Speed Queens
SPEED QUEENS: THE FEARLESS FEMALE DRAG RACERS OF THE 60S AND 70S
By Cherrybomb
Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney on the cover of ‘Sunday News Magazine’ in 1978.
Like many fields of work, the drag racing scene was and is fairly well dominated by men. During its heyday, specifically the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, the National Hot Rod Association incorporated the use of gorgeous women/models to help appeal to the fanboys. If you were into that scene, you probably spent a lot of time fantasizing about Pam Hardy aka “Jungle Pam” who accompanied driver “Jungle Jim” Liberman across the country clad in go-go boots and form-fitting, barely-there outfits that showcased her bodacious “assets” while she showboated on the track and in the pit for her adoring fans. Though Liberman would pass away unexpectedly in 1977, Hardy would continue to appear at racing events. But this post isn’t about buxom blonde race track cheerleaders. It’s about the ballsy women who drove the cars during that era—and there were actually quite a lot of “speed queens” that not only gave their male counterparts a run for their money, but also blazed a trail for other women who wanted smoke up the track.
And since I know you’re curious, here’s a shot of “Jungle Pam.” Though her attire says otherwise, it must have been cold that day.
[ click to continue reading (and viewing) at Dangerous Minds ]
Fark Yeah!
Foul-mouthed people are also the most honest, study finds
By Henry Bodkin
People who regularly posted short, simple messages on Facebook were found to be the least likely to swear, but also more dishonest CREDIT: AP
Temperate language has traditionally been considered a social virtue, but new research suggests that people who refrain from swearing are often the most devious and dishonest.
Those fond of effing and blinding, by contrast, are likely to be the most honest in any given group, according to academics at the University of Cambridge.
The study describes how 276 participants were asked to list their favourite swear words in order to gauge how fond they were of turning the air blue.
They were then given a survey asking them to agree or disagree with statements such as “I never lie” and “all my habits are good” to assess their propensity for dishonesty.
The researchers found that the most honest in the group were also the biggest swearers.
Thinking about taking up jogging….
Space Bling Psyche To Destroy World Economy
NASA to explore space rock worth so much money it would DESTROY world economy
THE American space agency is planning to send a spacecraft to a lump of metal in space worth quadrillions of dollars.
By Peter Truman
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY / BLING: The metal in the asteroid is worth more than the world’s economy
The 200km-wide asteroid is currently orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter.
It is made up of various precious metals such as iron, nickel and gold.
Experts believe the iron alone in the rock would be worth $10,000 quadrillion – enough to cause the world’s economy, worth $73.7 trillion, to promptly collapse altogether.
ENDGAME: Rules of The Game
Facebook Kills Again
Maserati Driver Killed In Crash Remembered As ‘Wonderful Young Man’
(credit: CBS)
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (CBS4) – Investigators have identified the driver of a Maserati killed in a crash in Douglas County.
Brandon Gionapoulos, 24, died when the blue Maserati he was driving landed in a ditch near C-470 and Lucent Boulevard. The mangled car was spotted by a passerby around 10 a.m. Saturday, but it’s not yet clear when the crash occurred.
Gionapoulos was a sales employee for the Mike Ward Maserati and Infiniti dealership and part of his job gave him access to the high-performance vehicles, authorities told CBS4. The dealership is located just about a mile from where the crash happened.
Hours before, around 7:25 p.m. Friday, Gionapoulos posted a Facebook Live video showing the dashboard of a Maserati. The short video shows the vehicle going from zero to 111 miles per hour in just about 20 seconds, and then ends.
The Big Magnet
The paradox powering Earth’s magnetic field
Our planet’s protective force field appears to be billions of years older than the mechanism that got it going. So what really made Earth magnetic?
By Marcus Woo
Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center
IT IS Earth’s silent defender. Without it, a constant onslaught of charged particles would bombard our planet’s atmosphere, changing its chemistry and disrupting our electronic infrastructure. Assuming any of that stuff was even there to disrupt. In Earth’s infancy, our guardian may have prevented the sun’s action from stripping away the protective bubble of gas surrounding our planet entirely, and so allowed life – and eventually intelligent life – to flourish.
