Tutankhamun Mask “Fixed”

Sometime last year, the beard on King Tut’s famous mask came off broken off and then was quickly repaired using “a quick drying, irreversible material”. Apparently, some sort of epoxy.

Jackie Rodriguez, a tourist who witnessed the repair work on the beard in late August, provided a photo to The Associated Press showing a museum employee holding it in place as the glue sets. “The whole job did look slapstick,” she said. “It was disconcerting given the procedure occurred in front of a large crowd and seemingly without the proper tools.”

Update Sat Jan 24 11:58:55 PST 2015: German restorer, Christian Eckmann, said in a press conference today, that the mask can properly be restored.

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In Its Dock, Dread Roomba Waits Dreaming

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It amuses me to no end that my son is afraid of the Roomba. He has always been afraid of it. Watching it. Jumping onto the couch and watching it. Following it from room to room, while staying a safe distance away. Standing on my feet when it gets too close. It is this fear that inspired me to put a face on it.

One time while playing, he knocked it from its dock, causing it backup and repeated try to redock.

Roomba wakes up!
You’ve disturbed it from its slumber.
Yeah!
Now it must wander… feeding. Feeding a hunger that can never be sated.
Yeah!

At the same time though, I try to explain to him that everything is fine. It can’t eat him. It’s dumb and can’t see so it bumps into things. That you can turn it on and off by pressing the button on top. You can send it away and make it go back home by pressing another button on the top. He knows this, and he’s proud when he presses the button and makes it return to the dock, but at the same time, he won’t do it on his own. He needs encouragement.

Previously

There Can be Only One

According to KBS, when Kim Jong-un was anointed heir apparent, his father, like his father before him, issued the following order:

All party organs and public security authorities should make a list of residents named Kim Jong-un … and train them to voluntarily change their names. Authorities should make sure that there is no one making unnecessary complaints or spreading gossip … regarding this project.

via The Guardian

Filmfest: Klan Revenge

Brotherhood of Death (1976)



Three black special forces soldiers (including return from Vietnam to their small Alabaman town, where the klan rapes one friend and kills another. They respond with Interestingly, the white sheriff is above board, but the deputies are the klansmen. Ends with a shot of a pro-klan billboard.

The Black Klansman (1966)



After the klan burns his daughter to death in a church burning, a light-skinned black man buys a wig, joins the klan under the guise of wanting to form a chapter in Los Angeles, dates the grand wizard’s daughter, and then kills him. Bonus points for miscegenation. This one ends with a JFK quote about racial equality.

As Quoted in the New York Times

Tech Giants Settle Antitrust Hiring Suit:

On Hacker News, the grumbling about the settlement was immediate. “I honestly do not understand why the plaintiffs would settle this case,” one poster wrote. But some saw another side: “What did the engineers risk with this lawsuit? Nothing. What did the law firm risk? Getting paid peanuts for hundreds of hours they spend on the case if they lose.”

The Only Gun The NRA Doesn’t Like

Meet the Armatix iP1. 22 LR calibre semiautomatic with a 10 round magazine. What’s not to like? How about the the RFID wristwatch that only allows the wearer to fire the gun?

Back in 2002, New Jersey passed a law mandating that all guns sold in the state had to have lockout technology built in, three years after such a gun went on sale somewhere in the United States. The gun has gone on sale &emdash; albeit very briefly &emdash; twice, once in Los Angeles, and then again in Rockville, Maryland (a place that it is strongly advised that one to not return to). Both stores stopped selling the guns after receiving death threats. Not only that, but the Republican Attorney General of New Jersey is refusing the certify that the gun was sold, and active the law.

Instead of “promoting freedom” to own the gun one chooses, the NRA is actively campaigning against the sell of a particular firearm, because the RFID locks would increase manufacturing costs. Why do they care about this? Because the NRA gets significant amounts of funding from gun manufacturers.

1919 Mechanical Play-by-Play Scoreboard

1919 mechanical play -by-play scoreboard

Back in 1978, a box of newsreels were found in the Yukon. Only recently though, was a newsreel of the infamous Black Sox 1919 World Series discovered in the collection.

It’s a great find, and as Deadspin points out, it shows the infamous 5 run inning that made it obvious everyone that the White Sox were throwing the game. However that’s not what caught my eye. What I was astonished by was the mechanical scoreboard that allowed people in Cincinnati to watch the game in near-real-time. The board doesn’t just feature moving base runners, but also features a ball that moves around as the play progresses. I had never seen anything like this before. Even the Flash players that MLB.com puts out, don’t feature a moving ball.

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