Washington's hair found in old book.

https://nypost.com/2018/02/13/strand...found-in-book/

Quote:

A shabby, leather-bound almanac from 1793 sat long forgotten on a shelf at Union College’s library in upstate Schenectady — until an *archivist surveying some of the school’s collections plucked it from obscurity in December. But there was something else hidden away inside an envelope tucked between the book’s pages: a lock of hair belonging to George Washington. He was a redhead growing up and powdered his hair white, a fashionable color in the 18th century.

Interesting. Didn't know GW was a redhead. :) Boys of VA anyone? Probably not since we can't get DNA from a strand of hair without the follicle.

Ranb

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UNCLE!!!

For my entire adult life I’ve been a “Registered Republican”.

Overall I think I’m socially liberal, or even libertarian, but fiscally conservative. In any case I’ve called myself a Republican, and generally voted Republican or abstained in the Presidential election as I did in 2008 and 2016.

But enough is enough! I’m done.

It’s been building for a long time, but this recent budget was the final straw. But I’ve been increasingly disgusted with Republicans at least since the 2016 Presidential Primary. The selection of Trump is a major, but hardly isolated cause of my disgust.

Today, I went so far as to call my local voting board to change my affiliation to Independent. Turns out Georgia does not register voters by party affiliation - you declare which primary ballot you want at the time of voting. I was probably thinking of my prior state of residence, Florida.

I’m not thrilled with the current state of the Democratic Party either. But I more and more often find myself on “their side” of issues. If there are more disgruntled Republicans like me out there, the Democrats can only benefit from the overall disillusionment of sensible Republicans at the sordid mess their party has become. Hopefully a viable third party can emerge from this chaos and offer more palatable options than we’ve been presented with recently.

Thanks for listening - I just needed to vent.

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Obama Official Portrait Controversy

Kind of surprised there's no thread on this yet. I put it in social issues & current events because I hope we can confine the discussion to the portraits themselves.

You can get a decent look at both pictures here.

As portraits go, these are certainly non-traditional. Barack is sitting in a chair, which is apparently in the middle of a hedge, because he is surrounded by green leaves. A few of the leaves are colored differently; these refer to Kenya (his father's birthplace), Hawaii (where he largely grew up) and Chicago (where he lived as an adult before becoming president).

But the one that is attracting the most attention is Michelle's portrait. She's seated as well, in a "Thinker" pose. She's wearing an enormous dress. But the oddest thing about the portrait to my eye is how washed out all the colors look; it's almost all pastel shades, except for some bright red stripes at the bottom of the dress. Which to my eye makes it look like an advertisement for the dress.

A bunch of people have commented that it doesn't look much like Michelle, and taken quite a bit of grief for it. Chris Cillizza, a liberal reporter for the Washington Post was called a racist (some NSFW tweets on that post) for making that (pretty obvious) point:

Quote:

This is a beautiful portrait. It looks very little like Michelle Obama

Now in fairness, a lot of crazy racist knuckle-draggers argued that Michelle didn't look mannish enough (refers to a bizarre conspiracy theory that Barack is secretly gay and Michelle is secretly a man).

Sean Hannity, however has pinned the crazy meter with his take on Barack's portrait. There are no words:

Quote:

Sean Hannity’s blog took on the big questions in the minds of all God-fearing Americans today — does the recently unveiled presidential portrait of Barack Obama feature “secret sperm” and was it painted by an artist who harbors hatred in his heart against white people?

The "secret sperm" of course is that little vein that runs by Barack's left temple and up to his hairline; if you look for pictures of him online you will often see it, particularly when he is presenting a left profile.

My take? You know how it is; if the Obamas are happy then I don't really care much. Neither of the portraits really appeals to me, but I can kind of see where they're going with it.

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Questionable stories in the bible.

Imagine that USA Today reported that 'man celebrates his 323rd birthday'. Would you believe it? Would your Christian friends? Or would we all think what the hell was that editor smoking that published that? And maybe where can I get some?

