Tour de Herndon "all-carbon" bicycle: $1899

"Ballerina" titanium-spindled pedals: $250

"Wow, do chicks really feel like this in high heels?!?" biking shoes: $40

Watching your husband toodle around on his space-age bike in clothes people get arrested on COPS in: priceless

What happens when your wife's association decides to re-do their three-year-old website?

Rice-boys take note. Your "looks-like-it-came-from-a-salvage-yard" hood is no match for an entire bike made out of carbon fiber.

Burning chrome

Why yes, as a matter of fact, it is 2005 Ultegra, and thank you for asking!

Easily the most surreal part of the ride. My Cypress's handlebars were completely out of view. This thing is like steering a ram back and forth. A really light, really twitchy, really fast ram. Lord only knows what the pure racing versions are like.

Special thanks to VALVT, without whose support this project would literally be impossible.

New Scientist is carrying this story about a bizarre discovery in the ant world:

The ant Wasmannia auropunctata, which is native to Central and South America but has spread into the US and beyond, has opted for a unique stand-off in the battle of the sexes. Both queens and males reproduce by making genetically identical copies of themselves - so males and females seem to have entirely separate gene pools.

Darned clever, those bugs.

Well, she didn't get eaten by it, but she sure did take some freaky pictures:

Then, suddenly, in a week when sharks have attacked two tourists off Panhandle beaches, Mathias had her own too-close-for-comfort encounter.

"It leaped out of the water about 5 feet away from me. I pulled my feet up really fast and it started snapping its jaws. I was so scared I forgot to take my finger off the button and just kept clicking."

Sometimes point-and-shoot is good.

Slashdot (via Fark) notes Britain's first Jedi member of Parliament made his maiden speech yesterday. Lefties blaming this on a vast Bush/Rove/Christian conspiracy in 3... 2... 1...

I saw it in the Post, but this thing is definitely making the rounds: a 646 pound catfish, representing perhaps the largest freshwater fish ever found alive, was caught in the Mekong river in a remote area of Thailand. While efforts were made to try and save it, the big male died anyway. The villagers didn't let it go to waste though... they apparently had a gargantuan catfish fry with this fish as the guest of honor.

Includes picture!

The rice rainbow, that is:

With Taiwanese youngsters increasingly drawn to Western hamburgers and fries, government researchers are trying to lure them back with something more traditional - sort of: rainbow-colored rice.

The ancient Asian staple will soon be available here in pink, green, yellow and purple, each with its own nutritional boost, said scientist Lo Tze-yen of the Hualien Agricultural Improvement Station in eastern Taiwan.

And I thought blue corn looked weird. With pictures!

Tacky? Tasteless? Purile? Partisan? Who, us?!?

What I find amazing is, in spite of our reputation as rigid, endoctrinated indoctrinated, humorless automatons, with the possible exception of Franken, we have all the funny. Of course, confidence tends to breed humor.

Because, you know, "right" isn't just a direction.

New Scientist is carrying this report on a remarkable discovery about dolphins and killer whales... both newborns and their mothers don't sleep at all for at least the first month after birth. Stranger still, tests showed the animals did not seem to be stressed at all by this activity. Considering some mammals will die if deprived sleep (and most human parents slowly lose their marbles over a newborn's inability to sleep any real length of time), this unexpected adaptation is quite mysterious indeed.

Nah, we're not upset at Iran because they're a bunch of expansionist revolutionary fundametalists trying to build nuclear weapons. We're upset at them because our Secretary of State was jilted by an Iranian in college:

Perplexed by the vitriol of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's attacks on Iran, one lawmaker believes he has uncovered the secret of her enmity -- that she was spurned by an Iranian boyfriend at college.

"The reason that the US secretary of state attacks Iran is because she had her heart broken by a young man from Qazvin while they were students," a confident Shokrollah Attarzadeh was quoted by the ISNA agency as saying.

If nothing else, this shows the US has no monopoly on legistators who are so out of touch with reality their shoes don't touch the ground.

BBCnews is carrying this article-and-picture of what could be the first lake discovered on Titan. I wonder what the buoyancy qualities of liquid methane are? Something tells me it'd be a bit challenging to waterski on.

CNN is featuring this brief article (with pic) on the latest re-design of the new WTC complex. While I understand why the reporter wrote "It will retain a spire, which will emit light and is intended to echo the Statue of Liberty's torch.", when I look at the picture I can't help but be reminded of a certain single-fingered salute New Yorkers are very fond of. All things considered, I still think it's appropriate.

Yeah, it's just a press release, but even the idea of a sub-2 pound bicycle frame is pretty cool:

BMC, the leading Swiss high-end bicycle brand, has developed for the number 1 Pro Tour Team Phonak a new secret weapon for the Tour de France.

Last year, BMC had already introduced the revolutionary "Time Machine" during the Tour de France, which set the new standard for time trial bikes. This year, we can present another revolutionary bike the BMC "Pro Machine". The "Pro Machine is the first bicycle frame in the world which is made entirely using the revolutionary Easton CNT-Nanotechnology.

Remember: to increase speed, add lightness.

Joshua gets a putter-shaped no-prize for bringing us the most unusual mini-golf course ever. Somewhere in Arkansas, there's a redneck steaming over his stolen idea.

Too Funny!

Brought to you by Spreegirl!

For sale: 1 private lot for development, contact city government for more information:

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of [Supreme Court Justice] Souter's home.

Is this another Dredd Scott? No, nobody's going to war over this. But it does show just how dangerous the Supreme Court can be. It's not the predictable left or right wing bias you should fear, it's the completely-out-of-left-field-we-are-the-SCOTUS-please-take-a-fuck-you-at-the-door decisions they have occasionally made that should keep you awake at night. Dredd Scott (aka "let's rip down the country just to see what the plebes come up with second time around") is just the best known, but just about any decision from the Warren court will do as well.

And yes dearies, I know which one you're thinking of, and I still stand behind the statement.

Via Siflay.

Fans of Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame) should find his newly posted Slashdot interview of interest. He's been in Hollywood too long to completely avoid the pretentiousness of that town, but for a card-carrying member of People's Republic of California, Left Branch, he's still pretty interesting. He'd have been a lot more interesting if he'd linked our weblog all those years ago like I asked him to.

Bitter? Petulant? Me? Nah...

Jack's back, this time in a book that claims he was a sailor on a merchant ship. Interesting to think he may not have even been British, but I have a feeling this one will be about as definitive as Cornwell's Sickert hypothesis. Still, fun to read about!

Jeff gets a dark and brooding no-prize for bringing us details of the latest batmobiles. Fully functional, 0-60 in 5.6 seconds... what's not to love?

Sometimes McGruder can be abrasive and unfair. Other times, well other times he's right on the money.

I was actually going to link this when I saw it this morning. A recent note from inveterate no-prize winner Ron simply sealed the deal.

It's a joke R&A... a joke! Of course we care about Tom, Oprah, and Lindsey.

*snicker* ... *giggle* No... *chuckle* really!

Well, I guess it's better than using a riding lawn mower:

Two Russian soldiers are in trouble after driving an armoured personnel carrier 40km to buy vodka.

They were caught after crashing through a fence into a used-car showroom, demolishing several vehicles, on the way back.

Funny because it would appear nobody got hurt. Well, except for the APC at any rate.

Daddy! I'm trying to eat my cake before it melts!

