John Richards of Dinham, Ludlow, UK, pled guilty to burglary charges after confronting the overwhelming evidence against him. An unnamed business in Ludlow had reported several burglaries, and Mercia police turned to SmartWater Technology Ltd to install a security system that uses a liquid containing a unique code to identify the place it was applied. It is only visible under ultraviolet light.
Richards was barefoot in a bid to creep around quietly but left footprints in the SmartWater UV paint which was found inside his boots and on a stolen cash box, police said.
Richards, from Dinham, Ludlow, pleaded guilty to burglary, escaping lawful custody and possessing cannabis in court 17 December.
There was never a hero more resourceful than Angus MacGyver, who could save the world with a paperclip and a piece of string. Many of the things he did on TV were technically possible, but hardly plausible in context. But there have been many real-life situations in which people did what they could with what they had to save someone’s life. When you have no choice, you try anything. And sometimes it works. For example, when a man became sick during a flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, he was lucky that Dr. Patricia Quinlan was also on the plane, along with a nurse and an EMT. Quinlan determined that the unconscious man had low blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat.
As the three medical professionals maneuvered in the narrow aisle, other passengers used smartphones to provide light as the team treated the unconscious man, who was likely suffering from dehydration. While a medical kit was onboard, no alcohol could be found to disinfect the IV needle, so Dr. Quinlan requested a flight attendant grab some whiskey from the bar cart to do so. Further improvising, Dr. Quinlan used her hair elastic as a tourniquet for the IV and, when the IV sprung a leak, patched it with tape another passenger had in her purse. By the time the plane landed, the sick man was conscious and able to walk off the flight. Dr. Quinlan emerged from the flight with a new nickname from the appreciative crew: “Doctor Angel.”
I’m starting to understand why college meal plans cost so much. Once upon a time, when I was in college, we thought we were clever for mixing coffee and hot chocolate for an after-dinner drink. My roommate would cut up boiled eggs (the “vegetarian” substitute) to make egg salad sandwiches when she didn’t like the entree. But that’s nothing compared to some of the recipes college students have devised using ingredients found in modern dining halls. How about Cream Cheese French Toast with “Caramelized” Bananas? Pizza Panini? Tater Tot Grilled Cheese? That’s good eating. Shown here is a Waffle Breakfast Sandwich. Find the recipe for it at Spoon University. And see the entire list of dining hall recipes at Buzzfeed.
It’s a feeling we’ve all had, about this situation or many others like it. We know what’s going on, so it must be obvious to everyone else. How can they not know? But think about the people you see in your daily activities. You don’t know what they just did in the bathroom. And honestly, you don’t care, either. You don’t even think about it. So be assured that they’re not thinking about you, either. But that nagging feeling of obviousness lingers on. This is the latest comic from Sarah Andersen at Sarah’s Scribbles.
Andersen’s new book Adulthood is a Myth will be out in March, and is available for pre-order now!
How a chicken farmer, a pair of princesses, and 27 imaginary spies helped the Allies win World War II.
In the weeks leading up to D-day, Allied commanders had their best game faces on. “This operation is not being planned with any alternatives,” barked General Dwight D. Eisenhower. “This operation is planned as a victory, and that’s the way it’s going to be!” Indeed, more than 6,000 ships were ready to cruise across the English Channel to plant the first wave of two million troops on the white beaches of Normandy. Nearly 20,000 vehicles would crawl ashore as 13,000 planes dropped thousands of tons of explosives and thousands of paratroopers.
The sheer size of the invasion—it would be the largest in history—was staggering. But so were the stakes. With the first day’s casualty rate expected to reach 90 percent and the outcome of World War II hanging in the balance, the truth was that Eisenhower was riddled with doubt. He’d transformed into an anxious chimney, puffing four packs of cigarettes a day. Other Allied leaders felt equally unsure. “I see the tides running red with their blood,” Winston Churchill lamented. General George S. Patton privately complained of feeling “awfully restless.” Chief of the Imperial General Staff Alan Brooke was more blunt: “It won’t work,” he said. The day before the invasion, Eisenhower quietly penciled a note accepting blame in case he had to order retreat. When he watched the last of the 101st Airborne Division take off, the steely general started to cry.
They were worried for good reason. With so many troops and so much artillery swelling in England, it was impossible to keep the attack a secret. Hitler knew it was coming, and he’d been preparing a defense for months. Only one detail eluded him, and he was confident in a Nazi victory if he could figure it out—he needed to know where, exactly, the attack would happen. To make D-day a success, the Allies needed to keep him in the dark: They’d have to trick the Germans into thinking the real invasion was just a bluff, while making it seem like a major attack was imminent elsewhere. The task seemed impossible, but luckily, the British had a secret weapon: a short, young balding Spaniard. He was the king of con men, an amateur spy gone pro, the world’s sneakiest liar. He was also, of all things, a chicken farmer.