This silent defender is Earth’s magnetic field, a force field whose source lies in the churning molten iron that forms the planet’s core. Electrons flowing through this fluid generate an electric current, which in turn creates a magnetic field. The core is a giant, self-sustaining electromagnet: a dynamo.
Superfly Snuka Gone
Low
How David Bowie Perfected the Concept Album on ‘Low’
David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. YouTube
It’s been said the beginning of Kosmische Musik—the hypnotic, minimalist style of music crudely dubbed “Krautrock” by the British press in the late ’60s—lies in the wake of World War II. The trance-like atmosphere and sterilized rhythms were the result of a sound designed to mirror the shell shock that fell over Germany after the demise of the Third Reich as well as the Schlager pop music deemed appropriate for public consumption by the government.
“There were not too many ways for a German rock musician to perform music, to make music, even to think of the theoretical development of music because there was no heritage in the country,” explains the late Edgar Froese of the groundbreaking electronic outfit Tangerine Dream in the BBC documentary Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany.
“And the Germans were in a very bad situation. You couldn’t forget that. I mean, they were so stupid and guilty for it, to start two wars. As horrific as it was it had one, forgive me to say that, one positive point. There was nothing else to lose. They lost everything. And so, when we thought about doing music in a different form, there was only the free form, the abstract form.”
Oddly enough, when David Bowie began exploring this new music coming out of Germany from groups like Tangerine Dream and Cluster and Kraftwerk, he was coming under fire for some of the things he was saying while under his Thin White Duke persona in 1976.
Dark Matter Dying
The Man Who’s Trying to Kill Dark Matter
by NATALIE WOLCHOVER
The Dutch theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde argues that dark matter does not exist.ILVY NJIOKIKTJIEN/QUANTA MAGAZINE
FOR 80 YEARS, scientists have puzzled over the way galaxies and other cosmic structures appear to gravitate toward something they cannot see. This hypothetical “dark matter” seems to outweigh all visible matter by a startling ratio of five to one, suggesting that we barely know our own universe. Thousands of physicists are doggedly searching for these invisible particles.
But the dark matter hypothesis assumes scientists know how matter in the sky ought to move in the first place. At the end of 2016, a series of developments has revived a long-disfavored argument that dark matter doesn’t exist after all. In this view, no missing matter is needed to explain the errant motions of the heavenly bodies; rather, on cosmic scales, gravity itself works in a different way than either Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein predicted.
The latest attempt to explain away dark matter is a much-discussed proposal by Erik Verlinde, a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam who is known for bold and prescient, if sometimes imperfect, ideas. In a dense 51-page paper posted online on Nov. 7, Verlinde casts gravity as a byproduct of quantum interactions and suggests that the extra gravity attributed to dark matter is an effect of “dark energy”—the background energy woven into the space-time fabric of the universe.
Instead of hordes of invisible particles, “dark matter is an interplay between ordinary matter and dark energy,” Verlinde said.
William Peter Blatty Gone
William Peter Blatty dead aged 89 as tributes pour in for The Exorcist author
BY JOHN SHAMMAS
THE legendary horror writer who penned The Exorcist has passed away at the age of 89.
William Peter Blatty’s death was confirmed on social media by the film’s director William Friedkin this afternoon.
The writer won the Oscar in 1973 for his screenplay, based on his own book that was published in 1971 which told the story of a child possessed by a demon.
And thanks to the film’s success, the possessed child’s image has become iconic among horror fans.
Finally, a Purpose for Instagram
Helen Mirren Is on Her Way to Kardashian-Level Instagram Mastery
Oh, what a difference three years makes for Helen Mirren, queen of moviegoer hearts and, now, Instagram feeds. In 2014, the Oscar-winning actress took an aggressively anti-social media stance, telling press, “I’m not a social-media person. . . . I find it distasteful.” Speaking of a 24-hour experiment with Facebook, Mirren said, “I just found it so intrusive and I didn’t want strangers wanting to become my friends. I just didn’t want that. There was something really scary about it and I didn’t like it at all.” So imagine our surprise in discovering on Thursday that Mirren has not only embraced her new Instagram account, but begun posting the kind of photos typically seen in the feeds of Kardashian family members—bathtub pics!
