From Neatorama: Introducing the Zero Dollar

Well, Th’ Cap’n Has Him Beat Because She Learned t’Dance with Steel at 3…

but She be too Humble t’be mentionin’ it, so just read on.

Okita Soji, who lived in mid-1800s Japan, was a bit different than most child prodigies. While the other children were remarkable because of their mental abilities, Okita Soji was a prodigy at kicking ass. When most of us were still struggling with cutting our own meat, Okita began learning advanced sword fighting techniques at age 9 and at the age of 12 he defeated a master swordsman in combat (legend has it he underestimated his young opponent, spending most of the battle pretending to steal Okita’s nose). Okita would officially become a master himself at age 18 and then become a founding member of the Shinsengumi, a legendary police force.

Continue readin’ about other Child Prodigies (well, aside from Th’ Cap’n, that is) here...

New Diet Aboard Th’Mound

As we all know, it takes 1 calorie to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade. Translated into meaningful terms, this means that if you eat a very cold dessert (generally consisting of water in large part), the natural processes which raise the consumed dessert to body temperature during the digestive cycle literally sucks the calories out of the only available source, your body fat.

For example, a dessert served and eaten at near 0 degrees C (32.2 deg. F) will in a short time be raised to the normal body temperature of 37 degrees C (98.6 deg. F). For each gram of dessert eaten, that process takes approximately 37 calories as stated above. The average dessert portion is 6 oz, or 168 grams. Therefore, by operation of thermodynamic law, 6,216 calories (1 cal./gm/deg. x 37 deg. x 168 gms) are extracted from body fat as the dessert’s temperature is normalized. Allowing for the 1,200 latent calories in the dessert, the net calorie loss is approximately 5,000 calories.

Obviously, the more cold dessert you eat,the better off you are and the faster you will lose weight, if that is your goal. This process works equally well when drinking very cold beer in frosted glasses. Each ounce of beer contains 16 latent calories, but extracts 1,036 calories (6,216 cal. per 6 oz. portion) in the temperature normalizing process. Thus the net calorie loss per ounce of beer is 1,020 calories. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate that 12,240 calories (12 oz. x 1,020 cal./oz.) are extracted from the body in the process of drinking a can of beer.

Frozen desserts, e.g., ice cream, are even more beneficial, since it takes 83 cal./gm to melt them (i.e., raise them to 0 deg. C) and an additional 37 cal./gm to further raise them to body temperature. The results here are really remarkable, and it beats running hands down.

Unfortunately, for those who eat pizza as an excuse to drink beer, pizza (loaded with latent calories and served above body temperature) induces an opposite effect. But, thankfully, as the astute reader should have already reasoned, the obvious solution is to drink a lot of beer with pizza and follow up immediately with large bowls of ice cream.We could all be thin if we were to adhere religiously to a pizza, beer, and ice cream diet.

Found this gem here…

What about Fluffy When Th’Rapture Hits?

Found at Cynical-C

Pet Sitters

* You should have multiple back up sitters available in case your primary sitter is taken up in the Rapture.
* You’ll also need some kind of system to alert them that you’ve been taken up. You’ll probably need to have some kind of prepayment plan, since you won’t be around to write checks.
* For advice on picking a pet sitter, check out Evaluation

Pet Food

* You’ll need some kind of auto dispenser as well. The Rapture and Tribulation times will be very chaotic, so something with a battery backup may be a good idea.
* This should only be needed for a short time assuming you’ve made other arrangements for them through a sitter or friends.

Clean Water

* This can be an automatic watering system, or something as simple as leaving a sink or the bathtub water running.

Deciding who to leave your pets with can be very confusing. Fortunately, I’ve come up with a quick way to evaluate potential caretakers.

Each person needs to be evaluated on two dimensions.

1. Rapture Index
2. Reliability Index

Fortunately, both of these can be evaluated by knowing only one fact about the person - their religion. Simply consult the table below to find their Rapture Index and Reliability and use the following formula.

