For those unfamiliar with Otzi the Iceman, this little video provides you with an introduction:
Well, there appears to be one more tattoo found on Otzi’s body:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/26/otzi-iceman-new-tattoo_n_6546884.html
The most fascinating thing about Otzi is that, as mentioned in the intro above, he was a murder victim. The fact that he died and was preserved for 5300 years makes him the old mummified corpse ever.
Stuff like this just absolutely fascinates me.
So you’re an American football fan looking forward to the Super Bowl this coming Sunday and, unless you also happen to be one of those rare football fans living in a cave, have heard about Deflategate or Ballghazi or whatever they’re calling it: The fact that the New England Patriots were found to have 11 of their 12 footballs deflated below the level they should be dictated by the NFL’s rules in the semi-final game against the Indianapolis Colts. (Worth noting: in the NFL, each team brings and plays with their own set of balls and it was found almost every one of the Patriots’ balls were underinflated while none of the Colt’s balls were)
I’ve heard a lot from commentators since then. Some outright state that deflating the ball to the levels found in the Patriots’ balls is not worth making much of. Others feel this is part and parcel of the Patriots’ modus operandi, ie they were already were found and punished for cheated a few years before and this is par for the course.
Frankly, I didn’t know if underinflating a ball would have that much of an impact on a game until I read this:
To all those who either scoff at the underinflation of balls or were, like me, unsure if such a thing would matter, please consider the statistics presented above. It shows the Patriots since around 2007 have led the league –strikingly!– in having the least amount of fumbles despite the large amount of plays performed, by an order of magnitude which is statistically incredible.
A few years back there were those who scoffed at the advantages of using performance enhancing drugs for baseball players, noting that having more muscles doesn’t help you hit a fastball. Yet the reality was that when the baseball league decided to clean up their act, the number of home runs dropped dramatically and are now near the norm statistically.
For me, this relates directly with “Deflategate”: The Patriots were using underinflated balls, who knows for how long now, and they were doing so because they obviously felt it was beneficial for them to do so. The statistics above may well point out the “why”.
Now that the Patriots’ have been “found out” and I’m sure the league will be far more careful in checking out ball pressure, I’ll be very curious to see how the Patriots’ fumble statistics look like in the future. Will they fall more within the normal range of other teams?
I will not be shocked if they do.
Nothing like starting the work week in total panic…thanks to your alarm not going off.
Will have to check what exactly happened. Electricity went out for a while on Saturday and I thought we had the alarm clock squared away. Turned out not to be the case and I feel like I’m still trying to catch up on things.
So says the article by Jacqueline Howard on Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/kennewick-man-dna-test_n_6516562.html
The mystery of Kennewick Man is a fascinating one as it relates to the skeletal remains of someone who died 9500 years ago and whose remains were found on the shores of the Kennewick River in Washington. Given the age of the skeleton, a great deal of curiosity surrounds his ancestry. Native Americans claim him for their own as a distant ancestor and want his remains returned to them so that he may be properly reburied. Scientists want to keep and study the remains so they may get a clearer idea of who this very ancient American was and what his genetic ties are to other ancient peoples.
It would appear that that later question may soon be answered.
Fascinating, fascinating stuff.
Yesterday I read that all the Target stores in Canada were going to shut down. To me, this was a mighty strange thing. I like Target well enough. It’s a decent place to pick up stuff at reasonable prices, from electronics to DVD/BluRays to Food (human as well as pet) to candy to clothing to…well, you get the idea. Target, like Walmart, is a “one stop shop”, where you can find just about all your needs in one convenient location.
So why would a store that is so successful in the United States be a failure in Canada? Turns out there was a pretty good reason. Check it out in this article presented in Slate magazine and by Jordan Weismann and, in particular, the damning photographic evidence that explains better than anything else the reason for Target’s failure north of the border:
…Every David Bowie hairstyle from 1964 to 2014 in one GIF:
For those too lazy to click on the link, here’s the GIF, though I suggest you check out the link if you want (NEED DAMMIT!) a full chart that shows you each individual picture…
So I just came back from Disney World in Orlando and had some interesting things to add to my old Disney World column (you can read it here).
