From the Australian slang dictionary:
Butcher : small glass of beer in South Australia – From the theory that a butcher could take a quick break from his job, have a drink and be back at work
I was unable to find a quantity of drink called “hacker”. Beer and computers don’t mix? Perhaps “Give me a hacker” doesn’t have the right ring.
Speaking of safety, this word reminds me of the old joke about the butcher that backed into his meat grinder…got a little behind in his work.
William Shatner performs Sarah Palin’s resignation poem:
What? Palin was really trying to say in this poem that global warming evidence is best seen right in her own backyard. She can not come out and say it straight, for fear of upsetting her financial and political supporters, so a poem was written to ring the alarm more eloquently and safely.
Palin also seems to be paying homage to the late Luke Cole who died last month in a car accident. Last year he filed the Alaska Kivalina v. ExxonMobile et al case.
Thus, we should thank Palin for her resignation poem. It shows she has finally taken a stand, albeit with thick literary camouflage, for national security through environmental protection.
Magnus Larsson gave a cool (pun intended) presentation at TEDGlobal 2009 called “Cities past and future” where he suggested an innovative way to stop desertification. You can see him in action here and here.
First, let me just clarify that I am all in favor of desserts and this in no way clouds my ability to comment on the urgent need to stop deserts from spreading. Ahem.
The idea is to support the green-belt concept, a barrier of trees and vegetation, with a giant wall made of sand.
The sand can be fused together using methods pioneered by anti-earthquake engineering and seismic research in California that is essentially a form of “bacterial concrete”. Bacteria (Bacillus pasteurii – microorganisms that create sandstone by precipitating calcite) can be used at low expense to generate a giant wall from sand. This not only protects the trees and provides a more significant barrier to wind and heat, but also should remain even as the trees may succumb to local demand for firewood or construction materials. In fact, this method coupled with solar innovations and enforcement penalties may make trees no longer desirable for construction or heat, so you get an overall risk reduction in several areas.
Some say this is poetry…
Larsson espouses “aggregation as a design strategy”:
in one way, all design is aggregation. even the most austere minimalistic design usually produces an aggregation of elements that weren’t there before. on one level, it is hard to do anything in the world without adding something to it: a trace, a movement; something.
sand is the very epitome of aggregation. a single grain of sand is almost nothing: a splinter of rock, something that once was something, but has now become a memory of that thing. but put myriad grains together and you get entire landscapes, deserts, the earth. you get fascinating forms and emergent patterns. you get possibilities, potentials, a fluid material from which to build our structures. and you get a force to do it for you: as the sand is carried by the wind, “all” we have to do is make sure we design with this in mind. work with the aggregation, not against it. allow the aeolian forces to put the sand in motion, allow saltation to do its thing, and then, when the sand has aggregated into a shape that we like, use an intelligent strategy for how to solidify it, petrify it, freeze it into a solid state that speaks of that one moment in time.
To me, of course, that is poetry.
Self-healing concrete is another interesting application.
The traffic police in California have provided a convenient guide to excuses they will and will not accept. The San Jose Mercury News is the first to publish the details.
The two men in their 20s said they had studied U.S. traffic laws before heading to the United States and were told that speed limit signs here are black and white — like the signs that read “101” along the freeway.
Wasn’t that, they asked, the speed limit?
“I let them go,” Barnett said, “and told them to make sure the sign also said ‘Speed Limit.'”
Yes, those French tourists probably laughed themselves all the way home.
I saw a similar situation the other day when an officer pulled over a car and yelled at the driver “Did you not see me? You just ran a red light!” A minute later his voice was calm and he said “Oh, tourists? Where in France are you from?” Soon after he was wishing them a nice vacation.
The news article warns that social engineering your way out of a ticket will fail if it includes any of these topics.
# The light was yellow.
# I’m a doctor and I’m late for surgery.
# I’m late for an important business meeting.
# I just used my cell phone for a second.
# I have to go to the bathroom.
# Everyone else was speeding.
# Isn’t there a 10-mile cushion on the freeway?
# I had to go into the carpool lane because I was cut off by another driver.
# I’m late to pick up the kids.
# My mom is dying.
The last one I am a bit surprised to see, especially after the Dallas incident outside the emergency room. The others are easy to understand. For example, an officer is not going to empathize with a bathroom story. They are going to logically analyze it. How many bathrooms around here? How many in the past ten miles? How many bushes near the roadside? They won’t relate to a doctor, mother or business man being late (e.g. leave earlier next time and you won’t get a ticket). Use of the cell phone for a second, or failure to see a light change, does not give perspective or justification. Alternatively, consider stories that take it to the next level. These examples escape logical analysis because they appear to be exceptions and deserving of empathy:
“I stopped one guy for speeding on Hillsdale Avenue who said that he was guilty and that he was speeding because he was mad,” Raye said. “He had just left from his house, where he had just caught his wife in bed with another guy. I didn’t give him a ticket.”
Marital excuses sometimes work. Barnett stopped a speeder on Highway 17 who said he was getting married the next day but was having second thoughts.
“He said he was trying to get out of town before anyone noticed,” Barnett said. “I let him go.”
Empathy of the police officer, where that empathy is with little risk and likely to diffuse or even help the situation, is clearly the social engineer’s ticket (pun intended) to not get a ticket.