Suitability Index = Reliability Index * (100 - Rapture Index)

It’s a Possibloid

By Ker Than

An icy, unknown world might lurk in the distant reaches of our solar system beyond the orbit of Pluto, according to a new computer model.

The hidden world — thought to be much bigger than Pluto based on the model — could explain unusual features of the Kuiper Belt, a region of space beyond Neptune littered with icy and rocky bodies. Its existence would satisfy the long-held hopes and hypotheses for a “Planet X” envisioned by scientists and sci-fi buffs alike.

…The Kuiper Belt contains many peculiar features that can’t be explained by standard solar system models. One is the highly irregular orbits of some of the belt’s members.

The most famous is Sedna, a rocky object located three times farther from the sun than Pluto. Sedna takes 12,000 years to travel once around the sun, and its orbit ranges from 80 to 100 astronomical units. One AU is equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

According to the model, Sedna and other Kuiper Belt oddities could be explained by a world 30 to 70 percent as massive as Earth orbiting between 100 AU and 200 AU from the sun.

Read more…

Me Astrophysicist be th’one who came up with th’Possibloid, by th’by. Canny Woman that one.

From ‘The List Universe’: 20 Historical Oddities

16. Like Dracula (Vlad Tepes), there really was a King Macbeth. He ruled Scotland from 1040 to 1057.

17. In 1839, the U.S. and Canada fought the bloodless “War of Pork and Beans”.

18. Despite the reputation, Mussolini never made the trains run on time.

19. The world powers officially outlawed war under the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact.

20. Ancient Egypt produced at least six types of beer. [See them drinking their lovely beer in the picture above.]

Th’others be here…

KaBOOOOM!

By Jeanna Bryner

Like a cosmic Grim Reaper, a blast of ultraviolet light signals the violent death of the universe’s most massive stars. Now astronomers have viewed this heavenly harbinger for the first time.

“Astronomers have been dreaming about seeing the first light from the violent death of a star for over 30 years,” said lead researcher Kevin Schawinksi of the University of Oxford. “Our observations open up an entirely new avenue for studying the final stages in the lives of massive stars and the physics of supernovae.”

Schawinksi and his colleagues detected the ultraviolet signal of a hefty star on the verge of explosion, which they detail in the June 13 issue of the journal Science.

Usually, when astronomers see a supernova, the star has already been destroyed. “It’s very hard to tell much about precisely the kind of star that actually died there,” Schawinski told SPACE.com. “The really cool thing about our observations is this light traveling ahead of the shock wave traveled through the star before it was destroyed.”

He added, “It’s telling us about the properties, the conditions, of the star at the moment it died, but before the shock wave actually disrupted it.”

O’course, Th’ Cap’n had t’be tellin’ Her Favourite Astrophysicist about it immediately, but here be more for ye as well…

Alix & Th’Swordmistress

Aunt Jane looked at Alix and shook her head. “No, those loose breeches will just get caught on something. You need to change to something a bit more snug.”

Alix looked down and then up again. “But these make it easier to move.”

“You’ll move when you need to – I assure you, dear — and without one thought for your comfort,” she announced, “Now off to your lesson…after you’ve changed into the leathern breeches I gave you for sword practice.”

Begrudged, Alix returned to the bedchamber, slipped out of the forbidden breeches and into the tight, leather ones. All for the new sword tutor. A trip down into the east wing and an opened door revealed a lithe figure lunging and dancing across the parquet floor. Alix stepped into the room, closing the door with a faint ‘snick’. The figure stopped and spun about, sword at the ready.

“You’re a woman,” Alix noted with no little surprise.

“So are you,” the SwordMistress announced with a slight flick of her rapier, “Lady Jane says you’re prepared to take the next step up in your training. I told her I’d decide that. Pick a blade.”

The young woman lifted her eyebrow, but strode over to the rack and chose her favourite.

“Not that one,” Her tutor stated from behind, “I’ll break it in half. Take the third from the right. We’ll use both sword and dagger today. Prepare.”

