The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Useful Information

Money Sank The Titanic

by 2 Comments

I came across an interesting article in Newsweek that shed new light on the sinking of the Titanic. It appears that the mighty ship succumbed to a disease that afflicts us to this day, greed.

“The Titanic sank into the North Atlantic 97 years ago. Since then, as Harvard historian Steven Biel quipped, “Only Jesus and the Civil War have been written about more.” In close to 200 books, documentaries and movies—and the highest-grossing film of all time—historians, scientists and Titanic buffs have fervently debated what really caused the biggest passenger ship of her day to sink just two hours and 40 minutes after hitting an iceberg, carrying 1,522 people to their deaths.

It turns out they needn’t have bothered. As Brad Matsen explains in his new book “Titanic’s Last Secrets,” those questions were answered long ago, in a confidential investigation by the ship’s builders. To date, experts have amassed enough evidence to demonstrate that the ship broke into three pieces, not two—before sinking, not after—and she went down faster and at a much lower angle than James Cameron would have ever guessed—all thanks to skimpy rivets and a flimsy hull. But a trove of documents from Harland and Wolff—the Belfast, Ireland, shipyard where the Titanic and her sisters were born—reveal that the problem was not just one of incompetence and poor construction. It was negligence: the ship’s builders suspected that the ship’s hull was too flimsy, but they overrode the concerns of their engineer in a bid to get the Titanic on the seas in time. An investigation held after the ship
sank was not made public; the heads of Harland and Wolff allowed two formal
government inquiries to lay blame for the wreck on the shoulders of the ship’s
captain. The lawsuits of so many victims would have bankrupted the Titanic’s
owners—J. P. Morgan among them.”

It is worth reading the rest of the article. I thought that it was quite interesting and sad to see that a hundred years later greed still plagues us. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that money is the root of all evil either, but it certainly influences things.

Crossposted Here.

Who Wants To Buy An Artificial Foreskin

by Leave a Comment

The Shack prides itself upon serving as an authority on all sorts of useful and not so useful gadgets, information and devices that you need to know about.

Before we discuss the meat of the post let’s take a look at some of the valuable information we have provided:

How to Make Hard Boiled Eggs
What Not to Do-Snakebites
The Cubicle Celebrates 40 Years
How Velcro Was Invented
My New Desk- I Have To Get One
London Restaurant Tries To Solve Gas Crisis

And this my friends is but an abbreviated list of the cool stuff we told you about. But now I am about to share with you the one invention that trumps all of them. I can’t believe that this wasn’t pointed out to me sooner.

Men, we now have the option to purchase artificial foreskin. Yes, you read that correctly, you can buy artificial foreskin. If your abba told the mohel to take a little off the top and he took him too seriously your prayers have been answered.

Introducing the SenSlip, a product whose manufacturers claim is long overdue. If you’ll bear with me I am trying hard to take this seriously, but it is killing me. So if you’re still reading let me share some of what is making me chuckle.

From the fitting instructions:

You can, if desired, adjust the length of the Senslip with a sharp pair of scissors. Remove the Senslip and cut off the required amount from the ribbed end to achieve the desired length.

I think that the should highlight the part about removing it before cutting. It is one of those warnings like not removing the tag from a mattress that are very important. After all who wants to visit the E.R. because you played automohel.

I should add that the FAQs provide valuable information too such as to never insert this into any part of your body or anyone else.

Call me crazy, but I foresee problems if you have to tell your partner to hold on because you have to take off the condom, er foreskin you’re wearing so that you can put on a condom.

Why, oh why are they not advertising this amazing product on television. Surely there is a washed up actor or actress who would do an infomercial to promote this wonderful product. Maybe they could sell it alongside The Ginsu Knife.

Anyway, if you are curious to see some of the other really cool products/information we have shared with you then I encourage you to check out the links below.

Untapped Sources of Energy
The Mangroomer
Business Cards That Will Get You Business
Medical Technology- The future is nowInventions You have Got T0 Have
(Includes the ladies urinal, toilet forehead support system and much more.)
The Nose Pouch

Crossposted here.

Signs That Your Relationship is Doomed

by Leave a Comment

One of my great pleasures in life is providing people with tips and useful information that they can use to improve their lives. Our current topic is how to recognize signs that your relationship with your significant other is doomed.

If you have a disagreement about dirty dishes and engage in any of the following activities you might consider looking for a new place to live.

  1. Biting
  2. Smashing picture frames across your partner’s face.
  3. Attack them with a sword.

Any one of these actions is probably a good indication that things are not good, but if you hit the magic trifecta of all three you can pretty much kiss him/her goodbye.

Inspiration for this post comes from the good people at MSNBC.

