Monday Machicolation Malapropism

TIL that the French Foreign Legion allows you to enlist with a fake identity, allowing members to effectively start their lives over.

Happy now, Dave?

 Three years after BP oil spill, USF research finds massive die-off. "Everywhere the plume went, the die-off went"

 Should i question his motives?

  TIL In 2002 at Salt Lake City Olympics NHL pro Jarome Iginla struck up a conversation with four fans sitting next to his table and found out they were sleeping in their car. He excused himself from the conversation and booked them at his own expense at the hotel his family was staying in.

 Beatles in action at the Cavern Club (600x522) ca.1961 And the drummer who missed the boat

  Built In The Middle Of No Where Genghis Khan statue on the Mongolian steepes

 The Hollywood sign originally said "Hollywoodland" when it was installed in 1923. The last four letters were deleted when the sign was refurbished in 1949. [545x620]

 Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

We know this to be the truth, even a small child understands this and believes it.. But just for grins lets look at the stupidity of those who regard themselves as being educated...

"A decade ago, spurred by a question for a fifth-grade science project, University of Washington physicist John Cramer devised an audio recreation of the Big Bang that started our universe nearly 14 billion years ago. Now, armed with more sophisticated data from a satellite mission observing the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow in the universe that acts as sort of a fossilized fingerprint of the Big Bang – Cramer has produced new recordings that fill in higher frequencies to create a fuller and richer sound."

***

Years ago I was painting a major brand name car dealers home in a guard gated community. 

He showed me a secret doorway behind his chair in his home office.

 It looked like an ordinary panel on the ornate wooden wall. He pushed on the panel and revealed a staircase leading downstairs. 

There was a mannequin dressed as a Nazi officer standing at the top of the stairs.

 That was all that I was allowed to see.

 Days later my painters helper, who was of German descent told me that the man had given him "The cooks tour" of what was down the staircase.

 Apparently, since I was not of German descent I was not invited. I was told that down the stairs there was a very large room that was a museum of Nazi memorabilia.

 Some of it was documents that were very valuable. There were old uniforms and handguns and lots of rare pictures on the walls.

 Some of the stuff was one of a kind, at least that was what I was told.

 Anyway the man has since passed away and the Hugh home was sold.

 I wonder if the new owner knows about the secret room in the office?   

***

The executives behind these maneuvers have studied their Sun Tzu, required

reading at any decent business school.

 “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as the night,” the Chinese Machiavelli writes in his masterpiece The Art of War, “and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” In other words, leave them as little time as possible to assemble their Molotov cocktails.

 Here’s a weird one:  Doors frontman Jim Morrison, native of Florida, stars in a promo film for Florida State University.

 This guy took away Apples reputation for being secure and reliable...

 "It was the malware which affected as many Apple computers as the Conficker worm affected Windows PCs and earned its creator up to $10,000 per day. Until now, no one knew who was behind the Flashback Trojan which hit 650,000 computers last year, but security researcher Brian Krebs has managed to uncover the creator as a 30-year-old Russian cyber criminal."

 Don't panic, Apple is still the leader in some areas of freedom...at least for now...
 Internal document from the Drug Enforcement Administration complains that messages sent with Apple's encrypted chat service are "impossible to intercept," even with a warrant.

***

Oh Poor Baby!

 
Jana Kasperkevic writes in The Guardian that it can be very stressful to be rich. "It's really isolating to have a lot of money.

 It can be scary – people's reaction to you," says Barbara Nusbaum, an expert in money psychology. 

"There is a fair amount of isolation if you are wealthy."

 According to Clay Cockrell, who provides therapy for rich, this means the rich tend to hang out with other rich Americans, not out of snobbery, but in order to be around those who understand them and their problems. 

One big problem is not knowing if your friends are friends with you or your money.

 "Someone else who is also a billionaire – they don't want anything from you! 

Never being able to trust your friendships with people of different means, I think that is difficult," says Cockrell. 

"As the gap has widened, they [the rich] have become more and more isolated."

Sci-fi author John Scalzi has published an entertaining take-down of the cluelessness in this article.