Mark H

"A fascinating look into the world of women and crime, including murderers, bandits, crooks and mob wives, from the Tribune's 4x5 glass-plate and acetate negative archive during the early 1900s." - Mark H

A bit long, but they don't seem to be in a rush anyhow. :) - Heather

We gave people 16 months and many still couldn't figure out how to make it to the wedding. Doubling it up seems fine to me. - Michael W. May

Not super engaged, then. - Eivind

:) Admirable restraint. - Spidra Webster

Via Gizmodo Australia - "Meet Kate and Kate. They’re the stars of a new Aussie YouTube comedy series about cooking, and despite the fact that might sound boring, it’s actually one of the funniest things I’ve ever watched. The Katering Show’s take on the Thermomix is excellent" - Mark H

Only in regions where the mysterious background hum isn't obscured by white noise from the contrails. - Jennifer Dittrich

the what now? - MoTO Boychick Devil

"without a doubt " - Aloof Schipperke

"The short film you’re about to take a look at is more than just a cheap, extraordinarily sexist exploitation film from 1937. Indeed, How to Undress in Front of Your Husband is most certainly that, but if you can put the stupidity of the attitudes expressed in the film aside momentarily, you’ll notice that it also happens to be surrounded by a bunch of weird, perhaps even interesting facts. Case it point: It involves the huckster distributer of Reefer Madness and his salacious screen writing wife, the film bears a mysterious similarity to a LIFE magazine article featuring photos of ex-burlesque stripper, June St. Clair made in the same year, one of the lead characters (such as there are characters) is the fourth wife of John Barrymore and the other lead character was an ahead-of-her-time suffragette." - Mark H

"One of the most interesting things about this weird little piece is the appearance of former stage and vaudeville actress, Trixie Friganza. She plays the role of the not-so-sensual clothes remover; the representative of “how not to undress in front of your husband,” and the narrator says some truly vile things about her while she goes through her supposed pre-bed ritual. Really, it’s cringe–inducing and mean-spirited. Friganza, a large woman, seems to have made career out of poking fun at her own size, but she was also an outspoken women’s rights activist often using her public notoriety to speak about the arts and for economically downtrodden. She was progressive for the time, even keeping her maiden name and continuing to work after marrying in her early life, a fairly bold statement in the early 1900s" - Mark H

So it's like a Japanese tea ceremony for undressing? - Todd Hoff

"There are two different types of geoengineering [...]: those that block sunlight to counteract global warming, dubbed solar radiation management or albedo modification, and those that remove the molecule behind much of the global warming: CO2. Managing solar radiation has considerable and so far unknown risks. For example, mimicking the cooling effect of volcanoes by spewing sulfuric acid droplets into the stratosphere would be likely to eat away at the ozone layer that protects life on Earth from damaging ultraviolet radiation; it could also lead to more of the air pollution that promotes asthma and early deaths." - Mark H

"Another sun-blocking concept—using aerosols to make the clouds that form over the ocean whiter in order to reflect more sunlight back to space—would not harm the ozone hole but could prove difficult in practice or impact global rainfall. Whether or not ships are already doing such marine cloud brightening by spewing aerosols from smokestacks as they travel the oceans is unclear, suggesting at best a limited understanding of the atmospheric and cloud physics involved." - Mark H

"Blocking the sun is, at best, a short-term fix that does nothing to remedy the other impacts of rising levels of atmospheric CO2, such as turning ocean waters more acidic or nights that get warmer and warmer under a thickening blanket of greenhouse gases. Once used, it might also prove difficult to stop hazing the skies or brightening clouds since, without removal of the CO2 causing the problem, global warming would just be in abeyance and any pause in the fast-acting but short-lived solar blocking would result in even more rapid global warming." - Mark H

"Solomon is one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men and women whose encounters with evolution, science, new atheism and biblical criticism have led them to the conclusion that there is no God, and yet whose social, economic and familial connections to the ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic communities prevent them from giving up the rituals of faith. Those I spoke to could not bring themselves to upend their families and their children’s lives. With too much integrity to believe, they also have too much to leave behind, and so they remain closeted atheists within ultra-Orthodox communities." - Mark H

Must be torture to keep conforming to all that bullshit when you've stopped believing you have to or risk the wrath of the mean fucker whose name is Jealous. - Eivind

"As I stated before and again, I didn't make this 2.7 inches 3D printed figurine of a comical sea creature wanting to get into a legal battle. If anything I expected more controversy regarding my previous works which included homophobic world leaders and local politicians. I certainly didn't expect this reaction from a comical dancing shark. I really would like to thank everyone for your support and encouragement. I decided to finally take a stand and break the usual cycle of rolling over or giving into legal threats." - Mark H

