AdamSmith

What I don't like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day. Phyllis Diller

Don't say I didn't warn you: http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/17245-fart-filtering-underwear/page-4#entry104220

Oh, I would think the liver definitely has more calories. And specially for hito...

Any submariners here? https://m.facebook.com/notes/randy-pace/submarine-slang-terms-and-phrases/10151136788588486?_rdr

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10532427/France-implants-its-first-artificial-heart.html Now if they will just kindly hurry up and get these things proved out before I come around to needing one.

Sorry!! I should be more careful with my titles.

For lack of a general-interest film/TV forum, this here. It looks great. Also Nathaniel Philbrick's historical account In the Heart of the Sea referenced below is well worth the read. The Whale: the terrifying real voyage that inspired Moby-Dick Moby-Dick is the story of a captain driven mad in his pursuit of a whale. But, as a new BBC drama reveals, the events that inspired Herman Melville were even more terrifying Charles Furness and Jassa Ahluwalia in BBC One's The Whale By Philip Hoare 7:00AM GMT 09 Dec 2013 The Telegraph Two thousand miles from the nearest land, the crew of the Essex watched in horror as the enormous bull whale headed for their mother ship. Marooned in small, open boats the 20 men stood, powerless, as the creature struck their vessel at full speed. Wood splintered, the whole structure of the ship shook. Then, after swimming off to leeward, the whale gathered its strength and came thundering towards the Essex again, even faster than before. As the crew floundered in the middle of the Pacific they knew their lives were in danger. None, though, was prepared for the appalling choices they were going to have to make in the days and weeks that followed. The story of the Essex and the lengths to which its crew went in order to survive is part of maritime lore and the subject of a new BBC film, dramatising the real-life voyage that inspired Herman Melville to write his novel Moby-Dick. Starring Jonas Armstrong, best known for playing Robin Hood in the BBC series of the same name, The Whale promises to be both an action-packed drama and a disturbing portrayal of the human response to extreme hunger. Also woven within the story will be a vivid depiction of the whaling industry. In the early 19th century, whaling was probably the most unpleasant, dangerous and least rewarded of all occupations. A whaler’s life was mired in blood and blubber, stalled by immense periods of boredom and often abruptly curtailed by violent death. Signing on for a whaling voyage could mean up to five years away from home, and a journey to the other end of the Earth, in order to do battle with the great leviathan of the seas – the sperm whale. Ever since 1712, when they had first set out from Nantucket, Yankee whalers had supplied the Western world with whale oil. The streets of London, New York, Berlin and Paris were lit by it; the mills and machinery of the Industrial Revolution ran on the same stuff. Whaleships were the equivalent of modern oil tankers, earning millions of dollars for the new republic and exporting its influence around the world. It was this heroic, filthy, abusive and highly lucrative (for its shipowners) business that Melville recorded in Moby-Dick. Published in 1851, his book was wildly digressive; 135 chapters filled with everything he knew about whales and whaling – a result of his own whaling voyages in the 1840s. But much more than that, Moby-Dick became a kind of modern American myth, woven around the legendary battle between man and whale, incarnate in the figure of Captain Ahab. The monomaniacal commander of the Pequod goes in search of the fantastical White Whale which had “dismasted” him, biting off his leg. Now Ahab scours the South Seas, seeking revenge on the gigantic creature. To land-bound readers of Moby-Dick, it must have seemed a far-fetched, if thrilling, tale. Could a whale really attack and sink a great ship, as Moby Dick does in the final, apocalyptic chapters of Melville’s book? The astonishing answer was yes. And not only that, the gruesome details of the true story exceeded any fictional account. Indeed, such is its resonant power, that the BBC drama is to be followed by another film version, In the Heart of the Sea, directed by Ron Howard and based on the book of the same name by Nathaniel Philbrick. Even now, the story seems unbelievable. But for a first-hand account of those events, we can turn to the words of the men who lived through them – and survived to tell the tale. On August 12 1819, the Essex, an 87ft, 238-ton whaleship, set sail from Nantucket. The captain was George Pollard, a man whose subsequent experiences were destined to haunt him as much as his fictional counterpart Ahab, while his first mate, Owen Chase, became the role model for Ahab’s first mate, Starbuck (although better known now for the global chain of coffee shops named after him). By November 1820, the Essex had reached the Pacific equator, 2,000 miles from the South American coast. The voyage had been uneventful – until now. That morning, November 20, the weather