Category Archives: Humor and Observations

May 19, 2014 · 4:12 pm

Merriam-Webster adds 150 new words

Merriam-Webster adds 150 new words

May 19th 2014 10:40AM

Merriam-Webster Dictionary Adds 150 New Words

The latest edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary has one region celebrating.

For more than a decade, a prosecutor in Michigan has been fighting to add the word “Yooper” to the dictionary.

It refers to a native or longtime resident of the Lake Superior region and people there say it’s becoming more recognizable outside their area. Plus it’s quote, “… just a really colorful word.”

Now “Yooper” and 149 other words and phrases have made it into the 11th version of the dictionary. A few more that fall under the category of “colorful” are:

“Turducken” — a boneless chicken stuffed into a boneless duck stuffed into a boneless turkey.

And then there’s “freegan” — someone who scavenges for free food in trash bins as a way to reduce consumption of resources.

The Associated Press explains Merriam-Webster uses a network of observers who track word usage in everything from newspapers to soup can labels but three or four senior editors make the final cut.

Other words stem from social media and digital life.

Here are the top 15 from AP:
Auto-Tune or auto-tune vt (verb transitive) (2003): a proprietary signal processor, to adjust or alter (a recording of a voice) with Auto-Tune software or other audio-editing software, especially to correct sung notes that are out of tune

cap-and-trade adj (1995): relating to or being a system that caps the amount of carbon emissions a given company may produce but allows it to buy rights to produce additional emissions from a company that does not use the equivalent amount of its own allowance

catfish n (1612): (second definition) a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes

crowdfunding n (2006): the practice of soliciting financial contributions from a large number of people, especially from the online community

dubstep n (2002): a type of electronic dance music having prominent bass lines and syncopated drum patterns

fangirl n (1934): a girl or woman who is an extremely or overly enthusiastic fan of someone or something

freegan n (2006): an activist who scavenges for free food (as in waste receptacles at stores and restaurants) as a means of reducing consumption of resources

gamification n (2010): the process of adding games or gameline elements to something (as a task) so as to encourage participation

hashtag n (2008): a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text, such as a tweet

selfie n (2002): an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera, especially for posting on social networks

social networking n (1998): the creation and maintenance of personal and business relationships, especially online

steampunk n (1987) science fiction dealing with 19th-century societies dominated by historical or imagined steam-powered technology

turducken n (1982): a boneless chicken stuffed into a boneless duck stuffed into a boneless turkey

tweep n (2008): a person who uses the Twitter online message service to send and receive tweets

Yooper n (1977): a native or resident of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan – used as a nickname

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May 18, 2014 · 9:17 pm

Rare deep sea fish washes ashore on North Carolina coast

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A Lancetfish was found in Nags Head on a beach in North Carolina.  Leif Rasmussen

A rarely seen deep sea fish washed up on the beaches of North Carolina on Monday, MyFox8.com reported.

A Lancetfish, which is known for its large mouths and sharp teeth, was found on  Nags Head Beach. The report said these fish can grow to 6 feet 6 inches in length, but little is known about their biology.

 Daryl Law, who sent the photo to the station, said the fish was released live after being photographed.

WISTV.com reported that the photographer had to release the fish twice, because it washed up to shore again, leading the observers to assume the fish is ill.

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May 17, 2014 · 1:22 pm

Burst water pipe reveals century-old Crusader murals in Jerusalem

LiveScience

By Stephanie Pappas

Published May 15, 2014

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Rediscovered late-1800s paintings in a storeroom in Saint-Louis Hospice, a Jerusalem hospital built by a prominant Christian.Israel Antiquities Authority

Wall murals portraying Crusader knights and symbols of medieval military orders have been rediscovered in a Jerusalem hospital thanks to a burst water pipe and a storeroom reorganization.

These paintings were the works of a French count, Comte Marie Paul Amde de Piellat, who believed himself to be a descendant of Crusaders. The count was a frequent visitor to Jerusalem and had the Saint-Louis Hospice built between 1879 and 1896, naming it after St. Louis IX, a king of France and leader of the Seventh Crusade between A.D. 1248 and 1254.

During World War I, however, the hospital came under the control of Turkish forces, who painted over the designs with black paint. The count returned to Jerusalem to restore his murals, but died in the hospital in 1925, his work undone. [See Images of the Rediscovered Murals]

A beautiful discovery
More recently, the nuns who run the hospital found some of the forgotten wall paintings while reorganizing storerooms in the building, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). A burst water pipe also stripped away modern paint and plaster, revealing more sections of the paintings.

