Toadfish Monastery

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/slideshow/photos-state-fairs-food-favorites-deep-fried-beer-8276151

Click and zoom...  Takes a second or two to clarify after each zooming.


http://gigapixelphotography.com/

http://www.jesusdressup.com/#

http://www.muhammaddressup.com/

NSFW


http://www.leakedpracticevideo.com/uj_world_peace.mov 

I make no comment.

I am dumbstruck.

We have been alerted by our esteemed comrade DavidH to the grievous plight of Sir Humphrey Gribling.
We have therefore started this thread to offer what help and advice to this good and gentle knight, who appears to have arrived here as a 'Time Ttraveller' of some sort, and is 'full bewidered and confused 'by our modern world.
I'm sure the Gentle Knight will explain at appropriate length, through the good offices of the esteemed said DavidH.

[Admins Note: We do not allow 'Sock Puppets' in the Monastery, but many alternate characters are channelled by our Siblings, and announce their contributions by explicitly signing there own names to their 'channelled' under their 'hosts' ID. Such 'Alter Ego's' are explicitly welcomed to the rescue of the Gentle Knight..]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaPepCVepCg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebmrider%2Ecom%2Fforums%2Fshowthread%2Ephp%3Ft%3D2869&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-TxebxUD54&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebmrider%2Ecom%2Fforums%2Fshowthread%2Ephp%3Ft%3D2869&feature=player_embedded

Edited for visibility by Swatopluk
[youtube=425,350]xaPepCVepCg[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaPepCVepCg

Won the Cannes Film Festival Award, too, I hear.

http://www.historiadeunletrero.com/ 

 found this over at the Richard Dawkins forum.
One of the sweetest, most effective, funniest put downs of pretentiousness I've ever seen 

Quote

Quotedocdee wrote:
One can never measure the speed of time.

Prepare a lovely cold Martini, stirred not shaken, turn off the TV, sit down and think about how to measure the speed that angels fly.

Have another Martini.

Now think about the colour of respect and then turn up the brightness.

Have another Martini.

Consider the sound that a paradox makes as it crashes into a contradiction.

Have another Martini.

Sit back and gently stroke your todger as you drift into sleep.

John

Incidentally, did you know that Respect for the Aged Day is a Public Holiday in Japan?

It appears that the Hominid line evolved into recognizable proto-humans about 500,000 years ago in Africa. This line spread into the habitable parts of Europe and Asia (Remember it was in an Ice Age back then) and appears to have speciated (again) into Neanderthals in Europe and Russia, and (possibly/probably [the fossil evidence is sparse]) a slightly more gracile branch in East Asia, and a much more gracile branch (our direct ancestors) remaining in Africa, by about 100,000 years ago.

The fossil/remains evidence found so far is most abundant for Neanderthals, reasonable for the African branch, and sparse for the Asian Branch.
In all of these groups however, the level of development is approximately the same:
1 Tools are simple, crude and uniform across the whole range of all branches.
2 Population densities are low (sparse) for all branches and groups are small (<40).
3 Few people lived beyond 40 years and none beyond 45.
4 Food was mostly fruits, nuts and vegetables with some poor wild grains, and small mammals, birds and shellfish for meat. Large mammals are only a very occasional part of the diet and none of the dangerous large mammals.
5 This description persists unchanged for tens of thousands of years. No innovation. No local cultural difference, or tool differences seen
6 Most of the older skeletal evidence of the more aged specimens show definite sign of disabling illnesses recovered from, and disabling injuries (broken legs etc. well healed.
The significance of the last point is that those people who survived into 'old age' would only have been able to do so if they were actively and carefully tended to and cared for by other members of their group. What was the evolutionary driver favoring 'caring for the aged in your group'?
(Here I'm getting speculative). I believe that the limited tools they had, local knowledge, social organisation and etc, were laboriously learned by primitive brains that, while they had for sound embryological reasons grown large (larger mostly than current humans), had not yet evolved the sophisticated self organising internal structures that modern human brains have (see Pinker The Language Instinct, and The Blank Slate). The older members of the group were valuable repositories of laboriously learned knowledge and skills, and if you cared for your elders, you got a huge advantage from being able to continue to learn from them.
And so it stayed for about 50,000 years.
Then the African branch started developing the internal brain structures pre-encapsulating the mechanisms of more mental processes. (I still like the name Julian Jaynes coined for these, long before modern Cognitive Neuroscience even began discovering and documenting them - Aptic Structures). These 'Aptic Structures' underwent an explosive development over the next ten thousand years, the effect of a 'runaway explosion' type of  evolutionary driver - positive feed back.
The Aptic structures allowed better and faster learning, which allowed (finally) innovation and the development of better tools, which eventually allowed the hunting of bigger and more dangerous game, and more social cohesion, larger groups, better food, which favored those who developed better Aptic Structures, which allowed.... and on and on.
The new evolving, gracile 'Cro Magnons' spread quickly into the same ranges as Neanderthals and the Asian branch species, and by 40,000 years ago they had out-competed and eliminated the Neanderthals, by 30,000 or so years ago they had done the same to the Asian Branch, and they continued evolving and spreading their range, and developing better tools and weapons at a (comparatively) frantic pace.
And still, the elders knew more, still it made good sense to tend and care for the elderly, those precious repositories of still more knowledge and wisdom and skill.
I'm going to skip over the next 30,000 years or so .
But recently, the world has changed.
In only the last hundred years or so, with near universal literacy, and cheap printed books, there are better, cheaper and more reliable repositories of knowledge than old people.
In only the last 50 years, knowledge has started increasing so fast that now the elderly have to work hard to even understand what the younger adults take for basic.
In only the last 10 years or so, home computers, worldwide instantaneous communications and the Internet have made the locality of knowledge virtually irrelevant.