was fine and clear. A pod of whales was sighted by the lookout. The men set to with gusto – whales meant dollars, after all. The slender, fast, clinker-built whaleboats, built to ride high in the water, were lowered from the sides of the ship, and the hunters set off in pursuit of their prey. The sperm whale is no mean adversary. It is the largest predator that ever lived, and although modern sperm whales grow to only 65ft, Melville and his fellow whalers recorded whales 80 or even 100ft long. (Scientists think intensive hunting in the 19th century reduced the number of very large bull sperm whales, thereby affecting the overall size of the population, genetically. Hunting has also reduced the world population from 1.6 million to fewer than 360,000.) Armed with a lower jaw studded with 42 teeth, it’s a formidable opponent if driven to defend itself. Its tail, as broad as a house, could dash a flimsy whaleboat to smithereens, and often did. The sperm whale is also the only cetacean that can swallow a human being, and, again, has done so, albeit by accident, in the melee of a hunt. (It’s not a nice way to go: its gastric juices are so acidic that sailors cut out of whales have been bleached white by the process.) Yet this mammal is also highly social, sentient and communicative – it posseses the largest brain in nature. And despite its size and power, it is extraordinarily placid, timid, even. I’ve made a special study of the whale, in the writing of my books, Leviathan and The Sea Inside, and can attest to its overwhelmingly pacific nature. But then, I’ve never come at one with a harpoon. A white sperm whale The crew of the Essex set upon the pod. Owen Chase, at the prow of the whaleboat, threw his weapon into a whale. “Feeling the harpoon in him, he threw himself, in agony, over towards the boat and, giving a severe blow with his tail, struck the boat,” Chase wrote in an account published in 1821. Realising that if he didn’t act quickly, the whale might drag them down, Chase took an axe and cut the line. At the same time, Captain Pollard was in his whaleboat, attempting to harpoon another large whale. But then, to his amazement, Chase saw, much closer in, “a very large spermaceti whale about 85ft in length” heading directly at their mother ship, “as if fired with revenge” for the sufferings of its fellow whales. Chase watched, horrified, as the whale “came down upon us at full speed, and struck the ship with his head, just forward of the fore-chains; he gave us such an appalling and tremendous jar, as nearly threw us all on our faces. The ship brought up as suddenly and violently as if she had struck a rock, and trembled for a few seconds like a leaf.” Even the whale appeared to have been dazed by the blow. It lay motionless, briefly, before making off to leeward. But then it “started off with great velocity”, Chase reported, “coming down apparently with twice his ordinary speed, and with tenfold fury and vengeance in his aspect”. Its jaws were snapping together, and the surf flew as it thrashed the water with its tail. I’ve seen sperm whales snap their jaws this way – it’s usually a sign of stress. I’ve also been warned off from getting too close by the thundering slap of their muscular tails, usually because they were protecting a young calf. Indeed, contemporary whale scientist Prof Hal Whitehead has speculated that the whale that attacked the Essex was defending its own young – it was a characteristic, cruel tactic of whalers to harpoon calves, in order to bring the more valuable adults within range. Having said this, there are few incidents of sperm whales attacking ships; one of the only other recorded incidents was the one on the whaleship Ann Alexander in 1851, 31 years after the attack on the Essex. Whatever the motive of this seeming monster, it rammed the ship with its head for a second time. This sickening blow was fatal for the vessel – with the sea gushing in its side, it was clear that the Essex was sinking. Pollard, who had now returned to his stricken vessel, cried, “My God, Mr Chase, what is the matter?” “We have been stove by a whale,” came the answer. Hurriedly, the crew, all 20 of them, took to the three remaining whaleboats. As the Essex sank, they rescued what they could: 6lb of hard bread; three casks of water; a musket, powder, tools; “and a few turtles”. Chase also managed to salvage his sea chest – and with it, precious paper and pencil with which he would record their ordeal. A leather sea chest, thought to have belonged to first mate Owen Chase They also saved navigational materials – but it was in using these that Pollard and Chase made their great mistake. They found that the nearest inhabited islands were the Marquesas, to the west. But they feared that their natives were cannibals, and so decided to try the longer route, eastwards, to Chile. It was a terrible irony, given what happened next. Having fashioned sails, they set off in three boats. They were at the mercy of currents and winds; often they drifted, lost on the infinite sea. Chase calculated that their food would last 60 days – but the bread got soaked and, once dried, its saltiness merely increased the men’s thirst. At night the boats would drift apart in the darkness, desperately