To begin, they’ve once again altered the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, this time for the worse, in my humble opinion. I don’t mind “wet” rides, provided they’re marked as such. There are going to be times don’t mind getting wet and others where I want to stay dry. For many decades, the Pirates was a “dry” ride. True, during the drop there was a chance a couple of drops of water might hit the riders, but it was rare that you stepped out of the ride very wet.
Not so now.
Though the bulk of the ride remains roughly the same (ie, post movie with the many appearances of Johnny Depp and the scrubbing of some of the more politically incorrect jokes), the drop has been changed. No longer do you have the skull and crossbones appear just before the drop and warn you to “abandon hope all ye who enter here”. Instead, you’re plunged into pitch black darkness followed by a drop that seems to curve a little more than it did before.
And by the time you hit bottom, the front two rows (at least) of the vessel you’re in get sprayed with a considerable amount of water.
I happened to be “lucky” enough to ride in the front of the craft with my family and the drop left my shirt and the bottoms of my pants completely soaked.
Unexpected to say the least and annoying.
You have been warned.
The second interesting thing I noticed is the “suicide” gag at the beginning of the Haunted Mansion appears to be back. In that previous column I noted how in the “locked room with no doors and windows” the narrator notes that in such a room, how do you get out…following which lighting flashes and we can see through the roof to an attic area. There, a figure dressed in rags is hanging from a rope, clearly the “joke” being that in a room with no doors or windows the only way out is through suicide.
During the last few trips to Disney World, that joke was considerably muted. The figure didn’t “swing” on the rope at all, but remained very stationary and thus the punchline of that particularly ghoulish joke didn’t register.
But as of yesterday, the morbid joke was back. The figure above you is clearly swinging on a rope.
For those curious, just thought you’d like to know!
It seems that with the passing of each year, I’m on some kind of time warp. When I was younger, it took foreeeever, it seemed, for things to happen. To go on a trip. To get to the weekend. For a class to end, etc. etc.
A curious thing happened after finishing my education: Time appeared to compress. Events whizzed by and, at times, I’ve felt like I was standing next to an interstate, watching those events fly by me as if cars on that highway.
2014 was no exception.
The most memorable event to me for the year, of course, was finally finishing Ghost of the Argus, the fifth book in my Corrosive Knights series.
This was the book that I had been working toward, the book that tied all the major stings together and brought all the principle characters I’d introduced in the other books of the series together. Because the book was so important to the series and was the culmination of so many things, I took extra time working on it. Normally it takes me roughly a year to finish a book. This one took two.
As pleased as I am with the book, I’m equally happy to have finally gotten it out of my hair. The fact is that writing can be very hard work, and Ghost of the Argus was very much that.
Equally memorable in this past year was the fact that I was once again contacted regarding the possibility of creating a feature film out of one of my works. While it is way too early in the process to get too excited about what may be, it makes me incredibly proud to know that things I have created at the very least garner interest outside my own four walls.
What does 2015 have in store?
No one knows, of course, though I hope this years doesn’t pass by quite so quickly. It would be nice to actually sit back and savor things.
To all a Happy New Year and to all my best wishes in the coming year. Hope its a good one!
That’s right, you read the headline correctly. From Playboy Online (I only ready the articles, honest), a 1912 Brothel Menu. A warning before you click the link to see the menu: It is quite filthy. Given when it was made, surprisingly so.
You’ve been warned!
It’s been a loong time, since November 19th, since I last posted and for this I apologize.
I wish I could say I was on vacation or doing something thoroughly enjoyable during that time but the opposite was true. Others were taking vacations, forcing me to work extra hard to take up their place. Meanwhile, my daughter came in for an extended Thanksgiving break so whatever time wasn’t devoted to covering others was spent with family.
As of today, the “normal” routine sets back in, although only for a little while. The Christmas/New Years Holidays are bound to create more time crunches, so we’ll see.
Regardless, I’ll try to make up for lost time!