The sturdier fishermen of the Upper Midwest of the United States are fond of venturing out to iced-over lakes. Fishing requires time and patience. Ice fishing requires both while enduring cold temperatures. That’s why many drag shacks onto the ice, where they can enjoy essential amenities, such as beer and heaters.
But now these ice fishermen can enjoy shacks far superior to crude wooden structures. Ice Castle Fish Houses, a company in Montevideo, Minnesota, builds veritable ice fishing mansions.
They come with full kitchens, showers, satellite television and beds. There are even air conditioners, which could really come in handy down here in Texas.
When it’s time to actually fish, just pull up a comfortable chair, open a plug in the floor and drop down a line.
I love these lamps! They're charming, functional and probably terribly hot to the touch. I'm not sure who made them, but my friend Marilyn Bellamy thinks that they can be traced back to a company called Balloonatics Enterprises.
Ladies: Name a fictional male (book, TV or movie) who encapsulates as many of of the qualities you'd like to see in a man.
That's a great way to look at relationships and what you want out of them. Peevesie offers an answer from the Harry Potter series:
Arthur Weasley (an age appropriate version) - he is strong, kind, brave, caring, loving, capable, curious, respectful, intelligent, responsible, and so many other things. He clearly didn't have a dead bedroom considering the number of off spring. He was an excellent father who nurtured his kids with a gentle and firm hand. He was an equalist. He has his faults but is by far the most real family man I have encountered in fiction. Molly was super lucky
Unsure why Westley/ The Man in Black/ Dread Pirate Roberts hasn't been mentioned yet...
Pirate + true love + kiss that blows away the best five kisses since the invention of the kiss + "As you wish" + eyes like the sea after a storm = Yes, yes, very much please. Yup.
Several ladies agree with starredwithjejune: Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird would be a great companion. Why? Concernedbitch explains:
For me it's his principles, and the fact that he's so gentle and emotionally insightful. IDK good single dads just do it for me. His brilliance and sense of humor are gravy.
Little Lion continues on that theme about Atticus Finch:
Oh, yes, there are a lot more. His compassion, his drive, his defiance of stereotypes about men (and humans) at that time... sigh
Lera Boroditsky once did a simple experiment: She asked people to close their eyes and point southeast. A room of distinguished professors in the U.S. pointed in almost every possible direction, whereas 5-year-old Australian aboriginal girls always got it right.
They weren't the only ones. Linguist John McWorter explains how using cardinal directions seems to indicate greater intelligence in spatial manipulation:
As an example, he refers to modern speakers of a Mayan language, who also use directions that roughly correspond to compass points, rather than left or right. Researchers asked people, most of whom only knew this language, to do tasks like memorizing how a ball moved through a maze, which would have been easier had they thought about it in terms of left and right, rather than compass points. The participants were just as good at these tasks and sometimes better,leading the experimenters to conclude they were not constrained by their language.
Some linguists think that language can constrain or liberate our thinking, opening or closing mental possibilities. For example, the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote his first autobiography in English. When a publisher asked him to translate it into Russian, Nabokov started to do so. But he promptly found himself writing a different book. Yu quotes linguist Aneta Pavlenko:
"When Nabokov started translating it into Russian, he recalled a lot of things that he did not remember when he was writing it in English, and so in essence it became a somewhat different book," Pavlenko says. "It came out in Russian and he felt that in order to represent his childhood properly to his American readership, he had to produce a new version. So the version of Nabokov's autobiography we know now is actually a third attempt, where he had to recall more things in Russian and then re-translate them from Russian back into English."
This reminds me of studying Koine Greek, which has a grammatical concept called "aspect." Nothing really corresponds with it in English. The experience made me wonder what invisible mental barriers were in my mind simply because of language.
Moschino is an Italian fashion house that produces everything from high class dresses to luxury handbags. At the recent Milan Fashion Week, the designers unveiled a line of clothing inspired by fast food, especially the iconic shapes and colors of McDonald's.
Other items look like huge food wrappers (complete with nutritional data), beer cans and SpongeBob SquarePants. You can see photos of these fashion wonders at Moschino's Facebook page.
