HUMOR - Happy birthday, December babies!

HUMOR - Family Knows Better Than To Fall For Mom’s Little Bullshit Speech About No Presents This Year

RICHMOND, VA—Saying that several of them had learned the hard way, members of the Gordon family confirmed to reporters Friday that they knew damn well not to believe Mom’s little bullshit speech about not giving gifts this Christmas. “She doesn’t mean a goddamn word of it,” said Alex Gordon, 32, one of Ellen Gordon’s three adult children, all of whom agreed that you’d have to be pretty fucking thick if you didn’t see right through her little song and dance about just enjoying each other’s company without the expense and obligation of giving presents. “She says this every year, but forget that—of course she wants to do gifts. Can you imagine the look on her face if there actually wasn’t anything under the tree and we just sat around empty-handed like a bunch of assholes? No way is that happening.” Gordon added that he and his siblings were taking their mom’s suggestion that they could leave on Christmas Day if the ticket was cheaper for the utter horseshit that it is.

Original site - http://www.theonion.com/articles/family-knows-better-than-to-fall-for-moms-little-b,37673/

MY LIFE - A hectic morning...

HUMOR - If it had been three wise women...

HUMOR - Merry Christmases!

ENTERTAINMENT - Have a very Trek Christmas!

MY LIFE - When my daughter's misspelling of "OMG" autocorrected as "Ming"!

MY LIFE - My boss thinks I'm ugly!

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY - What would it look like from Earth if the moonwere a giant disco ball?

By Robbie Gonzalez (http://rtgonzalez.kinja.com/)

So, technically, this is what it would look like if the Moon were a disco ball AND orbited Earth at the same distance as the International Space Station, i.e. roughly 420 kilometers (260 miles) above the surface of the Earth. But that doesn't make it any less incredible looking.

This fantastic animation is by Nick of Yeti Dynamics (the same guy behind this simulation of a normal, non-disco-ball moon at a distance of 420km) and comes by way of Michael Stevens of Vsauce. Some good stuff in here from Stevens about Roche limits (if the moon were ever suddenly teleported to so close a distance, it would promptly disintegrate... worth it?) and earthshine – although it's worth the watch for Nick's simulations alone. The one that envisions a giant, single-plane mirror orbiting Earth is especially awe-inspiring.

From Vsauce

DISCO BALL MOON INFORMATION: 
The large mirror-tiles are 150km squared, and the small ones are 100km squared. 
They are all 10 km thick with glass (with an IOR of 1.56) 
There are 3012 mirrored tiles 

When as near as the ISS, the Earth surface to disco-ball-moon surface distance is 420 km or so The orbital period in relation to the earth is realistic, about a 2.1 hour period. 

When the disco moon is in low orbit, each reflection of the sun as a caustic is effectively a tiny sun, although you can never reflect enough light to get above the temperature of the surface of the sun (about 6000 degrees). 

Since the sunlight is going through glass first, glass will in general filter out a lot of the UV, so your caustics shouldn't reflect too much UV. The projection of a mirror-tile is larger than the projection of the sun when seen from low altitude. . 

when seen from far away the tile is smaller than the sun, and hence the caustic isn't as bright . Basically the disco tiles are glass with a silvered backing. Some of the light will not penetrate the glass, and will be simply reflected off the first surface of the glass, This reflection strength increases as the angle of incidence approaches 90, generally referred to as a Fresnel reflection.. or rather the strength follows that equation. This reflected light will generally be full spectrum 

The center of the giant flat mirror is orbiting at a distance of 2157.4 Km above the Surface of the earth, It's diameter is 3474.8 km (same as the moon), It's orbital period would be longer than the disco moon simply because it has less mass. But in this video it has the same orbital period as in the moon.

The actual mass of the giant mirror is absurd.. it's way over-engineered.. if a real one were to be built it wouldn't have huge thick rims, it would more likely resemble a girder work, with Mylar films. Not huge death star like mirror with towers, and strobe lights (and a strange lack of solar panels) 

Follow me on twitter! https://twitter.com/tweetsauce or instagram: http://instagram.com/electricpants and subscribe to Vsauce for more: http://www.youtube.com/user/vsauce?su...visuals by YETI DYNAMICS: https://www.youtube.com/yetidynamics music by JAKE CHUDNOW: http://www.youtube.com/JakeChudnow

MY LIFE - Watching Christmas specials with my daughter...

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY - The origin and history of the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tubeman!

99 Percent Invisible - 

Episode 143: Inflatable Men

By ROMAN on December 2, 2014

You see them on street corners, at gas stations, at shopping malls. You see them at blowout sales and grand openings of all kinds. Their wacky faces hover over us, and then fall down to meet us, and then rise up again. Their bodies flop. They flail.

They are men. Men made of tubes. Tubes full of air.

