Category: goo brain

Attack of the Revenge of the Return

Backyard planet

Last night the server apparently caught a case of the fall-overs, but, fearless chrononaut RetroJim, of Relic Radio, has applied the proper whips to the proper galley slaves, and everything seems to be back to normal.

While I’ve got your attention, however, I’d like to point out that friend of the site, Barry/BMJ2k, is celebrating his 500th post over at Mr Blog’s Tepid Ride (http://bmj2k.com) – why not swing by and let him know how much you appreciate his constant slaving over a hot keyboard?

When you get back from that, the final item I might point out is last night’s episode, #162: The Last Pilgrimage, which is 19% more epic than the usual Flash Pulp. As I’ve mentioned previously, by the time we post a story I’ve usually grown to hate some aspect of it – not so this time.

Not Quite Ready For The End Of The World

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
When I was a youth, the post-apocalypse was a relatively simple affair – all you needed were some football pads to wear and a few sheets of scrap metal to affix to your Pinto, and you were good to go.

Of course, as technology moves on, and as our tastes in Armageddon-chic evolve, so too must the vehicles we intend to ride across the barren wastes.

I feel it was just such a case that prompted London’s Mutoid Waste Company to develop Lrry-1, a half-motorcycle, half-dog, fire-breathing monster.

[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8f7mKi3TLI]

Of course, it’s tough to picture the last hope of a dying Earth riding such a monstrosity – it seems much more likely that some future iteration of this beast would be the mount of choice for a ruthless Baron, ruling the desolation with an iron fist.

Who then will rise up to defend us from the imminent pack of flame dispensing robo-canines?

I nominate this lad:

[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53MQP0Q-vDU]

Still, none of these post-cataclysmic conveyances are quite ready to conquer the badlands, so hopefully we’ve got a few more years yet.

More Random Pointers

Poinsettia found at http://strawberrysweetdream.wordpress.com/This may be a little seasonally incorrect, but it’s a factoid I grew up with, and I was a surprised to learn it’s nothing more than another urban legend:

In the United States and perhaps elsewhere, there is a common misconception that the poinsettia is highly toxic. This is not true; it is mildly irritating to the skin or stomach and may sometimes cause diarrhea and vomiting if eaten. Sap introduced into the human eye may cause temporary blindness.

– wikipedia

Even with the myth cleared up, the idea of it causing temporary blindness is interesting. Further reading has lead me to the understanding that it’s not a reliable result, but something equivalent to a can of mace that doesn’t induce pain, but instead causes short-term loss of sight, (or even both,) might be quite effective.

Honestly, I’m sort of a fan of devices that encourage people with criminal intentions to seek professional medical treatment for non-life-threatening ailments – like the Rape-aXe.

If an attacker were to attempt vaginal rape, his penis would enter the latex sheath and be snagged by the barbs, causing the attacker excruciating pain during withdrawal and giving the victim time to escape. The condom would remain attached to the attacker’s body when he withdrew and could only be removed surgically

– wikipedia

Rape-aXe "condom"

Friday Fractions

Walking
Someone requested the full-sized version of the image used for the last FlashCast – I should note that most of the FC album art first cycles through my twitter feed, but I can’t blame people for not wanting to dig through my rambling, so I’ve made it available, above.

Feel free to click through for the largest available version.

I’ve mentioned it before, but there’s something about the weather in our new burg that has me constantly thinking in terms of horror film settings; a lot of rain, mist, fog, and creeping chills. Don’t consider this a complaint, on the contrary, it’s been quite helpful as far as mood building goes.

Anyhow – the other item I wanted to discuss was a recurring feature I’ve been considering. Many of the folks who swing by here, or subscribe to the podcast, have projects of their own. I’d like to instate a regular Friday spotlight on those folks and their feats.

As such, here’s a short list, in alphabetical order:

Reading this post and feeling like I’ve forgotten you? Or, reading this post and feeling like I’ve never even met you? Link your wares in the comments, and I’ll be sure to add you to the floggery.

Here There Be Updates:

Nazi Revenge

Donald Duck as a NaziNazis: the villain so evil they’re practically a cartoon.