The prices are substantially higher than you might expect for the central theme. The McDonald's-styled handbag that you see pictured above costs $1,265. Or rather, it did--the bag has already sold out.
As the ramen craze continues, I am left to ponder if there is nothing that cannot be made of ramen. We have seen ramen tacos, burgers, pizzas and sandwiches. Could we not have a ramen car? A ramen house? An entire army of ramen soldiers ready to march at my command and conquer the world in my name?
The last one may go too far, but a ramen submarine sandwich roll is not. Hugh Merwin of Grub Street made one by softening ramen, mashing it into a baguette pan, then weighing the noodles down with a wine bottle for a few hours. After baking it in the oven, he had a fine sandwich roll perfect for a cheesesteak.
The art studio L’Atelier d’Orel upcycles old objects into fresh, hip pieces of furniture. Among other projects, the artist has taken the spinning drums from clothes washing machines and turned them into coffee tables and bar cabinets. The artist responsible also offers workshops on how to make your own. It’s a bit unclear where L’Atelier d’Orel is located, but my best guess is Roubaix, a town on the border of France and Belgium.
It’s located just south of Suzu, Ishikawa, Japan. According to legend, the Eighth Century Japanese monk Kōbō-Daishi named the island after its resemblance to a warship. Mitsukejima measures about 30 meters high, 50 meters wide and 150 meters long. Visitors can reach it over a rocky causeway built from the shore. It’s considered a romantic place for couples to go.
How much can two heavy duty helicopters in tandem lift off the gound? A lot!
(No offense, ma'am.)
HeliGraphix is club of radio controlled helicopter hobbyists that puts videos of its amazing stunts online. Their latest project is HULC: Heavy Ultra Lifter Crane. HeliGraphix claims that it has completed the first successful human flight by an RC aircraft. In fact, they did several, some of which were over 40 seconds long.
This is In Orbit, an art installation and performance piece by Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder. The two collaborate in a medium that they call "performance architecture." In this case, it's a wooden wheel that measures 25 feet high. In Orbit is currently located at The Boiler, a gallery in New York City.
There are beds, chairs, desks and some kind of toilet in the structure. Shelley is in the exterior and Schweder is in the interior. The two men are living there for 10 days. They are currently in the middle of their performance, which lasts until March 9.
Both of them have to live separately, but in harmony. In order for one man to go to one part of the house, he must have the cooperation of the other.
Antonius and Vijay Nazareth are the merry composers who brought us musical versions of Fifty Shades of Grey, Elsa and Gollum. Now they're back to tell the story of five men who found the magic of friendship by watching My Little Pony. Listen to them sing (and sing very well) that:
We're going to stand up tall We're going to show them all Anyone can love ponies Big or small
Be weird boldly. You'll find that you're not so weird after all.
If I understand it correctly, The Wa is an art collective in France that consists of Alexandra Ross, Emmanuel Berque, Alain Bieber and Wang Ge. They create clever public art installations and advertisements, such as this crosswalk in the French city of Biarritz. If you're not paying attention while crossing the road, you'll go on a longer trip.
In 2012, The Wa attended Dockville, an annual music festival in Hamburg, Germany. The group collected trash from the festival, put it all into bright blue bags, then arranged the bags to display a message that could be seen from the air.
I like Katie Bee's idea. But this is just a temporary solution using materials at hand. If you have a bit more time and money, then I suggest hollowing out a realistic doll, filling it with the beverage of your choice, then slipping it into a Baby Bjorn. It's much more comfortable than a heavy car seat on one arm.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. That’s apparently the philosophy of Nick Chipman of Dude Foods. He’s already invented the bacon weave taco. Now it’s time to push the boundaries of that idea beyond all reason and good taste. Hence this creation.
Nick was goaded into creating the Double Decker Mac & Cheese Stuffed Bacon Weave Taco at the behest of a television show in Milwaukee. The producers wanted him to make something new that would terrify their audience. So he made a large bacon weave taco shell and stuffed it with macaroni and cheese. Nick writes:
So where do I take the Bacon Weave Taco from here? I honestly have no idea. At this point I think that it will be pretty much impossible to top the Double Decker Mac & Cheese Stuffed Bacon Weave Taco, but who knows.
The obvious next step would be to deep fry the entire thing.
