Isaac Schrödinger

No hammer needed

Scientists and engineers at Picatinny Arsenal are busy developing a device that will shoot lightning bolts down laser beams to destroy its target.

Sweet mother of Thor!

Back to red

CBM:

MAN OF STEEL Kryptonian armor for Jor-El and Faora plus, get a super close look at the new Superman suit in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel.

I'm glad the cape is red as it should be. The last movie used a dark brown color for the cape for no good reason. However, in the posters of the movie, the cape was shown to have a crimson hue which was a clear example of false advertising.

Understanding The L Goggles

Alpha Game:

Of course, it sounds absurd to suggest that a man's wife would kick one to the curb because his physical peak has passed, so how does it make any sense to imagine that a husband would be inclined to get rid of his wife simply because she isn't 22 anymore? Because there are more attractive women out there? There always were. There may be a few more than there were before, but he always had other options. Is a woman going to eventually be eclipsed by twenty-somethings? Of course, it is the way of the world.

Read it all. Later in the post:

it is so tragic when women, particularly women over thirty, cast aside their husbands in search of something better. Because no matter whom they meet, no one will ever look at them again through love goggles, which like beer goggles, tend to make a man see a woman through a soft and flattering lens as her mythical and eternally youthful self rather than the harsh, objective light of reality.

Looks do matter but they're not the only thing. As long as a woman doesn't turn into a whale after marriage and isn't disrespectful to her husband (both of which are not mutally exclusive), then she shouldn't worry much.

A very happy birthday

For Hitler!

I love the part when it's mentioned that Goring has eaten the cake.

GOAAAALLLL!

Cricinfo:

Wherein lies one of cricket's most compelling saving graces. In f***ball and rugby, such are the unprecedented standards of fitness and stamina, it is becoming ever easier to frustrate, spoil and negate your way to victory - or, at the very least, non-defeat. New Zealand held Italy to a draw at the last FIFA World Cup; New Zealand, to whose inhabitants f***ball holds roughly as much appeal as a Crowded House tribute band from Canberra.

I'm sure f***ball requires one to be, er, fit and possess tremendous amounts of stamina. I do wonder about the rules of f***ball, though.

Fight the ugly

An interesting lecture by Anthony J. Brankin:

Ask any child who is drawing something what he is trying to do and he will tell you that he is trying to recreate something that he saw in nature, be it an apple, or the sun, or a tree, or a house. And, invariably, the measure of the success of the drawing for that child is how closely the drawing resembles nature.

Accuracy according to nature was always the standard of reference for artists and societies, for all high civilizations from the Egyptians and Greeks to the Romans and Europeans. Each culture’s succeeding generations of artists tried to improve upon, or at least remember, the techniques, lessons, and discoveries of the previous generations, always seeking a greater beauty of lines, more solid figures, and truer perspectives.

One rifle to rule them all

Only in America.

Sexy IPS

Anandtech:

The personal computer is getting thinner, lighter, more integrated and more appliance-like. The movement is no longer confined to just Apple either. The traditional PC OEMs are following suit. Even Microsoft has finally entered the PC hardware business, something it threatened to do for years but hadn't until now. Distribution models will change, the lines between different form factors will continue to blur. What was once a mature industry is going through a significant transformation.

More:

The impressively thin display assembly or overall chassis thickness look neat in a photo but it’s not until you actually live with the rMBP that you can appreciate what Apple has done here. I carry around a 15-inch MacBook Pro because it’s my desktop, and as such it’s incredibly useful to have with me when I travel. For my personal usage model, the Retina MacBook Pro is perfect.

I have to say that Apple laptops, especially their screens, look very nice. For far too long on the windows side of laptops the screen quality has been utter crap. Of course, windows laptops are also cheaper but often the better quality screens (IPS) are not even presented as a possible option. So, even if one is willing to spend more for the quality, the option doesn't exist.

Good luck!

A guy:

insisted i touch this huge reticulated python from head to tail ...

Sure he did.

2 to 4 posses the most hotness

Right Wing News: Welcome to the 4th annual 20 hottest conservative women in the new media.

I think we should have a beauty pageant which involves conservative women. The winner can be crowned Miss Right!

"Go back to Canada."

An entire religion was built on a bunch of small minded people who "didn't keep it to themselves". Now, a Muslim has the gall to tell a peaceful Christian to go away and mind his own business in the United States.

