The Hole
The place for all the crap I stumble across on the net
EP224: The Ghost in the Death Trap
by Marjorie James read by Steve Eley
Editor’s note: this is a sequel to EP007. Listen to it here.
Flies buzzed around the edges of the huge stone block, gathering at the rivulets of blood that ran down to the floor. A bit of what looked like it might be intestine hung off one corner, drawing special attention. It was a testament to the force of the collision that fragments of bone and tissue were scattered all the way down the passage, some even wedged in the carvings in the stone walls. Two men surveyed the scene with dismay.
“See? And this just keeps happening. It’s getting so we can’t get anything done around here,” said the taller of the two, a grey-haired man with red eyes and a patchy beard.
The other man, younger but not precisely young, hauled himself up on top of the block and examined the mechanism. “This bar’s been sliced right through.” He looked back down at his client. “You say this was a poltergeist?”
Rated PG for some violence and language.
Ring of Stars in Centaurus A Uncovered
Cool space pic!
Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is one of the most studied objects in the Southern sky, because it is the giant elliptical galaxy with the closest proximity to our own Milky Way. It lies 11 million light years away from the Milky Way, and is believe to have merged with another gaseous galaxy about 200 to 700 million years ago. The result of this galactic mashup: the birth of hundreds of thousands of stars in a kiloparsec-spanning ring near the core.(…)
Read the rest of Ring of Stars in Centaurus A Uncovered (907 words)
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Post tags: centaurus A, near-infrared astronomy
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SNL Presents Sarah Palin '2012'
LOL makes you wonder
Fantastic faux-floor illusions
I was reading a Cool Tools review of a company that puts any image on blinds, wallpaper, or flooring, and one of the comments led me to some fantastic illusions made using photo prints on the floor. More info on the bathroom floor and elevator from the Amazing Illusions blog.
Hamsterdam
In these tough economic times, any job is a good job. Still, you often don’t know if you’re qualified until you are in over your head. I don’t know what this woman in Amsterdam is supposed to be advertising, but she sure got my attention! (via Arbroath)
She Saved the Puppies!
British citizen and experienced sailor Laura Hughes and her friend John Cochrane were battling gale force winds off the Turkish coast when a rope got caught in her boat’s propeller and killed the engine. She sent a Mayday signal and a boat responded, but the crew demanded 10,000 euros for their rescue -more money than Hughes had. So she jumped in to swim to shore. But she had some precious cargo to take with her -two dogs and their nine puppies who were born during the boat trip!
So, wearing a lifejacket, Miss Hughes jumped out of the boat, carrying the nine Rottweiler puppies ‘African-style’ by balancing the crate on her head and holding the side with one hand while swimming with the other.
Mr Cochrane and the two adult dogs also jumped off the boat and swam to the nearest beach at the Greek resort of Lalissos about 100 metres from their boat.When they got to the shore, exhausted, they were helped by German tourists from a beach hotel and members of the emergency services.
The British Embassy found Laura and John a hotel room for the night – and the puppies spent the night at a local Greek police station.
(image credit: KNSNEWS)
b3ta.com board
I pity da fool, before I go home
Shaun the Sheep Bathtime
Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind
Some things are so obvious, it only took a quarter-century for someone to think of this. (via b3ta)
Wut u mean no leevz in da hous?
Wut u mean no leevz in da hous? Iz mah colekshun!
i gotz sum 2 add 2 ur collecshun.
Picture by: Lizz Wilson Caption by: SuperPapillon via Our LOL Builder
Straight from the source
The good old days
HOW TO: Use Social Media to Find Black Friday Deals
For you folks looking to go shopping next Friday
Susan Payton is the Managing Partner of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog, and teaches marketing courses at Marketing EggSchool. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.
We’re a week away from Black Friday and just a few years ago, if you wanted to find the best deals, you had to wait for the sales flyers to hit your newspaper or mailbox. You’d make a list of what you wanted and get your game plan together. But that’s all changed because of social media. Tools like iPhone apps, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook will be key in helping competitive shoppers get a leg up against the thousands of shoppers vying for the deals of the century this season. And with holiday spending projected to be down 3% from last year’s low numbers, stores are doing whatever they can to make it easier for shoppers to spend their money with them.
Blogs and Websites
Weeks before Black Friday, blogs and websites like Black Friday 2009 and BlackFriday.info have been uploading sales flyers from every store imaginable to help shoppers plan out their attack on the biggest shopping day of the year. For gadget-lovers, Gizmodo’s #blackfriday feed has the latest posts about the best electronic deals to be had.
Mom-related blogs and forums, such as MomsLikeMe, a geography based networking site, or Triangle Mom2Mom, focus on the strategies for what to do with the kids when shopping on Black Friday, local sales and events, and advice on how to stretch that dollar even farther.
The benefit to blogs is that they are updated constantly, with deals being posted every day. Find one or two you like and subscribe to their RSS feeds to stay abreast of the latest Black Friday news and offers.