Old Farts like me and jjj and Sibling Chatty may, and I say may, earn the respect of our younger siblings, but they earn our respect, too. The yearning for the automatic respect for the aged, so clearly expressed by jjj, is now, for all of us, just that - a yearning. It no longer has the force of evolution demanding it.
And that may be a powerful evolutionary driver itself.

This topic has been moved to The Toadfish Comic Project.

http://toadfishmonastery.com/forum/index.php?topic=739.0

Mother: All your life I have tried to teach you how to be yourself. And all I have been able to show you is how to be me.

Daughter: All my life I have tried to study how to be you. And all I have learned is how to be me.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/12/cardboard.food.ap/index.html

So here's one of my all time favorites:

I've been looking for a long time...
http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

I've had a lot of different watches in my life. Some of my favorites were a little strange. For about 10 years as a teenager I had a simple stainless steel one I loved, and that quite a few people had said 'nice watch' when they saw it (I had no idea why, but I agreed!). When it eventually stopped working, I took it to a local (small town) jeweller to get it repaired. His eyes kinda lit up when I said, "I need this fixed", and he immediately opened the back and then gave me a funny look and said "this isn't worth repairing'. I was a bit puzzled, and said, "Well, have you got a new one just like it?"
He gave me an even funnier look and said "Certainly. It's about 800 pounds." I must have looked even more puzzled, and he explained (quite politely) that mine was 'just a cheap pin-pallette copy of 'one of these', and showed me an apparently identical one called a 'Rolex Oyster'. He was greatly amused that I'd never heard of them, but glad I hadn't paid a lot of money (at all) for mine...

In the early '70s, I was quite annoyed that I couldn't buy a 'digital watch' that showed the time on the 24hr clock - I had to keep a 'shift log' at work and needed the 'military format' time twenty or so times a night - 'digital watches' at the time had little mechanical rotating dials with the numbers on them!

Way back in 1982, I bought one of the first Casio 5000 models. It was incredibly accurate, easy to use, had a countdown timer (which I used a lot) and seemed set to last for ever. In 1988 I crashed my motorcycle, and smashed the crystal on my watch.  I threw it in a drawer, bought a new cheap casio (with less functions) and carried on. 3 years later I found the smashed one in the back of the drawer. It was still working and only wrong by 15 seconds!
I've had various other watches since then, (really missed the countdown timer), but Casio switched to the G-Shock models which were all way too thick to suit me (wouldn't fit under a shirt-cuff).
I really fancied the new Solar Powered and Atomic-Clock synched Casios, but they were still too thick (and didn't have a countdown timer).
Then I found the GW5600J. Based on the old 5000 series, Atomic, Solar Powered, 5 alarms and a countdown timer, full backlight. And the same style and thickness as my old 5000! Not thin, but not ridiculously thick either. So I asked my ever-loving for one as a B'day present, and got it earlier (Got to love a woman like that!)
I've had it a week now, I love it, I expect it to last the rest of my life (this sucker is tough), and neat, clear, easy to use and accurate!
I need a digital, to tell me what the date and day of the week is - I can't read those little windows on analog watches, anymore! And I have a countdown timer again!