Juan Pujol Garcia had been working at a hotel when he decided to become a spy. Although he was born to a wealthy Barcelona family in 1912, Pujol had squandered his privileges. To the disappointment of his family, he dropped out of boarding school at 15, eventually enrolling instead at an academy for poultry farmers. At 21, he served six months of mandatory military service, but army life wasn’t for him: The pacifist ditched the cavalry and bought a movie theater. When that venture failed, he bought a smaller theater, which flopped too. Success chronically eluded him. By 24, Pujol had resigned himself to working on a sinking chicken farm and marrying a girl he wasn't sure he loved. His life was normal, if not boring.
But life in 1930s Spain was anything but boring. In 1931, King Alfonso XIII sensed his popularity crumbling and fled the country without formally abdicating, leaving Spain a political vacuum. Communist and Fascist groups violently fought for power. Bullrings became theaters for public massacres, and the corpses of politicians littered Madrid’s alleys.
When Spain plunged into civil war in July 1936, Pujol was supposed to report for duty, but he fled instead. He was soon caught and thrown in prison. Then, after unwittingly joining a jailbreak, he bolted to a safe house in Barcelona. He never saw his fiancée again. More than a year passed, and in 1938, a depressed and emaciated Pujol emerged from hiding. The escapee looked so bad, he was able to forge a document saying he was too old for the army. It would be the first of a growing snowball of lies.
Humanity has a long tradition of trading witty insults as a form of entertainment and one-upmanship, manifested in modern times as rap battles or playing the dozens. These (sometimes) good-natured competitions are found all over the world in many eras of history. One in particular survives in the literature from medieval Britain. Back then, it was called flyting.
Flyting is a stylized battle of insults and wits that was practiced most actively between the fifth and 16th centuries in England and Scotland. Participants employed the timeless tools of provocation and perversion as well as satire, rhetoric, and early bathroom humor to publicly trounce opponents. The term “flyting” comes from Old English and Old Norse words for “quarrel” and “provocation.” 'Tis a form of highly poetic abuse, or highly abusive poetry—a very early precursor to MTV’s Yo Mama and Eminem’s 8 Mile.
“Court flyting” sometimes served as entertainment for royals such as Scottish kings James IV and James V. The most famous surviving exchange is The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie, which was performed in the early 16th century by William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy for the court of James IV. A medieval rap battle between two clever men, it featured the first recorded instance of poop being used as an insult. The moment Kennedy called Dunbar a “shit without a wit,” he ushered in a whole new era of scatological humor.
Watch a demonstration of the visual effects work in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but only if you’ve seen the movie, since there are plot points revealed here. I would suggest watching it in full-screen mode, since it's shown mostly in split screen.
The Force Awakens has been nominated for five Academy Awards, all in technical categories. The lack of pre-release viewing for critics may have contributed to the film receiving no major nominations for acting or directing, but it's up for Oscars in Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects, and Original Score. And deservedly so. Still, there's no guarantee of winning. Mad Max: Fury Road received ten nominations, in many of the same categories (plus Best Picture and Best Director), and the technical aspects of that movie were quite stunning. -via io9
Games are often used as metaphors for life. Chess is often used as a metaphor, although usually for war, which is more accurate in some ways than in others. Tor Bair beccame intimately aware of chess as a metaphor at an early age, and other games came only later.
From the age of seven, I played chess constantly and competitively. I played in school, online, at national competitions. Chess taught me patience, perseverance, critical thinking — crucial skills for tackling life’s hard problems and difficult situations.
Chess wired me to think causally at a young age. Move your knight here; you’ll trap his bishop. Capture that pawn; you’ll weaken his right side. Every correct move led me closer to a checkmate; every false step brought me closer to defeat.
Chess also introduced the idea of the “other”. Black versus white. Our school versus theirs. And every game was zero sum — there was only ever one point to score, either to be shared or taken in its entirety. No way to grow the pie.
The problem is that chess is logical, and can be as simple or as difficult as your opponent is. Life isn’t logical or simple, even though it can take a lifetime to master, as they say about chess. Bair decided that life is more like Tetris than chess, and requires a completely different set of skills, strategy, and philosophy. Of course, playing and winning are two different things. He lays out four ways Tetris is a metaphor for our lives, and it all makes perfect sense. -via reddit
Klara Tavakoli Goesche put together a feel-good music video featuring clips of the biggest musical acts of the past, set the the 1974 song "I've Got the Music in Me" by Kiki Dee. It's a great dip into a pool of nostalgia for those of us of a certain age -and just plain fun for everyone else. From the vimeo description:
I began this video project in December 2015. Sadly, we've lost two of the legends featured since I started. So this is now dedicated to David Bowie and Lemmy Kilmister. This video is a celebration of when musical artistry was all about the music. I also wanted to showcase this great song by Kiki Dee, the first white, female, 'blue-eyed soul singer' from the UK accepted by a Motown label. Finally, I made this in anticipation of the forthcoming HBO show 'Vinyl'. Turn it up.
Oh, you better believe I turned it up! -Thanks, Klara!
Echo 12, a pilot of the Rebellion, crashed and is left for dead on the ice planet Hoth. He’s not entirely alone there, which makes the situation quite dangerous. Even worse, it will be dark soon.