Such a little lady.

Lovie is another one of my clinic cats that lives with my parents. Well, she used to be a cat. Now she is some black blob that likes to bathe in the sun.

RB, aka Arbour, is my parent's cat. RB used to be a clinic cat of Amber and mine when we worked at an animal hospital together.

Pat gets a sharp n' toothy no-prize for bringing us news of yet another "taste-test" off the coast of Florida:

Another teenager was the victim of a shark attack in the Gulf of Mexico, law enforcement officials on the Florida panhandle said Monday.

The boy was in critical condition with severe injuries, said Christa Hild of Bay Medical Center in Panama City, where the boy was flown.

It would appear that we don't, in fact, taste like chicken. Or tuna, or seal, or whatever it is they're expecting when they chomp on a person. Of course, considering the size of these fish, the tasting is plenty bad enough.

Don't look at me man, I didn't even know they made tube amplifiers for car audio:

It's rare to win over 90% of all car audio competitions entered in a 5-year period and even more rare to be featured not only in all of the major car audio magazines but also to appear in Time, on MTV and CNBC, and in more than 211 newspapers in the US as well as 27 magazines worldwide, yet that's only part of the acclaim and attention awarded to Earl Zausmer's BMW 540i.

Below are some articles detailing Earl's legendary car audio system, which sports two gold-plated Milbert BaM-235 vacuum tube amplifiers. The system received many awards over the years, including "best of show," "best in class," and "best sound quality."

Car audio, like home audio, is a hobby I'd love to get back into if I suddenly hit the lottery or something. As it is, I'm amazed by the amount of crap I still hold in my head about this stuff (to this day I can tell you what RMS is and why anything rated above .1% THD is crap), even though I haven't been serious about it for more than a decade.

But for now the "cash required to fun acquired" ratio is simply too large for me to have a go at it. I mean, why spend thousands of dollars on hi-fi when there are bicycles around?

Since "baby" is becoming less and less relevant as Olivia continues to imitate a weed planted in a sack of fertilizer, I've added an eponymous category for her. Since they didn't have drawings of demons with binkies in their mouths and Elmo dolls in their hands, I chose something a little more subtle and hopefully longer-lasting. Look for the latest "O-monster" updates there.

First Tigger, now Piglet:

John Fiedler, a stage actor who won fame as the voice of Piglet in Walt Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh films, died Saturday, The New York Times reported in Monday editions. He was 80.

I'm too lazy to actually research this, but I'm pretty sure Fiedler was also in at least one original Star Trek episode. Can't recall the title (see! see! I'm not that nerdy!), but it was the one with the murderous spirit that kept jumping from body to body and hacking various expendable but creatively dressed trollops to pieces.

Jeff gets an amazingly long-lived no-prize for bringing us news of yet another B-52 Stratofortress expansion:

A B-52 from Barksdale Air Force Base, La., was launched with Boeing’s prototype integrated weapons interface unit that allowed the bomber to release, for the first time, eight 2,000 pound joint-direct attack munitions from the internal bomb bay. The test took place at the Utah Test and Training Range.

As I recall, current Air Force plans show the B-52s still on active duty in 2025. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if this thing ends up being the first weapon system in the modern era to last longer than a century.

The Washington Post today featured an article detailing what may be the first observed instance of culture in marine mammals. Dolphins, to be specific. Scientists have observed the females of one group of Australian dolphins wearing sea sponges as a kind of shield while they forage for food. The behavior is learned, passed down from mother to (almost exclusively) daughter, and does not appear to be genetically based. This does not, of course, preclude controversy, with other scientists remaining unconvinced that this really is a form of culturally-based behavior.

Lake Wobegon's gotten a little more stressful these days. Shooting begins Wednesday on a film version of Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion," bringing him together with director Robert Altman and a star-studded cast including Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and Lindsay Lohan.

Some very cool pixes of clouds.

You can tell how cold she is in this picture. She was blue by the time she was finished playing with the hose. You can only imagine the fit she pitched when we finally took the hose from her.

Thats an awful big bunch of balloons you got there O. Good thing we only came home with the Elmo and the star ones. Daddy was very upset I had to take the latex balloons in the back bedroom and shoot them like used horses.

Yes, yes calm down. She has a bathing suit bottom on. She is not all nekkid!

Baby is my brother's cat. She is insane.

Yes, even cyclists are loony.

O and I made $70 bucks last week with our change from the house, but this story is amazing.

Edmond Knowles started out saving pennies in a 5-gallon can. Thirty-eight years later, he was storing them in four 55-gallon drums and three 20-gallon drums - nearly 1.4 million in all.

Read entire article here.

"Paul Winchell, voice of Tigger in 'Winnie the Pooh,' dies at 82" and then the fact that he was a pioneer of early television, the most admired ventriloquist of his time and the inventor of the artificial heart are kind of like bonus, "oh, by the way..." details. I know reporters are supposed to look at every story and ask themselves what about it will relate most directly to the readers, and I agree that Tigger was better known today than most of Paul's other accomplishments. Still, it does seem to trivialize his more important achievements to rank them that way. Paul was a genuine superstar of 1950's TV and his artificial heart hastened the invention of a more advanced one that has saved lives. Somehow, the priorities seem a bit askew to me.

Read article here.

My parent's Blue Birds.

Bud is my parents's calorie-challenged potato spud dog.

Happy 2nd Birthday Olivia!!!

AMCG would also like to wish Olivia' sister in spirit, Alexis, a very Happy Birthday too!

Yes, yes, pictures. We will get to those soon enough.

What's a little girl to do with an oversized purple spotted leopard, a pink kitty backpack and a fuzzy kitty frame to do! Hug them of course!

On this day Tomorrow, in about four hours (Ellen knows the time down to the second, of course), Olivia Rachel Johnson was born. In just a year, we've gone from this:

To this:

Onward and upward!

Now you have two ways of wrecking your expensive RC toy! I think they should've shaped them like dragonflies or something.

This pix was floating around on LJ and it was too cute not to share!

Nobody talked openly about the "Suicide Boys'' until almost 90 years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

American Indian accounts written down immediately after the fight on June 25, 1876, or years later when the warriors were old men, do not mention four Cheyenne and about 20 Sioux warriors who vowed to fight to the death in the next battle with U.S. troops.

Maybe the suicide vow was too sacred to be shared with outsiders while the battle was still so fresh, speculated John Doerner, chief historian at Little Bighorn Battlefield.

On June 24, 1876, some of the Sioux announced that they would take the suicide vow. A dance was arranged that night to honor them. The ritual, which the Northern Cheyenne believed originated with them, was called the "Dying Dancing."

"This meant that they were throwing their lives away,'' Stands In Timber recounted. "In the next battle, they would fight until they were killed.''

Read article here.

Hey Joshua! You are right. It is Ron in a Chipotle ad!

No Prize to Rich for the link!

Sarah Michelle Gellar is attached to star in a feature version of the Electronic Arts video game "American McGee's Alice," which is itself based on Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" novels.

Read entire article here.

Seventy-seven million years ago—nearing the end of the age of dinosaurs, although they still had 12 million years to go—a young duck-billed hadrosaur lay down to die just over the horizon from the vast inland sea that covered much of central North Americ

Read entire article here.

A very fossilized No-Prize to Scott!

See what happens when you turn your back to make O dinner and she finds a pen. Bad things happen. Soap good.

