A lot of people offered their opinion, but there wasn't consensus on what kind of plants they are. A few people asked me to post photos when the plants blossomed. Well, they did blossom, and they flowers are pretty -- some are white and some are purplish / mauve.
I'm a regular Boing Boing reader. Here's something that's kinda strange, maybe you can help. Here's a link to a picture of my tongue. Perhaps other Boing Boing readers can help me out.
I've had these things hanging under my tongue all my life. Only recently have they been bothering me. I've been accidentally biting them and/or getting them caught on my lower teeth. It hurts a lot when this happens. Nobody else I know has these, except for my 5-year-old son; I figure it's genetic. As an adoptee though, I have limited access to my genetic history. My birth mother says that she doesn't have these. Anyone out there have these? Anyone have them removed? I searched Gray's Anatomy online, and of course have googled, but haven't found anything on this. Any tips or information would be appreciated.
Anyway, if you could post this, cool, I'd like to hear what others have to say about it.
Anyone have an idea of what these things are? Post it in the discussions area.
Is the U.S. Running out of emergency grain reserves?
“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC [USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation] inventory report there are only 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be only 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned [Larry Matlack, President of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM)].
“Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The only thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat, which is about enough wheat to make 1â„2 of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.
Nifty piece of plastic keeps computer cables from falling behind your desk. I wonder if there's an easy way to make something like this from plastic that most people throw away.
For sheer bang-for-the-buck, these cord management cards are tough to beat. They're cheap polyethylene sheets you either stick or screw to the edge of your desk and then snap the cables coming from your computer and peripherals into the recesses. I was tired of picking my iPod connector off the floor when it would fall off my desktop. With this, the ends of the cables are kept at the ready on your desk, which is especially great for stuff you are regularly plugging and unplugging. You can also use it to neatly route other cables coming from the back of a PC tower, like speaker and ethernet, which really helps cut down cable clutter.
Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey took these cell phone photos of Mennonite missionaries during the BEA book expo at the LA Convention Center.
He says: "I thought it was a strange fish-out-of-water thing to see these pale rural Wisconsinites on Broadway downtown. They handed me a CD of dull anti-evolution speeches, and had them in English and Spanish."
Coop has a terrific blog post about his latest painting, which is based on a smoking devil he created for a cigarette lighter company in 1993. The story of how Coop's illustration spread across the planet reminds me of the story of Robert Crumb's Keep on Truckin' illustration.
He quickly gained a life of his own. Lots of cars, trucks and skateboards, tool boxes, laptops, etc. ended up plastered with a Smoking Devil sticker. I started to meet people with the Smoking Devil tattooed on their body. It was at this point that I started to realize that I had, pretty much by accident, created something powerful. However those lines and forms came together, it had a power all its own. It was becoming something more than a piece of art or merchandise. It had become a symbol of something, a little talisman that people used to signify something about themselves and their lives. Pretty heady stuff for a dumb hillbilly such as myself.
As is often the case when an image reaches this level of recognition, it started to become bigger, something that was beyond my control. Like Frankenstein's Monster, the creation often thwarted the will of its creator. The Smoking Devil started to pop up in places where I never intended it to be. It was knocked off as merchandise, used without permission to adorn bars and businesses. I began to understand how Nagel must have felt the first time he saw one of those hideous paintings in the window of a nail salon. (That's probably what killed him.)
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
The new Moog Guitar Paul Vo Edition is made by the famed synthesizer company but is not a guitar synth or MIDI controller. However, the electric geetar is capable of "infinite sustain" that impressed the hell out of Lou Reed. Listening Post has details along with a promotional video featuring Reed and other guitar heroes. Link
Bus services across America are spending a fortune on driver-side kill-switches for busses that have been hijacked by terrorists that can stop them or slow them to five miles per hour. This is to stop terrorist from ramming busses into buildings.
So now, I suppose, terrorists will have to content themselves with activating the kill-switch signals to make every bus on every freeway in America slam to a stop all at once, causing massive fatalities and snarling the nation's traffic in a weeks-long, gory jam.
Nice one, movie-plot-fighters!
Private bus companies have received millions of dollars from the Department of Homeland Security for the security systems. It costs $1,500 to equip each bus, with $50-per-bus monthly maintenance costs.
