Heh

This was sent in by several readers.  It made me chuckle.

From the spelling of "humour" and the acronym RSPCA, I suspect this was an item in an English newspaper about an American news report. Still, it's funny in any language and any nation.




Peter

OK, this is worth a road trip!

I think I know where I'm taking Miss D. (and perhaps some friends) in January next year.

Behold New Mexico’s ultimate pork fiesta: 43 pigs, 300 gallons of chile and 22,000 tortillas

It’s 4:30 in the morning, and Anthony Guardian has a problem: His cooking oil is frozen.

He’s getting ready for the 19th edition of the World’s Largest Matanza, an annual fiesta in the small city of Belen, N.M., that celebrates the state’s historic nose-to-tail hog-slaughtering festivals. Sixteen teams from across the state will gather in Eagle Park on this chilly late January day to feed traditional New Mexican matanza dishes — carne adovada, chicharrones, carnitas, red chile and more — to an estimated 9,500 attendees who’ll pay $15 for all they can eat.

. . .

“It’s heritage, it’s community, it’s ritual, it’s economics, it’s culinary, it’s celebration,” says Tey Marianna Nunn, visual arts program director at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. “It really is a performance art form.”

Knowing its drawing power, the Hispano Chamber of Valencia County started what evolved into the World’s Largest Matanza in 2000 as a fundraiser for high school students.

“We can have a banquet,” says current board secretary Rita Garcia, “but isn’t a matanza more fun?”

. . .

The World’s Largest Matanza unfolds without any hitches, with attendees including military veterans, motorcycle club members and DEA agents. The temperature never exceeds 50 degrees, but no one seems to mind. The bands blast through their sets, with an announcer urging attendees to “dance off those chicharrones.”

By early afternoon, only a couple hundred people remain, mostly teams and their friends and family waiting to hear the winners in 10 categories such as carnitas, bizcochitos (an anise-flavored sugar cookie) and the Iron Pig, in which teams were tasked with cooking pork alongside a surprise ingredient: polenta. (“Maybe it’s not an exotic ingredient in Southern California,” says the head of judging. “But it is around here.”)

There's more at the link, and at the festival's Facebook page.

An article in New Mexico Magazine gives more information, and provides some mouth-watering recipes, too.  Here's one to whet your appetite.

New Mexico Red Chile Sauce

Simple sauces like this are a mainstay of every matanza. Dip a freshly fried chicharrón into a bowl of it. Experience bliss.

Makes 4 cups

• 8 ounces (about 20–25) dried whole red New Mexican chile pods, mild, medium, hot, or a combination
• 4 cups water or chicken stock
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 medium onion, minced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1–2 teaspoons crumbled dried Mexican oregano or marjoram
• 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1. Toast dried whole chile pods in a heavy skillet over medium heat until they are warm and release their fragrance, 1–2 minutes per side.
2. Remove chiles from the skillet immediately. When cool enough to handle, break each pod into several pieces (wearing rubber or plastic gloves if your skin is sensitive). Discard stems and seeds.
3. Warm the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic. Sauté several minutes, until onion is limp.
4. Place the chile pieces, onion, garlic, and oregano in a blender and pour in the water or stock. Puree until mostly smooth, with a few flecks of chile still visible.
5. Pour chile mixture into a saucepan, then add salt. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer. After about 15 minutes, taste the sauce and adjust seasonings. Continue simmering, for a total of 20–25 minutes.
6. When ready, sauce will be cooked down enough to coat a spoon thickly but still drop off it easily. Use warm or refrigerate for later use.

That sounds so delicious, I'm going to try cooking it soon.  I might try a variation using New Mexico's famous Hatch green chiles, too.  My mouth's watering already at the thought!

Peter

Hmmm . . . me Tarzan, you Jain?

For those who may not know, Jainism is an ancient Indian religion that, among other tenets, requires its followers to avoid harming any other living thing.  "Causing injury to any being in any form creates bad karma which affects one's rebirth, future well being and suffering."  The slaughter of animals for food is anathema to them, as it is to militant vegans - although the latter all too often don't subscribe to Jainism's non-violence creed.  Anyway, that's where the title of this article comes from.

