Bytes

Friday, July 25, 2014

Funny Friday

Caution: language may offend.

Today a collection of visual humour.

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Corn Corner:

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Thursday, July 24, 2014

More Tour de France pics

It is the wee hours of this morning as I sit at my laptop, posting pics of the Tour de France whilst at the same time watching the concluding kilometres of Stage 17 of the 2014 Tour.

I am amazed that so many people gather and wait for so long just to see the riders pass by. . .

A little seen sight on the television coverage, one sometimes referred to as un besoin naturel ("a natural need")

Some information:

Question: Don't riders have to urinate during a six-hourrace?

Answer: Yes, and they do. Shortly after the start, they often stop en masse --- in English, all together --- at the side of the road. In the heat of battle, riders often urinate while continuing to race, i.e. as they pedal along without stopping.. If they do this in a populated area and are seen by the many officials who monitor the race, they are fined.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/sports/03iht-eb.07003qatourdefrance.html?_r=0

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What happens when marathon cyclists need to urinate during a race? Multi-part question follows.

Watching the men's marathon race in Beijing yesterday and knowing very little about the sport, I saw a bunch of male cyclists stop for a wizz on the side of the road at one point. Google also tells me that cyclists may also just wet themselves while riding, which is not fun for the people riding behind them. A friend told me that good riders know how to pee without getting their bike wet, which is apparently a bad thing to do (wetting the bike that is). My questions are:
1. Is it more common for riders to stop for a wee or just do it on the fly?
2. Where does weeing on the fly sit in the realm of okay-ness? What are the rules of etiquette in a marathon race situation?
3. If some riders stop but others wet themselves, how is this fair in the race?
4. When a bunch of riders do stop for it, how to they maintain their racing order? How do they all decide they're going to do it?
5. This is the most important question: what happens for female riders? How would they be able to stop and go on the roadside? How would they wet themselves while riding without getting the bike funky?
6. What sort of damage, if any, is done to a urine soaked bike?

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Reply:

I'm not a world-class cyclist -- I race at the sub-pro level -- but I have done enough long races to be able to answer your questions with some firsthand experience.

1. Both, depending on the situation. If the peloton is really going -- say, chasing down a breakaway or something -- you can roll up your shorts and hang on to a teammate and actually pee off to the side of the bike. More commonly, though, when the race is quiet and the pace not too high, a few riders will just pull briefly to the side of the road, do what they need to do, and then work together to get back into the bunch. In really big, long races, like stages of the Tour de France, sometimes the almost whole peloton will take a brief break to pee.

2. Totally part of the sport. In the US, public urination is against the rules and can get you disqualified, but the officials are usually understanding if you exercise discretion and don't do this when spectators are around. Obviously, if you pee on the fly, you need to get to the side of the road so you don't pee on other riders, which is NOT ok.

3. This doesn't generally happen and it's not really a matter of fairness. If you're in a position where stopping or not might cause you to lose the race, and you had to go badly enough, you'd just go and deal with it. But that's a pretty rare situation.

4. In a long race, racing 'order' is not relevant. If you're in the bunch it really doesn't matter if you're number 10 or number 30, it's easy to move up or move back (if, say, you want to get out of the wind and therefore do less work, you'd go to the back, if you want to challenge for a sprint or drive the pace, you'd go to the front of the bunch). You just stop, pee, then work your way back into the group.

5. This is a bigger problem for women than men, obviously. But women's races are generally much shorter than men's races, so the need to pee is less of an issue.

6. None. But bikes do not become urine-soaked because you generally do not pee ON your bike, you pee FROM your bike.
One other thing to remember is that in many races peeing is even less of an issue because it's often hot enough that it's hard to stay hydrated, no matter how much you drink. So you just don't have to pee.

http://ask.metafilter.com/98817/Weeing-and-cycling-what-up

The Cofidis rider on the right goes on the fly while his team mates assist by keeping up the cycling momentum

This year's Tour also saw a light plane travel on the ground in green fields adjacent to the peloton for quite a distance and time. It looked like it was speeding up the runaway to take off but it remained on the ground.

You also get the nasty spectators.

1965

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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

More facts about famous people

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Walt Disney was scared of mice:

The irony of Mickey Mouse's creation is that Walt Disney was in fact scared of mice. However, he pictured mice as sympathetic creatures, despite people being scared of them.

By the way:

He was originally to be called Mortimer Mouse but Walt’s wife convinced him to change it to Mickey. According to Mickey Rooney, the mouse was named after himself, this happening after a meeting he had with the Disneys in the 1920’s when he was a child.

Mickey Mouse was the first ever cartoon character to talk. In the 1929 episode, The Karnival Kid, Mickey's first words were "Hot dogs!".

Walt Disney’s body or head are not frozen and cryogenically preserved. He was cremated on 17 Dec 1966. James Bedford became the 1st human to be cryogenically preserved on 12 Jan 1967.

“Girls bored me - they still do.

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known.”

- Walt Disney

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Is it true that the name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."

It is commonly asserted that when asked the country's name by a child he was first telling the story to, Frank Baum looked to his filing cabinet in the next room, which had two drawers. One drawer was marked A-N, and one marked O-Z. So he called it "Oz" after the letters on the second drawer.

While this story has been told many times, there seems to be little evidence that it's true. Baum himself told at least two different versions of this story. Others have speculated that it comes from the "Oohs" and "Aahs" his stories produced from readers and listeners. Still others, looking for hidden meaning in the book, claim it comes from the abbreviation for ounces, or have linked it to Uz (Job's home in the Bible), Shelly's "Ozymandias," or Charles Dickens' pseudonym Boz. But L. Frank Baum's widow, Maud, once wrote to writer Jack Snow on this subject and stated that it was just a name that Frank had created out of his own mind.

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Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button.

Like any persons, except Adam and Eve, he had a bellybutton when born. However, because of repeated stomach surgery, it was sewn over.

By the way:

Alfred Hitchcock was once stopped at the French border by a suspicious customs official. Eyeing the space where Hitchcock listed his profession as "producer," the official demanded, "And what do you produce?" "Gooseflesh," Hitchcock cooly replied.

Walt Disney refused to allow him to film at Disneyland in the early 1960s because Hitchcock had made “that disgusting movie Psycho."

When Hitchcock was a boy, his father sent him to the police station with a letter. Upon reading the letter the policeman locked Hitchcock in a cell and later released him. The officer then released Hitchcock explaining, “This is what happens when people do bad things.” It is reported that Hitchcock spent the rest of his life being afraid of policemen and a constant theme in his movies of the lone individual against inept police.

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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

The art of Jason Mecier

A follow up to the Jason Mecier portrait of Fay Wray made from junk and trash, posted in the Bytes on the movie line from King Kong, some more Jason Mecier works . . .