Rebel Scum is a Star Wars fan film by Blood Brother Cinema Co.
Rebel Scum pays homage to the original Star Wars trilogy; nearly all visual effects were created without the use of CGI, using time honored methods such a stop-motion animation. Shot on location in -30°C (-22°F) at Columbia Icefield in Alberta Canada.
There is a moment where it might have helped to have a lightbulb go off over the character's head. Read more about this production at its website. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Some times you feel like an adult; sometimes you don’t. As someone who’s done too much "adulting," I have to give this one a pass. Having cookies and alcohol for dinner occasionally may be ridiculous, but it’s not all that irresponsible. At least she isn’t driving around drunk or falling behind on her rent. Baby steps, y’all! This is the latest from Brandon and Dami at Hot Comics for Cool People. -via Tastefully Offensive
British actor Alan Rickman was a star of the London stage, but became better known when he went to Hollywood and landed parts like that of Hans Gruber in Die Hard, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Rasputin in Rasputin, and Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series. The Guardian has announced that Rickman has died of cancer in London.
Rickman was an actor unafraid of the unexpected. He voiced a monarch in an episode of cult carton King of the Hill and a megalomaniac pilot fish called Joe in the Danish animator Help! I’m A Fish. In 2000, Rickman appeared as Sharleen Spiteri’s love interest in the music video for Texas’s 2000 hit ‘In Demand’, which involves them tangoing at a petrol station. In 2015, Rickman again featured in the video for one of their singles, this time with vocals.
He spoofed his own persona in comedy Galaxy Quest (2000), in which he plays a Shakespearian-trained actor who has found fame as a Spock-style alien in a long-running sci-fi series and in Victoria Wood’s Christmas special of the same year, as an upright colonel at the Battle of Waterloo.
Rickman was sanguine about his legions of admirers, who declared their love on countless websites, video tributes and at stage doors. Even scientists were not immune: in 2008, linguistics professors concluded that the most appealing male voice mixes elements of Rickman, Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon.
At Johnson Space Center, south of Houston, Texas, there’s a nondescript building that contains things you won’t find anywhere else in the world. And some things you might find, but you wouldn’t know their significance. Building 31 has laboratories containing a curious and carefully curated collection of objects from outer space. There are rocks brought back from the moon by Apollo astronauts, meteorites from Mars, particles from the tail of a comet, and a precious but tiny amount of solar wind particles.
NASA keeps some of its most sensitive samples in the “Genesis” lab, which has the most rigorous cleanliness protocols of any facility at the space center. The Genesis lab houses particles from the solar wind, essentially tiny bits of the Sun which hold clues about the composition of the solar nebula at the time when the planets formed.
That morning we had been instructed to not wear wedding rings, nor scented deodorant. In the anteroom we had donned gloves, booties, and hair nets. In the “gowning” room, we had put on masks, full-body polyester suits, head covers, boots over the body suit and booties, and a second pair of gloves. Also, they’d taken my notepad and given me “clean” paper—once inside I’d receive a clean Sharpie pen. Nor did our photography equipment escape the cleanroom regime: we had to spend several minutes rubbing down cameras and lenses and tripods with alcohol wipes until the scientists were satisfied that the devices were reasonably dust-free.
After this entire process, we asked if the lab gets a lot of visitors. “I don’t take people in,” Allton, the lab's curator, said. “You guys are special. The main reason is, people are dirty.”
The general public doesn’t have access to those samples, but we can see them anyway. Ars Technica took plenty of photographs and notes on their exclusive tour to share with us. While the photos are fascinating, the best part of the article are the stories of how these outer space samples came to be there. -via Metafilter
The newest edition of the Mode 100 Years series shows us what women wore to exercise in over the past century. The model is YouTube fitness vlogger Cassey Ho. It’s not just a fashion video, either: Ho demonstrates what was considered a “workout” in those bygone decades.
We may laugh now, but 100 years ago, household chores meant heavy lifting, transportation meant walking, and “fitness” was something people rarely had time for anyway. As real life got easier, we had to adjust our recreation to fill in the physical fitness gap. Most of us don’t exercise enough even now. -via Tastefully Offensive
The nominations for the Academy Awards will be announced later this morning. Meanwhile, as is tradition, the nominees for the 36th annual Golden Raspberry Awards, affectionately known as the Razzies, were announced a day earlier. The Oscars recognize excellence in filmmaking, and the Razzies throw a spotlight on the worst movies and actors of the year. A few films dominate the nominations.
While the Academy Award-worthy films seem more plentiful than usual this year, the Razzie noms are focused on a few exceptional front-runners. Fifty Shades of Grey, the obvious favorite, is nominated in six of 10 categories: worst picture, worst actor, worst actress, worst “screen combo” (chemistry), worst director and worst screenplay. Adam Sandler’s Pixels (five nominations), Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (six nominations), and the Wachowski siblings’ Jupiter Ascending (six nominations) are also prime contenders.
The winners will be announced Saturday, February 27, one day ahead of the Academy Awards. See the full list of nominees at Flavorwire.
