Robert H. gets an analog no-prize for bringing us a new "virtual" slide rule. Those who, like me, always thought it was a goofy looking toy should consult the instructions. Far as I know, my dad's generation was the last to take slide rules seriously, and even then he tells stories about giving instructors ulcers by asking, "why do we have to learn to do this when a computer will do it better and faster?"

I come by it naturally folks.

Looks like that whole "fresh air and sunshine" crap may have something to it:

Numerous studies have linked heart disease and air pollution, particularly smog. Smog--a toxic brew of chemicals and molecules such as ozone--seems to exacerbate heart disease, leading to an increase in heart attacks and fatalities. But researchers have yet to discover the pathway by which smog impacts the cardiovascular system. Now a new study shows how ozone's byproducts in the body can harden arteries and cause heart disease.

Can't wait to see what sort of goofy gadgets this news brings out.

Folks fascinated by mortuary sciences in the audience (you know who you are) should find this website dedicated to embalming of interest.

Fark linked up news of a new development in paratrooper deployment:

A new military parachute system which fits wings on soldiers could enable them to travel to 200 kilometres (124 miles) after jumping, Jane's Defence Weekly defence magazine said Friday.

200k is well out of the range of nearly all air defense systems, which should make the guys flying the transport much less nervous. Should help the guys jumping out of the airplane too, as guys zooming around with wings makes for a much tougher target than guys hanging from parachutes. Coming to a special forces team near you!

Hey, if prostitutes can have their own political party, why not perverts:

Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage.

You know, sometimes the whole "morality is relative" movement takes their ball and runs right through tolerance and out the other side of "what the hell is wrong with you?!?" This, to me at least, is most definitely one of those cases.

Why debate the existence of absolute evil when there is so much of the banal stuff just lying around?

Robert H. gets a no-prize that'll reverse the charges for bringing us this hilarious clip from Robot Chicken, one of the newer programs on Adult Swim. Time to set a new season pass!

BBCnews is carrying this update on upcoming changes to the Mars rovers. By using software developed for an Earth-observing space probe, NASA scientists will upgrade the rovers, allowing them to autonomously select data (in this particular case, involving images of clouds and dust devils) and only upload the most significant items to Earth. The systems work very well and have provided significant cost savings on some missions already. With refinement, it's hoped such techniques will make roving space probes to more remote places like Titan possible.

Space.com is carrying this update on how NASA's shuttle replacement, called the CEV, is progressing. The companies involved in the competition are understandably tight-lipped about details, but it's good to see progress is definitely being made.

Aviation Week carried a long article on this in their most recent issue. Things that I remember: the recently-retired Complex 40, which was used for Titan launches, has become a candidate for CEV launches. Complex 39, which currently is used by the shuttle, is still slated for use by the much larger CALV. Apollo-era hardware is going to be re-used, but a lot of existing commercial launch gear is also being considered, especially for the unmanned CALV.

Slashdot linked up this New Scientist article which details a new discovery about the heart that could enable a whole new series of treatments for heart disease and injury:

A team of US researchers has discovered the “home” of stem cells in the heart, lending credence to the idea that the heart has the capacity to repair itself. The finding raises the possibility that these cardiac stem cells could one day be manipulated to rebuild tissues damaged by heart disease – still the leading cause of death in the US and UK.

Maybe one day they really will be able to give you a pill that helps you grow a new organ. Or at least repair one. Living science fiction!

All those times I complained about how cold our community's pool is? I take them all back:

A Nepalese sherpa stripped and stood naked on the summit of Everest in sub-zero temperatures for three minutes, sparking an immediate row today over defiling the sacred mountain.

Completely unaddressed is why he did it?

Fark linked up this step-by-step guide to building the "ultimate" paper airplane. It certainly looks a lot more complicated than the two versions I know how to make, so I have a feeling it'll fly a lot better as well.

Paper airplanes are one of those things it simply never ocurred to me to teach Olivia about. Time to go find something to fold.

Olivia got her big girl bed today! This also marks the first day I got kicked out of her room.

Did I mention he LOVED hugs.

MANY thanks to my sister, Nina, who sent me a pix I have never seen this side of. My heart aches for Teddy. I feel like I lost a child.

The winning bidder will inherit not only the building -- and possibly the furniture, kitchen equipment and liquor license -- but also the 15 to 20 spirits that believers say live there.