A puppy with two extra legs and a second penis is drawing curious stares at a temple in Pandamaran town near here.

Read entire article with picture here.

No-Prize to Ron for bringing us this one!

Nina! This one is for you!

I did not know they could come this big.

Happy Father's Day!

We miss you Daddy! Come home soon!

From the National Zoo today.

TONTITOWN, Ark. - Arkansas' best-known big family will be getting bigger in the fall. Michelle Duggar and her husband, former state Rep. Jim Bob Duggar, say they're expecting their 16th child.

Michelle Duggar was honored in April 2004 with the state's Young Mother award. At the time, she was pregnant with young Duggar No. 15, a boy named Jackson born May 23, 2004.

The next child, a girl, is expected in October.

Well there really is nothing to do in that town except just have sex.

Per Ron: "The mom is probably her children's sister too!

I need at least 4 of these.

Amber needs some too. Her cats vomit in the hallway, in shoes, on tables etc...

Southern Mama brings us this very cool article from her home state! A flowery No-Prize to you!

BAUXITE, Ark. - Hiking in the Ouachita Mountains one day, retired mechanic John Pelton's eye caught a pink flower that he hadn't noticed before. The man with a passion for plant life couldn't figure out just what kind of flower he had found in Saline County.

Read entire article here.

Happy Birthday Ron!!!

Per request of a certain Daddy in TX right now. "Just take a pix and post it, right now. No matter what she is doing."

OOOO K. Here ya go :)

A newborn kitten recently entered the world with two faces and, hopefully, at least nine lives. Gemini was born Sunday with two mouths, two tongues, two noses and four eyes.

Read entire article here.

With Pix!

I found this picture on a friend's LJ and thought it was too cute to not to share!

Just weeks after a high-profile debate about the role of women in the military, the Air Force is putting a woman in one of its most prestigious and high-profile jobs. Capt. Nicole Malachowski has been named the first woman pilot in the Air Force's world-famous Thunderbirds demonstration squadron.

Read article here.

A 23-year-old sergeant with the Kentucky National Guard on Thursday became the first female soldier to receive the Silver Star — the nation's third-highest medal for valor — since World War II.

Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, who is from Nashville, Tenn., but serves in a Kentucky unit, received the award for gallantry during a March 20 insurgent ambush on a convoy in Iraq. Two men from her unit, the 617th Military Police Company of Richmond, Ky., also received the Silver Star for their roles in the same action.

Read entire article here.

Ok, ok, I admit. I will poke Scott awake or shake him if he snores. But I have never done this.

A woman upset about her husband's snoring is accused of stabbing him with a pen and hitting him with a dumbbell to wake him up.

“I went to put some garbage in the trash receptacles in the park,” Eddie Arfe recalls his evening of terror, “when all of a sudden something hit me in the chest and bounced off. That was a squirrel. Needless to say, it was quite frightening.”

A must read!

Very Cool!

Following up on the most spectacular royal tour ever, nearly 30 years ago, the wondrous tomb artifacts of Egypt's ancient boy King Tutankhamun returned to America on Wednesday, coming to Los Angeles with his own entourage, fanfare and the hype of a modern-day rock star.

Read entire article here.

They need to come to DC!

Her identity was not revealed at the time but the story can now be told of the little girl who may have been the real Lucy in the Sky.

Lucy Richardson grew up to be a successful movie art director.

But this month she died at the age of 47 after a two-year battle with breast cancer.

Read entire article here.

A British man who claimed he was too disabled to work was jailed for fraud after police found out he had wrestled alligators and trained in martial arts while claiming state benefits.

Read entire asinine article here.

Ron brings us this interesting article on tornados.

But the new study of Oklahoma's legendary May 3, 1999 tornado challenges the tenet that taking flight is foolishness. In that storm, people cowering at home were more likely to die than those fleeing in vehicles, according to the analysis newly published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Scott is away for the week on buisness. This means the site is mine! ALL mine! BUWHAHAHAHAH!!

Instructions per Scott:

1. Despam as needed
2. Post at least 5 articles
3.No tattoos, no piercings

He didn't say no snakes...

Contact with the stiff-haired spines of oak processionary caterpillars, which have multiplied by the thousands in recent days in trees in the central state of Hesse, can lead to skin rashes and asthma attacks, a spokesman for the town of Dreieich said.

Now don't go running outside and squash every caterpillar you see.

With pix!

Against long odds, the baby Susan was carrying when she was stricken appears to be thriving after nearly 21 weeks of gestation, Torres says. If she can stay alive another month, and the cancer stays away from her uterus, the baby could be delivered and have a chance of surviving, he says. The couple has a 2-year-old son, Peter.

"I hate seeing her on those darned machines," Torres says, "and I hate using her as a husk, a carrying case, because she herself is worth so much more. But Susan really wanted this baby. And she's a very - how should I put this? - a willful lady. That's probably why she's made it this far."

In yet another cost-cutting move, Northwest Airlines said it would shut down one engine on each of its flights within the continental United States.

Read entire scary article here.

And to think people eat these from the bay.

When Johnson called scientists at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, they were just as amazed at the crab, which they call a "bilateral gynandromorph" because its gender is literally split down the middle.

Ok, so Toronto has a 13-foot-tall bronze statue dedicated to a gay hero of the city. Judging by the picture, you'd think it was a big "so what". Until you read the plaque:

[The description of the 19th-Century sex scandal that made him famous] is commemorated on the statue's granite base, with a bronze plaque depicting a man's rear-end with his pants around his knees, and [hero] Wood's outstretched hand in mid-examination.

Tasteless? Hey, have you seen a gay pride parade? But have to admit I rather like the sense of humor. However, would be rather challenging to explain to Olivia, were she to see it between the ages of 3 and 12 at any rate.

I guess it really is true that some people will pay money for anything:

Targeting self-conscious 4x4 owners whose rugged vehicles seldom see obstacles bigger than a speed bump, the enterprising British e-tailer behind Sprayonmud sells the scent of the countryside in a squirt bottle.

For 8 pounds (about $14.50), buyers get 0.75 liters (.85 quarts) of genuine filthy water, bottled from hills near the company's premises on the rural England-Wales border. The aim, says the website, is "to give your neighbors the impression you've just come back from a day's shooting or fishing -- anything but driving around town all day or visiting the retail park."

Reminds me of the time I saw box turtles priced at $40 each at a Houston pet store. I would've sold them mine for $15, and gotten three more behind my house the next day.

This Cox and Forkum cartoon lead us to yet another story that'll make our lefty friends stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la la la la la la":

Let's hope Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy were sitting down when they heard the news of the latest bombshell Supreme Court ruling. From the Supreme Court of Canada, that is. That high court issued an opinion last Thursday saying, in effect, that Canada's vaunted public health-care system produces intolerable inequality.
...
The ruling stops short of declaring the national health-care system unconstitutional; only three of the seven judges wanted to go all the way.
...
The larger lesson here is that health care isn't immune from the laws of economics. Politicians can't wave a wand and provide equal coverage for all merely by declaring medical care to be a "right," in the word that is currently popular on the American left.

There are only two ways to allocate any good or service: through prices, as is done in a market economy, or lines dictated by government, as in Canada's system. The socialist claim is that a single-payer system is more equal than one based on prices, but last week's court decision reveals that as an illusion. Or, to put it another way, Canadian health care is equal only in its shared scarcity.