Be that as it may, a group of vegans in England have come up with a non-violent new twist of which Jains will probably approve.

Leicestershire Animal Save are hosting roadside monthly vigils once a month in Melton Mowbray in which they whisper phrases to cattle before they arrive at an abattoir run by Foyle Food Group.

The activists, who have held 35 ceremonies since founding their group in 2015, also hold signs which say "your taste=their death".

Group founder Dina Aherne said the group has an understanding with the slaughterhouse bosses, who let them stop the trucks and trailers which transport the cows.

The 38-year-old former solicitor from Leicester said: "We want to make the cows feel at ease every time because they are living and sacred beings.

"Cows have a living soul and conscience. We really want to help comfort them.

"We have to arrange and give two weeks notice for when we are going to be on site.

"When we arrive usually at about 8am, we gather outside the slaughterhouse on days when the abattoir is operational for about three hours.

"We then stop each of the trucks and are given two minutes to say the last goodbye's before they go and get a bolt gun put through their head.

"We whisper phrases to them like 'we're sorry', 'we see you' and 'I love you'."

There's more at the link.

I don't suppose it does any harm . . . but if I were to join them, I'd be whispering other things, like "Sirloin!", "Ribeye!" and "T-bone!"  I can't imagine the cows will feel any the worse for the more . . . ah . . . secular incantations!  I'll invite the rest of the North Texas Writers, Shooters and Pilots Association to join me.  We frequently enjoy a good steak together, so we'll be able to get into the spirit of the thing, as well as digest (you should pardon the expression) its deeper implications.




Peter

"Bait and switch" prices are still going strong

It looks like companies are getting sneaky with high-tech shopping apps, using them to bait you into visiting their stores or Web sites, then switching prices on you.  This and other tactics have been used online for well over a decade, as this 2005 report shows.  Now Target appears to be doing something similar.

In a two-month investigation, that began with a concern from a viewer, KARE 11 found Target’s app changes its prices on certain items depending on if you are inside or outside of the store.

For instance, Target’s app price for a particular Samsung 55-inch Smart TV was $499.99, but when we pulled into the parking lot of the Minnetonka store that price suddenly increased to $599.99 on the app.

To test this further, we selected 10 products on the Target app at random, ranging from toys to bottled water to vacuum cleaners. We found that when we entered the store, four of the 10 products jumped up in price on the app.

. . .

Our list of 10 items was a total of $262 cheaper in the back of the parking lot on the app with no indication that the prices had changed.

There's more at the link.

Let's be honest:  most companies are out to separate you from as much of your money as possible, as painlessly as possible.  It's only because we aren't vigilant, and don't pay enough attention to what's going on, that we continue to tolerate this.

What's more, many of the prices charged for goods bear no relation whatsoever to the actual cost of production of those goods - another con game.  To illustrate, when I did my Masters degree in management, I recall our class visited a clothing factory.  A production line was churning out identical women's dresses.  At the end of the line, the last thing to be done before they were packed and shipped out was to sew a label into the neckline.  The dresses - all identical, remember, using the same materials and coming off the same production line - were shunted onto five "label rows".  The first - very few dresses - got an upmarket label, destined for high-end boutiques.  The second - a few more dresses - got a less upmarket label, but nevertheless one with "snob appeal".  They'd go to the "better" department stores.  The next three lines - the majority of the dresses - received middle-class to lower-class labels, and were destined for mass-market clothing stores and major supermarkets, where dozens of them would be hung on racks to be pawed through by all and sundry.  The prices charged for the high-end label would be twenty or more times higher than for the lowest-level label, but the dresses were identical.  It was "con the consumer" from beginning to end.

The Target app referred to above is simply another version of the same principle.  Charge what the market will bear, and deceive the consumer into paying the highest possible price.  The concepts of fairness, equity and value for money are irrelevant, as far as most sellers today are concerned.  As for openness and honesty . . . fuggetaboutit!