This Daily Mail article is full of details that even school-aged children would find hard to believe.

The MI5 files show that four German agents arrested in northern France in March 1945 revealed the range of poisons developed by Nazi scientists, including:

  • Special cigarettes which would give the smoker a headache. At this point the spy would offer an ‘aspirin’ tablet that was in fact poison and would kill within ten minutes.

  •  An exploding ‘pastille’ to be left on tables that would explode if it came into contact with a wet glass – blinding anyone nearby with glass shards.

  • A powder impregnated with poison to be placed on surfaces such as door handles, books and desks.

  • Another powder that could be dusted on to food by waiters that would cause death if swallowed but not if inhaled.

  • A tiny pellet to be dropped into an ashtray which, when heated up by burning cigarette ash, gave off a vapour that would kill anyone nearby

The problem, of course, is that I don’t believe in evil as a concept. People can be mislead, or flat out wrong, but I don’t think they do it because they love to rub their hands together and chuckle at other people’s misfortune: they do it because they believe they are in the right.

If a Nazi places an exploding candy on a desk, it’s naturally considered depraved – if James Bond does it, it’s considered for the opening sequence to one of his lesser ’70s-era films.

From the same article:

‘The buckle is about 1inch x 2.5ins. The cover drops down and by pushing a button a pistol flips out, pointing directly to the front. By means of pressing more buttons, the weapon can fire shots. If a person stood directly in front of the buckle he would be shot.’

Belt Buckle Gun from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1373037/Killer-sausages-Nazis-plotted-fight-losing-war.html

If there’s anything inherently insidious about this device, it’s that, since it’s being fired from belt level, it’s likely to land in some pretty tender territory.

[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jts0xxg7P8I]

With so many clever death-dealing devices, why don’t we see treachery in every Oktoberfest?

The truth is, we didn’t defeat the Nazis via mechanical devices, or tanks, or trick chemistry. It didn’t just happen on the beaches of Normandy, or in the streets of Berlin, it happened in the decades that followed – in assisting in the funding and rebuilding of German society.

I realize this may sound like obvious wisdom to most, but I think many today have fixed in their mind the cartoon ideal of the heavy-booted trooper, and have forgotten that it was kindness, not combat, which meant that World War II didn’t end like World War I: with simmering tensions and an inevitable flareup.

It’s a lesson we need to take to heart when considering why the popular vision of a “terrorist” is a dark-skinned fellow from the Middle East, and not a light-skinned fellow from Munich.

Wheels Of Cheese

Mammoth Cheese

The Cheshire Mammoth Cheese was a gift from the town of Cheshire, Massachusetts to President Thomas Jefferson in 1802. The cheese was created by combining the milk from every cow in the town, and made in a makeshift cheese press to handle the cheese’s size. The cheese bore the Jeffersonian motto “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

I’ve long complained that we don’t apply enough pomp and circumstance to our eating habits. Everything else on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs maintains some mysticism or grandiosity, but those who handle or dispense our food are often some of the lowest paid people in society.

You could point at high priced restaurants/foodies/celebrity chefs as proof to the contrary, but go ask the farmer who supplies the produce, or the grocery store clerk who stocks it, or even the waiter who denies the temptation to spit into it as it moves towards your table, and you’ll likely find someone making a barely livable wage.

The final product weighed between 1200 and 1600 pounds, was four feet wide, and fifteen inches thick. Due to its size, it could not safely be transported on wheels, so the town hired a sleigh to bring it to Washington, D.C. during the snowy winter months. With Leland steering the sleigh, the three week, 500 mile trip became an event from town to town as word spread about the gift.

Dance Of The Ragman

The Ragman

The Ragman was supposedly once a doll carried on the cart of a nomadic knife sharpener, who used it as a sort of calling card to differentiate himself from competition while wandering the suburbs in search of foodies with dull cutlery. Although he was apparently quite abrupt with his clientele, he often stopped for the children playing at the edges of the cul-de-sacs and would make them tiny dancing figurines, ground from large metal bolts.

The story goes that, one sunny afternoon, a soccer mom, in a rush to retrieve her child from school, backed into the wandering man and, in her hurry, did not notice her error. As his internal organs bled out, she drove away with only the doll, accidentally caught on her bumper, to point out her mistake.

