If You Say So

On the Vikings' Jared Allen:

Mullets are awesome, let's be honest.

There's GOT to be Another Way!

A Chirpractor is Growing a mullet to save lives Agassiz-Harrison Observer:

An Agassiz chiropractor is donning a mullet these days, and he's itching to be rid of it. Dr. Darren Paul has dropped his modern, clean cut look for the summer and is growing out his hair in the shaggy style more suited to the 1980s.

Berlin's Langen Nacht der Museen

Berlin's "Museum Night" is tomorrow, the 25th of August.

In fact there's an App for that !

The Wisdom of our Elders

A little old lady walking with a cane asked the pilot as she disembarked the plane after a rough landing:

"Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Why, no Ma'am," said the pilot. "What is it?"
"Did we land, or were we shot down?"

The Abuse, Forshame the Abuse!

Australia: Boy tied to tree, has mullet cut off.

A Sydney 14-year-old boy has been tied to a tree and had his mullet hair cut off in what is believed to be a school retaliation. Police said the boy was riding his BMX bike through Tandarra Reserve at Shalvey, in Sydney's west, when he was ambushed by four males...

Four males indeed... Mullet attack: woman and three teens charged over boy's bashing.

Keep on Truckin’

As if U-Bahn, S-Bahn, and shoe leather weren’t enough.

Alert the Media!

Oh, wait. It IS the media. Derek Holland plans to shave mustache

Derek Holland, who cut his hair prior to his previous start, plans on shaving his mustache Wednesday morning. "I think it's gone long enough," Holland said.

Stunningly, this was not a reference to the press.

Non-Crisis and Non-Cause-for-Alarm Forces PR Jokers into High Gear

Plan Bee.. how City banks are trying to save the humble bee

There is an acute bee crisis in the UK so putting them on top of the Stock Exchange seemed to make sense,"

Stunningly bad alliterations aside, no more than anywhere else, but, like, whatever.

Cronicles of Pointless People

Carrie Keagan Wants to Rock Nicki Minaj's "Backwards Mullet" Hair:

Carrie Keagan, host of VH1's Big Morning Buzz Live chats with Us Weekly about the history of hair in music. From Joan Jett's shag 'do, Cyndi Lauper's "highlighter yellow" hair color and Macy Grey's afro,

Be Helden Every Day

Rome’s Pantheon Symbolizes a Remarkable Leap in Human Knowledge

An article about the Pantheon in the Weekend WSJ provoked me to think about the example it represents to us in the broader context of human development. Not only was it as good a solution to the idea of “just a dome over a drum” as can possibly be created Architecturally, it was also the first true concrete structure. Aestheically, its’ précis is even more poetic in the economical use of ideas:

Seen from its north-facing front, the concrete-and-brick Pantheon consists of a pedimented entrance porch, a domed rotunda and a boxlike intermediate structure joining them. Their forms—triangle, hemisphere and rectangle—announce the underlying theme of pure geometry.

This is no small feat. While the Romans built arches and domes, there is no evidence that they actually understood the principals behind it. They understood their proportional thickness to span and limits of scale only by the skillful and advanced use of a much simpler principal that they used in the absence of other scientific knowledge: trial and error. This might seem like an insult to their intelligence, but it isn’t. Using a proxy for an engineering concept that you don’t have control of in order to use it is a risky strategy requiring their best engineering skills to manage. Moreover the risk of using and evidence-based/ trial-and-error based engineering concept was high for other reasons: embarrassment in the face of failure of whomever tries it, and the ire of the powerful patron who put their resources and trust in whomever did it. Slavery or even beheading would not have been becoming when you’re a well-respected Architect in the Roman Empire or Republic, I’m sure. We see that they cast coffers into the dome to lighten it, but we don’t know if they put two-and-two together, and understood that the space in between them turned into ribs made stronger by tie-ing them together with the concentric rings formed by the horizontal elements between the coffers. It took several centuries before we saw any rib-vaults that represent historical evidence that building technology knew and understood the concept. The trial-and-error issue extend to the material too: they “discovered” concrete in that they thought it could do something based on making mortar. Using volcanic ash, they produced a hydrating-lime concrete without really knowing that it was the hydration that was producing something like modern concrete. The invention of modern concrete is attributed to French gardener in the 2nd half the 19th century noodling around with a better way to make flower pots, and an Englishman who observed some of the hydrating and heat generating reaction of slack lime. So the take-away from this is that skillful use of what you know in order to do more than you know isn’t just possible, but it creates the examples that other can “reverse engineer” to determine the unknown engineering principals themselves. So there you have it – someone had to take a leap of faith – but the results for civilization was the ability to build more and better shelter using fewer resources, and this incrementally improved the lives of more people. This whole concept is lost on modern environmentalists whose luddite outlook is based on a are nostalgia of something that never existed, and is detrimental to the largest number of people. After all, if you tried to engage in such an experiment today, they would do whatever they could to stop it because of the risk and use of resources, and immediately vilify the chemistry involved in making it as a “poison” that will only serve to pollute streams and “make the rich richer.”

Cuban Number Stations

They're still at it. Heaven only knows why. The Radio Intrigue log has a list of times and frequensies for their activity in February.

Times in UTC, Freqs in kHz. VO2A 0200 5762 Sat 0800 5898 Fri 1900 12180 Tue-Thu 2000 13380 Tue-Thu M08A 1300 7578 Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri 1400 8097 Tue-Fri 1800 8097 Mon-Wed, Fri 1900 6785 Mon, Wed-Fri 1900 8097 Mon, Wed,Fri 2000 7554 Mon-Fri 2100 6932 Wed, Thu 2200 7519 Mon, Wed, Fri 2200 8009 Thu 2300 8009 Mon, Wed 2300 8135 Tue, Thu-Fri

Cache, cache... It seems Fidel has friends in hidden places it seems.