Of course, our universal health care will be different. Ours will work. Right?

A quote attributed to Albert Einstein suddenly comes to mind.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but then again if you squint your eyes just right, a logo can become a whole lot more. Basically SFW, although there are several "hmmm..." worthy pictures of what could possibly be construed as, well, something else.

Oh be quiet. You think this is bad, you should see what passed for decoration in fifth century BC Athens, or first century Rome. At least these things are abstract.

(Why yes, I have a two year old, why do you ask?)

While scientists have noticed correlations between prostate cancer and things like men living in northern latitudes or having dark skin, only recently has a study been completed that tries to find a strong correlation between prostate cancer and exposure to sunshine. Their findings indicate it's probably vitamin D that reduces the risk, and the reduction in risk can be as much as 50%.

Makes me feel even better about my afternoon bike rides!

Finally, a Humvee even a greenie can love. Is there anything you can't do with a VW chassis?

Actually, a dead fish would probably do well in Philly's offense too:

A bald eagle crashed through a window of a home and landed in the living room, scattering broken glass, feathers and a salmon carcass across the floor. Homeowner Jean Stack heard the crash and initially wondered if someone had thrown a dead fish through the window.
...
"They were fighting, thrashing around; there were leaves and limbs (shaking)," [neighbor Kurt] Haskin said. "This was all within 50 feet of me, and I was thinking this was pretty cool."

Then one eagle swooped out of the nearby tree, up past Haskin's head, around the eagle on the roof and back behind the tree, said Haskin.

"I didn't notice it was packing a fish when it swooped over me," he said.

The eagle re-emerged and bore down on Stack's bay window, which is about 15 feet off the ground.

"It just grenaded that window," Haskin said. "The window didn't even slow it down."

Eagle's fine, owner's fine, fish... well, fish wasn't fine before the encounter. Yet another thing you have to explain to the insurance adjuster. Good thing they've got witnesses.

Seen as a tagline on one of my bike groups:

There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

(Show it to Cindy, Jeff... she'll laugh.)

This week's "aren't you glad you have liability insurance" story comes to us courtesy of Disneyworld:

A 4-year-old boy died after passing out while aboard Walt Disney World's ``Mission: Space'' attraction _ a ride that has caused previous concerns because of its intensity.

Daudi Bamuwamye passed out Monday afternoon while on the attraction, which simulates a rocket launch and trip to Mars. The Orange County Sheriff's Office said his mother carried him off the ride and employees helped her place him on a bench.

Paramedics tried to revive him, but he died about 5 p.m. at Celebration Hospital.

Which is just about as sad as it gets, yet I can't help but think something else was going on. Little kids don't just drop dead because of an intense a/v experience. If they did nobody'd ever come out of an amusement park alive.

Well, hey, it sorta looks like a pipe bomb:

The “suspicious package” that caused Interstate 75 and Daniels Parkway to be shut for more than an hour Monday was not an explosive pipe bomb — but rather wrapped-up plastic foot-long penis.

“Someone took construction-grade plastic, molded it into a penis and wrapped it with duct tape,” said Lee County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Charles Ferrante.

“They wrote ‘Happy Father’s Day’ on the duct tape.”

Somewhere there's a man wandering down Second Avenue towards St. Mark's Place, doomed never to find what he's looking for, even for twenty-two bucks.

Probably old hat to most of you, but I'd never heard of Alien Loves Predator until today. A little heavy on the inside jokes about New York, but it still gave me a real chuckle.

This one reminds me of conversations I've had with friends over the years. No, I'm not Abe there. I just have really odd friends.

Via Silflay.

I've been interviewed for a lot of jobs over the years, and while, well, distinctive, I'd hardly call this guy's technique productive:

A man who tried to conduct a job interview naked has been sentenced to three years probation and placed on the sex offenders' register.

Glasgow Sheriff Court was told that Saeed Akbar, a manager at an interpreting and translation company, "had wanted a bit of excitement".

Sheriff Brian Lockhart described the behaviour as "wholly unacceptable".

He heard that Akbar, 35, left the interview room and came back in naked clutching a clipboard.

When the job candidate refused to strip as well, he put his clothes on and attempted to continue the interview as normal, the court was told.

I'd normally chalk this one up to someone wobbling off their meds, but the rest of the article makes him seem otherwise quite sane. Perhaps drugs were involved?

Heard this on the radio this morning on the way to work: calcium and vitamin D seem to significantly reduce the effects of PMS.

It was as if millions of husbands suddenly cried out in joy, and then were suddenly silent.

The Washington Post today carried this article detailing the discovery of the first sorta-Earth-like rocky world orbiting a distant star. Don't start holding your breath for ET though... this one is about 7.5 times the size of our planet and rockets around its star in less than two days.

So, what did we learn this afternoon?

• As much as it'll roll the eyes of many of those closest to me... as with OJ, we learned that America has most definitely progressed. The money of a rich (well, formerly at any rate) black man now buys the same amount of innocence as that of a rich white man*.
• Regardless of the media circus, regardless of common sense, "Joe and Jane Sixpack" really do take "beyond a reasonable doubt" seriously.
• Those on the left who think "trust the people" is eye-roll-worthy hyperbole should drop to their knees now and thank whatever it is they worship that they live in this country. You know, in case they ever get accused of something they didn't actually do. Or at least, didn't hurt anyone in the doing.
• The people of California, after a decade, still have not realized they must Clean House. Start from the lowliest elected official they can get their hands on and boot them over the horizon, then work their way up. Make sure whomever is put in their place knows the reason they have their job is to boot those the people couldn't directly affect over the horizon. Maybe, maybe then The People's Republic of California will stop being a law enforcement laughing stock.

Do I think Jackson did it? Like OJ, the answer is simple... oh hell yes. I read The Smoking Gun. Fourteen-year-olds don't come up with that kind of detail.

Do I think they proved it beyond a reasonable doubt? Again, as with OJ, oh hell no. California prosecutors, per historical precedent, chose to worship the cult of wealth and personality in their own special way and in the process allowed who knows how many real bad guys to walk. California citizens, swirled into the same narcissistic maelstrom, seem to keep re-electing these incompetents just to make sure their state's name stays in the papers. Of course, they then wonder cow-eyed at their monstrous state deficits.

The rest of us simply shake our heads and ponder how we can feel both sickened and heartened at the same time. Micheal Jackson is quite obviously someone who, were it not for obscene wealth, would have been given over to "Bubba the Love Machine" behind bars years ago. And yet he walks free, because in spite of the power and wealth of a state twelve people could not be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt he did what he almost certainly did.

Remeber folks, we're not looking for a perfect system. The world is infested with humanity, and anyone who even dreams of "perfect" justice is either hopelesly naive, an unapologetic card-carrying member of the liberal left (redundant I know), or selling something.

The rest of us, well... on a viceral level and in spite of the fact that I know it's irrational, it sometimes becomes difficult trusting family with my child. I think it takes a suspiciously naive person to allow their near-terminally-ill child to sleep alone in the bed of a man who spends millions of dollars every year to convince himself he's still eleven years old.

-----
* As destructive as that sentiment may seem, this is why they cheered ten years ago. If you don't think it matters, you're either white or not paying attention.

Ya know, it's pretty bad when your equipment attacks you. Professional A/V guy Joshua should get a kick out of this one. Wonder if it brings back any memories?

