February 9, 2012
These stories are so cool:
Can’t wait until someone does it with a trapped great white shark…
P.S. The Coromandel Peninsula, just to take the opportunity to make this a geographical learning experience, is on NZ’s North Island, just east of Aukland. The town of Coromandel is on the peninsula’s western shore.
January 24, 2012
Jan 24 (Reuters) – Delta Air Lines said it is diverting some flights on polar routes between Detroit and Asia to avoid disruptions to aircraft communications by a strong solar radiation storm.
The storm has caused minor disruptions for U.S. airlines. Delta said it altered routes for “a handful” of flights and that changes are adding about 15 minutes to travel times.
“We are undergoing a series of solar bursts in the sky that are impacting the northern side of the world,” said Delta spokesman Anthony Black on Tuesday.
“It can impact your ability to communicate,” he said. “So, basically, the polar routes are being flown further south than normal.”
Here’s our question: Shouldn’t a news story about one airline doing this (they do say that one other did a wee bit of rerouting) be about…one airline doing this?
Here’s a good article on the recent flares.
And oh heckyeah. Awesome NASA video:
January 17, 2012
And it’s a doozy:
Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard was “heavily involved” in “murder, car-jackings … and the sale of drugs [and] illegal guns”, according to a newly released FBI report. The FBI’s 93-page file on ODB, revealed in a Freedom of Information request, connects the rapper with a litany of serious crimes in the late 80s and 90s.
The documents were obtained by Rich Jones of the Gun.io blog, who filed a formal request for information on Russell Tyrone Jones, aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who died of an accidental drug overdose in 2004. It took the FBI less than a week to respond with its file, consisting of redacted police reports, court proceedings and news clippings. All have been posted online.
There’s a lot more, including the allegation that people were rewarded with recording contracts for committing crimes.
The funniest part:
The FBI’s ODB file will certainly be of interest to the rest of Wu-Tang Clan, who are still making music.
Ya think?
Wu Tang Clan info here, and at Wu-Tang Corp. And at The Daily Beast.
[pic]
* Post edited to take dumbass typo out of title. Sheesh!
January 12, 2012
This is one of those stories that reminds you…Goliath usually wins:
For decades, anyone entering the First National Bank of Dublin could get a free bottle of sugar-sweetened Dublin Dr Pepper.
Not anymore.
Bank Vice President Pat Leatherwood said the traditional freebie ended Wednesday after word spread that Dr Pepper Snapple Group settled a trademark dispute by acquiring the rights to the Dublin Dr Pepper franchise from the local bottler, a family-owned, 121-year-old institution in the Central Texas town.
“As of today, I will never drink another Dr Pepper,” vowed Leatherwood, reflecting the seething anger in the Erath County community of 3,700. Noting that the bottler was among the town’s largest private employers and clearly its biggest draw, the banker added: “They have just slapped us and killed our economy.”
2010 revenue for the Dr Pepper Snapple Group: $5.6 billion.
2010 revenue for Dublin Dr Pepper: $5.6 billion minus $5.6 billion or so.
We don’t know the numbers for Dublin Dr Pepper, but seeing as they had just 37 employees total (they had to lay off 14 of them this week), and could only sell their product within a 44-mile radius around the town of Dublin—we’re guessing that compared to $5.6 billion rounding off to $0 is accurate enough.
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December 29, 2011
The South Pacific Nations of Samoa and Tokelau are about to cross the International Date Line. Tonight at midnight, the islands will jump from December 29 to December 31. The decision was made in order to standardize trading with their partners in the region. Our thoughts go out to all those with a December 30 birthday on the islands. Hopefully your families will not use this as an excuse to skip out on gifts. More information about the switch is here and here.
Samoa Flag
While we are on the topic, here is a story of Kiribati, which had to shift the International Date Line so it would not cut straight through the middle of their country. Before the shift, half of Kiribati was 22 hours ahead of the other half.
December 28, 2011
Imagine the surprise of the baggage X-ray technicians who discovered this! A Czech man boarding a plane in Argentina, bound for Madrid, tried to board the plane with 247 live animals. Among the animals were 15 venomous vipers. Yikes!
Snakes on a plane doesn’t seem like a good idea at all. Someone should make a movie about that and they should call it “Snakes on a Plane.”
Here are some more details about the story.
December 22, 2011
You may have heard about this. If so, well, there’s been a very big update as of yesterday.
Back story: On December 10, comedian Louis CK put a video of himself performing at the Beacon Theater in New York City up for sale on a website made just for purpose. It offered the video for $5. You could pay through PayPal – even if you didn’t have a PayPal account – and download the video right away. And:
No DRM, no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever.
Just four days later Louis CK issued a statement:
People of Earth (minus the ones who don’t give a sh*t about this): it’s been amazing to conduct this experiment with you. The experiment was: if I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much money can be made by an individual in this manner? [...]