"In an effort to honor and thank the cyclops Rell, who gave his life holding the gateway open into the Beast's Black Fortress for me and many other great warriors of Krull who battled against the Slayers, I made a mistake in recalling the events of twelve years ago. I want to apologize. I said I destroyed the Beast with the Glaive, a spinning five-pointed blade that I retrieved from inside a volcano; I instead only wounded the Beast with the Glaive. I joined my fire magic with my girlfriend, Princess Lyssa, to project fire that was what finished the Beast." - Mark H

"From the British Black Arrow to Americas Saturn V this poster compares and shows off the various styles and sizes of the world’s rockets." - Mark H

Julian Edelman has been stealing the show. - Mark H

The entire airplane has been converted into a single luxury suite for two guests. This means you have the complete craft at your disposal – including its top-flight facilities, which include a Jacuzzi, separate shower, infrared sauna, mini bar, 3 flat screen televisions, blu-ray DVD player with a comprehensive collection of DVDs, a pantry with oven/microwave combination, coffee and tea maker, free wireless internet, air conditioning, etc. - Mark H

The plane is an Ilyushin 18 and was built in 1960. In its first years, it served as a government plane for the DDR top dogs, including Erich Honecker. From 1964 to 1986 Interflug, an East-German airline company, used it for flights to countries like Cuba, Russia, China and Vietnam. It could accommodate a total of 120 passengers and a four-man crew in the cockpit. After the German unification the plane served as a restaurant for 15 years until it was acquired by Hotelsuites.nl in 2007. - Mark H

You're staying up late to cry when the Seahawks beat the Patriots. - Kristin

Crying is for ladyboys. Or Akiva, as I believe you people call them over there. - Mark H

I think Geppetto would have to make him a real boy first. - Kristin

"To a human, two billion years is an unfathomable interval. But that, a team of European, Gabonese, and American scientists now say, is how long ago a recently discovered hoard of fossils suggests Earth’s first big life evolved — large enough to see with the naked eye, and in a spectrum of forms that tease and bewilder. What do their shapes mean? Would the life that existed on 2-billion-year-old Earth have given us any clues to the Earth we see today? Just what were these things?" - Mark H

"To put the unexpectedness of this fossil cache in perspective, consider that Earth condensed out of the planet-forming gas disk that shrouded our young sun about 4.5 billion years ago. Life evolved surprisingly swiftly after Earth’s birth, probably by 3.5 billion years ago and perhaps more than 4 billion years ago. But the ancestors of the large life forms we see today did not appear until the Cambrian Explosion, about 550 million years ago, and the first large life, the Ediacaran Biota, appeared just 50 million years before that, ca. 600 million years ago (relatively simple but macroscopic branching algae may, however, have evolved as early as 700-800 million years ago). These new fossils nearly split the difference and represent a mind-boggling 1.5 billion year leap back in time. They appear to have been a surprising punctuation mark in an otherwise monotonous microbial interlude. Of course, the fossil record being as fragmentary as it is, this is not to say it was the only one. Just the only one we know about so far." - Mark H

"So what might have encouraged this early flirtation with bigness? Immediately prior to their evolution, atmospheric oxygen spiked during the Great Oxygenation Event of 2.3 billion years ago, a result of the invention of photosynthesis by cyanobacteria and the running out of iron deposits with which to sop all the resulting oxygen up by rusting out (the genesis of the famous banded iron formations in Minnesota and Western Australia). This is consistent, the authors say, with the idea that more fuel in the form of oxygen allowed the evolution of bigger life forms. Aerobic respiration of the type made possible by oxygen yields 15 times more power than anaerobic respiration, and all this extra power could fuel bigger bodies, some have hypothesized. Intriguingly, these creatures disappeared around the time atmospheric oxygen levels nosedived, where the oxygen concentration stayed for the remainder of the Proterozoic Era up to about 800 million years ago, just before big life went mainstream in the Ediacaran/Cambrian. Although the idea that oxygen levels determine how big and complex life can be is “not universally accepted as a major driver for the evolution and complexification of multicellular life”, this evidence tends to support the idea, these scientists say." - Mark H

"As the Marshall Space Flight Center’s manager of nuclear thermal research, Dr. Houts is well versed in the benefits it has to offer space exploration. According to the presentation he and fellow staffers made, a fission reactor can be used in a rocket design to create Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP). In an NTP rocket, uranium or deuterium reactions are used to heat liquid hydrogen inside a reactor, turning it into ionized hydrogen gas (plasma), which is then channeled through a rocket nozzle to generate thrust." - Mark H

"A second possible method, known as Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEC), involves the same basic reactor converted its heat and energy into electrical energy which then powers an electrical engine. In both cases, the rocket relies on nuclear fission to generates propulsion rather than chemical propellants, which has been the mainstay of NASA and all other space agencies to date." - Mark H