signalling to each other with lanterns. Suddenly, on December 20, a month after they had been wrecked, they sighted land, “a blessed vision like a basking paradise before our longing eyes”, as Chase put it. But Henderson Island was no tropical paradise. It contained little fresh water and they had soon killed all the birds they found, so on December 26 they decided to try to reach South America – now 3,000 miles distant. Three men decided to stay on the island and take their chances there. Their fellow sailors were soon far out at sea. Burnt by the blazing sun during the day, at night sharks swam about the boat, snapping as if to “devour the very wood”. With only three days’ food left, extreme hunger was depriving the men of their “speech and reason”, wrote Chase. They reconciled themselves to the inevitable. “The black man, Richard Paterson, was perfectly ready to die.” He did so of his own accord: six of the Essex’s crew were African-American, and none would survive. But as Paterson’s body was committed to the deep, Chase realised that they couldn’t afford to jettison such a source of sustenance again. As the next man, Isaac Cole, succumbed to madness and death – dying “in the most horrible and frightful convulsions I have ever witnessed” – the decision was made to eat him. Cole’s body was dismembered, the flesh cut from his bones. They sliced open his trunk and took out his heart. “We now commenced to satisfy the immediate cravings of nature from the heart, which we eagerly devoured, and then ate sparingly of a few pieces of the flesh,” Chase wrote. The rest they cut into strips and hung up to dry for future consumption. They even roasted their victim’s organs on a fire made on a stone at the bottom of the boat. Chase and the remaining crew had been reduced to savages, ironically more than any Pacific islander they had sought to avoid. Their boat had become a charnel house: “We knew not then to whose lot it would fall next, either to die or be shot, and eaten like the poor wretch we had just dispatched.” With morbid practicality, Chase worked out a gruesome formula: three men could live for seven days off one human corpse. By now, the three boats had become separated. One drifted off and was never heard of again. In Captain Pollard’s boat three men died; all were eaten; all were black. After this, the white men began drawing lots and Pollard was forced to watch as his own young nephew, Owen Coffin, drew the black dot. Bowing to his fate, Coffin lay down his head on the gunwale, was shot, and consumed. Cannibalism had saved the Essex’s survivors. But at a price. On February 18, after almost three months at sea, Chase’s boat sighted a sail – a London brig, the Indian. Their rescuers were shocked at what they found, said Chase: “Our cadaverous countenances...with the ragged remains of clothes stuck about our sun-burnt bodies, must have produced an appearance affecting and revolting in the highest degree.” Charles Furness as the cabin boy Tom Nickerson in BBC One's The Whale Five days later, Pollard and the only other survivor in his boat, Charles Ramsdale, were rescued by the Nantucket whaleship the Dauphin. It was claimed they were, “found sucking the bones of their dead mess mates, which they were loath to part with”. They too were taken back to Valparaiso, from where a ship was sent to rescue the three men from Henderson Island. They’d managed to survive on the scant water they’d found, fish, and a few birds. Just eight of the Essex’s crew had survived. All went back to sea but, amazingly, Pollard was shipwrecked a second time and never took command of another ship, “for all will say I am an unlucky man”. Instead, he became a nightwatchman in Nantucket, wandering the island, haunted by his ordeal. When a writer asked him about his experiences, Pollard replied, “I can tell you no more – my head is on fire at the recollection.” (A more macabre story also went around: that when asked if he’d known Owen Coffin, Pollard would answer, “Know him? Why, I et [sic] him!”) Chase too was a guilt-ridden man. His ghostwritten account was published in an attempt to capitalise on the story – or, perhaps, to set aright the more sensationalist versions. Later, Thomas Nickerson, the 14-year-old cabin boy, produced his own account, claiming they had not eaten Cole. Perhaps he sought to erase the memory by denial. Chase could not forget, however. As he aged, he stored supplies of food in his attic, as if he believed he might once more face starvation – and that terrible dilemma. Plagued by headaches, he would cry, “Oh my head, my head”, and by the time he died in 1869 he had been declared insane. Today the island of Nantucket is a quiet, reserved place. The whalers have long since left its cobbled streets, though the mansions that the shipowners built from their bloody profits still stand. Their blank, silent windows look out to sea, testament to the extraordinary horrors that those men of the Essex suffered, out on the infinite deep. The Whale is on BBC One on December 22 at 9pm Philip Hoare's books, Leviathan and The Sea Inside, are published by Fourth Estate http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10500877/The-Whale-the-terrifying-real-voyage-that-inspired-Moby-Dick.html