Ron gets a small flying no-prize for bringing us news of an interesting development in distributed computing:

Scientists have used off-the-shelf hardware to build the smallest flying Web server — a helicopter that can serve up a Web page over a wireless network.

The 2.5-ounce Ultraswarm vehicle represents the first in a group of flying computers that will one day combine swarm intelligence — the ability to maneuver like a flock of birds — and wireless computing to process information the way cluster-based supercomputers do.

As noted, off-the-shelf tends to mean pretty-damned-cheap, so it's just possible this is more than vaporware and could end up being affordable. But since the guy's current record is a single helicopter flying for just a few minutes, it would seem he has a long way to go.

Pat gets a healthy thumping no-prize for bringing us this story of a new heart drug that's intended for a single race:

In 1997, a new heart failure treatment called BiDil appeared dead on arrival. The Food and Drug Administration rejected the drug, saying that studies supporting it were inconclusive.

Then, proponents of BiDil refocused their strategy. This Thursday, eight years after the drug was rejected for use in the general public, an F.D.A. panel will consider whether BiDil should become the first drug intended for one racial group, in this case, African-Americans.

I do agree race can sometimes be a very vague definition, but (they claim) the data is sound. Of course, any time you enter Americas Great Cultural Minefield, explosions are inevitable. Only time will tell if this helps anyone, regardless of skin color.

No, really: a blow-up plastic TV:

Bring back the excitement of the Drive-In movie theater experience right in your own backyard. The SuperScreen Outdoor Theater System is a complete entertainment package that includes everything from a 13' x 16' giant inflatable movie screen, high-output DLP™ projection, dual 10" speakers with stands and sound boards and even a DVD player. You supply the popcorn.

Because I'm sure your neighbors will love the midnight showing of Evil Dead II.

One of the more startling things I learned in basic biology when I was in grade school was that our brains are cross-wired to our bodies. You know, left side of the brain controls the right side of body, & visa-versa. Worse, nobody could really explain why this was. Well, today in the Washington Post there's an article about a group of scientists who think they've figured it out. Turns out it has to do with basic optics and the evolution of limbs as locomotion.

Today's "mother-of-the-year" story brought to you by Nola.com:

The mother of a 12-year-old boy killed in his own home by one of the family's two pit bulls said she had been so concerned about one of the dogs that she shut her son in the basement to protect him.

Maureen Faibish said she ordered Nicholas to stay in the basement while she did errands on June 3, the day he was attacked by one or both of the dogs. She said she was worried about the male dog, Rex, who was acting possessive because the female, Ella, was in heat.

They may crap on my floors, pee on my walls, and puke on my dinner table, but at least our cats can't kill us. Well, directly anyway. It's a damned shame when kids have to pay the price of their parents stupidity.

Per Fark, no altering required: Giant Balls of 'Snot' Explain Ocean Mystery. Actually, a fascinating discovery that may help explain just how so many critters can live in what would otherwise be the greatest desert on the planet... the deep ocean floor.

Oh dear...

And Scott curses MY cats!

Two kittens picked the wrong place to relieve themselves when they urinated on a fax machine, sparking a fire that extensively damaged their Japanese owner's house.

Read entire cat pee article here.

A 5 day old unchanged litter box NO-PRIZE goes to Monikka for the link!

Fox and Universal have acquired the movie rights to the Halo franchise. As fans of Hitchhiker's Guide (good) and Battlefield Earth (bad, very very bad) know, rights do not gaurantee a movie, but it is a positive step.

I wonder if they'll have a Puma in it?

So let's say, just hypothetically, that you really, really want to knock one of your co-workers on their ass as they blow by you in the hall. Not kill, not maim, just body-block them solid enough to bounce them on their butt at least twice.

Is that bad karma?

I'm just wondering...

Problem: Unusual volcanic activity in Mexico.

Cause: UFOs. Duh:

What is really strange is the periodic harmonic tremor. According to some scientists the tectonic activities may have been triggered artificially. One possibility is that the hot spot of active volcano is disturbed by some extraterrestrial experiments controlled by aliens. Mexico recently has reported excessive sightings of UFOs. The other alternative can be that some kind of military experimentation is going on there.

Hey, it's in IndiaDaily, it's gotta be true!

The Simpsons movie is apparently on track for a tentative 2007 release. Excellent.

Well, that's what Cringely thinks may ultimately result from Apple's recently announced plans to start using Intel chips. Of course, it's all pretty much speculation right now, but it's fun to think about.

Wrong I tell you, just plain wrong:

1979 Alfa Romero [sic] spider ... the engine compartment had been on fire. So it has a Reconstructed title.... now for the good part. I pulled out the alfa motor and trans and cleaned up the motor compartment. I put in a 1976 toyota 2TC Motor and 4 speed transmission out of a corolla.

For the amount of work required for the conversion he probably coulda...

Oh hell, why am I wasting my time with you Phillistines? Make vodka with molasses, change the Cowboy's colors to green and white, put a Ford engine in a Pontiac, change out all those diamonds for CZs, make Rachel Brice dance in blue jeans, make Manowar play bluegrass. I don't care. I'm taking my goofy Italian sports car with its goofy Italian motor and going home.

It may leak a quart of oil every month, but it damn well starts every time I turn the key!

Harumph I say! Harumph! Hey, I didn't get a Harumph outta that guy!

Update: Deleted. Bugger. And I didn't even save any of the pictures. Noooooo!!!!

Heh.

Update II: It's baaaack.

Ok Jeff, I've found your next computer case. Actually, he's kinda gotten out of the whole overclocking thing. At least he's not trying to tinker with mine anymore!

Joshua gets an in-game no-prize for bringing us a demonstration of just how sophisticated physics modeling is beginning to get in video games. Should also point out to the console fans out there that HL2 for x-box should be available this October.

Ron gets a warm-and-fuzzy no-prize for bringing us news of rare kittens born at the Minnesota Zoo. If Ellen so much as pouts at this she's gonna owe me a pizza.

I'm sure someone on the left side of the peanut gallery will have a snarky reply for this one. Aside from the fact that it seems to be "italics in the headline" day at any rate. Meh, still gave me a good chuckle.

While not as utterly skeeve-worthy as that German cannibal guy, this macabre discovery certainly should be worth its own place on the "wha???" mantle:

Russian police have found four people from three generations of the same family dead in their apartment where they had lain for at least two years.

A spokesman for Moscow city prosecutors told local media skeletons were all that remained of the man and three women who seemed to have died at different times in the past decade.

You'd think someone would've notice the smell...

Not content with empowering the elderly with their own robotic pets and servants, Japanese scientists have now given them powered suits:

Japan has taken a step into the science-fiction world with the release of a "robot suit" that can help workers lift heavy loads or assist people with disabilities climb stairs.
...
It can also move on its own accord, enabling it to help elderly or handicapped people walk, developers said.

Ok mom, no tossing Olivia with this thing, mmkay?

Slashdot linked up news that we are one step closer to everyone's favorite BFG:

Scientists at the Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico have accelerated a small plate from zero to 76,000 mph in less than a second. The speed of the thrust was a new record for Sandia's "Z Machine" - not only the fastest gun in the West, but in the world too.