IAA conservators are now working to clean and stabilize the paintings, and are looking for funds to continue the preservation work. There are no plans to turn the paintings into a tourist attraction, however, as the hospital is still in use for chronic and terminally ill patients. Sisters of the order of St. Joseph of the Apparition run the facility.

De Piellat was a devout Christian who wanted to boost the Catholic presence in Jerusalem at a time when multiple religious factions vied for influence in the city. His two-story hospital replaced a smaller medical facility in the city’s Christian Quarter. For Saint-Louis, de Piellat chose a location where the Norman king Tancred and his forces camped before storming Jerusalem in A.D. 1099, during the First Crusade. Today, the hospital is next to the Jerusalem municipal building and IDF square, which is on the dividing line between Israeli-dominated West Jerusalem and heavily Palestinian East Jerusalem.

Artistic history
The murals themselves are enormous paintings of Crusader knights dressed in full battle gear. The count also painted the names and genealogy of the families of French Crusaders, including their heraldry symbols. The murals are further decorated with symbols of military and monastic orders and cities conquered in the Crusades.

At the time de Piellat was working, the city was under the control of the Ottoman Turks. During the upheaval of World War I, the Turks took control of the building, according to the IAA, and painted over the Christian murals. The British captured Jerusalem from the Turks in 1917, at the end of the war.

De Piellat returned to his beloved hospital after the war and worked to restore his murals. After his death in 1925, however, no one took up his fallen paintbrush, and the unrestored murals were mostly forgot

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May 17, 2014 · 9:10 am

Cosplay Pictures for Your Saturday

Cosplay pictures to enjoy.  For those of you new to the blog site, cosplay stands for “costume play.”  People dress up as superheroes, pop culture figures, TV, movie, steampunk, or other characters.  Like Halloween, but for the fun of it.  The point is to have fun, and many people spend a lot of time getting their outfits together and getting photographers to help out.

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May 16, 2014 · 12:46 pm

1897: Costume ball

Amanda
March 17, 2014
Costume Ball 1

 

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May 16, 2014 · 12:27 pm

Ancient skeleton of teenage girl sheds new light on first Americans

Published May 15, 2014

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FILE: Diver Susan Bird, working at the bottom of Hoyo Negro, a large dome-shaped underwater cave in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, brushes a human skull found at the site while her team members take detailed photographs.AP

NEW YORK –  Thousands of years ago, a teenage girl toppled into a deep hole in a Mexican cave and died. Now, her skeleton and her DNA are bolstering the long-held theory that humans arrived in the Americas by way of a land bridge from Asia, scientists say.

The girl’s nearly complete skeleton was discovered by chance in 2007 by expert divers who were mapping water-filled caves north of the city of Tulum, in the eastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. One day, they came across a huge chamber deep underground.

“The moment we entered inside, we knew it was an incredible place,” one of the divers, Alberto Nava, told reporters. “The floor disappeared under us and we could not see across to the other side.”

They named it Hoyo Negro, or black hole.

Months later, they returned and reached the floor of the 100-foot tall chamber, which was littered with animal bones. They came across the girl’s skull on a ledge, lying upside down “with a perfect set of teeth and dark eye sockets looking back at us,” Nava said.

The divers named the skeleton Naia, after a water nymph of Greek mythology, and joined up with a team of scientists to research the find.

The girl was 15 or 16 when she met her fate in a cave, which at that time was dry, researchers said. She may have been looking for water when she tumbled into the chamber some 12,000 or 13,000 years ago, said lead study author James Chatters of Applied Paleoscience, a consulting firm in Bothell, Washington. Her pelvis was broken, suggesting she had fallen a long distance, he said.

The analysis of her remains, reported Thursday in the journal Science by researchers from the United States, Canada, Mexico and Denmark, addresses a puzzle about the settling of the Americas.

Most scientists say the first Americans came from Siberian ancestors who lived on an ancient land bridge, now submerged, that connected Asia to Alaska across the Bering Strait. They are thought to have entered the Americas sometime after 17,000 years ago from that land mass, called Beringia.  And genetic evidence indicates that today’s native peoples of the Americas are related to these pioneers.

