Another visit to the psychiatrist means another load of Drug Ad Scans. Two of these are actually not from a drug ad, but from an osteopathic college’s fundraiser magazine. The other two are the standard brochureware. Below we’ll learn why misshapen closeted animal trainers are humanitarian, why Bob shouldn’t use the nail gun for a while, and the relationship between bipolar disease and endless green rolling hills.
THE SUGAR BEET HAS GONE INSANE
Rhizomania, also called “root madness” or “crazy root,” has caused significant losses in root and sugar yield. […] The most obvious symptom of rhizomania is a mass of fine, hairy secondary roots that consists of a mixture of dead and healthy roots. […] The disease is so infectious that even a few grams of infected soil can eventually spread to infect entire fields.
Inland Empire Update: Homemade Mining Operation Considered Harmful
Montclair gold hunter digs 60-foot-deep hole in front yard
MONTCLAIR, Calif. (AP) A homeowner digging for gold in his front yard said he got “carried away” and ended up with a 60-foot-deep hole, authorities said.
Henry Mora, 63, began digging two weeks ago after his gold detector picked up a signal near his front patio.
“I figured, well, maybe there’s something down there you would logically conclude, right? So I started digging,” the semiretired musician said Wednesday.
Mora said he only intended to go down 3 or 4 feet, but he started finding gold dust in the dirt and the detector kept hinting that he was getting closer.
“It was still beeping, and that just gave me the idea to keep digging,” he said. “I think it’s a normal human reaction, especially when you think there might be gold down there.”
A neighbor who saw the mound of dirt growing on Mora’s lawn became concerned and called authorities Tuesday. Fire officials responding to the home found two men inside the unreinforced hole, using a bucket and rope to remove dirt. Mora had hired the two men to help him.
“We told him, ‘You’re done,”’ Montclair fire Capt. Rich Baldwin said. “It’s amazing no one got killed.”
Authorities fenced off Mora’s property and ordered him to hire an engineer to safely pack the dirt back into the ground.
Mora acknowledged his search for buried treasure was getting “totally out of hand.” Yet when asked whether he regrets starting the dig, Mora was conflicted.
“In a way yes, and in a way no,” Mora said, “because I think there’s still gold down there.”
immigrant schlong
So, O.C. goatee guy with the shiny truck. You think you’re badass because you blow 10 mpg in your lifted 4×4 and occasionally drive on a trail? Maybe because you have a buddy who did the Baja 1000 once? Let us show you an SU fuckin’ V:
http://www.icechallenger.co.uk/
This is a modification on the typical vehicle in Iceland, where instead of showing off the locals are concerned with getting around on a mixture of snow, ice, and sharp volcanic rock. Interestingly even though the thing gets shitty mileage it uses a tenth the amount of fuel it would take for an airplane to go the same distance.
via Autoblog and Forbes
LLLLLLLLLLL
The trainwrecks blog has categories for Annoyances, Birth Control, Flame Wars, Hubris, Oh Honey, Tragedies, Trolling for Free Stuff, and Unintentional Humor. It’s pretty good.
For father’s day they have a truly fine roundup of deadbeat dads, off-the-rails misogyny, one very strange mom, and something that appears to have been written by a teddy bear.
THE FAN WILL MURDER YOU WITH DEATH VIBRATIONS AS YOU SLEEP
The person who posted this on Flickr’s “Stick Figures in Peril” photo pool says:
These stickers were inspired by the ‘fan death syndrome” in Korea. The writing means “caution.” For more information on the “fan death syndrome” see: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a970912.html
Mawiage: A Modest Pwoposal
The conservatives are absolutely right. Marriage in this country is a mess. In the last 30 years, marriage has become one of a menu of options rather than the standard, and marriages are not taken seriously. People divorce a lot, make pre-nuptial agreements in preparation for divorce, re-marry, re-divorce, and pretty much treat the former sacrament as they would an apartment lease.
Marriage is, in fact, under attack. The trouble is, they have the wrong target. For inexplicable reasons my fellow Americans have chosen as their enemy homosexuals wishing to marry. Apparently the tolerance of these unions is corroding the entire institution.
Piffle. The problem is divorce. Easy, painless no-fault divorces and remarriages debase the currency of a sacrament. Who values a contract you can tear up with $100 and an hour with an attorney?
So, if we are to protect marriage from the destructive influence of convenience, it’s obvious what’s needed: A constitutional amendment forbidding divorce. Leave your mate if you wish, but you’re still married in my America. We have a standard to uphold here.
Some people may find this draconian, and it could be a hard sell. There’s a second less preferable option: A constitutional amendment barring re-marriage. If your marriage is so horrible that you can’t stand it one more minute, it can be dissolved. But that was your chance. We can’t have people abusing the seriousness of the institution.
If there’s squawking and whining about this one too, and it’s not politically practical, there’s only one other possibility. Marriages must be made painfully expensive after divorce. Perhaps $10,000 for a second marriage, $100,000 for a third, and $1 million for any afterwards. If there’s no other way to get our citizens to understand the power of marriage, money may have to do.
I know some of you are going to say that this is unreasonable, unworkable, and an unnecessary intervention of government in a deeply personal matter. There are going to be complaints of interference in religious belief as well. But if you ask your government to help you defend marriage as an institution, we’re going to have to do that the best and most equitable way for everyone.
The alternative would be to let people decide what marriage means on their own and just approve and record the union. But I guess you didn’t want that, did you?
Le Marin Butter Porn Session
Hot days are hard when you’re ugly
Something something invasion of Normandy, oh this isn’t for me
Payroll company faxes 121 pages of confidential stuff to wrong person
Wrong number faxes are a huge risk. It’s obviously possible to typo an email address, but since so many of them are names or words the sender is doing a visual checksum as the email is written and sent. Punching in a string of numbers is different, and with so very many faxes out there the chance of getting a friendly “okay!” from the wrong number is pretty good.
When I was at the hospital we paid a lot of attention to this because we were frequently faxing medical records to physicians. We had a rule that we would fax nothing to any insurance company, only to the attending physician or a specialist for whom we had written permission from the attending to share records. People always wanted us to fax stuff RIGHT NOW! but it was very important that we refuse.
One day I got an incoming fax that made no sense. The clerk had just dumped it on my desk. It was from one of the big accounting firms, and was about 20 pages of detailed financial information. It had nothing to do with the hospital. On close inspection this was a detailed financial analysis for one of the parties in an impending merger of two large companies.
I called the guy and told him I had it, and that it was okay, I worked at a hospital and I was going to shred it. He nearly cried. “Good thing I didn’t call the recipient, eh?” I said jovially.
Faxes are dumb.
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