Eeevil celebrations

Moulana Abdul Hamid Ishaq bin dumbass enlightens us:

It is not necessary that everything the West does is according to logic. The biggest proof that it is the invention of the west are the song words without which this function is not complete viz. 'Happy birthday to you.' No one says, 'Happy birthday celebration' or 'Happy Blessed birthday' or any other words of this kind. This disease of celebrating birthdays was never prevalent among Muslims before, but since Muslims started living alongside the non-Muslims, they have been influenced by them.

There's a lot more. This is how these people think and talk. To them, birthday celebrations, Valentine's day and Christmas festivities are like wicked diseases. However, violent and murderous Jihad is perfectly fine.

Link via Five Feet of Fury.

Necessary HDR

The magical cave lacks light. That's where camera tech and software come to the rescue.

Not rape again

Vox Popoli:

Some women are terrified of bats, others are afraid of heights, and those fears are no more your problem or my problem than Kate's terror of rape on the milk run. It is very, very easy for Kate to significantly reduce her chances of being raped, as getting a concealed carry permit and avoiding the company of black and Hispanic men will virtually eliminate the possibility that she will be forcibly raped. Even without taking any such defensive measures, the national rate of forcible rape is only 24.7 per 100,000 population, one-third lower than it was in 1990. This means that in a population of 308 million, Kate's chances of being raped in any given year are less than one in 12,000 and declining. This cannot be reasonably described as a "rape culture".

The combination of drama and victimhood is like cocaine for some women. As usual the concept of personal responsibility is often completely absent from their vocabularly.

I think that the idea of rape insurance is excellent. It makes one think about how one can increase or decrease the probability of rape.

Heart explodes

• Parrots.
• A very emotional beagle.
• An articulate feline shares her thoughts.
• Sometimes after a long day one is totally spent.

ODI no. 3275

What a spectacular collapse.

The five guys -- Hafeez, Akmal, Khan, Afridi and Ahmed -- who were expected to put runs on the board contributed a combined 1 run! Ajmal, a pure bowler, scored 12 runs. Had those guys scored nine to ten runs each at a good strike rate, Pakistan could have won.

There was only one positive for Pakistan: Azhar Ali. He was not out at 81 in the end and now he has become only the second batsman from Pakistan to carry his bat in an ODI. Misbah also played his part by scoring an efficient fifty but the rest were epic failures. Let's see if they play any better after this humiliation.

Half excellent

Cricinfo:

Over the last two years (July 2010 onwards), Pakistan have won 33 ODIs and lost 19. By all accounts that's an excellent record - only three teams have a better win-loss record during this period, and even there, Australia's ratio is better only by 0.02.

They made it to the World Cup semi-finals thanks to their bowling ...

It's a credit to Pakistan's bowlers that the team has such an impressive win-loss ratio, for their batsmen haven't done a whole lot to justify that record: in terms of averages and strike rates, Pakistan rank seventh among all teams

... but then crashed and burned there because of their atrocious batting.

Despite their fairly ordinary batting stats, Pakistan have won more than their fair share of matches, thanks to their outstanding bowling attack. During these two years, Pakistan have taken their wickets at 30.62 runs each, and are one of only three teams to concede less than five per over.

Pakistan fields the most potent bowling attack in the world when their premier bowlers are all fit. Only South Africa has a comprable line up of bowlers today.

Of course, in a direct match between Pakistan and South Africa, the Pakistanis would lose big time since their poor batsmen would get slaughtered by the South African bowlers. The Pakistanis need at least one near-great batsman in their team to win matches more regularly. Someone like Anwar, Inzi or Youhana. Younis Khan is fading; Umar Akmal hasn't matured; Afridi is too unpreditable; Hafeez is excellent but only as an all-rounder -- his batting is average.

Let's see who steps up in the near future.

Supermodel Doris

Bob Vishneski:

The more time I spend in my photography pursuits, the more I appreciate cameras that capture and photos that exploit their maximum dynamic range potential. Digital cameras have undergone dramatic improvements over the last 12+ years, but they still don’t come close to the human eye’s dynamic range capabilities.

True.

Post-processing techniques bring us very close to the perceived image as he shows. The vignette, especially, adds a lot.

Learning resistant

The Daily Mail:

Usually, parents will do anything to keep their precious children out of harm's way.

Usually. Though, I don't see what's so wrong about reading Playboy. I mean their interviews and articles are quite, er, informative.

Men vs. Women

A man wants certain qualities in a woman.

What does a woman want? Too much. 

Bloody rain

Cricinfo:

The south-west monsoon allowed only 6.2 overs of play in the third ODI between Sri Lanka and Pakistan at the R Premadasa Stadium, leaving the series level at 1-1.

That sucks. With two games to go, it's possible to get a series draw: 2-2. That's no fun.