What's the best counter to this naked greed?  I think Charles Hugh Smith's advice on frugality is very apposite.  If we give as little of our money as possible to these companies, they'll be forced to reconsider their tactics.  As long as we tolerate their antics, they have no reason to change them.




Peter

Stealth isn't a universal military panacea

A recent article highlights the very important fact that stealth in military aircraft isn't the be-all and end-all of existence.

The commander of Sweden’s air force, Mats Helgesson, recently made the bold statement that his country’s Saab Gripen E fighter could beat Russia’s formidable fleet of Sukhoi jets with none of the expensive stealth technology the US relies on.

Saab Gripen (image courtesy of Wikipedia - click it for a larger view)

“Gripen, especially the E-model, is designed to kill Sukhois. There we have a black belt,” Helgesson told Yle at a presentation in Finland, where Sweden is trying to export the jets.

. . .

The Gripen can’t carry the most weapons and has no real stealth. And it isn’t the longest-range, the fastest, or even the cheapest jet. But it has a singular focus that makes it a nightmare for Russia’s fighter jets.

Justin Bronk, an aerial-combat expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told Business Insider that like the A-10 Warthog was built around a massive cannon, the Gripen was built around electronic warfare.

Virtually all modern jets conduct some degree of electronic warfare, but the Gripen E stands above the rest, according to Bronk.

. . .

To defeat Russia’s fearsome fighters and surface-to-air missiles, the US has largely turned to stealth aircraft. Stealth costs a fortune and must be built into the shape of the plane.

If Russia somehow cracks the code of detecting stealth-shaped fighters, the US’s F-35, the most expensive weapons system in history, is cooked.

But Saab took a different, and cheaper, approach to combating Russia’s fighters and missiles by focusing on electronic attack, which gives them an advantage over stealth because they can evolve the software without a ground-up rebuild, according to Bronk.

There's more at the link.

I'd have to agree to a large extent with the article's arguments.  Back in the 1980's, South Africa was faced with what many considered to be the most comprehensive air defense system outside the Warsaw Pact, during its war with Angola.  It was able to penetrate it routinely, and carry out raids on enemy positions without major difficulty (even though it had lost air superiority to the later-generation MiG and other fighter aircraft, and modern anti-aircraft missiles, operated by Communist forces).  Similarly, Israel has been able to operate over Syria almost with impunity, despite the latter's relatively modern air defense systems.  This capability was publicly displayed in the famous 2007 raid on a nuclear reactor complex being built in that country:  "The attack pioneered the use of the Israel’s electronic warfare capabilities,as IAF electronic warfare (EW) systems took over Syria’s air defense systems, feeding them a false sky-picture for the entire period of time that the Israeli fighter jets needed to cross Syria, bomb their target and return".  Over the past couple of years, it's been evident in Israeli air strikes against Iranian and terrorist positions in Syria.

Stealth is very useful, but it has limitations.  It's another arrow in the quiver, but not the only one.  I think the Swedish approach (and that of Israel and other powers) is equally viable.  I also note that Israel insisted on the right to modify the stealthy F-35 with its own software and electronic systems before it agreed to buy it for its Air Force (a concession granted to no other foreign purchaser).  I suspect Israeli F-35's will combine stealth and electronic warfare to create a truly formidable adversary.

Peter

The self-inflicted abdication of moral authority

Two searing headlines about the Catholic Church and the morality (or otherwise) of some of its clergy sum up the current mess in that institution.

• Pope publicly acknowledges clergy sexual abuse of nuns
• Four in five Vatican priests are gay, book claims

That, plus the persistent refusal of so many Church leaders to publicly proclaim what the Church teaches and (at least officially) believes, has in turn led to this cynical condemnation:

• Catholic Clergy: Making Themselves Irrelevant

I'm afraid that last headline is all too accurate in many cases.  I have a friend who's in the process of preparing to get married in a few weeks' time.  His local diocese is insisting on all sorts of bureaucratic i-dotting and t-crossing, none of which have a single thing to do with his actual faith, and all of which are obstacles to celebrating his nuptials in the sight of Christ and his church.  Those involved are behaving like lawyers and bureaucrats, not men and women of faith.  The Church has, in far too many cases, become nothing more than yet another worldly institution, where filling out the right forms and clocking in and out of the office on time are more important than the faith it's supposed to preach, teach and practice.