On Thursday, while in Paris for a L’Oréal photo shoot, the actress took to the social platform to share a very behind-the-scenes shot of her Parisian hotel accommodations. Mirren posted a photo of her feet, while soaking in a bathtub, and captioned it: “ahh end of the day in the bath. You cannot overestimate how fortunate I feel”
Nostrageddon
500-year-old ‘Italian Nostradamus’ prediction says the world is about to end
By Natalie Keegan
Shutterstock
Could the end of the world be looming?
According to a prophecy from the “Italian Nostradamus,” Armageddon is just around the corner.
It all comes down to the snow that has been hitting Italian resort town Salento for the last two days.
Philosopher Matteo Tafuri, who lived between 1492 and 1582, warned that two consecutive days of snow in the town would lead to the apocalypse.
The region is known for its mild climate but has been left blanketed by icy falls of late.
Tafuri predicted: “Salento of palm trees and mild south wind, snowy Salento but never after the touch.
“Two days of snow, two flashes in the sky, I know the world ends, but I do not yearn.”
This week snow has blanketed some parts of southern Italy – leading some superstitious observers to believe Tafuri’s predictions will soon come true.
Chile Seeking Alpha Centauri
Giant telescope in Chile to seek habitable planets in Alpha Centauri
This artist’s impression shows the planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to Earth in this image released on October 17, 2012. REUTERS/ESO/L. Calcada/N. Risinger
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile will be modified in order to allow it to search more effectively for potentially habitable planets in Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth.
The ESO said it has signed a deal with Breakthrough Starshot, a venture that aims to deploy thousands of tiny spacecraft to travel to the system and send back pictures.
Starshot, which is backed by internet billionaire Yuri Milner and physicist Stephen Hawking, will provide funding to allow equipment on the Very Large Telescope that studies in the mid-infrared to be adapted to better detect faint planets, the ESO said in a statement on Monday.
The adaption will have the effect of reducing bright stellar light that drowns out relatively dim planets, improving the chances of finding them, it said.
Almost Here.
Mystery footage shows ‘huge ball of fire’ shooting over the Earth
BY ANDREW HIRST, RACHEL BISHOP
Abbey Shaw, 22, shared footage of the mysterious UFO saying she thought it was a ‘fireball’ or possibly something even weirder (Photo: MEN Syndication)
A strange ‘ ball of fire ‘ shooting across the sky had people baffled yesterday morning.
Abbey Shaw, 22, shared footage of the mysterious UFO saying she thought it was a ‘fireball’ or possibly something even weirder.
Abbey, who works at the University of Huddersfield’s IT department, told the Huddersfield Examiner : “I don’t have a clue what it is.
“It looks like some sort of fireball. I do not think for one minute that it is a plane.
“Everyone at work agrees with me too.
Bowiedamus
Why Video Games
How Video Games Satisfy Basic Human Needs
BY SIMON PARKIN
“Mass Effect: Andromeda” | Image from IGN / Bioware / YouTube
Grand Theft Auto, that most lavish and notorious of all modern videogames, offers countless ways for players to behave. Much of this conduct, if acted out in our reality, would be considered somewhere between impolite and morally reprehensible. Want to pull a driver from her car, take the wheel, and motor along a sidewalk? Go for it. Eager to steal a bicycle from a 10-year-old boy? Get pedaling. Want to stave off boredom by standing on a clifftop to take pot shots at the screaming gulls? You’re doing the local tourism board a favor. For a tabloid journalist in search of a hysteric headline, the game offers a trove of misdemeanors certain to outrage any non-player.
Except, of course, aside from its pre-set storyline, Grand Theft Auto doesn’t prescribe any of these things. It merely offers us a playpen, one that, like our own cities, is filled with opportunities, and arbitrated by rules and consequences. And unless you’re deliberately playing against type, or are simply clumsy, you can’t help but bring yourself into interactive fiction. In Grand Theft Auto, your interests and predilections will eventually be reflected in your activity, be it hunting wild animals, racing jet-skis, hiring prostitutes, buying property, planning heists, or taking a bracing hike first thing in the morning. If you are feeling hateful in the real world, the game provides a space in which to act hatefully. As the philosophers say: wherever you go, there you will be.