First of all, this was a premium video production, shot with six cameras over two performances at the Beacon Theater, which is a high-priced elite Manhattan venue. I directed this video myself and the production of the video cost around $170,000. (This was largely paid for by the tickets bought by the audiences at both shows). The material in the video was developed over months on the road and has never been seen on my show (LOUIE) or on any other special. The risks were thus: every new generation of material I create is my income, it’s like a farmer’s annual crop. The time and effort on my part was far more than if I’d done it with a big company. If I’d done it with a big company, I would have a guarantee of a sizable fee, as opposed to this way, where I’m actually investing my own money.
Result:
The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000.
That’s a pretty powerful little experiment, and the comedian said it was so successful that he hopes to do it in the future: cut out the bigwigs, and just go straight to the fans. Pretty cool.
But there is more – so much more. Mr. CK updated the site yesterday:
hi. So it’s been about 12 days since the thing started and yesterday we hit the crazy number. One million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Really too much money. I’ve never had a million dollars all of a sudden. and since we’re all sharing this experience and since it’s really your money, I wanted to let you know what I’m doing with it. People are paying attention to what’s going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.
So I’m breaking the million into four pieces.
the first 250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build.
The second 250k is going back to my staff and the people who work for me on the special and on my show. I’m giving them a big fat bonus.
The third 280k is going to a few different charities. They are listed below in case you’d like to donate to them also. Some of these i learned about through friends, some were reccomended through twitter.
That leaves me with 220k for myself. Some of that will pay my rent and will care for my childen. The rest I will do terrible, horrible things with and none of that is any of your business. In any case, to me, 220k is enough out of a million.
That is one heck of a good story, and a really good story for the Christmas season. Wow. A very, very large Uncle John’s hats-off to Mr. Louis CK!
[pic: fixed!]
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Last -minute gifts? Your friends don’t need a Kindle to read an Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader e-book from Amazon. It’s really easy to send one as a gift, and it’s also really fast!
December 18, 2011
It just seemed appropriate.
looking at a door
More here. And here.
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The UJBR HOLIDAY SALE! - 30% off all books - goes through December.
December 15, 2011
FYI, sports fans: There could be a big story concerning the National Football League breaking pretty soon:
Chicago Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd was locked up in federal custody Thursday as his stunned teammates learned he had been charged with trying to set up a drug-dealing network following his arrest with more than a pound of cocaine.
A POUND of cocaine. That’s not your “personal-use” amount of cocaine, as the story implies with the “network” comment. And the dude just signed a three-year contract worth $5.15 million! Why on earth…?! Wow.
But for the REALLY big ingredient in this story we have to go to another site:
Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd, who was arrested Wednesday on federal drug charges, was a top drug dealer in Chicago and police have a list of NFL players who were supplied drugs by the receiver, a law enforcement source told 670 The Score.
Oh. Dear. This is really, really ungood for the NFL.
We’ll update as we learn more.
Update: Holy cow. The indictment apparently indicates that federal investigators interviewed Hurd in July—regarding $88,000 in cash found in his car when it was being driven by someone else—but , according to the charges, he kept on dealing drugs! Holy cow! If that’s true this story may enter the Really UnSmart Hall of Fame!
Update 2: Just so you know: “Bears players are paid on Thursdays.” Now you know.
Update 3: Obligatory Sam Hurd Twitter feed right here. Example:
I knew the
#bears were lacking a possession receiver. But I don’t think that’s what they had in mind.
Update 4 (December 16 morning): That’s what we said last night!
Update 5: Hurd lawyer says Hurd never sold drugs to NFL players.
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The UJBR HOLIDAY SALE! - 30% off all books - goes through December.
And oh yeah: Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader eBooks and new and improved mobile app just became available yesterday….
December 7, 2011
Get ready for UncleJohn’sBathroomReader.xxx - coming to your internet any day!
Oh, no, wait, really. That sounded funny in our heads – for about 1.23 seconds – but now that we think about it a bit more…no. Really. Uh uh. No with a capital N.O.
Back to the story:
Web addresses ending in .xxx have gone on general sale, as legal efforts continue to scupper the domain name.
Some 100,000 addresses have already been purchased in a restricted sale. The first pages went live in September.
Much more on the whole “.xxx” story here. (They’ve apparently become available to the general public only yesterday. And some colleges are apparently trying to get .xxx addresses.)
Exxxtra: When you think about it, if you owned a company that made, say, x-ray machines, you might want the .xxx web address for good and pure and perfectly non-pornographic reasons, wouldn’t you? “XraysR’Us.xxx!” Or if you were a lawyer that specialized in divorce cases: “GetItAllFromThe.xxx!” Or if you just turned thirty years old, and you wanted to celebrate that with a website – and you can only write in Roman numerals: “YayI’m.xxx!”
Okay, that last one would be, well, dumb, but I think you get our point…
P.S. We looked for a cool image to go along with this post, but when you put “xxx” in Google – you would not believe what happens! Oh dear oh dear oh dear…
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HOLIDAY SALE! 30% off best Christmas presents ever! Goes through December!
King James I cited the health hazards of smoking in his “Counterblaste to Tobacco” in 1604.