As for the (im)moral situation of at least some of its clergy . . . what more can be said that hasn't already been said?  Priests and bishops are supposed to lead by example:  yet very few of them are making even a token attempt to do so.  Many are hunkering down, not daring to stand out in public and defend the truths of their faith for fear that their own hierarchy will discipline them for doing so.  The few that actually preach and practice what the Church teaches are in constant danger of being removed from their pastoral offices, because such behavior is no longer politically correct.  In how many parishes today can one hear sermons about the moral evil of abortion, or promiscuous sex, or honesty, or fidelity?  Precious few.

The clergy child sex abuse crisis over the past couple of decades is symptomatic of the decline - if not the virtual extinction - of the moral authority that the Catholic Church once had.  If it tries to proclaim today that something is immoral, it's more likely to be greeted with scorn and derision than with agreement, along with the pointed observation that people in glass churches should not throw stones.  It no longer has the moral authority it possessed for centuries . . . because it's thrown it away.  Some might suggest a stronger verb than "thrown".  I agree.

I've cited Bob Mumford before.  He's a Pentecostal evangelist who, back in the 1970's, defined secular humanism as "what happens when the world evangelizes the church".  I think he was exactly right, and I think that's what we're seeing in so many Christian churches today.  (The Catholic Church is far from alone in its moral malaise, more's the pity.)  More and more, the so-called "Benedict Option" (a term coined by Rod Dreher) seems to make sense.  Certainly, I don't see any other way in which the teachings of Christ can survive in an utterly secular, post-Christian First World society and culture, since the Catholic Church (and most other Christian churches) are no longer proclaiming, defending or living them.

I recommend Dreher's book on the subject to those who see no other way forward.

He doesn't have all the answers, to be sure . . . but I think he offers more of them than the current institutional Church - and that's a tragedy in itself.

Peter

Trying to de-technify . . . and failing

Kashmir Hill spent six weeks trying to "divorce" herself from the five major businesses that dominate the Internet:  Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple.  She's written a series of articles about her efforts, which demonstrate very clearly how the Big 5 dominate Internet commerce and business, and how hard it is to avoid their tentacles.

As an example, here are excerpts from her article about "locking out" Amazon for a week.

I am on a mission to live without the tech giants—to discover whether such a thing is even possible. Not just through sheer willpower but technologically, with the use of a custom-built tool that would literally prevent my devices from accessing these companies, and them from accessing me and my data.

. . .

Amazon reportedly controls 50 percent of online commerce, which means half of all purchases made online in America, which is obscene.

Amazon is not just an online store—that’s not even the hardest thing to cut out of my life. Its global empire also includes Amazon Web Services (AWS), the vast server network that provides the backbone for much of the internet, as well as Twitch.tv, the broadcasting behemoth that is the backbone of the online gaming industry, and Whole Foods, the organic backbone of the yuppie diet.

Keeping myself from walking into a Whole Foods is easy enough, but I also want to stop using any of Amazon’s digital services, from Amazon.com (and its damn app) to any other websites or apps that use AWS to host their content. To do that, I enlist the help of a technologist, Dhruv Mehrotra, who built me a custom VPN through which to route my internet requests. The VPN blocks any traffic to or from an IP address controlled by Amazon. I connect my computers and my phone to the VPN at all times, as well as all the connected devices in my home; it’s supposed to weed out every single digital thing that Amazon touches.

Ultimately, though, we found Amazon was too huge to conquer.

. . .

