reject the melancholy cabbage

H/t to David Malki ! for linking this in a Wondermark post. Let me describe this in the one way I haven’t seen anyone describe it yet: this is a Ms Scribe story for a literary scholar and memoirist in the 1970s and 1980s, except it didn’t work out for him. It is fascinating.

(And because I’m paranoid, yes, I fact-checked some of the claims of the article and didn’t come up against anything obviously fraudulent.)

I can’t find a good pullquote for this article, but it’s a really nice brief overview of the last two hundred years in prosthetic technology. It is, indeed, pretty fascinating how war drives medical tech—not just because there are a greater number of people who need the technology, but because there are a greater number of doctors and engineers who need the technology. The pictures are particularly great:

“Left, intended as a two-week substitute, this leg was ultimately used for 40 years, requiring many home repairs by its roof-thatcher owner. Right, a father constructed this limb for his 3-year-old son in 1903, possibly from a wooden chair leg. Images courtesy of the Science Museum / SSPL.”

nextian:

What kind of food? High-protein packs?

No, not mountaineering-type stuff. All I had was a bunch of sandwiches wrapped in foil from the Galley. It was a motley collection of clothes and food, a little bit of rope, crampons, and an ice axe that I didn’t use. I didn’t have a tent. I had no idea what was going to happen, and I didn’t have access to real mountaineering gear, so it was just a collection of what I thought I might use.

So what happened at tee-off time?

I took off on Saturday night, about 9 o’clock, while everybody was getting drunk. Before, during the work week, I had driven out and filled up the snowmobile gas tank, and got another five-gallon jerry can and put that on. I caught the shuttle to Scott Base, went out to the snowmobiles, threw the backpack in, fired it up and went down the peninsula. I remember thinking, “Oh my god, this is absolutely ridiculous. Why am I even attempting this?” You get further out and you get more and more committed.

I went back to tag some old entries, and this link was dead, so I’ve replaced it here.

Mount Erebus is in Antarctica. Big Dead Place is The Single Website that assembles what sometimes seems like all of the stories, jokes, survival guides, and photography of the English-speaking missions to Antarctica. It is incredible. So is this story!

“Douglas Moeson” is a legendary figure in the lore of The Program because in 1991 he ascended to the peak of Mount Erebus by his slight technical skills, his pro-active disregard of local policies, and with a bag of sandwiches from the Galley.

oldtimefamilybaseball:

It’s no secret that I feel ‘feelings’ for Fire Joe Morgan. Besides being the first internet webzone that combined sports with actual humor, it’s probably what firmly got me into the statistical revolution. Because as an 18 year old entering college, I was a baseball fan inasmuch that I loved baseball, thought Billy Beane’s computertech was trying to ruin the game, and bunts were man’s best friend.

And then I went to college where, along with the helpful, insistent prodding of my sabermetrically inclined roommate (an amazing feat at Emerson College), and his recommendation of Fire Joe Morgan, everything came together in a spark of light. Though my love of the bunt has never changed. 

When FJM shuttered their operations four years ago, probably because all that sweet Fremulon money dried up, there was a gaping hole in my soul. Today, at The Classical, Ken Tremendous, Dak, and Junior return to talk about their legacy. And wouldn’t you know it, even Brandon McCarthy was a fan: 

“And occasionally that nerd would be someone like Brandon McCarthy, who wrote us years ago, when nobody knew who he was. He was just a fan of the site, and he was pitching for the Rangers at the time. And he became a big fan of the site, and would write us all the time, and would tell us stories that we frankly can’t repeat. And we went and saw him when they played the Angels, and stuff. We keep in touch with him, and he came by Parks recently, after he got hit in the head. He’s better now.”

Part one of three is up now, and I advise you to check it out and then come back the next day. After all the hours of enjoyment that Fire Joe Morgan gave us, isn’t that the least you could do? 

This is a short true story that I don’t want to spoil, but holy shit is it ever great.

“Nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do.”

That’s good, who said that?

God did.

What?

God said it and there were only two people who believed it, you know who?

Nope, who?

God and me, so I went out and did it.

“The expression occupet extremum scabies Acron interprets thus: ‘May he get the itch who comes out last at composing verses’; for, he says, ‘the poet is here speaking metaphorically, drawing his figure from children’s games. For when children are playing at certain running games, they shout! Occupet scabies in extremo remanentem’. Porphyrio and the Commentator Cruquianus give similar explanations. On the basis of none of these could anyone possibly admit, it seems to me, the existence of a deified itch; though it might be allowable to think of it in the minds of the children as a personified itch.”

bigbigtruck:

Scary and fascinating posts about toxic substances on a chemistry blog.

“It turns out that brutal treatments like, say, touching [titanium tetraazide] with a spatula, or cooling down a vial of it in liquid nitrogen - you know, rough handling - make it detonate violently. I think that staring hard at it is OK, though… [with] goggles, blast shield, face shield, leather suit (!) and ear plugs. “

…

“[Ozonides] tend to have a lot of electron density on them, and bonding between them is a careful, arm’s-length affair, sort of like porcupines mating. “

…

“You can… distill out the perchloric anhydride (dichlorine heptoxide) if you have no sense whatsoever. It’s a liquid with a boiling point of around 80 C, and I’d like to shake the hand of whoever determined that property, assuming he has one left.”

My chemistry knowledge is almost nil (college 101 courses are way in the past), but this is still a pretty friendly read. Cool stuff.

This is really great.

Not that it’s what you’d call a perfect compound in that regard - despite a lot of effort, it’s still not quite ready to be hauled around in trucks. There’s a recent report of a method to make a more stable form of it, by mixing it with TNT. Yes, this is an example of something that becomes less explosive as a one-to-one cocrystal with TNT. Although, as the authors point out, if you heat those crystals up the two components separate out, and you’re left with crystals of pure CL-20 soaking in liquid TNT, a situation that will heighten your awareness of the fleeting nature of life.