Heartwarming NSFW toddler from Omaha:
[youtube OIUpvtIqgKw]
Heartwarming drunk 9-year old from New Zealand:
[youtube EIXit6bn_Dk]
Gives ya hope for the future, yeah?
Jan 112014
Jan 102014
Because absolutely nobody asked for it, here’s a clip from “Family Guy:”
[youtube ypWaLxo32mE]
The best jokes are those based on reality. And let’s face it… the stereotype that women-friends backstab each other or emotionally attack each other via left-handed compliments and passive-aggressive nastiness seems to be fairly well grounded. While at the same time, male relationships tend to be more honest… if the guys don;t like each other, there is little to no effort to play nice. There might well instead be bloodshed. But at least they know where they stand.
Similarly: I recall some odd things from my high school & college years. If a guy was physically attractive, that made him more or less honestly popular. But if a girl was physically attractive (especially a certain form of physically attractive)… that made her enemies. Especially if she didn’t play along with the “if she’s hot, she must be a slut” stereotype. The male reaction to an attractive female was pretty straightforward… a blatant interest, and then when rebuffed, anger. But the female reaction to a non-skanky attractive girl was even more vicious.
As might surprise approximately nobody, my high school years were spent more or less on the outside of interpersonal relationships. This, among other things, made me somewhat invisible. This was an annoyance, but it also allowed me to see things I might not otherwise, since people tended to discount my presence. And holy crap, girls are mean. Decades later there are still memories of what groups of girls would do to other girls that give me a sad.
Jan 102014
At last:
[youtube yIzTat3OD3w]
Stick around for the closing credits song (which can be downloaded HERE).
Also: the Derp Trek trailer:
[youtube xYnLO-MVRaY]
Jan 102014
The reporting in this story gives me a sad:
Kate Upton photographed in space
The title indicates that Kate Upton was actually “in space” when photographed. Which would be remarkable. But perhaps the body of the article will spell it out more accurately?
the voluptuous blond model… was photographed in a bikini in “zero gravity space” for this year’s 50th anniversary issue. Sources tell us Upton was shot in a zero-gravity chamber in a silver swimsuit
Ummm… WAT. A “zero gravity chamber?” The hell is that, and where can I get one? Do they mean an aircraft flying parabolic hops to simulate zero-g? Or do they mean some sort of special effects facility, with the hanging from wires and such? Did they actually launch her on, say, SpaceShipTwo, or perhaps rocket her to the ISS? Or has someone gone to the effort of inventing anti-gravity (such an effort might well be spurred on by the promise of getting Kate Upton into it, of course)?
Jan 102014
I generally disapprove of dressing up cats (and dogs) in human-style clothes. It’s not “cute,” it’s creepy. But then I saw this:
Cat Battle Armor
There is no way that any of my cats would tolerate this; they’d just flop over onto their sides and glare daggers at me. But any cat that can pull this off…
Jan 092014
The basics for US Bomber Projects #8:
Jan 092014
It is my understanding that the next “Marvels Agents of SHIELD” episode, titled “Seeds” and due to be aired Tuesday, Jan 14, is set to have some stuff in it of potential interest to Unwanted Blog readers…
Anybody reading along have the ability to both record the show and make decent-rez screenshots?
Jan 082014
More than a century ago, photographs of you and your loved ones were a bit of a challenge to get… expensive, difficult, time consuming, and possibly just not really available. So, it would make sense for people to put off getting family photo-portraits. But people – especially children – also had a tendency to drop dead from any of a wide range of diseases. So it would be entirely possible for someone to keel over without a single photo having been taken of them. You might think that that would be that, but no: post-mortem photography was apparently A Thing. Your kid keels over, you have no photos of ’em… so you now have at most a few days to get photos before Junior starts ripening. Some of the photos tried to make the subject look alive; many, perhaps most, were satisfied with Look, He’s Dead.
So if’n you have a hankering to see a bunch of dead folk, including a bunch of dead kids, a photographer has gathered a number together for your viewing pleasure:
Strange Past: Post Mortem Photography
To most of us today the idea is beyond creepy. But a century or more ago, people had a closer relationship with death. Until the 1920’s, a good well-appointed house would have a Parlor, a room full of all the best bling, intended for impressing visitors. One important purpose of the Parlor was as a display place for dead folk: when Granny or Junior died of consumption or the vapors or whatever, they’d spend a day or three in the Parlor with friends and family visiting, then a hole would be dug out back in the family cemetery and the dead would be buried. But starting in the early 20th century, dead folk began to find themselves unwelcome in the home: instead of being propped up in the Parlor, granny would find herself in a dedicated funeral home. Additionally: read the uncensored Grimm’s Fairy Tales and similar works. Children were exposed to Death both in reality and in literature. And as dead folk were starting to be hidden away from children in the early 20th century, death started to get written out of childrens stories. Compare the original tales with what Disney made of ’em.
So, it’s not really surprising that there was an industry devoted to taking photos of live kids alongside dead kids. Sure, parents would probably rather have had photos of their kids live and healthy, but post-mortem photos allowed them to at least have *something.*
While post-mortem portraiture would seem to be obsolete, heigh thee hence to yon Youtube. A whole lot of pet owners seem to like getting videos of their beloved cat or dog getting that last shot at the vet. Not a chance in hell I’d want that, but others differ.
Jan 082014
Out of this world first light images emerge from Gemini Planet Imager
Lawrence Livermore National lab has turned on the Gemini Planet Imager, a ground-based device designed specifically to spot distant planets. One of the first images is of HR4796A, a relatively young stellar system with a well-defined ring of dust and rubble likely left over from planet formation. Left image is natural light; right image is polarized light.
Jan 082014
Hubble’s First Frontier Field Finds Thousands of Unseen, Faraway Galaxies
The primary target is Abell 2744, a cluster of galaxies 3.5 billion lightyears away. But galaxies up to 12 billion lightyears distant are visible, many brightened and enlarged due to gravitational lensing from the foreground galaxies.
Various resolution images can be downloaded HERE.
Every speck of light here is an entire galaxy… some 1/10,000 the mass of the Milky Way, some 100 times more massive. But if you assume that every little blip is a billion stars, seen as they were anywhere from 3.5 to 12 billion years ago, you can’t help be feel a little… impressed.