What Not to Do-Snakebites

by Leave a Comment

Here at The Shack we appreciate stories about all kinds of animals. So when we find interesting news we like to share it. This afternoon we stumbled onto what not to do about snakebites.

Here is an excerpt that is worth a look.

“After 23 years as an emergency room physician, Dr. Mark Rabold still takes his business seriously but can’t help but wonder in amusement about some of the situations he’s encountered involving rattlesnake bites.

One of his favorite stories involves an anesthesiologist who had just recently moved to Montana. The guy ran over a rattler with his dirt bike, but the tire spun up the snake, which hit the biker in the stomach and bit him.

Then there’s the one — Rabold’s had so many patients he can’t remember if he treated this guy or just read about it —where a man was struck by a rattlesnake, and the guy’s buddy tried a home remedy to treat the wound.

“His buddy got the jumper cables and hooked him up to a giant battery for his semi, then fired up the engine. He probably had to put down his beer first to put the clamps on each side of the snake bite,” Rabold said, laughing. “The guy is screaming, yelling and seizing from this treatment; they thought it would somehow break the venom down.

“Someone actually did a study, and found that electric therapy doesn’t work. It’s just an interesting layman’s myth. This guy ended up with third-degree electrical burns.”

The reality of rattlesnakes is that they do cause a painful bite and their venom can kill a person, although that’s rare. But for every true aspect of rattlers, there are also plenty of tall tales.”

From a slightly different angle The Week has a review of a book called The Snake Charmer. It shares the tale of Joe Slowinski’s encounter with a venomous krait. According to the review a bite from this particular snake causes your nervous system to shut down and death within four hours.

“For all its high drama,” said Eric Ormsby in The New York Sun, The Snake Charmer is at heart “a book about strangeness.” The snakes that Slowinski and his colleagues pursue are rare specimens, yet the scientists themselves are James’ most exotic subjects of all. “They have their own lingo, their own customs, their private codes,” as well as astonishing tenacity. When Slowinski stops breathing, his peers keep him alive for 24 hours with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as they wait in vain for a helicopter rescue. Slowinski, meanwhile, calmly details the nature of his symptoms to his anguished friends. By dedicating his final hours to his chosen field, said People, he earned the “remarkable tribute” James has written.”

And that leads to an off color joke that you may have heard.

Two friends go on a camping trip together. A short time after dark one of them has to urinate. So he goes over to the bush pulls down his pants and then he screams. He runs over to his friend and says, “Man I’ve been bitten by a snake on my penis call for help.”

So his friend runs off to the car to call poison control to ask what to do to help his friend.

The doctor offers the following instructions, “You take a knife and make an x on the spot where he was bit, then you suck out the venom.”

The friend thanks the doctor and runs back to his friend who looks up and asks, “What did the doctor say?”

His friend looks down and says ” I am very sorry, the doctor says you’re gonna die!”

The Cubicle Celebrates 40 Years

by Leave a Comment

I don’t know that I’d really call this a celebration. For most of my professional career I have managed to avoid sitting in one, but there has been a time or two in which I have been stuck. I am not a fan.

“The cubicle celebrates its 40th birthday this month. A party is unlikely.

What’s to celebrate? The cubicle office system is one of the most derided realities of modern work life.

Somehow, the spaces that white-collar worker bees unlovingly refer to as “cubes” have become an icon for all that is confining, uninspiring, soulless and humdrum in our workaday lives.

Warrens. Honeycombs. Cube farms. Even “veal-fattening pens.”

The sarcasm — cynicism — wrapped around those fabric-covered panels is remarkable for a system marketed back in 1968 as the Action Office.

Bad rap?

“This was a wonderful concept,” Joe Schwartz said. He was the marketing director at Herman Miller in Michigan when the furniture company shopped a new office system concept around the country.

Schwartz, now 82, retired and living in Scottsdale, Ariz., spent a fair amount of time in Kansas City back then because Hallmark Cards was one of the first adopters of the Action Office.

The late Robert Propst at Herman Miller gets credit for the design, although some of his ideas were lost in translation, Schwartz said.

The basic idea of movable walls was a beautiful thing for employers and employees. For management, reconfiguring space could be accomplished without costly and messy drywall work. Employees gained storage, some privacy, even shelves.

In the initial design, Schwartz said, workers could have desks at two levels, one for sitting and one for standing.

“Propst had the idea that sitting wasn’t good for you and that people could both sit and stand at work and that would improve their health,” Schwartz said.

The Action Office met with some resistance. Managers wondered if privacy was such a good idea. Cost, as always, was an issue. Desks on two levels?

But the biggest alteration was that the cubicles shrunk in response to demands on office space, Schwartz said.”

For the full story please click here.