Happy Thanksgiving!

“With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly”

"The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenberg tragedy has there been anything like this! Oh, the Humanity!"

WKRP Turkey Drop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg

FW: Sing it with me!

What British people say vs. what they really mean

What the British Say:

"With all due respect..."

What Americans hear:

"He is listening to me."

What they really mean:

"I think you are an idiot."

and others @ http://todayilearned.co.uk/2012/12/04/what-the-british-say-vs-what-they-really-mean/

Just fun: Your Silicon Valley job title is...

http://siliconvalleyjobtitlegenerator.tumblr.com

click on "create another job"

Grand mountain ranges stretched across the printed page

German's reputation for long words is well-deserved (average word length in English: 8.2 characters, in German: 11.7 characters

http://www.ravi.io/language-word-lengths

English doesn't hesitate to borrow words from another language even if it makes it look fat. From German we have borrowed one-syllable putsch and kitsch, as well as Scrabble-defying gotterdammerung and sprachgefuhl.

"I would do away with those great long compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments."
~ Mark Twain

"... these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed."
~ Mark Twain

RE: Geography gaffe

A friend commented:

There's a trick. The temperature reading below 32 degrees F in Hawaii was at the peak of Mauna Kea, 13,800 feet above sea level.

OK, so technically they're correct.

But I refute it using a technique employed by Al Sleet, the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman:

"The temperature at the peak of Mauna Kea is below 32 degrees... which is stupid, man, cause I don't know anyone who lives on a mountain peak."

=====

At least five people have died in New York after a huge storm dumped 5ft (1.5m) of snow in parts of the state.

Temperatures across all 50 US states plummeted to freezing, and there were several snow-related deaths elsewhere.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30118783

All 50 states?

Ummm, I don't think it's freezing in Hawaii.

Geography gaffe

From the BBC website:

At least five people have died in New York after a huge storm dumped 5ft (1.5m) of snow in parts of the state.

Temperatures across all 50 US states plummeted to freezing, and there were several snow-related deaths elsewhere.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30118783

=====

All 50 states?

Ummm, I don't think it's freezing in Hawaii.

scientific exchange from the movie "Awakenings"

Dr. Sayer (Robin Williams): "Earthworms!"

Dr. #1: "I'm sorry?"

Dr. Sayer: "It was an immense project. I was to extract 1 decigram of myelin from 4 tons of earthworms."

Dr. #1: "Really?"

Dr. Sayer: "Yes! I was on that project for 5 years. I was the only one who believed in it. Everyone else said it couldn't be done."

Dr. #2: "It can't."

Dr. Sayer: "I know that now. I *proved* it."

Dr. Evil: Very well, where should I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. A sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. If I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fifteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shaven scrotum. At the age of eighteen, I went off to evil medical school. From there...

C'est WHAT ?

When we don't understand something, we say, "It's Greek to me."

What do they say in Greece?
What do they say in other countries?

answer: http://www.omniglot.com/language/idioms/incomprehensible.php

The story of the 'most complicated' watch in the world

A "complication" is a technical term referring to any feature on a watch which is in addition to simply telling the time - and Henry Graves Jr wanted more than anyone else.

The Supercomplication, made by Patek Philippe in 1932, has 24 of them including Westminster chimes, a perpetual calendar, sunrise and sunset times, and a celestial map of New York as seen from Graves's apartment on Fifth Avenue.

It was commissioned in 1925 but was not delivered to [Graves] until 1933. It has 900 parts and remains the most complicated watch built without the assistance of computers, according to Sotheby's. One of its functions shows sidereal time, which is based on the amount of time it takes the Earth to make two consecutive transitions of a meridian by a fixed start. A sidereal day is approximately 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds.

It was last wound in 1969. And it's still working.

full @

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-30002096

John Stewart on Clickbait

Jon Stewart, in the current New York magazine cover story ... was asked about his Internet-media diet: "Do you look at BuzzFeed; do you look at Vice news?"

Stewart, relatably, confessed to haphazardly wading through the deluge of content: "I scroll around, but when I look at the Internet, [and] I feel the same as when I'm walking through Coney Island. It's like carnival barkers, and they all sit out there and go, 'Come on in here and see a three-legged man!' So you walk in and it's a guy with a crutch."

It's Everywhere, the Clickbait

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/11/clickbait-what-is/382545/

MIT’s Crazy Materials Could Make for Self-Assembling Ikea Furniture

the Self-Assembly Lab focuses on making things that can, well, self-assemble. It has created a series of small wood planks, for instance, that fold into a toy elephants when exposed to moisture. Tibbets and collaborators Christophe Guberan and Erik Demaine are working on clothing that could morph in response to the weather. In the future, the Lab's research could make way for Ikea furniture that assembles itself with a splash of water—no Allen wrench required.

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/skylar-tibbits/

Don't Eat That !!!

http://www.thesneeze.com/steve-dont-eat-it/

Potted Meat Food Product
Natto
Cuitlacoche
Silkworm Snacks

and more!

(the comments he makes about each of the foods are interesting)

San Diego Hosts Convention of People Who Shot Bin Laden

San Diego Hosts Convention of People Who Shot Bin Laden

SAN DIEGO (The Borowitz Report)—The San Diego Convention Center is hosting the first-ever convention of people who shot Osama bin Laden, with organizers expecting a turnout of between three thousand and four thousand.