‘A Bunch of Crock’: A look at the absurdities of our bullshit society

Graphic designer and satirist, Safwat Saleem, concocts a series of retro images and poignant words to highlight the absurdities of our bullshit society. He calls his creation: A Bunch of Crock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Time Soak

A helpful guide: Zombies vs Supermodels in the 21st Century

When sports fans attack, Combat Marine shot stateside, and Babysitter charged with murder

   Good Day Humboldt County!

 Thanks for stopping by. Today’s theme is violence in our society. I’ve selected three current stories that illustrate how much it plays a part in all of our lives.

 No matter where we go, or what we do, or how young or old we are, we all can become victims of random violence…

 

When Sharks fans attack… A teenager with a brain tumor

Fans behaving badly isn’t anything new these days, but sometimes there are stories that just make you shake your head. One such story concerns 16-year-old Canucks fan in California Maggie Herger. Herger was attacked by a fan during a recent Canucks-Sharks game in San Jose that resulted in her being taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a concussion.

That might not sound so bad until you consider Herger’s recent battle with a benign brain tumor. Attacking a teenager is one thing, but one that’s already dealt with a lot of crap in life? That just makes this whole thing a lot uglier. Fans in California have had a bad  run of late when it comes to doing awful things at sporting events. Bryan Stow was nearly beaten to death at a Giants-Dodgers game in L.A., some fans shot each other after a 49ers-Raiders preseason game plus a stabbing at a Raiders-Chargers game, and now this case.

As Herger told Mike Rosenberg of the Mercury News, ”I was just really disappointed. I didn’t think that hockey fans were as bad as the baseball fans,” she said, recalling the Stow attack, which drew national headlines. “I didn’t think that anyone would physically hurt me.” Sharks fans don’t have that reputation of being jerks the way others do, but having one of your own attack a girl with a brain tumor is a good way to earn a really bad rap.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

After surviving combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Karl Trenker came home to Deerfield, Florida and was shot three times. His training probably saved his life.

Babysitter charged with killing, dismembering girl

Prosecutors on Friday charged a babysitter with murder and two other felonies Friday in the bludgeoning and dismemberment of a 9-year-old girl just days before Christmas.

Michael Plumadore, 39, was charged in Fort Wayne with murder, abuse of a corpse and removing a dead body from the scene in the Dec. 22 killing of Aliahna Lemmon.

Time to walk on down the road…

When people pay for nothing you have to wonder…

A man in China, recently spent $16,000 for a virtual sword on a game that has not even been released yet. "Age of Wulin," by California-based company Snail Games, has not even been released on mainland China but that isn't stopping some from spending serious cash on the game.

The game is a role-playing one that is set in ancient China and is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or better known as MMORPGs.

article source

How a tooth got stuck in one man’s foot, and a man lives 80 years with bullet in his skull

                Good day Humboldt County!

Welcome to my humble abode/blog. Today I’ve got a couple of stories about unusual wounds. Sometimes people suffer weird injuries that they miraculously survive from, and then there are those with (shall we say) unusual wounds. Do you know of any incidents of wounds that would qualify as weird or miraculously? If so, please share them here. 

How a tooth got lodged in some guy's foot

Not much good can happen when you send a bare foot smashing into someone's jaw. But during a summer beach brawl, a kick to the face caused one man to get part of his opponent's tooth stuck in his right foot.

Published in the Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery, this case is the first to report a tooth "traumatically implanted in the foot." The case describes a 29-year-old Croatian man who came to the hospital emergency room complaining of swelling and severe pain in his right foot. At first, he claimed he had stepped on a piece of glass while walking on the beach.

The man had a wound on the sole of is right foot in the gap of skin between his third and fourth toe. When doctors x-rayed the foot, they didn't find a shard of glass but saw "an opaque object" that resembled a human tooth. So, they questioned the patient again and this time he came clean.

He admitted that two weeks earlier he had been involved in a fight with another guy on the beach. He had been wearing flip-flops but they flew off during the scuffle as he kicked his opponent in the jaw with his right foot. That strike to the jaw broke off one of his opponent's teeth, which then embedded itself beneath the man's right foot. (Photo)

Engineer lived with bullet in his head for 8 decades

When a Russian man was only 3, his older brother accidentally shot him with a pistol. More than eight decades later, the bullet was still there, according to a case report just published online in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The bullet hit the little boy right below the nose and eventually lodged itself in his foramen magnum, the opening in the bottom of the skull that allows the spinal cord to pass through and connect to the brain. The 3-year-old lost consciousness for several hours. At the time, a doctor examined the poor kid, but didn't remove the bullet for fear of causing more harm than good, says Dr. Marat Ezhov of Moscow's Cardiology Research Center, who examined the patient more than 80 years later. Incredibly, the boy recovered completely.

Time to walk on down the road…

Do you know what’s causing the waves in California to glow?

It looks like something from the movie "Avatar": ocean waters that light up like neon glow sticks when they splash. Beaches across southern California have recently been alight with eerie, glowing waves. What could be causing such an otherworldly phenomenon?

A recent report by Discovery News has provided an answer. According to marine biologist Jorge Ribas, the glowing is caused by a massive red tide, or algae bloom, of bioluminescent phytoplankton called Lingulodinium polyedrum. The microorganisms emit light in response to stress, such as when a wave crashes into the shore, a surfboard slashes through the surf, or a kayaker's paddle splashes the water. The result is a wickedly cool glowing ocean.  Photo: msauder/Flickr

Five top science journal retractions, and ‘Dino-chickens’ for pets

                  Hello Humboldt County!

