Tag: balls

“Give me freedom or give me death!”

2 Comments


Not often you find a crook so enamored of his own rhetoric

Former president Donald Trump launched a Thanksgiving rant on social media and lashed out at one of the prosecutors investigating allegations of misconduct, including tax fraud.

“The Manhattan DA Case should never have been brought,” the 45th president posted on Truth Social on Thursday, adding that it was a “total witch hunt”…

In another post, Mr Trump said: “Give me freedom or give me death.”…

He lamented that the investigation into his actions was a “rigged scam”. “The ‘Justice’ Department and FBI are CORRUPT…,” he said.

You might think his “expertise” in things corrupt might at least evoke a blush.

Italian court outlaws saying, ‘”you don’t have the balls!”

Leave a comment

It took a trial and two appeals. But now Italians know where they stand…They may think it. They may mutter it. But, on pain of a hefty fine, they must not say it.

With all the solemnity on which it can draw, Italy’s highest appeals court has ruled it is a crime to utter the words: “You don’t have the balls.” And for reasons that are potentially as controversial as the judgment itself.

The court decided the phrase should be outlawed, not so much because it cast doubt on the offended party’s virility, but because it implied a “lack of determination, competence and consistency – virtues which, rightly or wrongly, continue to be regarded as suggestive of the male sex’.

In this instance, the offended party was a lawyer from the southern city of Potenza. The existence of his procreative organs was called into question by his cousin, a justice of the peace, in a public courthouse row.

The judges at the trial ruled for the lawyer. But the justice of the peace took his case to appeal, where his counsel persuaded the court that the accusation levelled at him was a load of, well, nonsense.

The judges declared that the claim regarding their learned friend’s allegedly missing testicles could not be regarded as offensive because it had been levelled “in the context of a family dispute”. Undaunted, the offended party appealed to Rome where it was argued, on his behalf in a hearing on 26 June, that while it was acceptable to say, for example, “don’t break my balls”, it was unacceptable to claim that “you don’t possess the attributes – in other words, you are worth less than other men.”

Har!

Making small precision hollow spheres of metal

2 Comments

Producing metallic hollow spheres is complicated: It has not yet been possible to make the small sizes required for new high-tech applications. Now for the first time researchers have manufactured ground hollow spheres measuring just two to ten millimeters.

New drive technologies combined with lighter and stronger materials will make the airplanes and automobiles of the future more fuel-efficient. But a number of technical details need to be resolved first. Magnetic ball valves are one example – for them to react extremely quickly, the balls must be as light as possible, and the same applies to rapidly moving bearings. Hollow spheres made of steel represent a solution.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing and Advanced Materials IFAM in Dresden working in cooperation with hollomet GmbH Dresden have created the technology for the manufacture of rapidly reacting ball valves and bearings. “In an injection valve the movement of a ball causes the valve to open and close. The lighter the ball, the quicker it moves,” explains Dr.-Ing. Hartmut Göhler, project manager at the IFAM.

“For the first time we’ve been able to produce metal hollow spheres in the required diameter of just two to ten millimeters. The hollow spheres are 40 to 70 percent lighter than solid ones.”

RTFA. The process is ingenious. It even appears to be practical.

Bravo!

A cookbook with a lot of balls!

1 Comment

Lamb Eggs. Rocky Mountain Oysters. Spring Roe. Cowboy Caviar. Montana Tendergroins. While the rest of the world dreams up user-friendly names for dishes cooked with testicles, Serbian chef Ljubomir Erovic has no such qualms, as his widely-blogged Testicle Cookbook – Cooking with Balls vividly confirms. Ljubomir, who also runs the ever-popular World Testicle Cooking Championship is a man on a singularly testicular mission…

On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore the charm of a recipe that begins “wash penis clean and pat dry” (stew with bull penis) or the romantic appeal of heart-shaped turkey testicles, and the instructional videos scattered throughout the pages show Erovic to be a man of great charm and unbridled enthusiasm…

And so I head up to the the halal butchers of London’s Green Lanes to track down my ballsy bounty, strike lucky in the first shop I enter, and return home to rustle up some pizza. The recipe is pretty straightforward – a basic dough, tomato paste, chopped onion, chopped red pepper, cheddar cheese and the testicles – but it’s not an altogether happy result. The slices of testicle are wet and soft, and their delicate flavour doesn’t match the rest of the dish. My suspicion is that Erovic has created the recipe to lure in the less adventurous diner, as if to pretend that these lamb berries are a perfectly normal ingredient.

I have more luck with my second dish, the battered testicle fritter. The nads are first marinated in lemon juice, parsley, olive oil and pepper before being fried in a simple batter, and the results are stunning, like miniature, elegant Wiener schnitzels. Emboldened, I’ve set next weekend aside to try Testicles A La Dime Vuk from Kratovo, a bold concoction that attempts to marry “5 pairs of testicles of castrated pigs” with Komovica grape brandy.

Mmmm-mmmmm.