Dhruv keeps track of all the times my devices try to ping Amazon’s servers during the week. It happens nearly 300,000 times, probably in part because apps frustrated not to get a reply from the mothership keep pinging repeatedly until I close them. My devices try to reach Amazon via 3,800 different IP addresses, which suggests that there are a lot of different apps and websites attempting to connect to Amazon throughout the week.

. . .

Amazon has embedded itself so thoroughly into the infrastructure of modern life, and into the business models of so many companies, including its competitors, that it’s nearly impossible to avoid it.

In her blockbuster academic article, Lina Khan, now a legal fellow at the Federal Trade Commission, argues that Amazon is breaking the spirit of antitrust law, but that regulators have failed to act because that law has evolved in a way to ignore monopolies if they result in immediate low costs to consumers.

But Khan says that our increasing reliance on Amazon in our everyday lives carries harms that we are only beginning to see, including Amazon being able to exploit its workers (who reportedly pee in bottles to keep up with the company’s punishing pace), being able to massively data-mine Americans whose activity it has vast access to (meaning it could charge different people different prices based on what it knows about them, which it experimented with in the past), and being able to kill off competitors who would otherwise offer consumers a variety of options and prices (R.I.P. Diapers.com).

There's much more at the link, and in the rest of the series of articles.  Highly recommended reading.

This is a very sobering series of articles.  Effectively, we're in a monopoly situation on the Internet, even though it doesn't fit the "traditional" definition of a monopoly.  Each of the Big 5 have so much clout in the market that they can effectively wipe out competitors by undercutting them, then buy up the remains and incorporate them into their own companies.  (As the article says, look at what Amazon did to Diapers.com.  That's just one example out of many that could have been chosen.)

I'm in a similar situation in that, as an independent author, I sell my books exclusively on Amazon.com.  That's because the time and hassle of selling them across multiple platforms is outweighed by the better terms offered by Amazon.  If Amazon chose to alter those terms (which it can do at any time, without warning), keeping more of the sales proceeds for itself and giving me less of them, I might be in all sorts of trouble.  That's a very uncomfortable thought.

On the other hand, having seen the enormous inefficiencies demonstrated by the US government when it tries to regulate commerce and industry, would an attempt to break up these de facto monopolies actually result in anything better?  That's the big question no-one's able to answer right now . . . but sooner or later, someone's going to have to make the attempt.

Peter

That'll git 'er done . . .

Seen at Wirecutter's place (clickit to biggit):

The "towed" vehicle looks like it's on the way to the scrapyard, so I don't suppose it matters to its owner that it's being carried like that . . . but I bet the combination would disrupt traffic, as every driver in the vicinity braked hard and stared!




Peter

Not a bad attitude towards money, IMHO

From Pearls Before Swine yesterday (click the image to be taken to a larger view at the comic's Web site):

I approve.  I've met a number of fairly wealthy people in my time, some during my business career, others as a pastor or chaplain.  The one trait most of them had in common was that they didn't own their money . . . their money owned them.  They spent so much time worrying about how to keep it, and how to make more, that they forgot to sit back, relax, and enjoy what they had.

I don't ever want to be like that.

Peter

The Founding Fathers gave us an Electoral College for a reason

I note that one of the myriad Democratic Party candidates for that party's presidential nomination in 2020 has come out four-square against the Electoral College.

Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a 2020 presidential candidate, on Thursday called for abandoning the Electoral College, saying it has made the country less democratic.

“We’ve got to repair our democracy. The Electoral College needs to go, because it’s made our society less and less democratic," Buttigieg said during an appearance on "CBS This Morning."

"We’ve got to explain our values and explain why Democrats are committed to freedom, to democracy, to security," Buttigieg added.

Some Democrats have voiced increasing criticism of the Electoral College since President Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election despite Clinton winning the popular vote.

There's more at the link.

There's just one problem, Mayor Buttigieg.  The United States is not a democracy.  It's a constitutional republic.

One of the hallmarks of a constitutional state of any kind (be it a democracy, a monarchy, or whatever) is that the will of the ruling power (the majority of voters, or the king, or whatever) is constrained by the legal requirements of the constitution - the so-called "Rule of Law".  In other words, they can do what they wish within those constraints, but they may not go beyond them.

