Short and sweet and sad.

The dog gave him a glance and we moved on by, but when I stopped after a decent distance and looked back he’d bent forward in his misery and I could hear sobs. A thin, tall man, perhaps in his late forties, his pale face now glistening with tears. Black jeans, gray shirt, some sort of jacket.

You need more owls in your life.



Via Stellar / Reddit

Coming soon to the Discovery Channel is a David Attenborough-hosted series about the earth's poles from the team that made Planet Earth and Blue Planet. The series has already started airing in the BBC and is 7 episodes long.

Incidentally, the Discovery Channel is neglecting to neglecting to air the series' 7th and final episode titled 'On Thin Ice' and covering change to the polar regions because of a "scheduling issue." Hmmm. (That 'hmmm' is intended to make you think there might be a conspiracy to hide climate change, which may or may not be true.)

I hate riding in the rain, but I don't mind riding in the snow. This new type of radar is relevant to my interests.

Meteorologists will be able to provide the public with more accurate information on the type and amount of precipitation that comes with New England storms, thanks to an upgrade to the Doppler radar used by the National Weather Service in Taunton, a meteorologist for the service said yesterday.

The upgrade will provide meteorologists with a three-dimensional image of water particles -- known to meteorologists as hydrometeors -- by sending and receiving pulses of radio waves in both a horizontal and vertical direction, said meteorologist Stephanie Dunten.

Thanks, Jessie!

Mad Men creator Matt Weiner recently talked to Grantland about a variety of things in an article titled "How Mad Men will end." He didn't say anything except, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Blah, blah, blah." In the paragraph Kottke pulled out, though was this: "It's 2011. Don Draper would be 84 right now." I posted it a couple years ago, but this is weird because a commenter on AMC used this interview with Don Draper to make a convincing case that Draper was born in 1924, not 1927. Being born in 1927 would explain Don's non-participation in World War II, but not sure how to explain away the 36 in 1960 thing.

Ha. Imagine if the previous paragraph was about Twilight instead of Mad Men.

The New Yorker recently had a profile of Henry Luce and Time and Harold Ross and The New Yorker's opinion of them. Balloon Juice highlighted a couple of the good parts. This is the type of cattiness we could use a little more of.

[A] brutal parody of Timestyle, called “Time . . . Fortune . . . Life . . . Luce”: “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.” He skewered the contents of Fortune (“branch banking, hogs, glassblowing, how to live in Chicago on $25,000 a year”) and of Life (“Russian peasants in the nude, the love life of the Black Widow spider”). He made Luce ridiculous (“ambitious, gimlet-eyed, Baby Tycoon Henry Robinson Luce”), not sparing his childhood (“Very unlike the novels of Pearl Buck were his early days”), his fabulous wealth (“Described too modestly by him to Newyorkereporter as ‘smallest apartment in River House,’ Luce duplex at 435 East 52nd Street contains 15 rooms, 5 baths, a lavatory”), or his self-regard: “Before some important body he makes now at least one speech a year.” He announced the net profits of Time Inc., purported to have calculated to five decimal places the “average weekly recompense for informing fellowman,” and took a swipe at Ingersoll, “former Fortuneditor, now general manager of all Timenterprises . . . salary: $30,000; income from stock: $40,000.” In sum, “Sitting pretty are the boys.”
...
“There’s not a single kind word about me in the whole Profile,” Luce said. “That’s what you get for being a baby tycoon,” Ross said. “Goddamn it, Ross, this whole goddamned piece is malicious, and you know it!” Ross paused. “You’ve put your finger on it, Luce. I believe in malice.”

I BELIEVE IN MALICE!

If you get your bike stolen, this is one way to get it back, but please be sure it's safe before you do it.

A Colorado woman took matters into her own hands when her bike was stolen from outside of a Boulder sports bar. She tracked down her stolen bike on Craigslist, pretended to be an interested buyer and stole back her own bike.

Via Vaughn

This has been everywhere, but you'd only need to watch about 5 seconds to know it'd eventually be up here.

The things they list on Wikipedia.

French fries are almost always salted just after cooking. They are then served with a variety of condiments, notably ketchup, curry, curry ketchup (mildly hot mix of the former), hot or chili sauce, mustard, mayonnaise, bearnaise sauce, tartar sauce, tzatziki, feta cheese, garlic sauce, fry sauce, ranch dressing, barbecue sauce, gravy, brown sauce, vinegar (especially malt vinegar), lemon, piccalilli, pickled cucumber, gherkins, very small pickled onions, fresh cheese curds (especially Canada), or honey.

Now this is something.



Via Chris.