Now, they say, at night the doll will come dancing to any cookie-cutter household which demonstrates its lack of gratitude to those less privileged. All accounts say that he makes his presence known, as a warning, and if the wrong is not corrected within three evenings of spotting him, one of the family members in the house will die by the following morning.

Purportedly, a child has never been his victim.

– source

Truths of Youths

Klingons Crossing the Delaware by Judgefang, from: http://judgefang.deviantart.com/art/Klingons-Crossing-the-Delaware-41612731Despite my love of double negatives – that is, my love of spotting them, not of using them – I’d somehow never noticed that Mick Jagger is actually full up on satisfaction; overloaded with the stuff, apparently.

If only he could have a moment of non-satisfaction against which he could compare his constant contentment, maybe his life would feel fuller for having the contrast.

[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a7cHPy04s8]

Of course, this is just one of those things that I became familiar with at such an early age that I never thought to question it – much like the wooden nature of George Washington’s teeth.

A forensic anthropologist from the University of Pittsburgh came to the dental museum, which is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, to supervise laser scans on one of the four known sets of Washington’s dentures. The dentures are made from gold, ivory, lead, human and animal teeth (horse and donkey teeth were common components).

– MSNBC

Planted Knowledge

HerbsI’m one of those people who believes in synthesizing folk-knowledge and science, but I’m also a firm believer in hearing out the voice of reason. That’s why I found this article in the Irish Times so interesting.

‘PLANTS HAVE been trying to kill us, not cure us,” says Dr Henry Oakeley, the garden fellow at London’s Royal College of Physicians.

Now, before you think this is some madman rambling on about The Day of the Triffids, hear him out.

Citing as an example the use of blue liverwort, Hepatica nobilis , once cultivated as a liver tonic because its three-lobed leaf form mirrored the shape of the liver, he says, “It was absolute rubbish. They had no idea how the body worked.

I once believed that herbal remedies were discerned on a trial and error basis – in some cases it’s true, but, in others…

In the 1880s, at the height of its popularity, those taking it to cure feelings of “liverishness” were stuck down by jaundice because the plant was in fact toxic to the liver.

I can almost envision a Victorian-era version of Anne Landers, or even Sanjay Gupta, utilizing their broadsheet column to espouse the value of Valentine’s candy boxes as protection against heart disease.
Truffle Filled Small Red Heart Shaped Box found at http://www.chocobong.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=341
Oddly, the whole thing strikes me as very much in the same vein as the more modern popular wisdom regarding birds exploding after consuming wedding rice.

In a recent [1996] column, Landers warned readers that throwing rice at weddings is unhealthy for our feathered friends: “Please encourage the guests to throw rose petals instead of rice. Rice is not good for the birds.”

“This silly myth pops up periodically, and it is absolutely unfounded,” responded rice expert Mary Jo Cheesman at the USA Rice Federation. Many migrating ducks and geese depend on winter-flooded rice fields each year to fatten up and build strength for their return trek to northern nesting grounds.

– Snopes

– and, hopefully, I don’t need to remind anyone regarding the truth surrounding the once mythologized “Spanish Fly”.

Spanish fly, or cantharides as it is sometimes called, is often given to farm animals to incite them to mate. When ingested, preparations containing cantharides once excreted in the urine irritate the urethral passages, causing inflammation in the genitals and subsequent priapism […] cause[s] painful urination, fever, and sometimes bloody discharge. They can cause permanent damage to the kidneys and genitals.

– wikipedia

The Irish Times article goes on to mention several herbs that do actually have medicinal applications, along with accompanying blurbs as to how they were discovered and observed to work. The lesson – as it is regarding many topics – is that research is an important step before jamming some odd bit of vegetation into your gullet.

Finally, the doctor closes with this great bit of foresight:

“I promise you, in 50 to 100 years’ time, people will be as rude about most of the medicines we take today as I am about peony root.”

(Dang – I’ve just discovered I’ve been scooped on this story by a posting at BoingBoing. My apologies to anyone who finds this all to be old news.)
Alchemical Guide to Herbs & Foods