The United States is such a nation.  In the case of the Electoral College, the only way to amend or abolish it is to use the process to amend the Constitution, thoughtfully provided by the Founding Fathers.  It's difficult to accomplish - deliberately so - but it's the only legal way to do it.  Any other way will be illegal in terms of the Constitution, and will therefore be disobeyed by any and all right-thinking Americans.

So, Mayor Buttigieg, I'm afraid your dream (a nightmare to the rest of us) won't become reality unless and until you and your party can get the necessary supermajorities in Congress and the Senate, or among the member States of the Union.  Somehow, I suspect that's not about to happen.

Peter

Just like love, money will find a way

I'm sure many of my readers know the old proverb, "Love will find a way".  That may or may not be true . . . but money usually does, too, and probably much more reliably than love.  If someone wants something badly enough to pay the costs involved, someone else will find a way to supply it, irrespective of laws, natural obstacles and any other barriers.  (Witness the trade in illegal drugs, which flourishes despite literally tens of billions of dollars spent fighting it each and every year.)

In that light, I was amused to read an account of how US ethanol is still being sold in China free of tariffs, despite nominally crippling import duties.

Although China slapped retaliatory tariffs up to 70 percent on U.S. ethanol shipments, the fuel can still legally enter China tariff-free if it arrives blended with at least 40 percent Asian-produced fuel, according to trade rules established between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the regional economic and political body.

In a striking example of how global commodity markets respond to government policies blocking free trade, some 88,000 tonnes of U.S. ethanol landed on Malaysian shores through November of last year – all since June, shortly after China hiked its tax on U.S. shipments. The surge follows years of negligible imports of U.S. ethanol to Malaysia.

In turn, Malaysia has exported 69,000 tonnes of ethanol to China, the first time the nation has been an exporter of the fuel in at least three years, according to Chinese import data.

Blending U.S. and Asian ethanol for the Chinese market undermines the intent of Beijing’s tariffs and helps struggling American ethanol producers by keeping a path open to a major export market that would otherwise be closed.

“Global commodity markets are incredibly creative in finding ways to ensure willing sellers are able to meet the demands of willing buyers,” Geoff Cooper, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, said in a statement to Reuters. The group represents U.S. ethanol producers.

. . .

Malaysia has no track record of significant domestic ethanol production, so it is unclear where the ethanol blended with the U.S. product originates.

There's more at the link.

I don't know where the "Malaysian" ethanol is coming from, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that it was also from US sources.  Import and export certifications can always be "arranged", with the help of a few greased palms.  (Nor should we feel smug about US businessmen getting one over on China.  I'll lay long odds that Chinese companies are doing the same with their exports to the USA, one way or another.  It's a universal phenomenon.)

I lived in South Africa during the period when economic and military sanctions were at their most swingeing, from the late 1970's through to the early 1990's.  They exacted an economic toll, to be sure;  but they didn't stop most really important necessities from being imported or "substituted".  A few examples:

• For a particular item of military equipment, a miniature electronic component was needed that was unobtainable through normal sources, because its military application was well-known.  However, a certain Far Eastern watch company made a wristwatch that contained an almost identical component, applied to a different purpose.  As a result, South Africa rapidly became the single largest market for that model of wristwatch in the entire world, importing them by the thousands.  They were all opened up, the needed component removed, and the rest scrapped without further ado.  It was a little more expensive than buying the component itself, but not much more.
• A number of South African military and research establishments needed access to computer equipment to conduct their work, but sanctions made it very difficult to obtain this through normal commercial sources.  Undaunted, a South African company began importing "spares" for DEC PDP-11 minicomputers.  This rapidly turned into a worldwide hunt for the necessary parts, as well as manufacturing some locally and having others "pirated" in Far Eastern factories that turned a blind eye to the illegality of the procedure - provided they were paid in gold or hard currency.  I understand that several hundred of these computers were produced, by the simple expedient of assembling parts acquired from all those sources.  They became crucial elements of South Africa's national security data processing infrastructure.
• High-precision industrial controllers could still be exported to South Africa under sanctions, for use in industry.  I found it interesting that a well-known West German brand of "industrial controller" was clearly visible (albeit carefully relabeled) in the fire control system of locally developed armored vehicles.  Since the same German firm happened to manufacture both industrial controllers and military fire control systems, it was obvious that the housing of one device had been used to conceal electronic innards from the other.  Nobody turned a hair.

