Quotulatiousness

May 3, 2015

Minnesota Vikings 2015 draft – third day

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I didn’t think “Trader Rick” would be happy with “only” six picks in the final day of the NFL 2015 draft…

TJ Clemmings draft

Round 4 (110) – T.J. Clemmings, Tackle, Pittsburgh. After three straight defensive picks, the Vikings finally address their offensive line concerns. At the Pioneer Press, Chris Tomasson has this to report on Clemmings:

The 6-foot-6, 315-pound Clemmings had projected by some to go in the first round but he dropped because of some medical issues. It’s not a high-risk pick by the Vikings, who have six picks on the third day of the draft.

It was appropriate Vikings Hall of Fame offensive lineman Randall McDaniel played a role in the pick on NFL Network. At the site of the new stadium that will open next year, McDaniel introduced construction foreman Lesley Singer, who announced the pick.

Clemmings, who was a second-team All-American as a senior and played in the Senior Bowl, has been projected as an NFL right tackle. However, he has the ability to play other positions on the line.

(more…)

Charles Stross – “Vampires are not sexy. At least, not in the real world.”

Filed under: Books, Media, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

He’s quite right … and he drives home the point in a recent blog post:

Desmodus rotundis isn’t sexy. (Except insofar as small furry rodents that carry rabies aren’t as un-sexy as some other obligate haemophages.) Bed bugs are really not sexy. But if you want maximally not-sexy, it’s hard to top Placobdelloides jaegerskioeldi, the Hippo Arse Leech.

The Hippo Arse Leech is a leech; it sucks blood. Like most leeches, its mouth parts aren’t really up to drilling through the armour-tough skin of a hippopotamus, so it seeks out an exposed surface with a much more porous barrier separating it from the juicy red stuff: the lining of the hippo rectum. When arse leeches find somewhere to feed, in due course happy fun times ensue — for hermaphrodite values of happy fun times that involve traumatic insemination. Once pregnant, the leeches allow themselves to be expelled by the hippo (it’s noteworthy that hippopotami spin their tails when they defecate, to sling the crap as far away as possible — possibly because the leeches itch — we’re into self-propelled-hemorrhoids-with-teeth territory here), whereupon in the due fullness of time they find another hippo, force their way through it’s arse crack, and find somewhere to chow down. Oh, did I mention that this delightful critter nurtures its young? Yep, the mother feeds her brood until they’re mature enough to find a hippo of their own. (Guess what she feeds them with.)

Here ‘s a video by Mark Siddall, professor of invertebrate zoology at the American Natural History Museum, a noted expert on leeches, describing how he discovered P. Jaegerskioeldi, just in case you think I’m making this up.

By the end of my description Jim and Freda were both … well, I wish I’d thought to photograph their faces for posterity. So were the audience. And that’s when I got to the money shot: the thing about fictional vampires is, vampires are only sexy when they’re anthropomorphic.

QotD: Innovations from foreign shores

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

We had ridden for about two miles, when we noticed, a little ahead of us in a space where five ways met, a man with a hose, watering the roads. The pipe, supported at each joint by a pair of tiny wheels, writhed after him as he moved, suggesting a gigantic-worm, from whose open neck, as the man, gripping it firmly in both hands, pointing it now this way, and now that, now elevating it, now depressing it, poured a strong stream of water at the rate of about a gallon a second.

“What a much better method than ours,” observed Harris, enthusiastically. Harris is inclined to be chronically severe on all British institutions. “How much simpler, quicker, and more economical! You see, one man by this method can in five minutes water a stretch of road that would take us with our clumsy lumbering cart half an hour to cover.”

George, who was riding behind me on the tandem, said, “Yes, and it is also a method by which with a little carelessness a man could cover a good many people in a good deal less time than they could get out of the way.”

George, the opposite to Harris, is British to the core. I remember George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for suggesting the introduction of the guillotine into England.

“It is so much neater,” said Harris.

“I don’t care if it is,” said George; “I’m an Englishman; hanging is good enough for me.”

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel, 1914.

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