Overnight Open Thread - TGIF Edition

Got Fireworks?

Well if not, you better get yourself to the nearest fireworks stand just over the county line.

And the good thing is that even if you live in a anti-fun nanny state, you're still no more than a two hour drive away from fireworks freedom of choice. Well except for California - they're just screwed

And on an unrelated note here's the current spot price for coke around the world. Hmm you know we haven't had a Dutch moron meetup yet.

And hey have you ever wondered what it'd be like to attach a camera to a super bottle rocket?
Well wonder no more...

Hey What Happened The Last Time We Reduced Our Carbon Emissions?
Well we got a damned Little Ice Age:

In Europe and Asia, forests were cut down with the ax. In the Americas before [Columbus], the primary tool was fire. For weeks on end, smoke from Indian bonfires shrouded Florida, California, and the Great Plains.

...Enter now the Columbian Exchange. Eurasian bacteria, viruses, and parasites sweep through the Americas, killing huge numbers of people -- and unraveling the millenia-old network of human intervention. Flames subside to embers across the Western Hemisphere as Indian torches are stilled. In the forests, fire-hating trees like oak and hickory muscle aside fire-loving species like loblolly, longleaf, and slash pine, which are so dependent on regular burning that their cones will only open and release seed when exposed to flame.

The Sun Is the Best Optometrist
Staying indoors all the time is making us into vitamin-D-deprived four-eyed weaklings:

WHY is nearsightedness so common in the modern world? In the early 1970s, 25 percent of Americans were nearsighted; three decades later, the rate had risen to 42 percent, and similar increases have occurred around the world.

There is significant evidence that the trait is inherited, so you might wonder why our myopic ancestors weren’t just removed from the gene pool long ago, when they blundered into a hungry lion or off a cliff. But although genes do influence our fates, they are not the only factors at play.

In this case, the rapid increase in nearsightedness appears to be due to a characteristic of modern life: more and more time spent indoors under artificial lights.

Victorian Ladies
For some reason women in Victorian era photos never seem to look as good as contemproary women. I suspect this is due to different/less use of makeup, bad hair styles and the utter lack of smiling. An exception though is the woman below, Lady Randolph Churchill, the mother of Winston Churchill.

You Know It's Surprisingly Easy to Accidentally Pick Up a Prostitute
Well I'm glad to see that I'm not the only guy who's run into this awkward situation.

...she pointed out the window of the still-parked car, indicated a nearby motel and let me know that she had a room there. Some people would right at that moment conclude, "Ah, motel, that settles it, she's a prostitute," but I'm not one of those people. I mean now, don't get me wrong, I think everyone is a prostitute, but at 19, I didn't even find anything curious about the fact that she was hitchhiking 10 yards away from her motel, because being a 19-year-old male is sort of the opposite of being Professor X.

Hitler Learns About Topology
Well to be fair I had similar feelings about open and clopen sets but I didn't really start ranting and swearing until Hausdorff spaces and homeomorphisms appeared.

Pancake Tosser Doesn’t Give a Fuck
It'd be a shame to waste these talents in yet another outsourced call center.

Got Horse Semen?
Then with a little marketing you could have the next big bar thing:

Holhoi tattea shots are all the rage at the Green Man Pub in New Zealand. For a mere $25 per shot glass, ladies are coming in droves to throw them back like champs. So what is holhoi tattea you ask? Oh, it’s just apple-flavored horse semen which supposedly tastes a little bit “like custard.”

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. Bla bla bla. And don't forget about the Job Bank.

Tonight's post brought to you by the original Enterprise:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

posted by Maetenloch at 09:31 PM

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