Category Archives: General

General

Yet more on self-driving cars…

I know, I know…I’ve devoted an awful lot of space around here to the driverless/self-driving car articles.  If you’re tired of reading these articles, scroll on because here’s another one.

In this case, it involves Elon Musk and his Tesla autopilot…and the fact that he’s already testing it, along with the limits of his version:

Elon Musk Is Already Driving His Tesla on Autopilot.  Would You?

As I’ve stated before, I’m absolutely fascinated with the concept of self-driving vehicles and feel this will be as big a game changer, society-wise, as we’ve seen since the advent of the personal computer/internet (which for better or worse has radically changed almost all aspects of our being as well).

I’m becoming more and more convinced the mass production and use of self-driving cars is just around the corner.  Perhaps in another five years or so we’ll see many of them on the streets of all major cities.  And maybe five years after that people will no longer care to own a car at all and will use self-driving cars they summon via their smartphones.

Interesting times.

General

Fascinating…

Found this on io9 and was blown away by it:

Eerie Chalkboard Drawings Show Life In Oklahoma Schools 98 Years Ago

From the article:

Contractors doing construction at Emerson High School in Oklahoma City unearthed chalkboards from 1917, showing classroom life from 98 years ago.

In making way for new white boards, the contractors removed chalkboards only to find another set of chalkboards — with the preserve writing and illustrations — underneath. It looks like the 1917 lessons were covered up during Thanksgiving/Christmas break, since every classroom had a lesson on the Pilgrims in it. And at least one classroom was counting down to Christmas.

Of the images found on the old chalkboards shown in the article, this is the one I found the most fascinating:

Eerie Chalkboard Drawings Show Life in Oklahoma Schools 98 Years Ago

Some kind of multiplication aid, I imagine, yet one for the most part lost to time.  A comment below the article offers an idea of how this particular aid works, but I’m lost!

The original article, along with an equally fascinating video, can be found here:

http://newsok.com/workers-discover-preserved-writings-drawings-on-slate-blackboards-at-okc-high-school/article/5425449

General

Because you had to know, part 3…

From Cracked.com…

The 6 Most Embarrassing Historical Artifacts Ever Discovered

Just goes to show our ancestors weren’t all that different from us in many respects.

Still, quite amusing.  Reminds me of some of the things discovered in the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

For those who don’t know, Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried and lost for many hundreds of years following the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.  (You can read an interesting history of the town and its rediscovery here).  As excavations of Pompeii gained steam, plenty of “interesting” artwork was found intact, just as it was at the moment Mt. Vesuvius erupted.  In more modern times, the archaeologists and their benefactors found themselves embarrassed by some of the things they found and some of the rediscovered items were locked away and/or simply not talked about.

Today, with our more open society, there is more information available regarding some of the more notorious elements found in both Pompeii and Herculaneum.  Perhaps the biggest thing revealed is the fact that Roman culture of that time was much more liberal when it came to sexuality.

See for yourself:

Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum

and…

Pompeii Brothel Pictures

General

Gotta Love the Internet, part deux…

From Salon.com…

The 9 Most God-Awful, Terrible-For-You Chain Restaurant Meals On The Market

When I was young, I was skeletally skinny.  Scary skeletally skinny.  Then I got older, got married, and the ol’ metabolism slowed down to where it wasn’t what it used to be.

In sum, I blew the hell up.

It was a slow process down the road to becoming overweight but I knew it was happening and tried (not too hard) to slow/reverse the process.  But it wasn’t until I felt pain in my feet/ankles whenever I walked that I realized it was time to get serious.

What followed was sheer, absolute hell.  While there exists a cottage industry around weight loss, the reality is that if you want to lose weight, this is what you have to do: 1) Eat less.  2) Exercise.

I spent days on end with headaches and a gnawing hunger (one causing the other, no doubt) and did some light exercises each day to kill even more calories.  When all was said and done, I lost something in the range of forty five or so pounds and, while I still consider myself a little on the heavy side (roughly 10 pounds over my “ideal” weight), I look much closer to what I used to as a youngster than what I became later on as a young adult.

And those pains in my feet/ankles?  Completely gone.

I look around nowadays and I can’t help but compare what people look like today to what people used to look like in my youth.  People have always come in different shapes and sizes but but seems to me there are more heavyset people around nowadays than before, and with restaurants giving out meals like those listed above, that’s not all that surprising.

Then again, when I was younger, the “large” soda and fries sizes in the various fast food joints was equivalent to what today is the “medium” size.  Is it any wonder weight is becoming more of an issue when we’re getting larger and larger portions of foods?

 

Then again, one shouldn’t go too far and engage in extreme and unhealthy weight loss/control behaviors.

Regardless, it’s safe to say the above listed meals should be avoided.  Or, if you order them, it might be very wise to share the meal!

General

Gotta love the internet…

So I’ve got a few free minutes and I’m goofing around on the internet and on reddit.com I find the following link which states:

“My girlfriend just sent me this with no context”.

I click on that link and viola…

I have myself a good laugh.  I mean…what the hell…a pug with a pepperoni pizza on its back in the middle of a nice green lawn/field.  Weird…amusing…weird.

Then I go to the commentaries for this link and right away it is pointed out that this photograph is the work of a photographer by the name of Jonpaul Douglass.  Turns out taking photographs that involve pepperoni pizzas is his “thing”.

