Innocent Bystanders

If He Sneezes He’ll Get Whiplash September 29, 2013

This is pretty gross and looks fake, but is supposedly real:

Chinese doctor builds new nose on man’s forehead

A surgeon in China says he has constructed an extra nose out of a man’s rib cartilage and implanted it under the skin of his forehead to prepare for a transplant in probably the first operation of its kind.

Disquieting photo below the fold.

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Handy Pronunciation Resource September 27, 2013

As a kid I had the leisure time to read a book a day, so I naturally built up my vocabulary with lots of words I kind of understood, but had never heard spoken. Like many other people in this situation, my pronunciation attempts often led me to embarrassment. But if we’d had YouTube and the Pronunciation Manual back in my youth, I could have impressed everyone with my erudition.

For example, say you’re speaking of wine country in France, and you want to discuss the famous wine-making village, Chateauxneuf du Pape. Got. You. Covered.

Or if you’re embroiled in an argument concerning use of literary devices, you’re going to want to be able to pronounce onomatopoeia without the jeers of your peers.

I am having some problems with the President’s name, so I’m anxiously awaiting their guidance on that matter.

[H/T: My daughter, the cyberflipper]

Cool Insect Fact September 24, 2013

Doing a little reading on oleic acid and ran across this interesting factoid:

Oleic acid is emitted by the decaying corpses of a number of insects, including bees and Pogonomyrmex ants, and triggers the instincts of living workers to remove the dead bodies from the hive. If a live bee or ant is daubed with oleic acid, it is dragged off for disposal as if it were dead.

Did not know that, but it certainly brings to mind some options for dealing with the current Democratic leadership.

Watching the Wheels Come Off the Bus September 23, 2013

Seems like every other story these days is talking about another foreign policy issue or international crisis. Of course, we all know that this confluence of badness doesn’t happen by accident – it’s the result of really crappy foreign policy executed by a truly incompetent administration.

But the media has gone into baby duck mode, where every (completely foreseeable) crisis has arisen out of nothing. Each one independent and a complete surprise, and forgotten as soon as a new story emerges.

Take North Korea, for example. We’re all hearing about Syria/Russia and Kenya and Iran and a little about Egypt, but North Korea’s just chugging along in the background while the administration’s attention is focused on how intervention in Syria is polling. Here are two of today’s stories from North Korea:

Photos show North Korea likely testing more rocket engines
and
North Korea Learning to Make Crucial Nuclear Parts, Study Finds

Lessee…Rocket Engine + Nuke equals…divide by two…carry the five… Oh yeah. Long range nuclear missiles.

Just an example. There’s always the rapidly increasing violence in Iraq because the President left without worrying about long-term stability. There’s the violence along our southern border which the President hasn’t even mentioned, let along taken action against. Did I mention China?

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Keeping a lid on the world doesn’t happen by accident, and the lid coming off isn’t just nature taking its course. No, that takes naivete and incompetence on, literally, a global scale.

Post-5 Million Nostalgia September 23, 2013

I was just going through some old posts at IB and thinking, “Man, I haven’t been embroiled in a decent argument in forever.”

What has the blogosphere (or at least IB) come to?

The other thing that struck me was how much time has elapsed since the heyday at AoSHQ – what I consider the “golden years.” For example, what year would you guess Gabe started coblogging at Ace’s?

2007.

I’d have guessed it was 2 or 3 years later. I still kind of think of him as a “new” coblogger, which is ridiculous given that he’s been writing there for more than 6 years.

Here at IB it’s been 5 years since the Amish flap, 4 years since WickedPinto was banned, and 3 years since Megan was asked to leave. Time flies.

Heck, it’s been more than 4 years since the first appearance of The Chart and the infamous triangles controversy.

Fortunately our aging processes have completely stopped while we’ve been blogging. Otherwise we’d be getting old too.

Answering the Important Questions About Animal Noises September 22, 2013

When the kids were little we went through the standard litany of “What does the cow say?” “Moo!” type questions. One day I stumped my oldest with:

Me: “What does the giraffe say?”

He: “?????”

Me: [in falsetto] “Blublublublublublublublu!!!!”

That became a family staple. Following the same sort of mental machinations, two talk show hosts from Norway cashed in a favor with a video production company to answer the important question: “What does the fox say?”

44 million views thus far.

H/T: My daughter the cyberflipper.

If You Follow Garp’s Philosophy… September 21, 2013

…it’s definitely time to move to Boulder:

To date, monthly rainfall for September in Boulder, Colorado, totaled 17.2 inches, the most for any month since official recordkeeping began in 1893, said Byron Louis, program manager for the National Weather Service in Colorado.

Rain in that area fell nearly continuously from September 9 to September 15, Louis said.

That amount of rainfall around Boulder is likely to occur less than once every 1,000 years, according to the weather service.

A 1000-year flood, huh? I’ve never seen flooding in the Boulder area, let alone to the degree that we saw last week. I guess now I know why.