Gray Line double-decker tourist buses and Coach USA have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds to install 3,000 devices. After receiving a $124,000 federal grant, DeCamp Bus Lines is installing the device on its 80 commuter buses, which travel routes from northern New Jersey to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown.
New Jersey Transit is currently in the process of equipping all of its roughly 3,000 buses with the technology. NJ Transit Chief of Police Joseph Bober said: "This enhanced technology helps us protect our bus drivers and customers. It's another proactive tool to protect our property, employees and customers."
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
I spotted this random children's flash card at a rec center this weekend. The back was blank. On first glance, the illustration, combined with the word "Indian," looks like it was meant to teach yogic levitation. (And yes, I realize that in this case "Indian" refers to Native American, not South Asian, and the card actually describes an exercise.) Link
Previously on BB:
• Videos of Ramana's levitations Link
• Yogic "flying" Link
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Geoducks are large saltwater clams that live off the Pacific Coast of the U.S. and Canada. I find them very curious and otherworldly. Dark Roasted Blend posted an homage to their bizarre beauty. Link
Save vs. Death uncovered this awesome video of the Monks ("American GIs stationed in Germany in the mid-sixties" -- wiki) performing "Oh, How to Do Now" on a German teen music TV show (circa 1966). Check out the banjo! Link
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, is home to a thriving black market where drugs, pirated DVDs, guns, and crappily-made "Startar" baseball jackets, can be easily purchased for remarkably low prices. The sellers will even help with "shipping." In the new issue of GOOD Magazine, Sacha Feinman visits the markets of Ciudad del Este that generate an estimated 30 percent of the country's GDP. From GOOD:
One shop in particular, I’m told, is a clearinghouse for drugs. Armed with the proper introduction, in I went. In lieu of a traditional greeting, the owner simply asks me what I’m looking for, and how much of it I’ll need. “And, yes, we have cocaine,” he adds as an afterthought...
He quizzes me, asking where I live in the city, if I have the cash on me, and if I’ll need assistance getting it back home from Ciudad del Este. Satisfied with my answers, he reaches under the counter to produce a narrow tan brick of densely compressed Paraguayan Brown (marijuana), barely softer than a rock. It looks like AstroTurf.
He asks me again how much I’m looking for and I stutter, blurting out that 50 kilos should do it for now. He chuckles. “We usually sell more than that, 200 or so, but we can do 50. One second.”
He leaves the room to make a phone call, and a moment later returns: “It’ll be $20 U.S. a kilo,” he says. “And are you sure you don’t need any help getting that to Argentina?”
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Yes I Can transform dead motorcycles into Giger-esque furniture. And yes, they're quite spendy. John Brownlee has more over at Boing Boing Gadgets. Link
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Before cuttlefish embryos even hatch, they look through their translucent eggs to learn to identify their future prey. Researchers at the University of Caen Basse-Normandy put crabs in a tank with cuttlefish eggs. Once the cuttlefish hatched, they were released into a tank with both shrimp and crabs. The cuttlefish that previously saw the crabs through their eggs had a taste for them. Cuttlefish that weren't exposed to the crabs as embryos preferred to eat the shrimp. From the BBC News:
...Unborn cuttlefish... have fully developed eyes. That leads the researchers to conclude that the cuttlefish embryos must peer through their eggs, and learn to recognise their prey, a behaviour which will help give them a head-start in life.
It is less likely that birds, reptiles and, particularly, mammals - including humans - could recognise visual images in the womb.
But the cuttlefish discovery helps reinforce the idea that some animals at least can begin to learn before they are born.
The new Moog Guitar Paul Vo Edition is made by the famed synthesizer company but is not a guitar synth or MIDI controller. However, the electric geetar is capable of "infinite sustain" that impressed the hell out of Lou Reed. Listening Post has details along with a promotional video featuring Reed and other guitar heroes.
One shop in particular, I’m told, is a clearinghouse for drugs. Armed with the proper introduction, in I went. In lieu of a traditional greeting, the owner simply asks me what I’m looking for, and how much of it I’ll need. “And, yes, we have cocaine,” he adds as an afterthought...
Yes I Can transform dead motorcycles into Giger-esque furniture. And yes, they're quite spendy. John Brownlee has more over at Boing Boing Gadgets. 
...Unborn cuttlefish... have fully developed eyes. That leads the researchers to conclude that the cuttlefish embryos must peer through their eggs, and learn to recognise their prey, a behaviour which will help give them a head-start in life.