Kevin | Astroblastro

Cpl Kenny Butler in Afganland

Aug 5, ’10 12:06 AM

My high school buddy slash college roommate slash good friend, Corporal Kenny Butler, is in Afghanistan right now. It’s been amazing to be able to keep in touch with him online while he’s there, a little crazy too. We get to chat over IM like he’s at camp or something, but I love it. For instance, he told me he found a ridiculously cool fox-headed fur hat that he wished he would have bought.
I had seen the inset photo recently and sent it to him with the following text:

INFO
SUBJECT: ARMY COMBAT UNIFORM (ACU) ENSEMBLE

1. THE PURPOSE OF THIS MESSAGE IS TO ANNOUNCE IMPLEMENTING INSTRUCTIONS ON THE CARE AND WEAR OF THE NEW WRINKLE-FREE, UNIVERSAL FLUFFY K-9 MOUNTAIN MAN ACU ENSEMBLE APPROVED BY THE CSA ON 21 JUL 10. POLICY CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

2. SO TUCK A PRETTY LITTLE FOX UP ON TO YOUR HEAD SOLDIER.

Then he sent me the picture above taken on the day he first saw the goofy hat. He said he might print them out to spread the word and I thought it would be fun to do the same. So if you’re at home or at work, you should download this little pdf of the instructions and print a copy. You don’t have to hang it up. Just print it out, look at it, and think good thoughts for Kenny in Afghanistan.

Oh, and before you ask, his gold tooth is real.

Comments (1)

Mad Men Chaser

Aug 1, ’10 10:17 PM

Mad Men is a great TV show, partly because it acknowledges recent cultural history. Martini lunches, overt office flirting, smoking in the car with the kids unbuckled, it’s hard to believe they got away with that stuff! Other of their bad habits have stayed with us though, they’re just not as obvious.

Comments (2)

Rodeo Bannack

Jul 31, ’10 7:04 AM

More here!

Comments (1)

Morph-o-Saurus

Jul 30, ’10 12:48 PM

Prepare to have your mind blown.

Certain dinosaurs—physically disparate enough that we’ve always thought of them as different species—may actually be the same animal at different stages of its life cycle. Also: Those big, protective-looking bone formations surrounding some dinos’ heads and necks probably weren’t all that useful as a defense against predators.

Case in point, triceratops. Or, maybe we should be calling it torosaurus now, I’m not sure. See, according to research done by scientists at Montana’s Museum of the Rockies, the familiar triceratops is really just the juvenile form of the more-elaborately be-frilled and be-horned torosaurus.

A fully grown Torosaurus

This extreme shape-shifting was possible because the bone tissue in the frill and horns stayed immature, spongy and riddled with blood vessels, never fully hardening into solid bone as happens in most animals during early adulthood. The only modern animal known to do anything similar is the cassowary, descended from the dinosaurs, which develops a large spongy crest when its skull is about 80 per cent fully grown.

Scannella and Horner examined 29 triceratops skulls and nine torosaurus skulls, mostly from the late-Cretaceous Hell Creek formation in Montana. The triceratops skulls were between 0.5 and 2 metres long. By counting growth lines in the bones, not unlike tree rings, they have shown clearly that the skulls come from animals of different ages, from juveniles to young adults. Torosaurus fossils are much rarer, 2 to 3 metres long and, crucially, only adult specimens have ever been found. The duo say there is a clear transition from triceratops into torosaurus as the animals grow older. For example, the oldest specimens of triceratops show a marked thinning of the bone where torosaurus has holes, suggesting they are in the process of becoming fenestrated.