Some People Collect Stamps, Some People Don't.

[Heradel]

From the New Yorker

[...]But the most accurate account of the bomb’s inner workings—an unnervingly detailed reconstruction, based on old photographs and documents—has been written by a sixty-one-year-old truck driver from Waukesha, Wisconsin, named John Coster-Mullen, who was once a commercial photographer, and has never received a college degree.
[...]
Coster-Mullen sees his project as a diverting mental challenge—not unlike a crossword puzzle—whose goal is simply to present readers with accurate information about the past. “This is nuclear archeology,” he told me, in a late-night phone call. “It’s like any other kind of archeology.” Though the government does not make a practice of providing Coster-Mullen with timely responses to his technical inquiries, no official has actively discouraged him from pursuing his research.
[...]
Coster-Mullen spent the next ten years of his life mastering a body of recondite technical data. He extracted photographs from government archives and scrutinized them with a magnifying glass; he interviewed one retired machinist after another, as well as scientists and engineers. Researching the bomb provided Coster-Mullen with an outlet for a sensibility that might have been equally at home collecting tropical butterflies or double-print stamps. To suggest that Coster-Mullen is a garden-variety classification freak, however, is like comparing a high-school trumpet player to Miles Davis. [Emphasis Mine]

The article mentions these two Wikipedia pages, which have drawings by Coster-Mullen.

So what have you been doing in your spare time?

_{edit:Damn, forgot the opening quote tag.}

[stePH]

So what have you been doing in your spare time?

Plotting the overthrow of the British monarchy.

[Zathras]

So what have you been doing in your spare time?

Making babies 

[Raving_Lunatic]

You know the global financial/economic collapse?

That was me. Sorry guys.

[Talia]

Ive been throwing shoes at the president.

[Raving_Lunatic]

I saw that clip too (along with 6 billion other people).

Where were his bodyguards? He had the time to take off his other shoe before they stopped him. Could've easily pulled out a gun (although I'm sure they were all searched) and shot the guy.

[Russell Nash]

Ive been throwing shoes at the president.

I can just watch that clip all day long.

[Heradel]

Ive been throwing shoes at the president.

I can just watch that clip all day long.

Me too. I love he's an asectarian folk hero now.

I saw that clip too (along with 6 billion other people).

Where were his bodyguards? He had the time to take off his other shoe before they stopped him. Could've easily pulled out a gun (although I'm sure they were all searched) and shot the guy.

Something tells me that the Secret Service doesn't do shoe-thrown-at-package exercises. That said, they did burst in pretty immediately (he threw both shoes in what, four-five seconds? They were slippers, not sneakers). I'm sure that the searches for Iraqi journalists were akin to the seven layers of hell.

[Russell Nash]

It was a really good throw.  I'll say one thing, Bush is pretty quick.

[Heradel]

It was a really good throw.  I'll say one thing, Bush is pretty quick.

Makes you wonder what goes on in the Residence. 

[Bdoomed]

"Who throws a shoe?"

[Russell Nash]

Hitting with a shoe is a massive insult in Iraq and I think most of Muslim society.

[Heradel]

From the Times article:

Hitting someone with a shoe is considered the supreme insult in Iraq. It means that the target is even lower than the shoe, which is always on the ground and dirty. Crowds hurled their shoes at the giant statue of Mr. Hussein that stood in Baghdad’s Firdos Square before helping American marines pull it down on April 9, 2003, the day the capital fell. More recently in the same square, a far bigger crowd composed of Iraqis who had opposed the security agreement flung their shoes at an effigy of Mr. Bush before burning it.

[stePH]

Hitting with a shoe is a massive insult in Iraq and I think most of Muslim society.

As I mentioned to my wife last night, the insult might be considerably lessened if your target is from a different culture than your own.  For another example, a handsign that means "suck my asshole" in Brazil* would most likely be interpreted in the USA as "okey-dokey".



*so a friend who's traveled that country informs me.

[Windup]

So what have you been doing in your spare time?

Getting ready for a couple of shorter (200 kilometer and 300 kilometer) brevets next Spring, as well as the Tour of the Missisippi River Valley (TOMRV) and RAGBRAI.  At the moment, that means time on the trainer and trying not to grow too portly over the holidays, which seems to get harder every year. 

[Planish]

So what have you been doing in your spare time?

I'm suddenly obsessed with building kites these days, and most recently started collecting pictures of the "General Lee" car from The Dukes of Hazzard. I was never a fan of the show, but I thought it would be the most appropriate celebrity car to fly as a kite.
I'm thinking one of the frameless "inflatable" style of kites, such as some of the ones you see on  http://www.gombergkites.com/plynn2.html . "Inflatable" only in the sense that the pressure of the wind entering the opening at the front (in this case, the radiator grille) inflates the kite like a windsock, not like a balloon with a sealed skin and helium.

Not going full scale for the first prototype, maybe 1/3 life-size or so. Just think of it. Driving along, look up, and see a big old orange 1969 Dodge Charger R/T, flying a few hundred feet above a hayfield.  Priceless.

[Zathras]

So what have you been doing in your spare time?

I'm suddenly obsessed with building kites these days, and most recently started collecting pictures of the "General Lee" car from The Dukes of Hazzard. I was never a fan of the show, but I thought it would be the most appropriate celebrity car to fly as a kite.
I'm thinking one of the frameless "inflatable" style of kites, such as some of the ones you see on  http://www.gombergkites.com/plynn2.html . "Inflatable" only in the sense that the pressure of the wind entering the opening at the front (in this case, the radiator grille) inflates the kite like a windsock, not like a balloon with a sealed skin and helium.

Not going full scale for the first prototype, maybe 1/3 life-size or so. Just think of it. Driving along, look up, and see a big old orange 1969 Dodge Charger R/T, flying a few hundred feet above a hayfield.  Priceless.

I want to see video of that!