To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries
visual design
The midnight wind is blowing Sixth Avenue. These faces.
What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar.” When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account.
{ Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 31, 1807 | Continue reading }
‘Tragedy is when I cut my finger… Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.’ –Mel Brooks
{ sorry, unsourced photos/email }
‘Every moment is the last because it is unique.’ –Marguerite Yourcenar
Erotomania is a type of delusion in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger, is in love with him or her.
The illness often occurs during psychosis, especially in patients with schizophrenia or bipolar mania.
Erotomania is also called de Clérambault’s syndrome, after the French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934).
The term erotomania is often confused with obsessive love, obsession with unrequited love, or hypersexuality (hypersexuality replaces the older concepts of nymphomania (furor uterinus) and satyriasis.).
The Reagan assassination attempt occurred in Washington, D.C. on Monday, March 30, 1981.
President Reagan and three others were shot and wounded by John Hinckley, Jr. with a .22-caliber pistol.
Reagan was the first serving United States president to survive being shot in an assassination attempt.
{ Reagan assassination attempt | Wikipedia | Continue reading | Google Images | Related: In a 1982 speech, President Ronald Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to America’s national security, putting a too-literal gloss on the phrase “war on drugs.” }
The motivation behind Hinckley’s attack stemmed from an obsession with actress Jodie Foster due to erotomania. While living in Hollywood in the late 1970s, he saw the film Taxi Driver at least 15 times, apparently identifying strongly with Travis Bickle, the lead character.
Hinckley arrived in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, March 29, getting off a Greyhound Lines bus and checking into the Park Central Hotel. He had breakfast at McDonald’s the next morning, noticed U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s schedule on page A4 of the Washington Star, and decided it was time to make his move.
Knowing that he might not live to tell about shooting Reagan, Hinckley wrote (but did not mail) a letter to Foster about two hours prior to the assassination attempt, saying that he hoped to impress her with the magnitude of his action.
{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | The Trial of John Hinckley, 1982 | Hinckley bought two identical .22-caliber revolvers in Rocky’s Pawn Shop in Dallas on Oct. 3, 1980 | Photos: John Hinckley, Jr. | Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. }
You never cared for secrets I’d confide
{ My New Pink Button | Thanks Chris! }
And everything is turning blue now
How far can bullets travel when fired into water?
The first candidate for this test was the Civil War rifle. At a range of 15 feet, the ballistics gel was completely unharmed; likewise at five feet. Only when the range was reduced to three feet did the bullet finally penetrate the gel, suggesting that diving under water was probably a pretty effective way of dodging slugs during the Civil War.
The experimenters moved on to the hunting rifle, which was loaded with a full-metal jacket .223 round that emerged at roughly 2,500 feet per second. At ten feet, the bullet disintegrated and the gel was untouched. At three feet, the bullet again broke up, with its tip coming to rest on the gel — not nearly enough power to damage flesh.
A bullet from the M1 Garand, with a muzzle speed of 2,800 ft/sec, also disintegrated at the ten-foot range. At two feet, the slug penetrated about four inches into the gel, suggesting a non-fatal wound. The armor-piercing .50 caliber round didn’t do any better — it, too, came apart at distances greater than five feet and lost most of its punch by three feet.
The engineers at the Central Scientific Research Institute for Precision Machinery Construction in Moscow correctly perceived the problem with shooting into water and in response developed the SPP-1 (Spetsialnyj Podvodnyj Pistolet, or “Special Underwater Pistol”) for use by Russian Navy frogmen. The SPP-1 is a manually operated four-barrel handgun that breaks open along the top and loads in a fashion similar to a double-barrel or over-and-under shotgun. The ammunition is designed to work underwater, using long bottlenecked rimmed casings plus bullets made from mild rather than hardened steel and designed to be stable underwater. The barrel isn’t rifled. According to the specs for the pistol, when fired at a depth of five meters — over sixteen feet — it’s lethal up to seventeen meters, or over fifty-five feet.
The SPP-1 isn’t the only exemplar of the breed. Other firearms are designed to work underwater as well, but they tend more towards the spear-gun model using dart-like projectiles. There’s no bright-line boundary where a bullet becomes a dart, but the projectiles fired by the Heckler & Koch P11 Underwater Pistol, for example, clearly cross the line. The H&K is an all-polymer weapon made especially for underwater use by the German Bundeswehr Kampfschwimmer — “army combat divers.” Each of the five dart-shaped projectiles is powered by a small, solid-fuel rocket. The weapon has been featured in some high-profile films, including Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie, and is said to be able to inflict a fatal wound at fifty feet underwater.
{ The Straight Dope | NB: The article isn’t on the site anymore | Related: Can a bullet fired into the air kill someone when it comes down? }
photos/enlarge { 1. Howard Schatz | 2. Unsourced }
It’s not like a triangle, triangle have corners
{ via hsgn | Thanks Tom! }
And you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here
{ Imp Kerr, Mergers, Acquisitions, and Disposals, 2009 }
I told you, I’m going through an emotionally difficult time creatively
It may seem strange to identify a sensation of temperature with the visual realm of color sensation. However, experiments have demonstrated a difference of five to seven degrees in the subjective feeling of heart or cold between a workroom painted in blue-green and one painted in red-orange. That is, in the blue-green room the occupants felt that 59° F was cold, whereas in the red-orange room they did not feel cold until the temperature fell to 52 - 54° F. Objectively, this meant blue-green slows down the circulation and red-orange stimulates it.Similar results were obtained in an animal experiment. A racing stable was divided into two sections, the one pointed blue, the other red-orange. ln the blue section, horses soon quieted down after running, but in the red section they remained hot and restless for some time. It was found that there was no flies in the blue section, and a great many in the red section.
Of course we communicate. Now can we not talk about it anymore?
{ Michel de Broin, Silent Screaming, 2006 | Alarm, bell jar, vacuum pump and water, variable dimensions, single piece | This device is designed to silence an alarm system by creating a vacuum, which is an environment where sound cannot travel. The movement of the hammer striking the bell jar is visible but the alarm “scream” is inaudible. | more }
When the music’s over, turn out the lights
{ The 4 big myths of profile pictures: It’s better to smile, You shouldn’t take your picture with your phone or webcam, Guys should keep their shirts on, Make sure your face is showing. | OK Trends | Full story }
My favorite thing is me coming to visit you, and then you ask, How about a small smackeral of honey?
‘Take me, I am the drug.’ –Salvador Dalí
{ The Crayola’s Law: The number of colors doubles every 28 years | Weather Sealed | Full story }
