Day: September 30, 2009

Take it from Snee: Cosplay against Confederates

So, I’ve been reading Confederates in the Attic, in which the author–Tony Horwitz–explores the South’s enduring CSA obsession. While it delves into issues like the Confederate battle flag (which I’ve commented on before and have since changed my mind about) and the families of long-dead soldiers, the interesting parts are about the reenactors.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—there is a dearth of Union reenactors compared to Confederates, so much so that Southerners often have to pose as Yankees just to get the numbers right for battles. Apparently, people in the North don’t harp so much about a war that they won 144 years ago.

What are die-hards obsessed with a war over states’ rights [to slavery ] to do when their Northern counterparts don’t want to play along anymore?

And then I remembered a comparison I wrote over a year ago and a comment Chugs made:  reenactors are the original cosplayers. Continue reading Take it from Snee: Cosplay against Confederates

Escalators: bane of the dead

So, you’re in the midst of a zombie outbreak. Do you head for the hills, or take refuge in a mall? A new physics paper says that hunkering down in a sprawling shopping center will increase your odds of survival. That’s right, smarty smart people are now talking about zombies.

A paper from Davide Cassi at the Università di Parma, published this month in Physical Review E, explores how targets might be annihilated by “random walkers.” These walkers might be any moving organism that can eliminate a target, but keep in mind that zombies are the perfect analogy for these “walkers.”

The paper examines the likelihood of the targets surviving if they remain immobile within various types of structures. One of the findings is that the more complex the hideout, the less likely a random walker is to encounter a target. What does this mean? Hiding out in a building filled with twisting corridors, such as a mall or a school, offers a better chance of survival than hiding out in the open or in more open structures.

Of course, all bets are off if your particular breed of zombie, excuse me, “walker”, is driven to repeat some of the actions that it committed in life.

Because of our tight American-style pants?

Such as we understand women, anyway.Psychologists Cindy Meston and David Buss, from the University of Texas at Austin, have attempted to answer that immortal question: why do women have sex?

There are apparently 237 possible reasons, varying from woman to woman. (Were you suprised?)

We know for a fact, though, that one of those reasons must be “because he didn’t force me under the covers when he farted tonight.”

Just try getting a dentist in the Cretaceous era

We all know that a super asteroid powered along the space ways by the time traveling voice of Steven Tyler killed most of the dinosaurs. But what about Tyrannosaurus rex?

Turns out he probably should’ve flossed a bit more. You know, with the those hilariously tiny arms that they had.

Tee-hee! Hilariously tiny arms! Every time a tyrannosaurus has an itch, it’s like a scene out of a sitcom!

The finely-made watch is ticking on Switzerland’s doom

Last week, Libyan leader and noted crazy person Omar Gaddafi made a rambling speech in front of the United Nations. Most of the speech was just a bunch of nutty ideas, but the dictator did make a good point: what the hell is Switzerland for?

Gaddafi, who looks like Antonio Banderas after a bender, suggested that Switzerland be divided up among other European countries (because that plan always works) and be done with that pesky, neutral nation. What are the Swiss good for, anyway? We know how to make their cheese, their military sold the rights to their famous knife tools, hell, we even use the inverted colors of their flag as the world symbol for “don’t shoot at me.”

Yodeling–that’s what we’re left with. Suck it, Swiss!