Where there's a will, and money to be made, there's always a way.

Peter

Be my anti-Valentine?

Two news reports bring a new twist to Valentines Day.  The first is from Oregon.

"Did you fall hook, line, and sinker for someone who broke your heart?" the Wildlife Images Rehabilitation & Education Center asked in its promotion. "Kodi & Yak would love to help you get your revenge!"

For a $20 donation, the animal rehab center will name a salmon after the ex of your choosing and feed it to their bears, send you a certificate and photos of Kodi and Yak enjoying the salmon named after your former love.

There's more at the link.

In similar vein, here's one from England.

For those that don’t quite require revenge, there’s another way to make you feel better about getting back at your ex this Valentine’s Day.

The [Hemsley Conservation Center] is offering the chance to name a cockroach in honor of your friend's worthless ex-“someone” on this special holiday of love.

Again, more at the link.

(EDITED TO ADD:  El Paso Zoo is doing the same thing - and then feeding the cockroach to the meerkats on February 14th.)

Hmmm . . . a dead fish, or a live cockroach - or both?  I suspect you'd better be sure that your relationship with the victim is terminally "ex", or such gifts might make getting together again a bit risky!




Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,036

Today's award goes to a hapless Australian heavy transport driver.

The northbound off-ramp on the M1 Pacific Motorway at Cameron Park in Newcastle is expected to remain closed into the evening after a truck transporting a huge piece of refinery equipment became wedged on the guard rail.

The incident has caused traffic chaos, as the scene remains closed to motorists.

Emergency crews and experts including police, Rural Fire Service, RMS, heavy vehicle inspectors and a bridge engineer have spent the day trying to extricate the truck from the off-ramp, but the vehicle is wedged in tight.

There's more at the link.

I've seen taller loads squashed under bridges, but that's the first wide load I've seen that couldn't get through a tight spot.  Around here, loads like that often take off-ramps to avoid going under bridges or between guardrails on the highway.  Their escort vehicles lead them up the off-ramp, across the crossing road, and down the on-ramp again, precisely to avoid that sort of trouble.  I guess there wasn't an alternate route in this case . . . but surely someone should have done the measurements, and foreseen trouble?  (Unless they measured above or below the constriction of the guard rail.  That might be a factor.)

Peter

This is when a pilot earns his flying pay

A Boeing 787 was coming in to land at London's Heathrow Airport last week during a winter storm.  It got caught by turbulence (possibly wind shear) during the last few feet of its descent, and almost went out of control.  Full marks to the pilots for getting out of that mess.

A brown-trouser moment for sure, to the observers.  I'm not sure whether the passengers realized what a close call they'd had.  Kudos to the flight crew for their quick reactions.

Peter

Sunday morning music

Edward Elgar is one of the best-known British composers.  Here's his Serenade for Strings, performed by the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra in Holland in 2016.

It's interesting that this rendition is paced slightly faster than most recordings of the Serenade for Strings.  Its timing is very close indeed to a recording of the piece conducted by its composer in 1933, shortly before his death, which you can also hear on YouTube.  To my ear, the faster rendition seems to flow more naturally than some of the slower ones I've heard.

Peter

I did not know that

Bell pepper facts, found on Gab:

I didn't know that either.  I wonder if bell peppers can suffer from gender dysphoria - or is that merely a matter of taste?




Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  Apparently (according to commenters) this is fake news. Oh, well . . .

50 years ago today . . .

