There are so many ways to make barbecue sauce that you want to know the basic kinds and maybe sample them all. That could involve some traveling to get the "real thing," as most of them on this list are named for the region where they originated.
American barbecue sauces owe their differences to their colonial histories and can be divided in three basic categories, vinegar based, tomato based, and mustard based. Then there are at least 11 distinct classic American regional barbecue sauce styles and infinite variations (if we stretch the definition of "sauce" to include Memphis dry rub).
But this guide has links to recipes so you can make your own, and to commercially-available versions you could try out, too! Link -via the Presurfer
Several Navy SEALS recently parachuted into Dodger Stadium to impress the crowd. They had to maneuver themselves in from pretty high -it's about a four-minute drop- but executed it perfectly! And the great thing for us is that one guy was wearing a camera so we can see, if not feel, what the dive was like. Link-Thanks, James!
Street artist Paolo Cirio is taking images of people who are enshrined forever on Google Street View and putting them in their places in the real world, a project he calls Street Ghosts. So far, New York City, London, and Berlin have paper images of the people captured on Street View placed in the exact locations they were photographed. These may be comng soon to a street near you! Link -via mental_floss
I've loved big old houses since I was a toddler and lived in a Victorian mansion. Of course, it was subdivided into student apartments by then, but still... I see homes like this and think how wonderful it would be to live there, but how very expensive it would be to make it habitable again.
Documented by photographer Kevin Bauman as part of his excellent 100 Abandoned Houses project, the 24-block neighbourhood of Midtown Detroit known as Brush Park, conceived in the 1850s, had once been an oasis of grand homes aimed at the city’s elite. Spearheaded by entrepreneur Edmund Brush, construction peaked several decades later with 300 Victorian, Second Empire and Romanesque homes. But the area fell into disrepair due to the advent of streetcars and automobiles, which enabled well-to-do residents to move away from the inner city during the early 20th Century.
Don't fall for this scam, like so many innocent students before you! Just look at Alex, who has a PhD in molecular biology and makes his living as ...a blogger. -via Cynical-C
Have you ever wondered how the American football field came to be the way it is? I didn't, either, but the way it evolved from the soccer and rugby fields it was based on is more interesting than I expected.
The origin of American football is surprisingly complex, but here’s the abridged version: professional football was formally organized in 1920, from loosely affiliated professional organizations that evolved out of college football, which was born out of rugby, which, of course, has its origins in soccer – also known as football to everyone else in the world. While American football bears little resemblance to these earlier games, the fields are vaguely similar large, green rectangles that connote their shared history. However, American football is unique in that the field exists independently of the ball. That is to say, the field does not need to be a perfectly flat or consistent surface in order to accommodate the rolls or bounces of a ball. Football is a battle for territory as much as points, and so the field primarily serves as a way to measure the progress of this battle. And it also cushions tackles. Well, it mostly cushions tackles – but more on that in a minute.
The basic field design has been tweaked and changed over the years, with the biggest change being the introduction of AstroTurf. Read all about it at Design Decoded. Link
You know how you reach an error page of a website, and it often says "Not Found"? The European NotFound Project wants to use those pages to place notices for missing children. What could have been just a sad pun is another way to use available space to spread the word about children who have never been found. And if one child is found because of it, the whole project will be worth the effort. Link -via Laughing Squid
You've enjoyed all the Screen Junkis' honest trailers so far ...how about this one for The Avengers? Is it true to the film? I haven't seen it, but it is out on home video today. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Salem, Massachusetts, is a lovely place, and the people who live there will defend their city as much more than a Halloween destination. However, the city knows what side it's bread is buttered on. If you're thinking of a Halloween road trip, Salem might be a fun place to check out. If you don't plan to go anywhere, you can read about how Salem capitalized on its reputation as the setting for the 1692 witch trials at Neatorama's Halloween blog, which you need to bookmark for all things Halloween. Link
A 6-month-old gibbon named APEril plays with Chuck, a female cat. I've noticed that my cats, while they can be crabby with adults when they aren't in the mood to play or cuddle, will always be very patient with babies and toddlers. Chuck is obviously that kind of cat. -via Arbroath
Joe Arridy was convicted of the vicius rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl from a prominent family in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1936. He was sentenced to be executed for the crime, to which he confessed.
