jwz

Drilling for Scotch whiskey on frozen continent

A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica's ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago. The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.

Workers from New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds. Al Fastier, who will lead the expedition in January, said restoration workers found the crates of whiskey under the hut's floorboards in 2006. At the time, the crates and bottles were too deeply embedded in ice to be dislodged. The New Zealanders have agreed to try to retrieve some bottles, although the rest must stay under conservation guidelines agreed by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations. [...]

Richard Paterson, Whyte & Mackay's master blender, said the Shackleton expedition's whiskey could still be drinkable and taste exactly as it did 100 years ago. If he can get a sample, he intends to replicate the old Scotch and put McKinlay whiskey back on sale. "I really hope we can get some back here," he was quoted as telling London's Telegraph newspaper. "It's been laying there lonely and neglected. It should come back to Scotland where it was born.

Previously, previously, previously.

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1595

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← previous	November 16th, 2009	next
November 16th, 2009: There are now HOLIDAY SHIPPING DEADLINES announced. The nearest one is on November 22nd so now is the time to think about awesome Dinosaur Comics presents for your favourite dudes and ladies, cats and kittens! – Ryan

jwz

DNA Lounge update, wherein there are some photos.

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1594

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← previous	November 13th, 2009	next
November 13th, 2009: Hey, what are you doing next Friday, the 20th of November? If you're in NYC you should totally check out Art, Advertising, Activism & Alchemy, which is a series of talks by four awesome street artists (including my buddies Posterchild and Jason Eppink!) and also an art show and also it's free, you guys! Posterchild's site has the details and this Facebook group has the details too. Also! There are now HOLIDAY SHIPPING DEADLINES announced. The nearest one is on November 22nd so now is the time to think about presents for your favourite dudes and ladies, dudes and ladies! – Ryan

news [theljstaff]

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
3. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
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5. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
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5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1593

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← previous	November 12th, 2009	next
November 12th, 2009: It's not quite definitely not planning any crimes ever! #seriouslyyouguys, but Rodney Bradford's Facebook status update of "Where's my pancakes" successfully acted as an alibi against a charge of robbery! Awesome, Rodney Bradford! He wasn't out robbing people because he was at home wondering where his pancakes were. But as that article goes on, it slides deep into "oh man OLD PEOPLE STEREOTYPES" territory. Joseph Pollini, who otherwise sounds awesome because he lists "hostage negotiation" as his primary area of expertise, says that teenage HACKERS could have posted that pancake-centric Facebook update to Rodney's profile while posing as Rodney at his home computer, while Rodney was actually out busy robbing at the time - which, you know, is possible? But it's not very likely, and it takes some knowledge. No problem, says Joseph! Teenagers are really good at internet, because "they use it all the time". "They [teenagers!] could develop an alibi. They watch television, the movies, there is a multitude of reasons why someone of that age would have the knowledge to do a crime like that." Is it the "the" he puts in front of "movies" that is so terrible? Is it that he believes you can get better at computers in real life by watching an actor on TV sit down in front of a monitor, a monitor so bright it projects legible text onto his face, cracking his knuckles before saying "Let's get cyber" - is that what's so terrible? Perhaps he believes that all digital photographs can be enhanced to reveal any face via the "ENHANCE" button that true hackers have access to, and that when such a hacker is faced with a screen full of the words "ACCESS DENIED" in a blinking red font while a siren goes off and laughing skulls spin in the background, they need only hit the "OVERRIDE" button. Anyway! Where's my pancakes UPDATE: Michael let me know that the New York Times ain't so dang reliable, the update made by Rodney didn't say "Where's my pancakes", it said "ON THE PHONE WITH THIS FAT CHICK......WHERER MY IHOP." Guys that is so much better, this story is amazing. – Ryan

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1592

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← previous	November 11th, 2009	next
November 11th, 2009: Here is some exciting news that Laura the Zoologist sent to me! Do you have something gross lying around your house? Of course you do. Well, it turns out that you can now get a free scanning electron micrograph of ANYTHING. Fill out a form, send in your object sample, and they'll post the result on their site! Guys we all have to do this! – Ryan

jwz

DNA Lounge update, wherein the axe falls.

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1591

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← previous	November 10th, 2009	next
November 10th, 2009: In yesterday's comic T-Rex and Utahraptor talked about self-charging mp3 players (before everyone died) (quite a bit before everyone died). Utahraptor said "There are physical limits to what a -" before he was interrupted by T-Rex. If he'd been allowed to continue he would have said "There are physical limits to what a device such as that can do, and it wouldn't be enough, as I said earlier - assuming of course that the person lives a sedate lifestyle and barely uses their legs." I say this because it turns out that people are ALREADY working on T-Rex's invention! In fact, they're such great people that they started working on it even before he invented it, and that's really something. Thank you everyone who sent me links to this Science Daily article and this NPR story. I even got some emails from researchers working on this very problem, which was kind of crazy, because I hadn't expected that! It made me think that if I'd written a comic about how you can converse in English with your dogs now instead, we'd all be waking up today to a world where, come Christmas 2009, a Dog Talker will be on the top of everyone's list! Anyway that sounds pretty good to me! UPDATE: Guys it turns out that dog translators exist, I am going to think really hard about what my third invention will be before posting it here; I don't want to waste it. UPDATE 2: Okay the idea of using breasts as a power source was just a stray thought, I didn't mean for it to come true! I need to get a handle on controlling this new-found power. – Ryan

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1590

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← previous	November 9th, 2009	next