Martha Stewart's Tips for Rednecks

Dining Out
1.   When decanting wine, make sure that you tilt the paper cup, and pour slowly so as not to "bruise" the fruit of the vine.
2.   If drinking directly from the bottle, always hold it with your fingers covering the label.
Entertaining In Your Home
1.   A centerpiece for the table should never be anything prepared by a taxidermist.
2.   Do not allow the dog to eat at the table, no matter how good his manners are.
Personal Hygiene
1.   While ears need to be cleaned regularly, this is a job that should be done in private using one's OWN truck keys.
2.   Proper use of toiletries can forestall bathing for several days.
3.   However, if you live alone, deodorant is a waste of good money.
4.   Dirt and grease under the fingernails is a social no-no, as they tend to detract from a woman's jewelry and alter the taste of finger foods.
Dating (Outside the Family)
1.   Always offer to bait your date's hook, especially on the first date.
2.   Be aggressive.  Let her know you're interested: "I've been wanting to go out with you since I read that stuff on the bathroom wall two years ago."
3.   Establish with her parents what time she is expected back. Some will say 10:00 PM. Others might say "Monday."  If the latter is the answer, it is the man's responsibility to get her to school on time.
Theatre Etiquette
1.   Crying babies should be taken to the lobby and picked up immediately after the movie has ended.
2.   Refrain from talking to characters on the screen. Tests have proven they can't hear you.
Weddings
1.   Livestock, usually, is a poor choice for a wedding gift.
2.   Kissing the bride for longer than 5 seconds can get you shot.
3.   For the groom, at least, rent a tux.  A leisure suit with a cummerbund and a clean bowling shirt can create a tacky appearance.
4.   Though uncomfortable, say "yes" to socks and shoes for this special occasion.
Driving Etiquette
1.   Dim your headlights for approaching vehicles; even if the gun is loaded, and the deer is in sight.
2.   When approaching a four-way stop, the vehicle with the largest tires always has the right of way.
3.   Never tow another car using panty hose and duct tape.
4.   When sending your wife down the road with a gas can, it is impolite to ask her to bring back beer.
5.   Do not lay rubber while traveling in a funeral procession.
Tips For All Occasions
1.   Never take a beer to a job interview.
2.   Always identify people in your yard before shooting at them.
3.   It's considered tacky to take a cooler to church.
4.   If you have to vacuum the bed, it is time to change the sheets.
5.   Even if you're certain that you are included in the will, it is still considered tacky to drive a U-Haul to the funeral home.

Our flower beds in our new house (ten years ago) started out as pure Tennessee Red Clay. Eventually, natural action under the lawns has turn that into passable topsoil, but the flower beds were another problem entirely. Tennessee Red Clay absorbs a lot of water when it rains, and gets very slippery and sticky. In the summer it dries quite quickly to a hardness that will bend a moderately priced spade...
We added three inches of Peat and rotavated it in.
It essential to mulch in Tennessee to prevent the drying out (even after soil improvement). We decided to cover the flower beds in 'gardening fabric' (a water-permeable membrane)and cover that with a large pine-bark nuggets mulch. It worked fine for about three years, and then we started to get lots of weeds.
It seems that organic mulches gradually decompose into rich soil. This gave a two inch layer of good soil for the weeds to get started in, and they then sent fine rootlets into and through the fabric, integrating themselves with it!
We had to pull the whole lot off. Fourteen large garden trash bags full of what had been expensive mulch and fabric.
We relaid new fabric, and this time covered it in three inches of river pebbles. Seven years now and no problems.

This topic has been moved to Home Brewing.

http://toadfishmonastery.com/forum/index.php?topic=77.0

This topic has been moved to Food.

http://toadfishmonastery.com/forum/index.php?topic=185.0

This topic has been moved to Food.

http://toadfishmonastery.com/forum/index.php?topic=459.0