`I've seen things that even the most pragmatic man would have to believe,'' said Ken Roberts, who bought the building with his wife, Margarita, four years ago.

Those ``things'' include missing and moving objects, a ghost stroking a woman's hair, sounds of boots walking across the wooden floors when no one is there, and the sound of the 1930s freight elevator door closing when no one else is in the building, he said.

See entire story here.

Drawing while on acid.

Photos found here.

Ron gets an eye-popping no-prize for bringing us Cans vs. cans. Video is SFW, although I may never look at a can of Fosters quite the same way again.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder:

I have been to Iraq nine times since the American invasion three years ago, for a total of about 10 solid months. (My wife is counting.) During that time, I have seen bombs and blood, I have seen rebuilding and restructuring, and I have seen death and democracy. So what have I heard? That's easy: Lionel Richie.

Grown Iraqi men get misty-eyed by the mere mention of his name. "I love Lionel Richie," they say. Iraqis who do not understand a word of English can sing an entire Lionel Richie song.

Well, hey, if Hasslehoff can become a German pop god and Jerry Lewis can be made a French knight (or something), I suppose anything is possible.

What's next? Barry Manilow's Copa Cabana as the Nigerian national anthem?

As part of the "DaVinci Code" promotional blizzard, a Japanese personality claims to have re-created what Mona Lisa and Leonardo himself may have sounded like when alive. Hey, this is the guy who invented the dog translator, you gotta trust him!

Ok, well, after seeing this... rmm... "rap?" video, all I can say is I hope they shoot better than they rap. I bet it's even funnier if you know what they're parodying looks like.

Via Countercolumn.

Author Amir Taheri recently visited Iraq, and, not surprisingly, his observations are quite different than the ones the MSM provide us:

It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly [the MSM-generated] image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq. Part of the problem, faced by even the most well-meaning news organizations, is the difficulty of covering so large and complex a subject; naturally, in such circumstances, sensational items rise to the top. But even ostensibly more objective efforts, like the Brookings Institutions much-cited Iraq Index with its constantly updated array of security, economic, and public-opinion indicators, tell us little about the actual feel of the country on the ground.

He then provides a very large number of concrete examples of just how well many things are going over there. Be sure to read the whole thing before you dismiss me as an utterly blinded neocon cheerleader.

Via Instapundit.

Pat gets a nutty no-prize for letting us know about the discovery of a rare stand of American Chestnut trees in Albany GA. This species of hardwood tree was almost completely wiped out by a fast-spreading fungus in 1904, so finding a mature stand of them is quite impressive.

Thanks to Bike to Work day, I learned it's 21.93 miles from the end of my garage door to the wall behind my desk. 15 mph avg, ~ 1:45:00 travel time. Ellen had a performance last night and will do another one tonight, so we were actually taking it a little easy. Go us!

Now if the rain will either pass through before 3 pm or hold off until 5...

Ok, this aughta put the whole "biker bit by dog" thing in perspective:

A cyclist attacked by a bear in Banff National Park is recovering following surgery to repair torn muscles in his arm. Park officials say it appears the 41-year-old victim was stalked by the bear, before being viciously mauled.

Yet another reason why this biker is a roadie through and through. To Ellen and me, "roughing it" means no Tivo.

Jeff gets a no-prize at the bottom of the ocean for bringing us news of the spectacular and useful demise of the USS Oriskany, a WWII-era Essex class aircraft carrier. Her career included combat tours to Korea and Vietnam, as well as a few supporting roles in various movies. She's the first (and so far largest) warship to be turned into an artificial reef.

She's sunk in 210 feet of water, which will make her a challenging dive even to reach the top of the island. Still, it'd be a helluva place to explore!

I'm not completely sure what a Lotus Omega is, but it certainly handed this cop his own ass. Cool, yes, but the cop got plenty close enough to see the plate number, and I don't care how fast your car goes you can't outrun a radio. When they catch this dude it will be... unpleasant.

Which is fine with me. I'm either minding my own business in a sedan that can be outrun by a kid on a big wheel, or a sports car built when "safety standards" meant a lap belt and a kiss on the cheek. I don't need maniacs in supercars screaming by at mach 2. Toss him in jail and take away his car.

Then give it to me.

For some reason Ellen won't let me grow a world-class mustache and beard, which i shame. I mean, look what she's missing!