Good day to you. I’m going to quit saying good morning,  because my posts of late, have been made in the afternoon. Maybe it’s a sign. Time for change.

With a new year around the corner, changes are inevitable. To make these changes, and to survive another year full of question marks, I’ve written up a Survival Guide for 2012. Look for it in this Sunday’s Times-Standard.

Here’s today’s offerings: 

     Top science journal retractions of 2011

Bad science papers can have lasting effects. Consider the 1998 paper in the journal the Lancet that linked autism to the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. That paper was fully retracted in 2010 upon evidence that senior author Andrew Wakefield had manipulated data and breached several proper ethical codes of conduct.

Each year hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles are retracted. Most involve no blatant malfeasance; the authors themselves often detect errors and retract the paper. Some retractions, however, as documented on the blog Retraction Watch, entail plagiarism, false authorship or cooked data.

No journal is safe from retractions, from the mighty "single-word-title" journals such as Nature, Science and Cell, to the myriad minor, esoteric ones. Here are the top five examples:

#1: Chronic fatigue syndrome is caused by a virus.

#2: Litter breeds crime and discrimination.

#3: Treat appendicitis with antibiotics, not surgery.

#4: Butterfly meets worm, falls in love, and has caterpillars.

#5: Los Angeles marijuana dispensaries lead to drop in crime.

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Dino-chicken: Wacky but serious science idea of 2011

Paleontologist Jack Horner’s newest idea takes iconoclasm to a new level. He wants, in short, to hatch a dinosaur.

Use the living dinosaurs among us to recreate creatures dead for millions of years. Anyone who's seen "Jurassic Park" knows that birds are dinosaurs, part of the evolutionary line containing those toothy Velociraptors.

LiveScience talked with Horner about his "chickenosaurus" plan and what sort of dinosaur he'd like to keep as a pet. [ Infographic: How to Make a Dino-Chicken ]

Time to walk on down the road…

One for the cynics…

 Originally titled “Even God has a sense of humor”, this photo shows a horrible aftermath of a location devastated by heavy floods.

Cynics among you will spot it immediately, while for the rest it will take few moments before they can see it.

 

 

via Mighty Optical Illusions

 

Tea Party Pol Calls for Killing Obama Family

In another of the long line of racist comments directed at President Obama and his family, a wannabe Tea Party politician and supporter of Ron Paul called for the assassination of the first family.

Jules Manson, who fell flat on his face when running for California City Council years ago, went on a Facebook rant that makes Rush Limbaugh's and Matt Drudge's comments about the Obamas look mild. "It must be countered with assassinations onto them and their children," he wrote in the original posting, which has since been scrubbed from his Facebook profile.

"Assassinate the f----n (N-word) and his monkey children," he prodded, according to a screen grab obtained by YourBlackWorld.com.

An angry backlash followed on Facebook, and Manson apologized for his words but defended his right to speak freely. "Once you have taken the position that anyone should be imprisoned for careless emotionally driven remarks that had no real substance, you deserve what your government has become," he wrote in the new Facebook post.

This isn't the first time Manson attacked Obama: He put up a picture of the president dressed as Hitler earlier in the year.

Read more at the Daily News.

Have we met before? and new ‘Museum of Clean’ ready to shine

       Good Afternoon Humboldt County!

 Forgive me if you stopped by this morning and didn’t find anything new. I got a late start today. I think the holidays are catching up to me. I do have hot chocolate and cold beverages so feel free to share some with me while you check out today’s offerings:   

 

      Tracing the origins of face blindness

Close your eyes. Picture your closest friend. Maybe you see her blue eyes, long nose, brown hair. Perhaps even her smile. If you saw her walking down the street it would match your imagined vision. But what if you saw nothing at all?

James Cooke, 66, of Islip, N.Y., can’t recognize other people. When he meets someone on the street, he offers a generic “hello” because he can’t be sure if he’s ever met that person before. “I see eyes, nose, cheekbones, but no face,” he said. “I’ve even passed by my son and daughter without recognizing them.”

He is not the only one. Those with prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, can see perfectly well, but their brains are unable to piece together the information needed to understand that a collection of features represents an individual’s face. The condition is a neurological mystery, but new research has shed light on this strange malady.

One of the keys to understanding face recognition, it seems, is understanding how the brain comes to recognize voices. Some scientists had believed that faces and voices, the two main ways people recognize one another, were processed separately by the brain. Indeed, a condition parallel to prosopagnosia, called phonagnosia, similarly leaves a person unable to distinguish a familiar voice from an unfamiliar one.

Idaho man's Museum of Clean ready to shine

Don Aslett may be more than a half century into his fight against dirt and clutter, but he still can't take a stroll without bending to pick up litter from the sidewalk.

As a child, he can remember cringing at the site of spilled coffee grounds and in high school, finding it strange the other boys didn't like to clean their rooms. Even now at the age of 76, his battle against grit and grime has yet to relent.

Those who may not understand his devotion, he reasons, have likely never felt the satisfaction of making a toilet bowl shine. "I'll tell you, clean is a hard sell," said Aslett, who has written 37 books on the topic and founded a janitorial business with branches in most states and Canada.

While mothers may threaten their kids with having to clean their rooms as punishment, Aslett knew he was different from an early age. "I love to clean," he said with a shrug.And now, he has a six-story shrine dedicated to his craft — the Museum of Clean — that recently opened to the public in southeastern Idaho.

Among the exhibits: A horse-drawn vacuum dating back to 1902 ( see graphic above); a collection of several hundred pre-electric vacuum cleaners; a Civil War-era operating table; a 1,600-year-old bronze pick that was used to clean teeth, and an antique Amish foot bath.

Time to walk on down the road…