The Daily Blurgh: Flipper goes commando and Gidget almost loses it (again)

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

In the near future, Navy Marine Mammals will prevent the next diabolical underwater plot hatched by marine-loving terrorists. In fact, they’re doing it off the coast of California right now. Lest you be worried that these aquatic freedom defenders are “canaries in a coalmine” (but in water!), rest assured that, “None of the animals have been harmed in the anti-terrorist work. They never have to carry potentially catastrophic mines.”

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The sexual history of “Gidget.”

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UC Berkeley plans on asking incoming freshman and transfer students to submit DNA samples swabbed from their inner cheeks, “in an effort to introduce them to the emerging field of personalized medicine.” Yeah right. We know that UCB is going to take a page from Philip K. Dick and use the genetic data to blackmail the students when they attempt to do things like go on hunger strikes or protest budget cuts.

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Boing Boing has a neat-o preview of this year’s Maker Faire.

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Garderobe, a word now extinct, went through a similar but slightly more compacted transformation. A combination of “guard” and “robe”, it first signified a storeroom, then any private room, then (briefly) a bedchamber and finally a privy. However, the last thing privies often were was private. The Romans were particularly attached to the combining of evacuation and conversation. Their public latrines generally had 20 seats or more in intimate proximity, and people used them as unselfconsciously as modern people ride a bus.

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Creepiest headline of the day: Slain woman found in suitcase off Embarcadero 

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Most delicious word of the day: “maize’wiches“

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Piece of Internet wisdom of the day, courtesy of Slog commenter gloomy gus:

“The internet is 45% sadness, 45% anger, and 10% things to soothe the sadness and anger, meaning: cats and advice.”