But the oldest skeletons from the Americas — including Naia’s — have skulls that look much different from those of today’s native peoples. To some researchers, that suggests the first Americans came from a different place.

Naia provides a crucial link. DNA recovered from a molar contains a distinctive marker found in today’s native peoples, especially those in Chile and Argentina. The genetic signature is thought to have arisen among people living in Beringia, researchers said.

That suggests that the early Americans and contemporary native populations both came from the same ancestral roots in Beringia — not different places, the researchers concluded. The anatomical differences apparently reflect evolution over time in Beringia or the Americas, they said.

The finding does not rule out the idea that some ancient settlers came from another place, noted Deborah Bolnick, a study author from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dennis O’Rourke, an expert in ancient DNA at the University of Utah who didn’t participate in the work, said the finding is the first to show a genetic link to Beringia in an individual who clearly had the anatomical signs of a very early American.  He said he considered the notion of multiple migrations from different places to be “quite unlikely.”

Last February, other researchers reported that DNA from a baby buried in Montana more than 12,000 years ago showed a close genetic relationship to modern-day native peoples, especially those in Central and South America. An author of that study, Mike Waters of Texas A&M University, said the Mexican finding fits with the one in Montana.

There are so few such early skeletons from the Americas, he said, that “every single one of them is important.”

However, Richard Jantz, a retired professor of forensic anthropology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said he still believes early settlers arrived by boat from east Asia before any migration occurred via Beringia. That’s based on anatomical evidence, he said. The argument in the new paper “leaves a lot of unanswered questions,” he said in an email.

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May 15, 2014 · 6:58 pm

Random Humor

Random humor to close out your week…

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May 15, 2014 · 1:03 pm

Pancake Art

Nathan Shields is a former math teacher and current stay-at-home father of two. He enjoys teaching his young kids something new each day in the most unusual way: making pancakes. Nathan has made everything from sharks to parasites to seashells, and whether it’s truly an effective teaching tool or not let’s just say having a tasty pancake breakfast is never NOT worth the time.

Reposted from the Chive.

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May 14, 2014 · 10:09 am

One Man Has Written Virtually Every Major Pop Song Of The Last 20 Years. And You’ve Probably Never Heard His Name

Random Celebrity Article By   on January 26, 2014

Pop quiz: Who has been the most influential and powerful person in pop music over the last 20 years? Britney Spears? Madonna? Michael Jackson? Beyonce? Simon Cowell? Sure, these people have all been extraordinarily successful, but what if we told you that there’s one man whose musical accomplishments easily trumps all of these artists? And what if we told you that most people have probably never even heard of this person and definitely wouldn’t recognize him walking down the street? Sounds impossible right? Well, if at any point in the last 20 years you’ve heard a song from The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, N’Sync, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Ace of Base, Katy Perry, Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, Adam Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Pink, Justin Bieber… then you’ve unwittingly been subject to the creations of a Swedish born musical genius who goes by the name of Max Martin. Believe it or not, over the past 15-20 years Max Martin has been the brains, ears and talent behind virtually every hit pop song that has been released to the screaming masses. He’s personally responsible for churning out more Billboard singles than Michael Jackson and MadonnaCOMBINED. And since he is essentially unrecognizable to the average person, that might make him the most famous, non-famous person on the planet. This is his story.

Who is Max Martin?

This past April, the Backstreet Boys celebrated the 20-year anniversary of their career by being inducted into the Hollywood Hall of Fame. On hand to give remarks was an un-remarkable looking man named Max Martin. Martin, with his Seth Rogen-esque neck beard and hair down to his shoulders, wrote many of the BSB’s hit songs. During his speech, Martin reminisced fondly of his first encounter with the Boys. He met the future superstars in a hip Stockholm restaurant back in the mid-nineties. He told them he was excited to hear them sing in the studio later that evening. In response, the band stood up and serenaded him on the spot. “I got the goosebumps. It was amazing”. For millions of people around the world, this would have been the event of a lifetime. But for Martin, it was just another day in the life.

So who is Max Martin aka Martin Karl Sandberg? Was he a huge rock star in Sweden? Not really. A powerful record executive? Nope. A Svengali-like manager who knows all the secrets to success in the music business? Hardly. If he was any one of these things, it would be hard to explain why the most popular song produced by his own band, “It’s Alive”, has fewer than 1000 views on Youtube today.