The Z Machine is now able to propel small plates at 34 kilometers a second, faster than the 30 kilometers per second that Earth travels through space in its orbit about the Sun. That's 50 times faster than a rifle bullet, and three times the velocity needed to escape Earth's gravitational field.

In essence, a magnetic pulse gun. LiveScience.com even has a picture of the thing. It also apparently has uses in fusion research, even if that's not quite as cool. ;)

Nearly everyone in America has heard about Amish genetic problems, but this WJZ13 Baltimore News story is the first I've seen to go into any real detail about just what this really means:

The Amish make up only about 10 percent of the population in Geagua County in Ohio, but they’re half of the special needs cases. Three of the five Miller children, for example, have a mysterious crippling disease that has no name and no known cure.

Their father, Bob Miller, says he realizes there is a crisis in the community, which is why he and two other fathers, Irwin Kuhns and Robert Hershberger, have agreed to break a strict Amish rule that forbids them to appear on camera. The three sat for an informal interview.

The only thing that puzzles me is why these things should "suddenly" manifest now? I have a feeling they've probably been having these problems for a lot longer, and only now are realizing a) that they really are biological problems and b) that there are cures. Whether or not the Amish will take them, well, that's a different story.

Jeff gets a medical no-prize for bringing us this inside look at one of the more puzzling sub-cultures in America.

Now that's what I call service:

A German city is rushing to install a series of drive-in wooden "sex garages" in time for next year's Soccer World Cup and an expected boom in the local sex trade, a city official said on Wednesday.

I'd make a crack involving our local soccer fan, but he doesn't need any help getting in trouble with his wife.

Cobb has created a comic strip that should give all Tivo owners a good chuckle. Every time I demonstrated ours to friends or family the conversation would be the same:

Me: "It's great! You can pause live TV, and when you come back you can skip commercials!"

Them: "Wow. Can you skip this commercial?"

Me: "No, this is still live TV. We can't skip over to a part that hasn't been broadcast yet."

Them: "Hmpf." Followed by a "wow, what a useless piece of crap" look.

I could almost watch the horse wandering away from the water hole.

Today's "stowaway tries to find America but discovers Darwin instead" story brought to you by the New York Daily News:

A man's severed leg - with a white Adidas sneaker still attached - plummeted from the sky onto a garage roof and bounced into the backyard of a Long Island home yesterday morning.
...
The leg, hip and chunk of torso apparently fell from the wheel well of a South African jetliner about to land at Kennedy Airport.

Explain that one to your insurance company!

Pat receives a sappy but inspiring no-prize for bringing us this story of a young woman who successfully gave birth after an ovarian tissue transplant from her sister. This specific situation was quite unique... since the sisters were identical twins, tissue rejection was not an issue, and therefore potentially fetus-endangering drugs were not required. But it still opens up both positive and negative questions in the field of elective tissue transplant.

Can intelligence be enhanced genetically? Has it been enhanced in certain existing groups of people? Slashdot linked up this intriguing article about a new report that hypothesises a firm "yes" to both questions. The population under consideration? Ashkenazi Jews.

An interesting proposal, but one that doesn't seem to have received much in the way of testing so far.

Jeff gets a dangerously powerful no-prize for bringing us this National Geographic website special, "Inside Tornadoes". I seem to recall us watching a special that detailed how they used these little R2D2-like probes to study the insides of tornadoes, but I can't recall them showing us any results. Well, here be the results!

Don't you just wish they actually wrapped them correctly and sucked the air out of the packages.

A rape victim once wished for teeth "where it mattered". Now a device has been designed to "bite" a rapist's penis. The patented device looks and is worn like a tampon, but it is hollow and attaches itself with tiny hooks to a man's penis during penetration.

In the event of rape, the device folds itself around the rapist's penis, attaching to the skin with microscopic hooks. It is only when the rapist withdraws that he will realise the device is clamped around his penis.

Read entire article here.

A MYSTERY animal, said to be a cross between a cat, kangaroo and monkey, is being hunted by cops.

The bizarre beast — dubbed the Catgarookey — has been spotted three times roaming a city’s streets at night.

Read entire article here.

With pix! (ok really this story is a SUN feature. If you can't take a joke, don't look at it)

This sucks.

NEW YORK - Anne Bancroft, who won the 1962 best actress Oscar as the teacher of a young Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker" but achieved greater fame as the seductive Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate," has died. She was 73.

She died of uterine cancer on Monday at Mount Sinai Hospital, John Barlow, a spokesman for her husband, Mel Brooks, said Tuesday.

Read entire article here.

Meh, why not give the deceased equine a few more lashes:

During last year's presidential campaign, John F. Kerry was the candidate often portrayed as intellectual and complex, while George W. Bush was the populist who mangled his sentences.

But newly released records show that Bush and Kerry had a virtually identical grade average at Yale University four decades ago.

Instapundit has a round up of far more clever responses.

Oooo... bumper sticker time! Somewhere in New England there's a village missing its idiot.

Somehow I don't see this one showing up any time soon on our own friendly neighborhood mobile billboard. Or static fridge. But hey, it's all good.

No, really, is that a fish in your pocket:

An Australian woman was found to be carrying 51 live tropical fish after custom officials were alerted by "flipping" noises coming from beneath her skirt as she arrived at Melbourne airport.

On closer inspection, officers discovered the woman had strapped on an apron of plastic water-filled bags containing the fish, the Australian Customs Service said in a statement on Tuesday.

Well, there goes Ellen's other idea for sneaking more goldfish into the house.

Somehow, when it comes time to remodel our bathroom, I don't think this one will be on the list of "upgrades". This thing is so wrong on so many different levels, you know we had to link it.

As of yesterday, Opportunity is once again a rover:

After weeks of spinning its wheels in a Martian sand dune, NASA’s rover Opportunity has finally extricated itself. Its wheels are now running freely across the surface, with no slipping.

Just in time, unfortunately, for dust storm season, which cuts into the sunlight the rover's solar panels can collect for operational power. Still, I'd rather have a slow rover than a fast, rrm... stucker?

Slashdot today linked up this Wired story detailing the shadowy world of Torah theft, and what synagogues are doing to stop it. Not as easy as you'd think, because to remain, well, I guess you'd say either "legal" or "kosher", absolutely nothing can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text. However, since Torahs are, you know, sacred, ways have been found to at least curb the theft problem.

Stealing Torahs. Man, it doesn't get much more "do not pass go do not collect $200 go to Hell" than that.

The Washington Post today carried this story about the "Geek Ghetto" that has grown up in Tokyo:

On streets once packed with housewives or couples shopping for refrigerators and microwave ovens, hundreds of thousands of nerds -- mostly men between about 18 and 45 -- now wander through the area's multi-story comic warehouses and elaborate game arcades. Eyeglass adjustment kiosks compete for space with shops selling nondescript dress shirts and thick leather shoes.

The article seems to provide a reasonably balanced view of this cultural phenomenon, discussing things like the sense of community and the prevelance of pedophilic imagery in that community. A good read if you're interested in the details of a startlingly different culture.

Four words: Home built high voltage. I mean, any site that puts an explicit warning of electrified death on its front page has got to be up to something good, eh?

This'd definitely be cooler than some stinky ol' bird feeder in the front yard. Time to get some electrical tape...

I am ready for my closeup.