HAUNTED Casting
TV News Roundup
by Dani Levy
CASTING
Three new cast members will join Syfy‘s “The Haunted” as series regulars. Steve Kazee and David Alpay will play two of the four siblings in the Bradley family reunited after their parent’s death, slowly fixing their relationships with each other and navigating between the all too real ghosts from their pasts. DeVaughn Nixon will play a detective, investigating the mysterious circumstances around the deaths. Full Fathom Five’s James Frey and Todd Cohen will executive produce. Pilot writer Noga Landau, of “Tau” and “The Magicians,” will also co-executive produce.
Bend It
Anti-fame
Why some artists no longer want to be famous
by Aurélie MAYEMBO
An art piece protected by a plexiglass pane by British artist Banksy, seen on a beach in Calais, northern France (AFP Photo/Philippe Huguen)
Paris (AFP) – “I love being famous,” the black US comedian Chris Rock once quipped. “It’s almost like being white.”
But a growing number of artists would rather have success without the encumbrance of fame.
From the street artist Banksy to the Italian literary phenomenon Elena Ferrante, a new brand of creator is actively rejecting the limelight and doing everything they can to avoid it.
Even first-time novelists, whose publishers are often desperate for them to go out and promote their work, are thumbing their noses at celebrity.
One young French novelist, who writes under the pseudonym of Joseph Andras, rejected the country’s top prize for a first book last year because it threatened his anonymity.
Like Ferrante, whose Naples quartet has become a huge international bestseller, Andras refuses to be photographed and only does interviews via email.
“A baker makes bread, a plumber unblocks pipes and writers write,” he declared in his only interview, granted to the Communist newspaper L’Humanite. “Everything is in the book, I don’t really see what more I have to add.”
They Found It.
Satellite spots MASSIVE object hidden under the frozen wastes of Antarctica
Scientists baffled by bizarre observations of gigantic ‘anomaly’ buried beneath polar icecap
BY JASPER HAMILL
SCIENTISTS believe a massive object which could change our understanding of history is hidden beneath the Antarctic ice.
The huge and mysterious “anomaly” is thought to be lurking beneath the frozen wastes of an area called Wilkes Land.
It stretches for a distance of 151 miles across and has a maximum depth of about 848 metres.
Some researchers believe it is the remains of a truly massive asteroid which was more than twice the size of the Chicxulub space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs.
If this explanation is true, it could mean this killer asteroid caused the Permian–Triassic extinction event which killed 96 percent of Earth’s sea creatures and up to 70 percent of the vertebrate organisms living on land.
However, the wilder minds of the internet have come up with their own theories, with some conspiracy theorists claiming it could be a massive UFO base or a portal to a mysterious underworld called the Hollow Earth.
This “Wilkes Land gravity anomaly” was first uncovered in 2006, when NASA satellites spotted gravitational changes which indicated the presence of a huge object sitting in the middle of a 300 mile wide impact crater.
Give Me The Sea
Why swimming in the sea is good for you
by Sergio Diez Alvarez
Ocean swimming and the associated salty environment have been shown to ease the symptoms of hay fever.
If you live near the sea, make frequent trips to the beach, or are planning an island holiday this summer, chances are you’re getting more out of it than just enjoyment. It has long been thought sea frolicking has many health benefits.
Historically, doctors would recommend their patients go to the seaside to improve various ills. They would actually issue prescriptions detailing exactly how long, how often and under what conditions their patients were to be in the water.
Using seawater for medical purposes even has a name: thalassotherapy.
In 1769, a popular British doctor Richard Russell published a dissertation arguing for using seawater in “diseases of the glands”, in which he included scurvy, jaundice, leprosy and glandular consumption, which was the name for glandular fever at the time.
He advocated drinking seawater as well as swimming in it.
Cannibal Neanderthals
The caves that prove Neanderthals were cannibals
Reconstruction of Neanderthal man. Credit: public domain
Deep in the caves of Goyet in Belgium researchers have found the grisly evidence that the Neanderthals did not just feast on horses or reindeer, but also on each other.
Human bones from a newborn, a child and four adults or teenagers who lived around 40,000 years ago show clear signs of cutting and of fractures to extract the marrow within, they say.
