If you don’t get it, then you haven’t seen Clint Eastwood’s speech (below) at the Republican National Convention, in which he starts talking to an invisible Barack Obama, who is sitting in an apparently empty chair and loves telling people to shut up and asking them to violate themselves. Of course, the Internet is all over the whole empty chair thing, and there’s already a t-shirt:
From Lester Aponte and Busted Tees
Now that Neil Armstrong actually died, NPR has an interesting story about what would’ve happened if he had died in space. Back in 1969, a life insurance policy would’ve cost the astronauts much, much more than they could afford. However, being responsible family men, the three astronauts who were part of the Apollo 11 mission couldn’t just leave the Earth without making sure their kids were going to live in a house and eat food. So the astronauts banked on the only currency they had, which was their fame. Less creative people would’ve just started charging for autographs, but these astronauts were clever and not out to get rich.
Insurance envelope autographed by Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin
What they did instead was insure themselves using the market for their autographs: they had always signed autographs for free, but people would, of course, turn around and sell them. During their month-long quarantine before the space launch, the three astronauts signed hundreds of envelopes and gave them to a friend. On important days — like the launch and the moon landing — the friend took envelopes to the post office, had them postmarked, then dropped them off with the astronauts’ families. If they failed to return from space, the families could sell these autographed, postmarked envelopes and keep themselves solvent for years or maybe even a lifetime. Today, those envelopes are worth about 30,000$ each.
From NPR
Don’t worry: it’s only if you may actually want to give live birth someday. This, according to a new Finnish study which warns that things start getting hairy after the third abortion: that fifth-time’s-a-charm baby has a decent chance of being born prematurely, and of being underweight. If you’re still one of the pedestrians that has only had one or two abortions though, you don’t have that much to worry about. However, once your life choices and/or understanding of the stork’s role in childbirth have brought your smushmorshin count up into plural territory, the well-being of future fetuses may be put at risk. The study makes no recommendations for those who could care less about childbirth.
From Oxford Journals, via NPR
Because let’s face it: food is not only the thing you love most and the only thing that makes you happy, but eating is also somehow the most exciting thing you do. And Apple cares about your happiness.
From YouTube
After the Eagles’ starting quarterback got his ribs bruised in the second preseason game this year, his corporate parental units decided to stop screwing around: from now on, ESPN says that Vick will wear advanced body armor under his uniform. This means that not only will the military-grade, battle-tested, Kevlar-containing composite material protect him on the field, but he also no longer has anything to fear from bullets, and could even enter a dog fight himself, knowing that dog teeth are no match for his Unequal Technologies EXO Skeleton — which, by the way, is apparently either fitted, custom-fitted, or both:
“It’s going to be custom-fitted and fitted to protect all across my sternum, across my ribs. I think it’ll be a better fit.” – Michael Vick
Unequal EXO Skeleton Barricade 5 Pad Shirt
The battle armor is described as a compression shirt that has two rib protectors, each of which weighs three ounces and stops tickle fights before they start. Also, the CEO of the athletic armor company is either brash, a betting man, or just wants every defense in the NFL to try really hard:
“I guarantee he will not get hurt,” – Rob Vito, CEO of Unequal Technologies
From ESPN.com
It’s a trailer about a happily married guy who one day wakes up to find that his wife’s breasts are suddenly small. Everyone, including the wife, tries to convince him they were never big, but he won’t — he can’t — believe that it’s not a massive conspiracy. Olivia Munn from The Newsroom plays the wife.
From YouTube, via Laughing Squid
A major showdown between two of the greatest mages of our time has ended in Mitt Romney’s favor. Hurricane Isaac, designed by president Obama to devastate the Republican National Convention in Tampa and seriously call into question Mitt Romney’s abilities, has failed. Instead, it has been diverted by the Republican nominee to the Democratic stronghold of New Orleans, a city revered by the left wing after the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2010 premiere of the hit HBO show Treme.
Early in the bout, most meteorologists predicted Obama’s unexpected move would succeed, as the nascent tropical storm making its way toward Tampa was poised to become the first hurricane to hit the city in almost a century. But in the end, Romney and his Republican party proved themselves a force to be reckoned with, as the storm not only failed to make its way to the convention, but also to achieve hurricane strength by the appointed time, instead arriving in New Orleans on the seventh anniversary of Katrina. The miscalculation of Romney’s obviously significant power was a costly one for the sitting President, and a retaliatory move on Obama’s home base of Hawaii cannot be counted out at this time.
So that's why she's supposedly fascinating!
According to Wikipedia:
Mona Lisa has no clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes. Some researchers claim that it was common at this time for genteel women to pluck these hairs, as they were considered unsightly. In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte announced that his ultra high resolution scans of the painting provide evidence that Mona Lisa was originally painted with eyelashes and with better visible eyebrows, but that these had gradually disappeared over time, perhaps as a result of overcleaning. For modern viewers the nearly-missing eyebrows add to the slightly abstract quality of the face.
The venerable couldn’t-pass-seventh-grade-biology Congressman from Missourah said “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole [pregnancy] thing down.” So someone made a diagram of what that might look like. And remember, it’s not the politicians’ fault that they’re idiots: it’s your fault, for voting them into office.