Joe Arridy didn't ask for a last meal. It's doubtful that he even understood the concept.
He was 23 years old and had an IQ of 46. He knew about eating and playing and trains, things you could see and smell and experience. But abstractions, like God and justice and evil, eluded him. The doctors called him an imbecile — in those days, a clinical term for someone who has the mental capacity of a child between four and six years old, someone considered more capable than an idiot but not quite as swift as a moron.
The newspapers of the 1930s had other names for him. "Feeble-minded killer." "Weak-witted sex slayer." "Perverted maniac."
In 1992, Robert Perske began looking into the case, and saw a travesty of justice. Arridy was convicted despite the fact that another man, Frank Aguilar, was identified by the victim's sister who witnessed and survived the incident, that forensic evidence linked Aguilar to the crime (but not Arridy), and that Arridy's confession was neither written down nor witnessed by anyone besides the Cheyenne, Wyoming, Sheriff George Carroll, who arrested Arridy. And Arridy had an alibi.
The alibi witness was never called to testify on Arridy's behalf. Perhaps his account was considered unreliable; he was, after all, another "feeble-minded" unfortunate. But how reliable, Perske wondered, was the confession Arridy made in Cheyenne?
The circumstances were certainly suspicious. No one heard the bulk of Arridy's story but Carroll, who made no effort to record it. Arridy started out talking about a club, then it became a hatchet; Carroll knew from the newspapers that it had to be an ax. Arridy didn't start blaming "Frank" for the murder until after Carroll talked to Chief Grady and discovered that Frank Aguilar had already been arrested. And how likely was it that Arridy, who still couldn't get the names of colors right, had provided a detailed description of the Drain home — unless he was prompted in some way?
The prison warden cried when Arridy was executed, although Arridy himself never displayed any understanding of what was happening. Read the entire account at Denver Westword News. Link -via Metafilter
Read it again, and this time with feeling! Don't forget your motivation! This dramatic reading of ingredients was brought to you by the comedy team Awkward Spaceship. -Thanks, Martin!
A couple of years after Leo Traynor opened a Twitter account, he became the victim of a troll.
It started in July 2009. I'd been on Twitter for over 2 years at that point having joined in May 2007, and I'd never had a problem. My account was followed by a fairly innocuous looking one which I followed back and within 10 minutes I had received a Direct Message (DM) calling me a 'Dirty f*cking Jewish scumbag'. I blocked the account and reported it as spam. The following week it happened again in an identical manner. A new follower, I followed back, received a string of abusive DM's, blocked and reported for spam. Two or three times a week. Sometimes two or three times a day. An almost daily cycle of blocking and reporting and intense verbal abuse. So I made my account private and the problem went away for a short while. There were no problems on Twitter but my Facebook account was hacked, my blog was spammed and my email address was flooded with foulmouthed and disgusting comments & images. Images of corpses and concentration camps and dismembered bodies. Again, it eased off for a couple of weeks. I relaxed. Thought they'd finally tired of failing to get a reaction from me. Boy, was I wrong.
The situation escalated, as Traynor's wife also became the victim of online abuse, and then he started receiving threatening packages in the mail. A serious cyber-investigation followed, and this summer Traynor found out who the troll was. And that's where the real surprise was. And the confrontation that followed is a fascinating story. Read it all at his blog. Link -via Boing Boing
Dr. Roy Lowry demonstrates what happens when liquid nitrogen returns to its gaseous state. It involves the release of a lot of energy. He blew it up real good! -via the Presurfer, celebrating 12 years online today.