Mac fanatics who have been all twitterpated about rumors ripping around regarding this can now rest, if not easy. It's official, Apple is going with Intel chips:

In a risky move that could further shrink its minuscule slice of the PC market, Apple Computer Inc. announced plans Monday to switch its Macintosh computers to the same Intel Corp. chips used in systems that run Microsoft Windows.

At least now they'll be expensive and fast.

Jeff and Pat share a no-prize for reminding us that today is the 51st anniversary of D-day. Weirdly, nobody has been able to provide a link to a US news source noting this fact. Google news's top return is this Indian Express article, which isn't even about the event in question. Then again, considering this is the fiftieth anniversary of events that ended the war, there might be a bit of overshadowing going on. Still, don't forget to raise a glass!

Ellen gets her very first no-prize for reminding me to post this brief animation that shows a dust-devil whirling around on Mars. I saw the thing when it came out last week, but at the time it'd been squashed by slashdot, and then I forgot. Very nifty!

Fark linked up this interesting account of the discovery of what could turn out to be the inspiration for Captain Nemo's Nautilus:

She was built in 1864 by a visionary craftsman, Julius Kroehl, for the Union forces during the American Civil War. But the boat, called Explorer, was never used in the conflict and was subsequently taken to Panama where she was used to harvest pearls.

She was ideal for this purpose because of a unique lock-out system, identical to the one in the Nautilus from Verne’s book, published in 1870.

Of course, no direct evidence exists for a connection, but the parallels are pretty interesting. As with its near-contemporary Hunley, this sub's crew perished on-board, only instead of trying to sink ships they were harvesting pearls.

Why have an ant colony when you can have a mean little thing that eats ants instead?

So far Olivia's etymological interests have been yelling "FRY!!!" every time she sees a butterfly (on anything... books, TV, clothes. I'm not sure she's actually seen a real one yet). Occasionally she'll say "bug!!!" when she sees some other creepy-crawly. We'll just have to see how the interest develops over time.

Damion gets a rubbery no-prize that swings from trees for bringing us, well... this. And you people think I have too much time on my hands.

Ron gets a mecha no-prize for bringing us the simplest DIY gauss rifle ever created. Yes you can fulfill your darkest Mechwarrior dreams with just a ruler, some common magnets, and a few ball bearings!

I don't think I would want to use this.

For all of you Pagans out there.

Maybe Scott would leave the cats alone if they did this!

Dude, you gotta get you one of these:

My case mod is a scale model of a Star Wars TIE Fighter, with a computer built right into the cockpit. And, it's also a desk! The whole case is built from scratch. As a die-hard Star Wars fan, I knew my first mod would have to incorporate something from Star Wars, and I could think of nothing cooler than a TIE Fighter. I got the blueprints online and got to work.

Ellen's always badgering me to replace my old computer desk. Now I finally can!

While this report about scientists finding a single gene that controls the sexual orientation of fruit flies is quite interesting, I think they perhaps overstate their case a bit. People are far more complex than flies, and if it really was this simple then it would at least seem to make bisexuality (which, according to Kinsey and later researchers, is far more common) impossible.

Then again, there's the less-oft discussed counter-argument... if sexual orientation wasn't at least largely genetic, would men and women really be willing to put up with each other?

According to the pool thermometer. The water was 72 degrees. COLD!

Remember folks, these are the people who consider themselves Gaurdians of Civilization:

"The conservatives have got us, as a country, now believing that balance -- giving both sides -- is the same as truth, and there are some things that are just false," said Linda Foley, president of The Newspaper Guild, during a panel discussion on media reform at the "Take Back America" conference in Washington, D.C.

Because, you know, if you presented both sides of an argument, why... that might mean the plebes could make up their own mind! Think for themselves! Come to a decision we don't agree with! The horror!!!

Tell me again, and slowly because I'm obviously too stupid to understand, why it's Fox News that's the enemy?

*GASP* ... Jesus Christ:

German police, alerted to a potential kidnapping, "freed" a man from a car trunk only to discover the would-be victim was actually a willing sex slave, authorities said Thursday.

Police stopped the car after a concerned caller told them he had seen a woman locking someone in the boot. However, on opening it, they were greeted by the sight of the 39-year-old man wearing nothing but a leather thong and a collar.

Now that's a mug shot to share with your friends!

Set your alarms folks, because in about eight hours the Battle of Midway starts. Well, sixty-three years ago at any rate. Raise a glass!

Crazy Frog.

I'm telling you. If you click the link, your life will not be the same today.

Noooo...It's not the fruit! But a loop!

Hey man, don't ask me, I just report the news, I don't make it:

A cup of coffee nearly cost a Twin Cities family the biggest investment most people will ever make: their home.

It is only fitting a story about something so destructive, one that sounds cooked up, would take place in a kitchen.

"I was in shock, I didn't know what to think," Ron Greenberg said.

Understandable, considering a cup of coffee forever changed Greenberg's morning routine.

"That's what I was doing here, is holding onto the thermos here, by the handle, twisting this, when the thermos broke away, the handle broke away from the thermos and it started shooting black stuff out there," Greenberg said.

Greenberg's two-year-old breakproof Stanley thermos broke.

"It was like a smoke bomb going off," Greenberg remembered. "It filled up the whole kitchen and the whole living room with a cloud of black smoke."

I mean, where do you start?

While most scientists seem to be finding more and more evidence of a "wet" Mars, some are making strong arguments for quite the opposite:

One study reveals that a region rich in the mineral olivine - which suggests it is has been "dry" for about 3 billion years - is actually four times larger than previously thought. That adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting Mars was mostly cold and dry - and not warm and wet - in the past.

The second study asserts that subsurface reactions of olivine and water could produce enough methane to account for recent observations of the gas in the atmosphere, removing the need to invoke living microbes to do the job.

Of course, this gives us even better reasons to send more probes, so I think it all ends up being good.

Sometimes I wonder why Celine Dion doesn't seem to be doing real well in Las Vegas (she recently complained of audience members falling asleep). Then I see something like this, and then I don't wonder so much. Not at all sure I could sleep through that though.

Jeff gets a quick and deadly no-prize for bringing us yet another home-brew lightsaber duel film. This one's got some really great fight co-ordination and stunt moves in it. Also, found the much-more-safe-for-work host, so no worries about naughty ads.

The Washington Post today carried this article detailing how scientists have managed to determine the sex of at least one Tyrannosaurus rex fossil. Their technique? Turns out a T. rex in the middle of egg laying season has the same sort of extra bone growth that a chicken does. While interesting in and of itself, the find also helps confirm the very close relationship between dinosaurs and birds.

Yes, Olivia can be a pain sometimes*, but all it takes is a story like this to show just how lucky we have it:

My wife, oldest daughter, and I love to bike. However, our younger daughter (Hannah) has cerebral palsy which makes it very hard for her little 5 year old legs to keep up, much less remain straight in the seat. After fooling around with a training wheel bike (still too unstable) and a trike [...], we had all but given up on finding her a ride that was economical and stable for her to ride.

Well, a week or so ago, while getting a tune on my bike I noticed a Adams trail-a-bike at my LBS. I asked a few questions about it and purchased it the next day.

If you don't get a smile at the end of the story... well, let's say I'm just gonna have to take back your "humanity" merit badge, mmkay?

We're going to get the same thing for Olivia when we're certain she won't roll off the back like an unsecured watermelon. But that's by choice. I can only respect and admire the folks who... well... you know...