“It is irrefutable, cannibalism was practised here,” says Belgian archaeologist Christian Casseyas as he looks inside a cave halfway up a valley in this site in the Ardennes forest.
The bones in Goyet date from when Neanderthals were nearing the end of their time on earth before being replaced by Homo sapiens, with whom they also interbred.
Once regarded as primitive cavemen driven to extinction by smarter modern humans, studies have found that Neanderthals were actually sophisticated beings who took care of the bodies of the deceased and held burial rituals.
But there is a growing body of proof that they also ate their dead.
Happy New Year!
Bubbles Breaks Free
Old horse joins pack of mini donkeys to escape slaughter, president of Frisco nonprofit says
by Liz Farmer
An old gray horse headed for slaughter in Mexico recently orchestrated his escape by slipping into a pack of mini donkeys being rescued by a Frisco-based nonprofit, the group’s president said.
Staff members of Becky’s Hope Horse Rescue were down at a “kill lot” to rescue several donkeys, which is part of their mission to save abused, neglected or abandoned livestock. Bubbles, the horse, walked right up to their trailer as they tried to load the donkeys, according to a Facebook post from the nonprofit published Dec. 16.
“He was intent that this was his ride out of there,” the post said. “We stood there staring as this old guy with crumbled ears from frostbite waited patiently for the group of mini donkeys to catch up so he could jump on the “freedom trailer” out of there.”
How-to Neon
Mickey Back In The Ring in Moscow
Hollywood star Mickey Rourke may hold boxing bout in Russia next year
Valery Sharifulin/TASS
MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/. World’s famous Hollywood star Mickey Rourke might again return to boxing February or March next year as he ponders of holding a bout in Russia’s Urals, his agent told TASS on Tuesday.
We are currently in work on organizing a bout for Mickey in the Urals,” Vadim Kornilov said in an interview with TASS. “This may happen in February or March next year.”
“Mickey is now practicing every day, he is looking forward for the bout and keeps asking when he would be fighting in Russia,” Kornilov added.
The 64-year-old actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, whose professional boxing career boasts a record of eight bouts (six victories with four knock-out wins and two draws), is currently training for his return to the ring at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Los Angeles, the United States.
Space Miners
The Next Frontier: Space Miners Are the Universe’s Future Tycoons
byDYLAN LOVE
The next gold rush will be intergalactic.
In 2009, a collection of astronauts, academics, and aerospace industrialists convened to review NASA’s present and future plans for manned space flight. Informally dubbed the “Augustine Commission,” the more-stuffily named Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee determined that our ultimate goal ought to be nothing less than “to chart a path for human expansion into the solar system.”
Considering that Earth’s resources are finite and that the well of human desire knows no bottom, a continued future for our species will likely require robust manned spaceflight to leave the planet. But it remains incredibly expensive and logistically complex to see humans break the planet’s escape velocity, let alone with any regularity. The ostensibly modern spacecraft of today carry all their fuel with them from the start — a lot of that fuel is required simply to transport other fuel. It’s comically inconvenient.
Contemporary spaceflight is impractical by virtue of being unsustainable; it’s a pursuit for governmental agencies and rich visionaries. Now an industry with its roots in prehistory is changing that tune, summoning up a modern set of incentives for people to get more intimate with outer space. “Space mining” presents itself as a killer technology for interstellar travel and exploration — the miners are due to inherit the stars as we set their sights beyond our planet to harvest geological resources from the universe itself.
Related: Are Humans the Real Ancient Aliens?
Baba Booey Gone
Joey Boots from ‘Howard Stern Show’ dies at 49
(Photo: Jamie McCarthy)
Joey Boots, who helped introduce America to the expression “Baba Booey” on The Howard Stern Show, has died at 49.
The radio personality, whose real surname is Bassolino, was found unresponsive in his Bronx apartment Friday, report TMZ and CNN.
The NYPD later confirmed his death to the Hollywood Reporter.
Bassolino, who was part of the rogue’s gallery known as the Wack Pack, grabbed attention by shouting “Baba Booey” on Stern’s show and during live TV reports. He even managed to successfully defend his right to do so in a New York court.