My Black Friday Deals takes a sprinkling of social media and mixes it together with a dash of blogging to create a place for shoppers to interact. The site uses the mobile photo slide show app Whrrl to allow bloggers to take pictures of the best deals they can find in stores and upload them to the site to be voted on by deal seekers. The best deals will then be shared on Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook.
Full disclosure: Susan works with Collective Bias, which runs My Black Friday Deals.
Social Media
Bloggers, consumers, and brands alike are all using Twitter and Facebook this year for Black Friday. Staples has been “leaking” its own Black Friday deals on its Twitter and Facebook accounts for days, and a search for the term #blackfriday on Twitter nets an endless stream of deals, tips, and links that will help shoppers save on Friday. You can also check out the @blackfriday account, which tweets Black Friday news from across the web.
Macy’s too has been priming its followers on Twitter for its Black Friday sales, as well as its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. Wal-Mart, which has claimed it won’t be beat on price on Black Friday or after, is tweeting its deals already in place, and will likely do so through Black Friday.
The dedicated Black Friday blogs and web sites (such as the ones mentioned above) are also getting a piece of the social media pie by creating Fan Pages on Facebook, like the one for Black-Friday.net. Pages like this really put the power in the hands of the people, who can share deals as they find them.
YouTube is chock full of videos about Black Friday, as well. The site has a large library of clips from both consumers and major news networks, with advice on handling the crowds on Black Friday, what to expect at the stores, and tips on which stores have the best deals.
There’s an App for That
Now that I have an iPhone, I get excited about functional, useful applications like the Black Friday apps that have come out this year. DealNews has a free Black Friday app that lets you sort deals by “Early Bird,” “In Store Only,” and “Limited Availability,” as well as see photos of the sale items.
The Toys R Us Big Book Favorites app lets users make wish lists, find deals, and share deals (it’s free, too). The $0.99 BF Deals app, meanwhile, lets you see a map of other users at stores so you can find a less crowded one (assuming a lot of the shoppers have the app), and it sends your deals to your Twitter account. There are others (do a search in the iTunes store for “Black Friday”), and stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart may incorporate Black Friday deals into their existing iPhone apps.
Wrapping It Up
If you’re planning to brave the crowds on Black Friday, be smart. Get on Twitter, Facebook, or the dozens of Black Friday blogs to find the deals you want. Take your iPhone with you to reduce the number of stores you go to in fruitless search of items that were sold out at 5 AM. And most of all, good luck to you!
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MarcusPhoto1
Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, iStockphoto
Tags: black friday, deals, List, Lists, shopping
Sushi DNA Tests Reveal Fraud
Yet another reason why I like my fish DEEP fried with hushpuppies
A biologist walks into a sushi bar and orders some tuna. What does he get? Escolar, a nasty fish with buttery flesh that can cause bizarre episodes of diarrhea, accompanied by a waxy intestinal discharge. It’s not a joke. It happened five times to the same scientists during a brief research project. The results of that study were published Wednesday in PLOS One. “A piece of tuna sushi has the potential to be an endangered species, a fraud or a health hazard,” wrote the authors. “All three of these cases were uncovered in this study.” The team of researchers from Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History ordered tuna from 31 sushi restaurants and then used genetic tests to determine the species of fishes in those dishes. More than half of those eateries misrepresented, or couldn’t clarify the type of fish they were mongering. Several were selling endangered southern bluefin tuna. Although their results were shocking, exposing sloppy sushi joints wasn’t their main goal. The scientists were trying to improve on a new species-identification technique, called DNA barcoding. A coalition of labs has been collecting fish, reading their genes and uploading the information to a database called FISH-BOL. Their goal is to build a catalog of every fish species on earth so that anyone with a handheld DNA reader could definitively identify fish within minutes. Wildlife officials could use that technology to spot-check fish markets, and fine people who are selling protected species. Right now, the FISH-BOL database is roughly 20 percent complete, but zooligsts can’t seem to agree upon the best way to condense the genetic information from each fish into a concise signature. That’s where this study comes into play. By checking 14 carefully selected spots on a gene called cox1 and matching them up with the database, the scientists could accurately identify any kind of tuna. Citation: Lowenstein JH, Amato G, Kolokotronis S-O, “The Real maccoyii: Identifying Tuna Sushi with DNA Barcodes – Contrasting Characteristic Attributes and Genetic Distances.” PLoS ONE 4, 11, 2009, e7866. Photo: Spicy tuna roll stuart_spivack/Flickr See Also: - ID Error Leaves Fish at Edge of Extinction
- Tuna Ranch Hormone Cocktail Could Save Bluefin
- Genetic Testing for Tuna: Is It Really Yellowfin?
- Bird Cam Captures Albatross, Killer Whale Rendezvous
- Hacking Salmon’s Mental Compass to Save Endangered Fish
- Saving Fish Is Possible, Unless They’re Past the Tipping Point