----
* Grammas, pleased to be sitting down and being quiet. You get to give her back when she boils over.

No! No 90 year-old Japanese soldiers for you:

Fresh reports that an elderly man in the southern Philippines was a Japanese soldier left over from World War II were dismissed on Thursday by local police and Japan's embassy in Manila as a hoax.

He was the third man reported to be an Imperial Army soldier who stayed back in hiding in the Philippines after the end of the war. The other two never showed up and an intermediary who promised to bring them to the city was dismissed as untrustworthy.

Didn't stop the Japanese media from descending in a frenzy, but that's what they're good at after all.

Monty Python would be proud:

Got a gun but no game? Try Sweden's new moose stock exchange, launched by the Scandinavian country's state-owned forestry firm Sveaskog Thursday.

See the løveli lakes

Sveaskog rents its grounds to 3,200 hunting teams with allotted kill quotas and teams will now be able to offer moose they do not expect to shoot to would-be hunters.

The wøndërful telephøne system

Interested hunters can also post requests to use part of a team's quota on Sveaskog's Web site, www.sveaskog.se/jfn, the company said in a statement.

And mäny interesting furry animals

Moose hunting is something of a national pastime in vast and sparsely populated Sweden, with 250,000 hunters felling some 100,000 moose each year.

Including the majestik møøse

No mention of swallows (laden or otherwise), nor any advice as to whether coconuts actually migrate or not.

Actually, we get along with our neighbors pretty well. I was thinking of some other folks in the blogosphere when I saw this.

Today's "moron uses lighter to watch gas siphoning" brought to you by Warrensburg NY:

A Warrensburg man burned himself and is facing criminal charges after he used a lighter to check how his efforts to steal gasoline were going, causing a fire that destroyed a forklift, police said.

Glen B. Germain Jr., 19, of Glen-Athol Road, was charged with petit larceny and fourth-degree criminal mischief in the May 4 fire on Don Potter Road, according to the Warren County Sheriff’s Department.

He suffered minor burns in the blaze when he lit a lighter in an effort to see how full the can he was filling had become, sheriff’s Investigator Kibby French said. It ignited gas on his hands and in the can, police said.

This actually looks to be pretty close to where Ellen grew up. See Ellen, rednecks don't just live in the south!

See Ellen, I'm not a dumbass, I'm a good husband!

Via Silflay.

Space.com has this article providing a nice summary of what NASA's crawler-transporters are up to nowadays. Long-time readers will know my dad was in charge of the mobile launcher system that sits on top of the crawler back in the Apollo days. Good to see NASA still getting use out of the old equipment, even though the shuttle is rather puny compared to the cargo it was originally designed to carry.

Wow. Just, wow:

A fight about gambling started a married couple down a path that would end with their pickup being driven into a Tuttle pond.

So begins one of the more elaborate "so drunk they went right out the other side of stupid" tales I've read in a long time. Hey, at least they're not from Arkansas!

"Your job Hajji, should you choose to accept it, is to take your dinky lil' AK-47 and try to shoot down this mean mother f-er as it goes by. Keep in mind you only get one chance, because he'll see the flashes and make another pass, only this time he'll be shooting bullets the size of your thumb going mach 4. He doesn't miss.

Hajji? Hajji?

It's only when you see one of these things swooping around that you realize how devastating close air support really is. And these things are the slow and quiet component.

Remember folks, firepower means never having to say you're sorry.

Me: "That's weird."

Joshua: "What?"

"There're are only five airplanes on the flight line. There should be six."

"Six?"

"Yeah. Four for the diamond, and two for the solos. They never lose someone because of a mechanical failure. They carry two D models [two seaters -ed] just for media hops, and those'll do fine. But there are only five."

"Huh. Well, gives me something to look forward to next year, no?"

We never did find out why only five took part in the airshow. This time, it was three for the "diamond" (as it were) and two solos. I can only speculate that one of the pilots (probably one of the solos, because that section of the show was kinda weak) already had the nasty flu-thing that I ended up with the next day. It was surprising how much I missed the extra man. But we still had fun.

It would've been nice, though, for them to tell us what the heck was going on.

Thank the heavens for Wikipedia, without which we may all have remained ignorant of Spring Heeled Jack:

Spring Heeled Jack was described by his victims as having a terrifying and frightful appearance, with diabolical physiognomy that included clawed hands and protuberant red eyes, which "glowed like fire". One of these victims also recounted that, beneath a black cloak, he wore a helmet and a tight fitting white garment like an "oilskin". Many depositions also mention a "Devil-like" aspect, wearing a tight fitting oilskin outfit, although its colour alternated between white (the most frequent) and jet black. Many a witness stated that Spring Heeled Jack's physique was athletic and sturdy and that he was capable of effecting great leaps. Several reports mention that he could breathe blue and white flames from his mouth, and that he wore sharp metallic claws at his fingertips. At least two testimonies denote that he was able to speak in comprehensible English, albeit with an uncommonly deep voice.

Eons ago I remember reading in our local paper about a farmer who had an "encounter" with a similar creature after a bad storm blew apart his barn. It must have been a practical joke story (this was the Dumas Clarion after all), but the story scared the bejeebus out of me for years after.

Fweaky...

Joshua gets a cool unmarked no-prize for bringing us Das Keyboard, "for UberGeeks only". Ellen would regularly wear the marks off the keyboards of her old laptop. I just tend to wear smooth spots on the space bar. This would kill some of my other friends who never learned to properly touch type (you know who you are).

Slashdot linked up news of a self-wiring computer. By using special chips called Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), the idea is that people can create software that will cause the computer to physically change itself to become more efficient in processing certain tasks. The goal is a smaller, faster system than would otherwise be possible with more common generalized circuits.

Well, not exactly, but I can definitely get the circle to draw over where I work. I'm in a low-rise office that faces the other way, so as long as the terrorists don't field anything really big, I might actually live through it. Ellen's place is an old converted residence a few miles up the road from here. It'd probably get flattened like a swatted bug if they managed to light one off in the 200 KT range.

Cynical? Shocking? Hey, I grew up in the heart of the cold war. From that perspective, it's actually an improvement to talk about a nuke only taking out a single city.

Kinda puts your squares and lines to shame, no? I never have figured out how to draw curves with the dratted things. But I had fun with them nonetheless.

Via Reflections in D Minor.

Have blog, will travel:

A small but growing number of businesses are hiring people to write blogs, otherwise known as Web logs, or frequently updated online journals. Companies are looking for candidates who can write in a conversational style about timely topics that would appeal to customers, clients and potential recruits.

The salary range isn't that great for someone who's been in the IT business as long as I have, but it's quite a bit more than I was making when I started out. Can you say backup career? I knew you could...

Fark linked up this nifty, if rather macabre, story about a recent Bronze Age burial find in Germany:

Archaeologists have discovered the skeletons of a lord and his retainers in a burial mound at Germany's most celebrated Bronze Age site.

Archaeologist Olaf Schroeder said the intact, 4 200-year-old mound was one of at least eight "barrows" within view of the ancient holy site that yielded the 3 600-year-old Nebra celestial disc, a bronze and gold depiction of the heavens, in 1999.
...
"In the middle lay the lord, but his upper body and legs were missing. There was a precious bronze knife and a bronze needle next to him, and the remains of his court lay in a circle round him. The skulls were deformed. These people had died violently."

Wagner would be proud.