The Darwin Awards Condom (Item is no longer available...)

This is our kind of URL...lol 

(Mentions Population Control Volunteers!)

Keep yourself out of the gene pool!

http://cgi.darwinawards.com/cgi/vote.pl?

Friends don't let friends reproduce!

The Darwin Awards are really great reading.

http://www.darwinawards.com/

Documenting the "limit" of Human Stupidity!

You are still connected to Verizon, I'm going to release the call...

The subject line was the signoff of the Verizon tech that recovered my contacts for my cell phone...She signed onto my phone(!) and fixed things from there, with a little help from my thumb.

It reminded me of the following "Pranks by Boys"* story.  *My brand name...

Circa 1987 - Some Telecommunication Association Trade Show

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network  was all he rage, simultaneous voice, video, data, etc. over the same wire...

The telecoms were saying:  "ISDN  -  I see Dollars Now"

The customers were saying: "ISDN - I Still Don't kNow!"

I was walking the show floor beforehand, so I would know where every competitor and partner were located, and I happened upon the "Telco Equipment Provider TEP" booth.

They had a private ISDN network set up with a Phone and Data connection between their scenario real estate office and the mortgage banker.

The actual hardware setup, about which I inquired before they started, was a tractor trailer outside the hall, with cables like elephant trunks emanating along the periphery...looping onto the show floor and back...running some ridiculous speed with an ISDN wrapper, the two terminals were side by side... 

They did a fine demo, and then, when it was over, I said...

"So, the Real Estate Agent is seeing the Banker's screen with the loan offer, and then the phone call is over, since they hang up, but what hung up the data connection, won't the real estate agent still see what's on the Banker's screen???  

Like, when he pulls up some confidential transaction...

Not ONE of my clients will be impressed by your demo, au contraire (French being a language with which they were familiar...)"

They read my badge more closely

Frish

New Product Launch Manager

Communication Systems - IBM (Before there was Networking LOL )

Then they LITERALLY pulled the plug on the demo, showing it to exactly no one else the entire show...$300,000 fizzled in a flash and a whimper!

"Have a good show!" shared I while skipping down the aisle.

They actually thanked me.

It's the unintended messages that are the hardest to control.

Glad Verizon both recovered my contacts and knows how to end a voice/data call!

Climate and Human Violence...Science Mag abstract

Just the abstract, copied below, is enough.  no need to pay for the article...it's all here!

"A rapidly growing body of research examines whether human conflict can be affected by climatic changes. 

Drawing from archaeology, criminology, economics, geography, history, 

political science, and psychology, we assemble and analyze the 60 most rigorous quantitative studies 

and document, for the first time, a remarkable convergence of results. 

We find strong causal evidence linking climatic events to human conflict 

across a range of spatial and temporal scales and across all major regions of the world. 

The magnitude of climate's influence is substantial: 

for each 1 standard deviation (1σ) change in climate toward warmer temperatures or more extreme rainfall, 

median estimates indicate that the frequency of interpersonal violence rises 4% 

and the frequency of intergroup conflict rises 14%. 

Because locations throughout the inhabited world are expected to warm 2 to 4σ by 2050, 

amplified rates of human conflict could represent a large and critical impact of anthropogenic climate change."

From: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/07/31/science.1235367

When a scientific peer reviewed article finds CAUSAL EVIDENCE of HUMAN CONFLICT there can't be many things more important... 

Wonder who is reading Science...