Curious to see more examples?  Then click the link below and enjoy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/06/jonpaul-douglass_n_4904595.html

And don’t ever say this blog never does anything for you.

General

World’s Oldest Murder…

How long ago was this murder committed?  Try 430,000 years ago!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/29/oldest-murder-case_n_7466222.html

You should really check out the link above, but if you don’t want to, a somewhat brief summary:  The skull was found in a cave system in Spain that had another 28 set of bones within it.  When the skull pieces were put together, the forensic team realized it showed signs of two blunt force trauma wounds, either of which was sufficient to kill the subject.  Both wounds, by the way, were created with the same weapon.

The motive for the killing, of course, will likely never be discovered, but it is fascinating to learn that humans, even all the way back then, were very much capable of committing homicide.

skull

General

Artistry vs. hackery…

The art world is a most curious place.  It hit the news a couple of days ago that “artist” (I put his name in quotes for a very good reason) Richard Prince had created quite the controversy.  Why?  Because he was selling -for quite a good bit of money- instagram photos he appropriated (ie took) from that service.  What exactly did he do with the appropriated items?  He simply blew them up in size without altering the images in any way and then put some new text messages on the bottom of said photos.

That was the extent of his “artistry”.

Read all about it here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/27/richard-prince-instagram_n_7452634.html

While one of the “artistic” pieces sold for as much as $90,000, I suspect this attempt to cash in on others’ works will stall now that the artist has been exposed for what he is.

However, Mr. Price is not a unique figure when it comes to “appropriating” others’ artistic works to make money for themselves.

Ask some prominent comic book artists/fans about the revered Roy Lichtenstein and you’ll find some pretty strong opinions regarding “his” most famous works.  Check out this article, for instance, which gives very clear examples of how Mr. Lichtenstein ripped off various comic book panels to “make” his art:

http://nextpanel.blogspot.com/2011/08/roy-lichtenstein-plagiarist-or-art.html

Perhaps Mr. Lichtenstein’s most famous work of “art” is this one, called “Whaam!”:

The image was ripped off almost whole by Lichtenstein from this panel from DC Comic’s Men at War #89, originally drawn by Russ Heath:

And this is only one of many such works of “art” that Mr. Lichtenstein made off the works of others and which earned him millions while the original creators got nothing.

So Mr. Price isn’t the first to rip off the art of others in an attempt to make themselves money.  Perhaps the most eloquent response to these types of things was created by Mr. Russ Heath himself with regard to Mr. Lichtenstein and his “Whaam” painting…

Bottle of Wine by Russ Heath

General

This is your brain on politics…

If the results weren’t so damn scary (the man could have died!), you’d laugh at the following article concerning one Holly Nicole Solomon, an Arizonian who got so furious with her husband for not voting for Romney (he apparently didn’t vote at all) that she ran him down with her car:

http://theviralvault.com/woman-gets-3-12-years-in-prison-for-running-over-her-husband-for-not-voting-for-romney/

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: the political climate these days is so damn rancid.  The “product” from Fox News and the radio conservatives (among them Rush Limbaugh) are heavily to blame for this.  Mrs. Solomon, by the way, was pregnant at the time and felt that another Obama presidential term would somehow devastate her life.

Ironically enough, Romney won the Arizona vote and therefore the electoral votes for that state so her husband’s non-vote didn’t really matter.

Hopefully, we’ve already reached the crest of this particular wave and things will normalize…at least as “normal” as they can be in the wonderful world of politics!

General

Real life CSI

The case involved is one of incredible, horrifying brutality:  A D.C. family of four were brutally tortured, murdered, and then their house was set on fire to cover the evidence.

Worse yet, during the ordeal the attackers apparently ordered Dominos Pizza.

Turns out, doing so fingered at least one of them in the crime, as their DNA was found and matched from a discarded piece of pizza crust:

http://gawker.com/suspect-in-d-c-murders-identified-from-dna-left-on-dom-1705947571

The heinous nature of the crime is difficult to comprehend, but one can at least find some encouragement that at least one of the people behind this crime has been identified.  I suspect it won’t be long before he’s captured -alive, hopefully- so that he can identify the others in this vicious crime.

General

Autonomous Autos…again

If you’ve followed my ramblings you know that I’m incredibly fascinated with the concept of the self-driving car.  Any stray article that comes my way about this potentially revolutionary new field (once its implemented) and its impact on our society has my attention.

What’s most fascinating is the fact that there are so many factors to consider when/if such a technology becomes the norm, something I suspect will happen soon rather than later.

For example, how will such a technology affect the economy?  Will we need to buy vehicles for ourselves if we can simply “order” a driverless car to come pick us up with our smartphone and have it take us wherever we need?  Will driverless cars lead to significantly less traffic and accidents and deaths (I suspect yes).

But there is one thing I hadn’t considered until now: Will safer driverless vehicles be allowed to run at greater and greater speeds and will this, in turn, allow us to live farther and farther away from our worksites?  If that’s the case, how will that affect the environment?

Joseph Coughlin and Luke Yoquinto offer a fascinating article regarding just this issue for Slate magazine.  I highly recommend those interested in this emerging technology give it a read.  Just click on the link below:

The Long Road Home