Alix took up the weapon so designated and turned to regard the brusque woman. “I assume you have a name to go with your attitude.”

A swift smile just brushed the woman’s mouth. “My name is Caroline and you are stalling. Have at it.” On the last word, she drove forward in attack.

Alix barely had time to deflect and twist away from the strike. Her dark eyes blazed as she slashed her sword in the air to gain a feel for its balance, “Bad form.”

“Most of the people you’ll fight have no idea what that even means,” the swordmistress returned, “and if you say ‘bad form’ to them, they’ll laugh in your face. Any fight to the death is going to be with brawlers and n’er-do-wells who’ve been trained to do one thing – kill. Now set to.”

Alix leapt back to defend herself then set her jaw and took up the offense. She was able to back up only a few paces afore the woman drew the tip across the top of her hand as easily as a quill scratching parchment. Blood welled up as surely as Alix’s temper. She ignored the stinging pain from the wound and lunged forward.  Caroline knocked the dagger from her left hand easily and kicked against the inside of her foot. The young woman stumbled and threw her free hand out for balance, grabbing quite accidentally a very firm breast as she tried to catch her balance. Another sharp pain, this one above her right eye, caught them both up short. As crimson began to cloud her vision, Alix growled, “I don’t care a flying frick if you laugh. Bad form.”

Caroline was horrified. She threw down her blade and came forward with a linen hankerchief in hand. “My Lady Alix! I…”

Alix took the woman’s wrists in her hands, pushed her back against the nearest wall and kissed her.

dang

Th’ Cap’n Didn’t Do It - Swear…

A 22-gun British warship that sank during the American Revolution and has long been regarded as one of the “Holy Grail” shipwrecks in the Great Lakes has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Ontario, astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, deep water, explorers announced Friday.

Shipwreck enthusiasts Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780.

See?

Heh, Evil Sea-Monkey in Trainin’

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. - A spider monkey used a garden hose to scale the wall of a moat at a Michigan City zoo before being captured at a nearby boat dealership.

One of two spider monkeys recently added to the Washington Park Zoo broke out of its enclosure this week while workers were cleaning the moat, which had been emptied of water.

Zoo Director Johnny Martinez said workers had figured the monkeys would remain inside their enclosure during the cleaning despite the lack of water in the moat to act as a barricade.

Once past the moat Wednesday, the escaped monkey jumped onto the roof of a water filtration plant. Martinez says zoo staff recaptured it at the dealership atop a white and blue speedboat.

Martinez said the monkey is sociable and posed no danger to people.

I Don’t Feel Like Dancing — Well, Maybe

A lil dancin’ music for yer Friday.  Yer welcome.

Stairway Wit

L’esprit de l’escalier (stairway wit) is the sense of thinking of a clever comeback when it is too late. The phrase can be used to describe a riposte to an insult, or any witty, clever remark that comes to mind too late to be useful—when one is on the “staircase” leaving the scene. The German word treppenwitz is used to express the same idea. The closest phrase in English to describe this situation is “being wise after the event”. The phenomenon is usually accompanied by a feeling of regret at having not thought of the riposte when it was most needed or suitable.

Check out th’rest o’ th’phenomena

Pluto Be in the Dog-house

The International Astronomical Union has decided on the term “plutoid” as a name for dwarf planets like Pluto.

Sidestepping concerns of many astronomers worldwide, the IAU’s decision, at a meeting of its Executive Committee in Oslo, comes almost two years after it stripped Pluto of its planethood and introduced the term “dwarf planets” for Pluto and other small round objects that often travel highly elliptical paths around the sun in the far reaches of the solar system.

The name plutoid was proposed by the members of the IAU Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN), accepted by the Board of Division III and by the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN), and approved by the IAU Executive Committee at its recent meeting in Oslo, according to a statement released today.

Rocket out t’be readin’ more…

Aye, This be Granny Patch’s Own Evil Sea-Monkey

Note th’white hair. They match each other.  They also be havin’ th’same beady, lil’ eye…