Not worth the effort

According to an article published a couple of months ago by some British statisticians, the average bank robber in the U.S. gets away with approximately 4,000 dollars.  So to make even a vaguely reasonable living, a hood would have to plan and execute (and avoid subsequent capture) 9 or 10 heists a year.  Doesn't really seem worth it.  Now, according to the same study, an equivalent British bank robber will do a bit better-- an average of nearly 20 grand.  Still, that's a couple of jobs a year for the rest of your life, and bank robbery usually doesn't come with dental.

You might get a company car, though, if you consider the getaway vehicle you carjacked.

Outlook is grim

Today I learned that if you try to send an attachment in Outlook when you're set to Rich Text mode, it will include it inline, whereas if you send it when you're set to Plain Text, it will attach it differently, as a separate, traditional "attached" file.

WHY DOES IT DO THIS AER#&489OGSU)9359*Y!!!

And if the person you are sending the attachment to does not realize this, there will be many communications along the lines of "I'm not seeing/getting this.  Are you sure you're sending it properly?  Maybe you should just put a copy up on the server."

Magic hour

This is another one that I imagine several of you are already familiar with, and are going to laugh at me because I had never heard of it until I heard Wil Wheaton talking about it on his YouTube show.

What?

Anyway, the magic hour (also sometimes called the golden hour) is a particular time of day, generally early morning or late afternoon, when the light from the sun comes in at a low angle, bathing everything in a soft, warm, friendly light.  The lighting is less direct, so shadows are minimized.  Everything looks beautiful.  Ah.

Anyway, it's apparently a big deal in photography and cinematography, neither of which I have much experience with, so-- it's new to me!

Bingham Plastic Fluid

You may be familiar with the popular material science concept of the "non-Newtonian fluid," also known as the "walking on custard" trick.  This is a substance whose viscosity is variable, and (for the most part) will increase proportionately to the impact of another substance on it.  In other words, the harder you hit it, the stiffer it gets.  Jump up and down on it, and it's practically a solid-- stand still, and you start to sink in.

A similar class of substances is the Bingham Plastic, named after chemist Eugene Bingham, who was a rheological pioneer.  It is similar in that its physical properties vary depending on the applied stress, but it actually acts in the opposite fashion-- under no or low stress, it acts like a solid, but if you apply stress to it, it begins to flow like a liquid.  A good example is a stiff mayonnaise-- it spreads smoothly under pressure, but left alone it retains the peaks and ridges left by the knife.

Carry the torch

Apparently, when they (the IOC) is preparing for the Olympics, they do not make just one torch to be carried by the runners.  According to an interview with Sir Patrick Stewart, they actually made 8,000, one for each runner, and everyone chosen to do so for a leg had the opportunity to purchase theirs as a memento.  Sir Patrick is apparently planning to mount his on the wall, or possibly just sit on the porch and shake it and young people who've never heard of Jean-Luc (possibly anyone under the age of 18, more likely 10 if you count the movies).

Word For the Day -- Dandy funk

Although this conjures images of a well-dressed gentleman in top hat and tails getting down with his bad self to the strains of Marcus Miller*, "dandy funk" is actually a foodstuff.

It is, according to the Authority, "hardtack soaked in water and baked with grease and molasses."  The OED concurs, calling it "hard tack soaked in water and baked with fat and molasses."  That's a very important distinction in there, you betcha (although they do indicate that they think it was more commonly a closed compound, "dandyfunk").  The Encyclopaedia Britannica offers up no opinion, which is probably just as well.  It is alternatively described as "a mess made of powdered biscuits, molasses and slush," a staple(?) of sea-going fare, guaranteed to keep you alive, if not terribly happy.

Also, ew.  Definitely need your grog ration if you want to choke that down.

*I have no actual funk favorite (or even particularly any knowledge), I just Googled "greatest funk" and picked a name at random out of the lists that came up.

Duck Dance

It's a fairly safe bet that most of you are familiar with this little piece of avian boogie.  If you've been to a wedding in the last couple of decades, for example, it's practically de rigueur.  You flap your elbows, bob up and down, and generally make a damn fool out of yourself to the sprightly tones of a polka ensemble.

What's that?  Chicken, you say?  Well, no, I'm generally brave enough to participate...  Oh, you mean it's called the Chicken Dance?  Well, sure... now.

You see, back in the 1970s, in Switzerland, one Werner Thomas (accordionist) composed what was called at the time "Der Ententanz," or, "The Duck Dance."  The route by which it switched birds is somewhat obscured, but there are two major perspectives.  One is that it simply shifted from "Duck" to "Bird" to "Chicken" as it meandered its way through various languages before reaching Stateside.  Plausible, but boring.

More exciting (but a trifle dubious) is the story that it was played during the 1981 Tulsa Oktoberfest, and one of the organizers managed to procure a chicken suit from a local television station (in the absence of a duck costume), and the suited dancer subsequently created moves that will live forever.

Absences

I'll continue to be gone sporadically for the next few days; I'm moving to a new computer and there have been a few stumbling blocks.

But that's provided for several learning experiences!  For example, I learned that my previous monitor is so freaking old that the new computer won't even recognize it without 45 minutes with tech support leading to alterations to the BIOS!

OTOH, in more pleasant discoveries, I learned that the Steam online game store (to which I am relatively new) acts not only as a store, but also as a cloud server-- once I downloaded the games again to the new machine, opening them put me exactly where I had left off in the old one!  A delightful revelation, to be sure.