""I’ll say: bone cancer in children, what’s that about? How dare you how dare you create a world where there is such misery that’s not our fault? It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? The god who created this universe, if he created this universe, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish. We have to spend our lives on our knees thanking him. What kind of god would do that? Yes the world is very splendid, but it also has in it insects whose whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind.”" - Mark H

ooo dış mihraks fiğdini bulmasyone. otporumsu paralelizasyon - furi

"It's easy to sit back and laugh at bold predictions that fail to materialize in works of speculative science fiction that came out thirty years ago. However, just because evil bastards who look like Gene Simmons from KISS aren't running around stealing microchips with the help of an army of robot spiders doesn't mean the premise of Runaway is that far-fetched." - Mark H

This was one of those films that we must have taken out of the video store a dozen or more times in the first few years of having a VHS player. I loved this film so much. - Mark H

This is a classic movie. - Steven Perez

BTW, Tom Selleck just turned 70! - Nils Sandin

"Will there be a serious, detailed discussion of important policy issues? Hahahaha, LOL, nope." - Mark H

I have mispronounced Hartlepool all these years. (There were more I didn't know, but I've never had any reason to pronounce them. (Harlepool is a football team.)) - Eivind

Nothing like a little bit of local knowledge. Near me are two places, Cosham and Bosham. The first is pronounced more-or-less like it's spelt: cosh'm. The second one is bozz'm. No idea why. - Mark H

"In case you missed it, the NFL is investigating whether the Patriots used under-inflated footballs during their victory in the rainy AFC Championship Game on Sunday night. No, really. Under-inflated footballs. A real investigation. It’s happening. The same league that put in no effort to obtain video of a star player knocking out his wife inside of an elevator is expending time and energy to look into some potentially deflated footballs." - Mark H

"To some (mostly the conspiracy types, loons, Steelers fans, etc.), these accusations are just further confirmation that Bill Belichick and the Patriots are dirty, rotten cheaters who never follow the rules on their way to sustaining unparalleled success. To others (mostly those with brains, the ability for complex thought, etc.), the whole situation is pretty hilarious. I mean, really? Deflated balls? They were so deflated, yet not one official who threw the ball into play or set the ball down at the line of scrimmage or tossed the ball out of play noticed? Come on now. What are we talking about?" - Mark H

Article includes some quotes from former Pats and some quite amusing tweets from Matt Chatham in particular. - Mark H

"This was purchased against my wishes many years ago as I never wanted any children and a buggy signified my wife's intent to have children. We argued much and this buggy signifies everything that ended my happy carefree low cost child free life. This buggy clearly meant she intended to have not just one but multiple children and the extortionate price of this buggy will stay imprinted on my brain till the day I die. I have bought cars that cost less than this buggy. My dad once bought a house that cost less than this buggy. Anyway as you can tell I hate the buggy. I now have 3 children, and a Labrador and am forced to endure the school run where women I dont know try and discuss the price of centre parc holidays, and the benefits of the micro over the mini micro scooter. To summarize my life is over and this green albatross needs to go round some other poor sods neck." - Mark H

"This buggy has never been used for dog sledding, racing, or buggy bumper cars, although I once used it to concuss a randy Alsatian that tried getting amorous with my lab. There are many adverts on here for immaculate models and these people are all liars and scoundrels as nothing that comes into contact with a young child is ever immaculate. So for a starting price of just £9.99 you too can screw up your life. There are programs for those of you who need to recover from drugs or alcohol. Any money generated from this sale will be used to help me recover from children (and probably involve drugs and alchohol). So spend big - its for a good cause." - Mark H

There is soooooo much truth in this it hurts. - Anika

"You classist gimp. I happened to go to a boarding school. No one helped me at boarding school to get into the music business. I bought my first guitar with money I saved from holiday jobs (sandwich packing!). I was taught the only four chords I know by a friend. No one at school had ANY knowledge or contacts in the music business, and I was expected to become a soldier or a lawyer or perhaps a stockbroker. So alien was it, that people laughed at the idea of me going into the music business, and certainly no one was of any use." - Mark H

"And then you come along, looking for votes, telling working class people that posh people like me don’t deserve it, and that we must redress the balance. But it is your populist, envy-based, vote-hunting ideas which make our country crap, far more than me and my shit songs, and my plummy accent." - Mark H

"A recent survey by the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics finds that over 80 percent of Americans support “mandatory labels on foods containing DNA,” about the same number as support mandatory labeling of GMO foods “produced with genetic engineering.”" - Mark H

Murica. :( - Jenny H.

My parents bought a set of encyclopedias when I was born - the Merit Students Encyclopedia - and I have strong memories of using them extensively growing up to simply learn things, read for the sake of reading, or helping with schoolwork. I'm pretty certain with hindsight that because they were an American publication they were not on the radar of most of my teachers which is why a lot of my homework that copied whole sections was marked highly. - Mark H

My mum and dad also bought a book of 365 stories/poems to read at night. I can remember seeing my mum or dad reading to me from the book for a few years in a row and I can remember the book itself - a large, thick book with a pale purple, textured cover - but I can't remember any of the stories. - Mark H