Recent Comments

1. 4 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Before everyone starts virtue signaling HOW they would have behaved had they been Jefferson, I am reminded of the wise words of a historian (might have been Hannah Arendt) who said (I’m paraphrasing): “Everyone likes to think that if they lived in NAZI Germany, they would have been in the resistance, they would have sheltered Jews. If they had been Jefferson, they would have freed their slaves. Statistics, unfortunately, argue elsewise.”In fifty years time your descendants will probably be telling each other: “If I had lived then, I would have resisted cancel culture” just as members of my generation said: “I would have resisted McCarthyism.” Statistics, unfortunately, argue elsewise.

2. 4 days ago on JumpStart

   Steve Barwick on Quora:

   I’m not sure about gold-coated candies. But in a number of countries, silver-coated candies are consumed orally, literally by the tons every single year.

   For example, in India, several times a year during certain festivals, as well as at weddings and at the traditional outdoor food bazaars, the people eat traditional Indian sweets.

   And these sweets are wrapped in a pure silver foil called Varak (or Varakh) that’s been beaten thin so it can be used to wrap the food – this, apparently, to help stop food poisoning pathogens from growing on the sweets which are often sold in outdoor food bazaars.

   These sweets are generally ingested silver foil and all by the Indian people. This has been going on for thousands of years in India. Just about everybody there does it. (See documentation here.)

   And there’s apparently never been any cases whatsoever of “silver poisoning” or harm from “heavy metal toxicity” from this traditional cultural activity.

   Indeed, the government of India has approved silver foil as a food-grade ingredient, as long as it’s 99.9% purity or better.

   In other words, the Indian government doesn’t limit the use of edible silver, but they do regulate the purity of the silver that can be used in food applications and eaten, allowing their citizens to eat only the purest silver possible!

   (See “Justifying the Need to Prescribe Limits for Toxic Metal Contaminants in Food-Grade Silver Foils, journal of Food Additives and Contaminants, 2005 Dec;22(12):1219-23.)

   As stated in the journal Materials Research Innovations, Vol. 11, No. 1, (2007) pages 3-18:

   “A recent paper by Das et al. provides the remarkable datum that some 275,000 kg [i.e., 605,000 pounds — ED] of edible metallic silver foil are consumed every year (in food) in India.

   No known adverse health effects have ever been recorded…

3. 4 days ago on F Minus

   This is very frustrating:Turns out that there are a whole lot of dogs that, through adversity, have learned to walk upright. There’s Dexter who escaped from his home as a puppy and dashed into traffic and was severely injured: https COLON SLASH SLASH youtu DOT be SLASH Ry2QA4nu5a4Faith who has a birth defect: https COLON SLASH SLASH youtu DOT be SLASH 5QKG3CKZTYUThese dogs with the same birth defect: https COLON SLASH SLASH www DOT youtube DOT com SLASH shorts SLASH YnO1UfQjPxE?feature EQUALS sharePappy from Chicago who has full use of all four legs but climbs stairs with just two legs:https COLON SLASH SLASH www DOT youtube DOT com SLASH shorts SLASH ECZJ5F6WhQg?feature EQUALS shareAnd this guy:https COLON SLASH SLASH www DOT youtube DOT com SLASH shorts SLASH rxODF5Conrw?feature EQUALS share

4. 4 days ago on F Minus

   First time through it deleted the links Turns out that there are a whole lot of dogs that, through adversity, have learned to walk upright. There’s Dexter who escaped from his home as a puppy and dashed into traffic and was severely injured: httpsyoutubeRy2QA4nu5a4Faith who has a birth defect: httpsyoutube5QKG3CKZTYUThese dogs with the same birth defect: httpswwwyoutubecomshortsYnO1UfQjPxE?feature=sharePappy from Chicago who has full use of all four legs but climbs stairs with just two legs:httpswwwyoutubecomshortsECZJ5F6WhQg?feature=shareAnd this guy:httpswwwyoutubecomshortsrxODF5Conrw?feature=share

5. 4 days ago on F Minus

   Turns out that there are a whole lot of dogs that, through adversity, have learned to walk upright. There’s Dexter who escaped from his home as a puppy and dashed into traffic and was severely injured: >

6. 11 days ago on Arlo and Janis

   Radio broadcasts are delayed 7 seconds so they can be bleeped in case of the utterance of a forbidden word. TV probably uses satellite transmission and a bleep delay. Why I could never watch the Vikings while listening to the radio (Paul Allen is an HOF legend). I used to work for a telecommunications equipment manufacturer and we had a satellite delay device. Maybe I should break out the Raspberry Pi and try to build a delay circuit.

7. 24 days ago on For Better or For Worse

   It’s to demonstrate why Socialism never works.

8. 25 days ago on Baby Blues

   I took my son to see what had to be the worst action movie of all time, The Shadow with Alec Baldwin. A man an aisle over began loudly snoring and my son, who was about 12 at the time, was getting ready to pelt him with ice from his drink. I told him I would handle it. I walked over to the man, touched him on the shoulder and said “Excuse me, sir, but your snoring is keeping the rest of us awake”. Big laugh from the other moviegoers, probably the only enjoyment any of us got.

9. about 2 months ago on WuMo

   I never heard the phrase “parcel shop” before today. Which led me to discover that this is a Danish comic strip, which explains a lot.

10. 2 months ago on Close to Home

    Where’s the folding table to crash through?