Need a trim? Or maybe just cutting down to size ...

July 31 is the feast day of the founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) -- St. Ignatius Loyola. Ignatius was canonized on March 12, 1622 in a ceremony that honored four other saints: Teresa of Avila, Francis Xavier, Isidore the Farmer and Philip Neri. Neri, founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, was the lone Italian, all the others being Spaniards. This led the Italians to say that Pope Gregory XV had canonized four Spaniards ... and a saint.

Ignatius is noted for his seriousness. Philip Neri was noted for his sense of humor. 

My favorite story/legend about the two of them recounts an encounter they had when both were in Rome. While Ignatius went on and on about something of vital importance to the progress of the Catholic Reformation, Neri supposedly pulled out a pair of scissors and patiently began trimming the Jesuit's beard.

I'm not Italian, but that is still my idea of a saint!

Gives the saying piss off a whole new meaning

San Francisco city officials are implementing a new "pee-proof" paint around the city to combat the persistent problem of public urination. 

Public Works crews have painted 10 walls in the city with a special UV-coated, urine-repellent paint, according to CNN affiliate KPIX

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Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru was inspired by a project in Hamburg, Germany, where walls in a night club district were coated with the liquid-repellent paint. 

If an offender tries to urinate on a wall coated with the super hydrophobic paint, the urine, instead of running down the wall, will spray back at the person relieving himself, potentially hitting his clothes or shoes. 

Public urination has been a chronic issue in San Francisco for a long time. In 2002, the city passed legislation banning public urination and imposing a $50 to $100 fine for offenders, but the ban has had little to no impact on the problem. 

Since the beginning of January, Public Works has had about 375 requests to steam clean urine from various areas in the city. The hope is that the new "pee-proof" paint will help quell some of the city's hottest urinating zones.

Proof of evolution ... or of Genesis?

The oldest snake fossil on record looks almost like a modern snake, except for one glaring difference: It has four feet, each with five digits, a new study finds.

 The roughly 120-million-year-old snake, dubbed Tetrapodophis amplectus (literally, four-legged snake), likely didn't use its feet for walking. Instead, the appendages may have helped Tetrapodophis hold onto a partner while mating, or even grip unruly prey, said study co-researcher David Martill, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.

Previous research has detailed two-legged snake fossils, but this is the first known snake ancestor to sport four legs, he said. It likely evolved from terrestrial-burrowing creatures, and was a transitional animal that lived during the shift from ancient lizards to modern-day snakes, he added. 

"We've found the ancestor of all snakes," Martill told Live Science. "We have found the missing link between four-legged lizards and snakes."

The researchers found several indications that the fossil is, in fact, a transitional snake. Unlike lizards and crocodiles, Tetrapodophis has faint impressions of a single row of belly scales, a signature still seen on snakes today.

When the researchers used ultraviolet photography to examine Tetrapodophis' gut, they found partly digested bone fragments that the camera highlighted in different colors. These remnants suggest the snake ancestor ate vertebrates, just as modern carnivorous snakes do.

Moreover, the fossil had other classic snake features, including a short snout, long braincase, elongated body, fanged teeth and a flexible jaw that could swallow large prey, the researchers said. It also has a similar vertebrae column that allows the snake to be extremely flexible, they said.
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Damien's note: Anti-evolutionists often claim that transitional animals or fossils have never been discovered, thus disproving that evolution exists. This is of course famously false, as everyone knows who has ever seen the fossils of Archaeopteryx with its feathers and teeth. The two- and four-legged transitional snakes are another example, one would say, thus providing more weight to evolution.

On the other hand, Biblical fundamentalist are nothing if not logically slippery. I would imagine at least one preacher will immediately latch onto this fossil as proving that snakes once had legs and lost them because of the role of the serpent in tempting Adam and Eve. (Genesis 3:14 -- And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.)

And you thought it was just Wikipedia that was ... unreliable?

One of the "headlines" on my computer news feed this morning was Yanked off air. Apparently yet another sportscaster has embarrassed himself by saying something offensive to an entire group of people and lost his job as a result. Why this is news is unclear to me.

But it made me wonder about the origin of the word yank, which means, we are told by Merriam Webster Online,

: to suddenly pull (something) in a quick, forceful way

: to quickly or suddenly remove (something or someone)

 Okay, I pretty much knew that part. What I wanted to know was the origin of the word. (Did it have anything to do with the word Yankee, for example.) But M-W assures me that the origin is unknown. It goes on, however, to say that the first known use was in 1822. So probably not some Rebel slang slander of the Union soldiers.

But being the curious person that I am -- and you can feel free to take that every which way you wish -- I scrolled down. I have learned not to stop reading too soon.

The next entry (unidentified source) said the first known use was circa 1864, squarely in the middle of the Civil War, and making me wonder about those pesky Union dudes again. But it is more than forty years later than the date given by M-W.

Scroll further and discover that Yank as a person from the US of A appears for the first time in 1778, as far as we know.

For what that's worth.

You pays your money, you takes your chances. 

National Hot Dog Day

No, seriously. It is.

On the anniversary of the Moon Landing

Replica of the chalice Aldrin took to moon.

The first drink consumed on the moon was wine. No, the crew didn’t pop a few corks to celebrate. Buzz Aldrin — a strict Presbyterian Christian — actually took a mini communion kit without NASA knowing.

Silly String goes to war

In 2006, a soldier serving in Iraq named Todd Shriver contacted his parents in New Jersey, asking that mom and dad send him some Silly String. The request wasn’t a sophomoric one, though; Shriver wasn’t going to use the Silly String to play a practical joke on the other members of his detail or for revelry at all. Rather, he planned using it for something which could one day save his life or the lives of others: bomb detection.

It is not uncommon for buildings in Iraqi war zones to be booby trapped, with bombs rigged to explode when someone enters the room. The bombs are triggered when an entrant stumbles into a thin, nearly invisible tripwire, leaving almost no time for escape. For soldiers, entering an unoccupied room is therefore a gamble -- unless you can somehow detect the tripwire before crossing it. Enter Silly String. It travels far enough where a soldier can shoot it across most rooms, and it’s light enough such that if some Silly String lands on the tripwire, it won’t cause bomb to explode. Fire the Silly String and if it hangs in the air, it’s snagged on something -- and therefore, the room is best avoided. Pretty clever, right?