The economy! Stupid.

Hussein photoshopped.

Game over, man

If by "better worlds" one means dying in an acid-drenched inferno, then yes.

Sadly, no cryptography

I usually visit a few tech sites and today for the first time I saw a Neal Stephenson video on one of them.

The devil is in the details

A Shiite cleric provides some, er, penetrating analysis of how the Islamic world is filled with passive homosexuals and whores.

I would have been very interested in that

Batmobile The Tumbler in ... Toronto!?

I missed it. It would have been nice to take a few snaps.

Monster thunderbolt

I don't know what Intel and Asus are thinking. It's frustrating to see such a high price premium for Thunderbolt on desktop PCs today. One has to buy a new motherboard (~$200) and then buy an add-in card (~$200) to get a working Thunderbolt port.

The Thunderbolt cable is currently going for $50. So, that's $450* if you wish to utilize a thunderbolt device. I know people who spend that much on their entire computer!

* Of course, one has to buy a thunderbolt device separately. Unfortunately, they are not reasonably priced either.

Future vacation spot?

A beautiful shot taken in Iceland. It gives off a David Lean vibe.

I'd like to see the glacier's name show up in a spelling bee.

Don't run on low

Vacation is good:

Americans work more than anyone else. In fact, we work 100 hours more per year than the famously nose-to-grindstone Japanese. And we put in up to three months a year more than Europeans.

America is the only country that does not mandate paid vacation leave. China gets three weeks. Europe averages six.

Call it the incredible shrinking vacation. The average vacation in America now numbers a pathetic three to four days—a long weekend. And this year, according to a recent survey, one in seven Americans is taking no vacation at all.

I find that it is not necessary to go on a vacation. Simply being off from work for a week or more does wonders. Not to mention that it's also a more economical choice.

Come to think of it, I haven't been on a "vacation" since 1996. That was the time I met my extended family in Pakistan for a few weeks. Good food, cricket and plenty of cheap arcade games. Good times.

Link via Instapundit.

The Queen's Choice

But then who wouldn't choose them?

Puny Krugman

Dang:

Let's sh*t on East Europeans: their English is bad, won't respond & actually do what they've agreed to & reelect govts that are responsible.

That's the President of Estonia reacting to Paul Krugman.

Overlord

One of the greatest battles of the Second World War started on this date 68 years ago. The logistics were on an epic scale:

The operation, planned by a team under Lieutenant-General Frederick Morgan, was the largest amphibious invasion in world history and was executed by land, sea, and air elements under direct British command with over 160,000 troops landing on 6 June 1944, 73,000 American troops, 61,715 British and 21,400 Canadian. 195,700 Allied naval and merchant navy personnel in over 5,000 ships were involved.

A 10-part TV series a decade ago captured the horror and terror of that war:

The story of Easy Company of the US Army 101st Airborne division and their mission in WWII Europe from Operation Overlord through V-J Day.

Aussies want the best

Cricinfo:

Waqar Younis, the former captain and coach of Pakistan, has been interviewed for the position of Australian bowling coach, as Cricket Australia intensifies its search for the man to replace Craig McDermott.

Excellent choice by Australia. Waqar was one of the most impressive fast bowlers in the world in the early 90s. His knowledge of reverse swing will be particularly useful for the Aussies as their overall bowling has been weak since Warne and McGrath left the sport.

Flying feline

I want one -- preferably in the form of a lion.

What could be cooler than a flying Aslan!?

As they say, here's the rest of the story.

No needle for you!

Magic at MIT:

One of the scariest things about visiting a doctor while you're sick is that you never know when you’ll be given an injection. Sometimes even the smallest of illnesses are met with a hypodermic needle—unfortunately when you least expect it. Luckily for all of us needle-fearing folk out there, MIT researchers have taken the time to engineer the needleless needle.

The most amazing aspect is that they can now inject a drug directly through the eye into the retina! That's scary cool.

Prometheus lacks fire

David Thompson didn't like the new Aliens kinda-sequel Prometheus.

Too bad. I would have like to have watched it in the theatres. I'm now waiting for Nolan to finish his trilogy.

Oh, this movie would be quite entertaining as well.

The DSLR King

Digital Photography Review forum:

Last night I photographed repairs on a sign I designed for a medical system I worked for. My goal was to preserve the vibrant colors of the sign while also showing the surrounding clinic architecture. I didn't have a tripod along, so multiple frames composited wasn't an option. Instead, I metered the vibrant blue letter faces to avoid clipping and fired away at ISO 200 ...

The result is stunning.