Max Martin - Life Story

Max may not have gotten super famous with his hard rock band “It’s Alive”, but he did receive two important gifts from the experience: 1) When the band recorded their first and only album, they hired a producer named Denniz PoP and Denniz is the person who suggested that “Martin Karl Sandberg” should change his name forever to Max Martin. 2) While recording their album, Max astutely learned all the tricks of the producing trade from Denniz. In an interview years later, Max explained: “I didn’t even know what a producer did. I spent two years – day and night – in that studio trying to learn what the hell was going on.”

Max Martin with Britney Spears

When “It’s Alive” flopped at record stores, Martin immediately decided that he really belonged on the other side of the glass in a recording studio. He began assisting Denniz Pop as a sound engineer and song writer for all the incoming talent. One of the first projects that Martin collaborated on was fellow Swedish band Ace of Base and their 1995 album “The Bridge”. This album eventually sold six million copies worldwide. As big of a success as that was, it was his next project that catapulted Martin to astronomical success. Impressed by his songwriting and producing work, an A&R executive from the record company Jive decided Max was the perfect person to work on the debut album of a fresh young boy band called The Backstreet Boys. Martin co-wrote the singles “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart),” “As Long as You Love Me,” and “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”, arguably the three most popular songs on the band’s self-titled debut album. The album went on to sell more than 10 million copies worldwide.

What is perhaps most remarkable about Martin’s career is the consistency with which he churns out the songs that find their way into the ears of millions of people around the globe. Britney Spears, Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Avril Lavigne. More than half of the Backstreet Boys’ 1999 album Millennium. The list goes on and on and on and on. Since 1999, Max has written or co-written 16 songs that hit #1 on Billboard. There aren’t enough metaphors to properly describe his success. He’s like the Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Roger Federer, Muhammad Ali, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt… of music. Here is a list of some of the biggest pop songs that Max Martin has written and produced:

Katy Perry: “I Kissed a Girl”, “Teenage Dream”, “California Gurls”, “Roar”, “Dark Horse”

Britney Spears: “Oops!… I Did It Again”, “Stronger”, “…Baby One More Time”, “Till The World Ends”

Backstreet Boys: “Quit Playing Games With My Heart”, “I Want It That Way”, “Larger Than Life”, “As Long As You Love Me”, “Shape of my Heart”

Kelly Clarkson: “Since You’ve Been Gone”, “My Life Would Suck Without You”

N’Sync: “Tearin’ Up My Heart”, “It’s Gonna Be Me”, “I Want You Back”

Taylor Swift: “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, “I Knew You Were Trouble”, “22″

If you are a Spotify user, I compiled a playlist of Max Martin’s biggest and most popular hit songs. To listen, just paste the following text into your Spotify search box:

Max Martin ASCAP Awards

For Martin, it’s the fun of the work that keeps him going: “If I did it because it was my job, and I only did it to make money, I don’t think I’d still be doing it.” Which isn’t to say that the man behind countless hits hasn’t found financial success. From the royalties and producing fees he has received from all of this fun he’s been having, Max Martin has earned a personal net worth of$250 million dollars. That’s right. He’s worth a quarter of a billion dollars and you’ve probably never heard his name.

Max has won ASCAP’s Songwriter of the Year award six times. His most recent #1 single is Katy Perry’s “Roar” which has been nominated for several Grammys including Song of the Year. He also contributed to the album “Red” by Taylor Swift which has been nominated for Album of the Year. Whether you love the songs or hate them, whether you can admit that behind the corniness of “As Long as You Love Me” is a pop mastermind, or not, one thing is for certain: Max Martin isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe if the accolades and records keep piling up, people might actually start knowing his name and face!

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May 13, 2014 · 11:33 pm

Print Your Own 3D Printer Porsche

The DIY 3D-printed Porsche

Published December 11, 2013

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PORSCHE

Is that Porsche you always wanted still out of your price range?

Well, now you can build one yourself. Just don’t expect to go very far in it.

The automaker is now offering the data needed to 3D print an accurate model of its Cayman sports car, saving you the trouble of driving a full-size one through a massive 3D scanner.

The download is available on Porsche’s website, and can be used to print cars in a variety of sizes and colors, depending on how large your 3D printer is and the filament used.

Those adept in the art of 3D printing should even be able to modify the data to design customized Caymans of their own creation.

Think you can do better than Porsche’s own designers?

Be sure to check out our review of the real car before you give it a shot.

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