Overnight Open Thread (3-26-2012)

Heh: The California To Texas Translation Guide

Via Doug Ross comes this handy guide for Californies who have Gone To Texas and are having a hard time communicating with the locals. It also works pretty well for any non-blue state.

I wonder if there's a browser plugin you can get that will automatically translate MSM-speak for you as well.

UNC-Chapel Hill Forbids The Mention of Limbaugh's Name During Broadcasts

Or their name to be spoken during Rush's show:

UNC-Chapel Hill has asked WRDU 106.1, a Triangle station also known as "Rush Radio," to stop referencing the school or the Tar Heel Sports Network during the broadcast of Rush Limbaugh's daily talk show on the station.

The new practice, announced in a statement from the university, also prohibits mentioning Limbaugh's show during the broadcast of UNC football and basketball games on Rush Radio.

Why? Well because they're such an open-minded community of ideas. And because they fear getting conservo-cooties over the radio waves.

The Death of Encyclopedia Britannica - Dead Tree Version

So the Encyclopedia Britannica as a printed set of books is dead - from now on it'll be in electronic form only. Which is kind of shame since it was always my favorite encyclopedia at school.

But they were also notorious for their high prices and hard-sell techniques:

It was either a door-to-door salesman or a hawker at the county fair who suckered my parents into buying the Encyclopedia Britannica. ...They were the perfect marks for the encyclopedia man: They wanted to give their kids a good start in life, they believed in the expansive possibilities of consumer goods, and they trusted the authority of the Britannica name.

I don't know exactly how much they shelled out for those books, but I remember it was a major purchase-big enough that they had to pay on an installment plan, and big enough that when the books arrived in the mail, we greeted them as joyously as we would a new car. My sister and I cleared a space on the bookshelf and carefully installed them in alphabetical order. And that's pretty much where they've remained, mostly unopened and forgotten, ever since.

I made the mistake once of inquiring what the price was and was hounded for months by salesmen knocking on the door. And then you had their commercials like this one - which I remember seeing and remember wanting to beat the shit out of the arrogant little prick they had as their poster-snob:

Turnaround: Japanese Troops Learning Hand-to-hand Combat From U.S. Soldiers

The US system may have been initially inspired by Japanese martial arts but it's evolved and now has the benefit of actual use in combat:

Martial arts experts charged with revamping the Japan Self-Defense Force hand-to-hand combat program are eager to incorporate lessons learned by U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In recent years, the U.S. Army has revised its own hand-to-hand combat training based on interviews with hundreds of soldiers involved in close-quarters combat in both theaters.

...During close-quarters combat drills, American troops learn to thump enemies in the chest with the muzzles of their rifles, creating space in case they need to shoot to protect themselves. The technique was developed after experts analyzed the information provided by the troops involved in fights in Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers are more likely to find themselves engaged in crowd control than fighting with bayonets

How Containerization Changed The World

Pretty much everything you have around you likely arrived via a shipping container. And it turns out the idea of a standardized container was the brainchild of a truck driver in the 30's who was irritated that he had to wait so long for the stevedores to load his cargo onto a ship.

11 Classic Posters

That were probably on your wall if you're of a certain age.

In early 1976, one of Pro Arts' founders heard from a friend that many of his dorm-mates at college were buying women's magazines just for the Wella Balsam shampoo ads that featured a blonde beauty named Farrah Fawcett. Pro Arts tracked down Fawcett and arranged a photo shoot beside the pool at her Bel-Air, California, home. Photographer Bruce McBroom used an Indian blanket that doubled as a seat cover in his Chevy as a backdrop. Farrah chose a red one-piece bathing suit in lieu of a bikini in order to cover a scar on her stomach.

Post-Sex Psychology

Researchers are on the job and the results seem well about what you'd expect:

In that case they found that our post-coital behaviors - again considering only heterosexual sex - tend to split along gender lines. Eating, fixing yourself a drink, smoking and asking your partner for favors - all activities that sound pretty good to me - were more likely to be taken on by the men. The women, in this case, placed greater importance on behaviors related to intimacy, like cuddling and "professing their love.

Man Raped By Woman?

Via unwanted surprise BJ:

A woman was today ordered to stand trial in Australia, accused of breaking into a man's home and raping him.

Rebecca Helen Elder, 39, pleaded not guilty to one count of aggravated serious criminal trespass at the man's home, and one count of rape.

...At trial, prosecutors will allege Elder, of Parkside, broke into a house while its male occupant - who cannot be named - was lawfully on the premises. 

They will also say she broke in with the intention of committing a further offence of rape.

Finally, prosecutors will accuse Elder of raping the man by performing an act of oral sex without his consent.

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. Bla bla bla.

And don't forget about the Job Bank.

And my twitter thang.

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posted by Maetenloch at 10:07 PM

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