the 8th, and Friday was daaays ago. Shows how much you know.

No, it doesn't matter that it's September, this was taken on April 1st this year:

Sunset from North Kihei, April 1, 2009


I remember this sunset. I had loaded up the camera with cheap -- sniff -- consumer-grade Fuji Superia 400, because I wanted to take pictures of something too unimportant to blow good film on. Don't remember what that was, now. And then I went and shot the whole roll on this one sunset, which you must admit was pretty cool.

The striping effect is from shadows cast by clouds onto other clouds.

Ah, Kihei. Hot, muggy, smelly Kihei. I remember taking walks along the beach, trying hard not to twist my ankle on the coral, or step on a dead fish, or into a decaying pile of seaweed. And then going home to my sweaty little lair and listening to the neighbors scream. How I don't miss it.

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