I mean 323 years is almost 3 times the longest verified life known today which is 122. Still, in biblical terms 323 would be youthful as Methuselah lived to be 969. 5 people lived over the age of 900. If you can't believe the USA Today article, how can you believe the biblical accounts.

It's in the Bible, it must be true...right TBD?

The bible says you can climb the highest tree and see the entire earth. Is that really possible? Hmmmm...Let me think.

Is the story of Noah true or is it as any teacher who checks up on his students can tell you is totally plagiarized from the story of Gilgamesh.

If your dog got annoyed with you for swatting his nose 3 times and admonished you in English, would you believe that? The bible says a donkey spoke to his master for being whipped 3 times.

The tower of Babel offended God because of its height. A building reported to be 91 meters in height. The Burj Khalifa is close to ten times that height. There are more than 240 buildings taller than a 150 meters on the island of Manhattan alone. And if that isn't enough more than five hundred people to have travelled in space.

Noah not only lived to be older than 900 years, he supposedly built with 8 other people a sea worthy boat 450 meters long made entirely of wood when modern engineers conclude that a wooden boat longer than 300 feet would break apart under its own weight.

Jonah being swallowed by whale (big fish) and living for 3 days and then vomited on to dry land.

The bible is filled with stories that are unbelievable to almost all of us if the stories emanated elsewhere. But say they came from this book of anonymous authors and they are suddenly believable?

What stories in this book don't you believe?

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Things no-one complains about

It seems there are quite a few activists on this board, but it also seems that their areas of concern are rather limited. I thought I'd share some very underrepresented things to be concerned and/or outraged about.

- In the US, hispanics earn more on average than blacks
- In the US, asians earn more on average than caucasians
- In the US, asians earn more on average than hispanics
- In the US, asians earn more on average than blacks
- The 10 most dangerous jobs in the US have little gender diversity
- The sexualization and objectification of men within the gay community

I've got lots more if you need them...

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First darts, then F1, now... the tiling industry!

BBC News: 'Don't use showgirls to sell roof tiles'

"One of the UK's largest industry exhibitions is issuing a new code of conduct over the use of "promo girls".

Last year, UK Construction Week, held at Birmingham's NEC, faced criticism over the use of lightly clad women to staff an exhibitor's stall.

It featured Las Vegas-style showgirls selling roofing products."

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Buying or building a PC in 2018

Hi,

I'm learning video editing and my laptop is driving me nuts.

So, I'm going to need some serious equipment, I'm not very technical, did my research and here are my thoughts. I'd like to know if the techies here concur.

Laptop vs Desktop
Although there are some seriously powerful 'Gaming' laptops on the market, I'm leaning towards a desktop PC. Here's why.

• The components in a laptop are less powerful than in a desktop.
• laptops heat up faster, decreasing performance.
• laptops are more expensive
• I can change components on a desktop, giving the machine a much longer life. (I reckon a very fast machine could last me 10 years)

Build vs Buy
I was warming to the idea of building my first PC (with my 10-year-old daughter, who's a nerd), but then I found that buying some components separately has become very expensive due to bitcoin miners buying all the powerful graphics cards they can get their hands on.

Companies that build PC's are apparently less affected by this as they buy in Bulk (is this correct?).

So, I've sort of abandoned that plan and am now looking to buy a 'Gaming' PC.

I've looked at Apple, but a PC looks like a better deal to me with much more bang for the buck. (opinions?)

I was hoping to pull this off for about € 1000, but this is starting to look less realistic the more I look into it, so €1500 or €2000 it is.

I've configured my dream PC and it came out €4000, so that is way over the top.

My wishlist looks like this now:
CPU: Ryzen 7 (apparently better at rendering video than the i7)
RAM: 16 Gig
GPU: undecided
Memory: SSD (I wanted PCIe but the ones I've seen are close to €1000 in themselves, so it's going to be a small SSD plus an HDD)
Plenty of cooling

Am I overdoing it?
Can I buy such a system of the shelf, what would be a reliable brand?
Any input welcome:)

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