Speaking of Red Skelton... He insisted on getting his television skits done on the first take, even if it meant ad-libbing around blown lines and failed props. In one famous incident on live television, he managed to ad-lib while a cow defecated on stage ("Not only does she give milk, but also Pet-Ritz pies!"). http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0804026/bio

Shocked, shocked. ----- Clem Kadiddlehopper's mother-in-law: "Well, I never!" Clem: "Probably not!"

Hear, hear. Three years ago it was a great indulgence to sit with friends in the comfort of my apartment 7 blocks from Times Sq and watch the New Year's Eve doodah there on TV.

Ahem.

Surely not quite that bad. Each new model need only work long enough to sustain itself until the next new thing. Ever thus anyway, nein? Imagine the reaction of the scribal monks when they saw what Gutenberg wrought. Or Scroll Manufacturers Local 34 once the spine-bound codex caught on. Unless you were just making an autological post.

Emergency C-Section Turns Up ... No Baby By Newser | Parenting – Fri, Dec 20, 2013 10:04 AM EST (Newser) - A bizarre story out of Brazil, where doctors performed an emergency C-section on an apparently expectant mother only to find ... no baby at all. When the woman, 37, arrived at Cabo Frio's Woman's Hospital saying she was 41 weeks pregnant and in pain-with a protruding belly and some kind of proof of prenatal care-doctors assumed she was in labor, officials revealed this week. "Because the doctors couldn't pick up the [baby's] heartbeat, they decided there wasn't time to request an ultrasound," the site's director told the Daily Mail. "They did the surgery then had the great shock of not finding any baby at all." It turns out the woman was suffering from a false pregnancy (known as pseudocyesis) and "was so convinced she was pregnant, that she altered her prenatal tests that showed otherwise because she was convinced the results were wrong," a city Health Department rep said per CBS News. And her husband says it wasn't the first time. Last year, she said she'd lost a baby at the hospital, but never showed him a death certificate. She's now been referred to psychiatric care. Oddly enough, the Dayton Daily News reports a similar case popped up at the same hospital earlier this year; a woman faked an ultrasound to get treatment despite not being pregnant, the site's director said. (More bizarre pregnancy news: A recent study found 1 in 200 women say they've had a "virgin pregnancy.") http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/emergency-c-section-turns-no-baby-150400404.html

A main point I took was that this is a search for new models of how to fund journalism. And in ways that let it remain, as they put it, "independent public service journalism."

http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/glenn-greenwalds-new-media-company-is-a-bespoke-firm/282546/

'iPotty' named worst toy of the year What happens when you combine an iPad with a potty? You get an iPotty. By Sophie Curtis 4:52PM GMT 20 Dec 2013 The Telegraph The iPotty – a bizarre combination of iPad and potty designed to help young children with potty training – has been named the worst toy of the year by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC). According to manufacturer CTA Digital, the iPotty is a "comfortable and fun place to learn to use the potty". It features a special stand to securely hold the iPad, which can be rotated 360 degrees to switch between horizontal and vertical views and also includes a removable touchscreen cover "to guard against messy accidents and smudges". A clip-on seat cover can be attached to convert the potty to a child activity seat, so they can safely play apps, read and watch videos on the iPad even when they are not potty training. The stand can also be adjusted to 3 positions or removed entirely to make extra room and easily store away. Michelle Salcedo, who voted for the iPotty as worst toy of the year in CCFC's poll, said that toilet learning should be a time of positive interaction between a child and their parents. "Children should be aware of the cues in their bodies as they learn. This toy takes this social/emotional focus out of the process and substitutes the hypnotism of a screen,” she said. Alex Reynard, who also voted, said: “It not only reinforces unhealthy overuse of digital media, it's aimed at toddlers. We should NOT be giving them the message that you shouldn't even take your eyes off a screen long enough to pee.” Other toys in the running for the 2013 TOADY (Toys Oppressive and Destructive to Young children) included the VIP Upgrade Membership by The Real Tooth Fairies, Monopoly Empire, PLAY-DOH Create ABCs App and Imaginext Mega Apatosaurus by Fisher-Price. "It’s clear that CCFC members are appalled by the escalating push to insinuate screens into every aspect of young children’s lives," the organisation said in a statement. "It’s the third consecutive year that voters chose a screen-based toy for infants and toddlers as the TOADY winner." If you actually think the iPotty is a good idea, it is still available to buy from Amazon.co.uk for £30, (iPad not included). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10531063/iPotty-named-worst-toy-of-the-year.html

No, we are very happy about it. Not happy about having to wait for you, though. Hurry up!

Hadn't thought about this!