RelentlesslyOptimistic

It was that rock & roll

via whatthefuckbooks.tumblr.com

Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars and Their Careers (SFW)

Using the Internet Adult Film Database, "the premier resource for information about the American porn community on the web (who knew?)," Jon Millward extracted lots of interesting information about those who work in porn movies: Most common names: Nikki & David; average bra size: 34B. The infographic above is a color wheel of actresses races. Read the story at JonMillward.com.

There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written

"In Alaska’s North Slope, the population of bowhead whales seems to be recovering. But that’s really not the coolest part of this Alaska Dispatch story. Instead, it’s this, noticed by Geoffry Gagnon"

"Bowheads seem to be recovering from the harvest of Yankee commercial whaling from 1848 to 1915, which wiped out all but 1,000 or so animals. Because the creatures can live longer than 200 years — a fact [Craig] George discovered when he found an old stone harpoon point in a whale — some of the bowheads alive today may have themselves dodged the barbed steel points of the Yankee whalers."

Read the rest at blogs.smithsonianmag.com

Apple Maps

Note "that the Apple Maps icon actually suggests that you drive right off an overpass"

via imgur.com

Weird Picture Break: Roadkill With Balloon

via aboutcolonblank.com

The effect of drug control spending on addiction rates

via boingboing.net

Forbes: Obama is the smallest government spender since Eisenhower

"Amidst all the cries of Barack Obama being the most prolific big government spender the nation has ever suffered, Marketwatch is reporting that our president has actually been tighter with a buck than any United States president since Dwight D. Eisenhower."

via www.forbes.com

How to blow up a horse (a government guide)

The US Forest Service has a guide: ”Obliterating Animal Carcasses with Explosives” by Jim Tour and Mike Knodel, 1995, USDA Forest Service document #9523-2315–MTDC.

Note: Not to be applied to whales

via www.improbable.com

JetBlue Captain Blames Midair Freakout on 24-hour GOP Campaign Coverage

"...During the commute, the captain inexplicably left the cockpit and began walking the cabin, ranting about bombs and al Qaeda. At that point, a former corrections officer and six other passengers restrained him..."

"...the captain called reporters from his hospital room and blamed his emotional collapse on his realization that the United States had been taken over by gay terrorists plotting to banish Christians to the moon -- something he learned during the non-stop media coverage of the Republican primaries.[emphasis added]"

via www.benningtonvalepress.com

Startling but true: Giraffes eat bones

That's not a cigar in this giraffe's mouthit's a bone. Apparently, although giraffes mostly eat the leaves of thorny trees such as acacias, they occasionally supplement their diets with minerals from other sources, such as bones they find on the ground.

via www.scientificamerican.com

Mornings on Maple Street: Attaching stories to Lewis Hine's Child Labor photos

UPDATE: Lewis Hine was a photographer who began working for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) in 1908 documenting working children.

Joe Manning ferreted out the stories behind this picture, and many others:

"As I type the opening words of this story, it has been five years to the month since I saw this picture for the first time, in August of 2006. It was posted on a photo blog I ran across while searching for information about Lewis Hine."

The children and families depicted in the child labor photographs of Lewis Hine were unwittingly caught in the act of making history, but we know almost nothing about them. The pictures were taken for a noble purpose, but a century later, they have become an enormous photo album of the American family. By finding out what happened to some of them, and by revealing the photos to their descendants (most descendants are unaware of them), we are dignifying their lives, and the lives of everyone that history has forgotten.

via www.sevensteeples.com

Batman: "I am the 1%"

via afternoonsnoozebutton.com

Only on Fox - Man vs Beast:"[It] was only a race once the camel decided it liked to chase midgets"

Shows where midgets compete with animals. Where midgets compete with each other. Fox’s other programming (which may or may not involve midgets). The network has finally come to grips with its lowest-common-denominator nature.

"This year’s competitions (and let's all pray that Man Vs. Beast 3 is on the Fox horizon) featured...a relay team of 4 midgets racing against a camel."

"...[the Beast] doesn’t try, for the simple reason that ...It doesn’t know it’s in a competition. That’s why greyhound races require fake rabbits and horse races require jockeys. And why that camel race was only a race once the camel decided it liked to chase midgets."

From Paul's Ponderings via Searching For A Band of Gypsies

One of those obvious questions you never thought of

via juliasegal.tumblr.com

The World of Beetles

via thedailywh.at