. . . the first flight of the Boeing 747, the famous "Jumbo Jet", took place, on February 9th, 1969.  Here's Boeing's official video of proceedings.  The actual takeoff is shown from about 14m. 30s. onwards.

Congratulations to Boeing on a landmark in aviation history.  As of December 2018, over 1,500 747's had been built, and the type is still in low-rate limited production, primarily in freighter configuration.  It's proved to be one of the most successful aircraft programs of all time, particularly in terms of the number of people carried - including the largest number ever carried on a single flight by a passenger aircraft, during Operation Solomon:

An astounding record was set on 24 May 1991 when 1086 Ethiopian Jews were evacuated to Israel in one plane. This was more than double the normal capacity of a passenger jumbo jet, and not surprisingly, never before had so many people flown in a commercial airliner. Two babies were born en route bringing the total who landed in Israel to 1088. The flight was just one of 40 which were put on to evacuate a total of 14,200 Jews to their promised land from Addis Ababa, the besieged capital of Ethiopia, all in the space of 24 hours.

The seats had been removed, of course, to make more room, but even so - talk about a crowded flight!




Peter

More over-the-top Bollywood

This fight scene from the 2014 movie Maanikya is utterly impossible.  Anyone sustaining the sort of blows and injuries depicted would certainly not be capable of fighting back, let alone the miraculous recovery exhibited by the protagonist:  and the feats of strength (including launching seven or eight attackers into the air simultaneously) are just plain ridiculous.  Nevertheless, the movie was a smash hit in India - perhaps not surprising, given all the smashing and hitting in this scene!

Peter

Danger, disguised as a toy

It seems some criminals at least have found a new way to put their intended victims off their guard for just long enough to get within striking distance.

Police caught a felon painting a shotgun to look like a toy in a Spokane motel room Monday, according to Spokane Police Department in a news release.

The suspect, Elijah B. Zon, also was in possession of three black-powder guns, methamphetamine, heroin and ammunition.

He was arrested and booked into the Spokane County Jail.

. . .

They found Zon in the middle of painting a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun green and yellow with an orange tip to resemble a toy, according to the news release. Pictures display a shotgun painted on one side.

“Officers throughout Spokane County and across the nation come across real guns that are made to look like replicas,” the news release stated.

There's more at the link.

Police officers of my acquaintance have seen the same thing, although not quite so garish or covering so much of the firearm.  It's not uncommon for the tip of the barrel of a criminal's gun to be painted orange, so that the weapon resembles an Airsoft toy.  You can imagine the advantage this gives the criminal if his residence is raided by the police.  Their automatic assumption used to be that a toy gun was precisely that - a toy - and that it presented no threat.  They can't assume that any longer.

Similarly, if you're confronted by a young criminal waving something like that shotgun, you can no longer assume it's a toy.  It may be a deadly threat.  Certainly, if I see something like that, I'm going to take every precaution to safeguard myself and my wife.  Tragically, that may expose real kids, with real toys, to real risk . . . but then, criminals don't care about such niceties.




Peter

If you use Flickr, download your images right away

It seems that Flickr is reducing the storage provided to non-paying users of its facilities.

The company said months ago that it planned to whittle free accounts down from a terabyte to only 1,000 images and delete the rest on Feb. 5. After that, if users wanted to post more photos to the site, they would have to purchase a Flickr Pro account that would run them $50 annually. Flickr announced these changes back in November as part of an overhaul to focus on paid subscriptions after it was purchased by SmugMug last year.

But despite giving users plenty of time to prepare for this massive photo purge, many were—hm, let’s say unprepared ... Some users also reported getting error messages while they were attempting to download their photos, which the company seemed to imply in its statement Wednesday was part of the reason it pushed the deadline back to March 12. Needless to say, some Flickr users seemed genuinely pleased to have another month to get this squared away.

For a step-by-step guide for how to download your photos, we’ve got you covered right here. But photo nerds, seriously, this is your last chance.

There's more at the link.

I don't use Flickr myself, but I know many people who do.  You've got less than a month to download your images, after which you may lose them - or most of them, at any rate.

Peter