[An “AirDancer” from LookOurWay. Credit: Sam Greenspan]

Depending upon your tastes, they are either full of ridiculous joyful exuberance, or the tackiest thing in the world.

A number of cities across the US have actually banned the use of tube guys. An ordinance in Houston enacted in 2008 proclaims that dancing a tube guy “contributes to urban visual clutter and blight and adversely affects the aesthetic environment.”

Some may seem them as visual clutter now, but they have ancestry in stunning works of Caribbean art.

The tube guy origin story begins with celebrated artist and “mas man” Peter Minshall. He made a name for himself in Trinidad & Tobago (and beyond) for his Carnival bands, featuring larger than life puppets which dance through the street to the beat of Calypso music.

In the early 1990s, Peter Minshall had gained fans among members of the planning committee for the Olympics and in 1995, he found himself in a stadium in Los Angeles working with a bunch of different artists, trying out different ideas for the opening ceremonies for the Atlanta Games the following year.

As Minshall tells it, he was was trying to do something using inflatable tubes, but it wasn’t working. And then Minshall realized that if they were made to look like people, they would dance just like people did back home in Trinidad & Tobago—limpid, loose, and gracefully...

After the Olympics, Doron Gazit applied for a patent for “apparatus and method for providing inflated undulating figures,” in 2001. He then began licensing its use through his company, Air Dimensional Designs.

This became a point of tension between Gazit and Minshall; Minshall had been unaware of Gazit’s intention to patent and monetize the inflatable figure. Gazit, for his part, says that he applied for a patent because he put a lot of research and development into making the “flyguys” (as Gazit calls them), and he was already starting to see other people people rip off his efforts...

However, Gazit’s company, Air Dimensional Designs, does continue to license its patent to various companies that manufacture and sell vertical inflatables. One such company is LookOurWay, which in addition to making “AirDancers,” also sells “Air Rangers.”

Turns out that vertical inflatables also make for good scarecrows. Farmer Gary Long, who helped develop the Air Rangers, says that bird damage in his orchard of honeycrisp apples went from 20,000 pounds a year—to zero...

To read the full piece or listen to the podcast - http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/inflatable-men/

HUMOR - Ralphie "just" had a fight...

CULTURE/SOCIETY - Christmas before Thanksgiving!

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY - A Vision Of Deep Space Exploration That Will GiveYou Chills

Stop what you're doing, set aside four minutes of your time, and bask in the inspirational spectacle that is Wanderers, an electrifying short film by animator Erik Wernquist that seamlessly merges breathtaking visions of humanity's future in deep space with stirring narration by Carl Sagan. Trust us – you don't want to miss this. - Robbie Gonzalez (http://rtgonzalez.kinja.com/)

This Is A Majestic Vision Of Humans Embracing Our Exotic Solar System

Riding a space elevator up from Mars. Trekking across the ice fields of Europa. Soaring in wing suits above the clouds of Titan. Base jumping on Miranda. Wanderers is a science-inspired short film imagining human exploration of our solar system that leaves me giddy and excited for a future we could one day experience.

Top image: Base jumping off Verona Rupes, the highest cliff in the solar system. Credit: Erik Wernquist

Set to Carl Sagan reading from Pale Blue Dot, this inspired future borrows heavily from the futuristic visions of NASA, Kim Stanley Robinson, Arthur C. Clarke, Chesley Bonestell, and many more. The film's creator, Erik Wernquist, sees the film as "a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds - and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there.

To read more - http://space.io9.com/this-is-a-stunning-vision-of-humans-basking-in-our-sola-1664676360/1664858837/

HUMOR - Black Friday - Movie Trailer

ENTERTAINMENT - A Porno by Wes Anderson

MY LIFE - Thanksgiving 3 years ago

ENTERTAINMENT - Happy Thanksgiving! - Spose - Knocking On Wood [Lyrics]

WARNING: Contains naughty language!

HUMOR - The Confederettes - "Red State Thanksgiving"

ENTERTAINMENT - Sam Spade Terrified Turkey Caper 1950

ENTERTAINMENT - The Morning After with Luke And Leia

ENTERTAINMENT - Christopher Lee doing a metal cover of "My Way"

HUMOR - Winter!

HUMOR - Vlog Project with Dad FAIL

POLITICS - Porn stars explain net neutrality

Porn Stars Explain Net Neutrality from Alex Chance

MY LIFE - Flashback to when daughter got asked out

HISTORY - Africa, Uncolonized: A Detailed Look at an Alternate Continent

By Frank Jacobs

What if the Black Plague had killed off almost all Europeans? Then the Reconquistanever happens. Spain and Portugal don't kickstart Europe's colonization of other continents. And this is what Africa might have looked like. 

The map – upside down, to skew our traditional eurocentric point of view – shows an Africa dominated by Islamic states, and native kingdoms and federations. All have at least some basis in history, linguistics or ethnography. None of their borders is concurrent with any of the straight lines imposed on the continent by European powers, during the 1884-85 Berlin Conference and in the subsequent Scramble for Africa. By 1914, Europeans controlled 90% of Africa's land mass. Only the Abyssinian Empire (modern-day Ethiopia) and Liberia (founded in 1847 as a haven for freed African-American slaves) remained independent.

This map is the result of an entirely different course of history. The continent depicted here isn't even called Africa [1] but Alkebu-Lan, supposedly Arabic for 'Land of the Blacks' [2]. That name is sometimes used by those who reject even the name 'Africa' as a European imposition. It is therefore an ideal title for this thought experiment by Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon. Essentially, it formulates a cartographic answer to the question: What would Africa have looked like if Europe hadn't become a colonizing power? 

To arrive at this map, Cyon constructed an alternative timeline. Its difference from our own starts in the mid-14th century. The point of divergence: the deadliness of the Plague. In our own timeline, over the course of the half dozen years from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death [3] wiped out between 30 and 60% of Europe's population. It would take the continent more than a century to reach pre-Plague population levels. That was terrible enough. But what if Europe had suffered an even more catastrophic extermination – one from which it could not recover?

To read more - http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/africa-uncolonized

ENTERTAINMENT - David Bowie Asks Iman If They Should Just Do Lasagna Again

The man who once played the role of a pansexual alien and came to drunken blows with Lou Reed in a restaurant, looks through the fridge with his wife, a Somali supermodel.

NEW YORK—Saying he would be fine “just taking a load off” and eating in, rock icon David Bowie reportedly asked his wife, Somali supermodel and actress Iman, if they should just do lasagna for dinner again Monday.

The 66-year-old singer-songwriter, musician, actor, and producer, who once reinvented himself as a gender-bending extraterrestrial rock star named Ziggy Stardust, as well as an emotionless Aryan superman named The Thin White Duke, then looked through the couple’s refigerator and, noted they still had a jar of Mario Batali pasta sauce and a “pretty full” box of lasagna noodles in the cupboard...

Bowie and Iman, who are currently deciding whether or not they want to make garlic bread with their salad.

Sources confirmed the nine-time platinum recording artist—who claimed at one point in the 70s to have subsisted on a diet of red peppers, cocaine, and milk—then preheated the oven, started boiling a pot of water, and searched around inside the kitchen cabinets, at one point asking Iman if she had seen the “good baking pan.” In addition, Bowie, who allegedly had an affair with Rolling Stones lead vocalist Mick Jagger at the pinnacle of the glam rock era, suggested that the “fridge needed a quick wipe down” while grabbing a carrot, a cucumber, and a box of organic spinach to make a quick salad. Iman, one of the fashion world’s most legendary ethnic supermodels, noted philanthropist, and entrepreneur, reportedly ripped a page off of a notepad hanging on the refrigerator door and wrote “Windex, aluminum foil, milk” below a lengthy list of items...

Sources confirmed the rock legend, recognized for mixing British mod, mime, and Japanese kabuki styles to bring art rock to a mainstream audience, pulled on a windbreaker, slipped on a pair of Asics sneakers, and reportedly spent several minutes considering his grocery list...

Hey, hon, DVR The Amazing Racenow so we don’t miss the opening,” said the man who once hallucinated that witches wanted to steal his semen to produce a child to be slaughtered in a satanic sacrifice. “And just text me if you need me to pick up anything else.”...

For the full article - http://www.theonion.com/articles/david-bowie-asks-iman-if-they-should-just-do-lasag,34097/

POLITICS - Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism by FCKH8.com

MY LIFE - Flashback to planning my 50th bday

HUMOR - Adult Wednesday Addams

Adult Wednesday Addams - Wednesday has finally moved out of the Addams Manor. First on the agenda: Find an apartment. Second: Terrorize everyone. - Wednesday interviews to be an assistant at a cutthroat Hollywood agency. Good thing cutting throats is one of her special skills. - Wednesday discovers the perils of online dating. Her date discovers the perils of Wednesday. - The morning after a drunken hookup is always awkward, and sometimes lethal.

https://m.youtube.com/#/playlist?list=PL7_LetEm-ez8YH4XGJPdSXgg1oTMZ0n5T

HUMOR - ALL ABOUT THAT BASE

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY - VINYL AND STYLUS AT 1000X MAGNIFICATION

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/vinyl_and_stylus_at_1000x_magnification

Here’s a neat image of a record and a stylus at 1000x magnification. It’s pretty incredible to see the etched grooves on the record up close and how they interact with the needle. I’ve always known how record players worked, but seeing the process magnified like this is way cool. 

The photos come from Microscopic Images on Twitter.

Via Kottke