Bah, who am I kidding. I can't stand mine to get much longer than "closely trimmed". The way a mustache acts like a sponge just annoys the crap out of me. And if my beard gets long enough all I do is sit around and pull it. Neat & trim, that's for me!

So are gators dangerous, or is the press just suddenly noticing them like they did with the Great Shark Attack frenzy a few years ago? Michael Yon thinks perhaps it's a bit of both:

When people eat gators, it never seems to make the news. But lately gators have killed three people, so it’s big in the news.

The State of Florida—where tourism is a multi-billion dollar industry—is quick to say that only 17 people have been killed by gators in Florida during the last 58 years. I am suspicious of this number, which somehow never seems to change despite the occasional story about man-eating gators. Media around the world have regurgitated the figure faithfully, but I have suspected for many years that someone is hiding the true body count. Before I get a wave of angry communiqués, or worse, whispers from the knowing who have proof of the “hidden-killer-gator-conspiracy,” I’ll admit the body count is not worth more than another minute on it, but I suspect –without substantiation –that my favorite state, Florida, pegs the body count low to avoid flushing the tourists. The State probably already has a press release with an excuse ready for the day when some pesky journalist figures out the real body count. After all, we are talking about gators; the attacks flash in the news and disappear.

Includes a detailed account of when the author got in a tangle with a 12 foot male!

Long ago, we used to live in Merrit Island Florida, and my parents have several stories of various alligator encounters. The one I remember is about a big male who used to terrorize the NASA parking lots, chewing off car tires for no reason anyone could figure out. Eventually he got overly ambitious and tried to chew the tire off a moving bus, thereby becoming an ex-alligator.

At least, that's the story. Always funny, sometimes even true!

No, really:

Humans' evolutionary split from their closest relatives, chimpanzees, may have been more complicated, taken longer and probably occurred more recently than previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday.
...
The process of separation may have taken about 4 million years and there could have been some inter-breeding before the final break.

Has to do with X chromosome changes, and the estimated age of those changes. Weird!

Like Olivia needs another excuse to fart alarmingly:

Consumers will soon be able to prepare baked beans on toast...in the toaster. Heinz is launching a frozen sandwich which cooks the beans inside the bread.

The student staple is popped in the toaster and heats up in around 60 seconds in a similar way to Kellogg's Pop Tarts.

All I can think of is how awful it would be to clean up after one that leaked.

There's duct tape, and then there's Duct Tape:

8979N – Nuclear Grade is designed for both permanent and temporary applications both indoors and outdoors.

Rated for use up to 200 degrees, and is meant to last for a year or more. I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!

Via ASFD.

I'd make a crack about these "Sci-Fi themed" fetish accessories being German, but something tells me they're probably just as prevalent over here. God only knows what the Japanese wear.

People are weird.

Suddenly, coming up from the outside, here's Nintendo roaring back into the field:

Nintendo, which is trying to regain videogame market share from Microsoft and Sony, will likely sell its new Wii console for much less than its competitors' console prices. Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post predicted Thursday that the new machine, which will be released this fall, will sell for $200, a move that could prompt software publishers to create more titles for the gaming system.

It would also appear Nintendo has finally made its development tools cheaper, and that this platform is easier to develop for than the others. The former was a legendary complaint about earlier Nintendo platforms which stunted their growth, and the latter addresses several complaints made by developers about the competitor's latest consoles.

Why are developers so important? Games don't write themselves! Couple that with an innovative controller and a price below, sometimes far below, the competition and you've got yourself a darned interesting market. For once.

I only thought North Korea frothed like this:

Venezuela's military is considering selling its fleet of U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to another country, possibly Iran, in response to a U.S. ban on arms sales to President Hugo Chavez's government, an official said Tuesday.
...
The Foreign Ministry said the U.S. move was aimed at weakening Chavez's government in preparation for an attack.

According to this, Venezuela has 21 F-16A block 15s. In capability, they're vaguely like 1982 Corvettes. Nice, especially if you're hunting Paco the cocaine farmer, or trying to keep the mob from taking your Fearless Leader to "hang out in the plaza", but not something of which one should be overly proud.

I don't doubt they're having trouble with them. US hardware, especially the aviation stuff, has a well-earned reputation for being fussy and high-maintenace (as well as elegant and extremely capable... sorta like my wife.*) They're designed with the assumption that large groups of highly-trained volunteers will be dedicated to keeping them running. They should've bought Soviet gear long ago, which is designed with the assumption that three teenage conscripts drunk on brake fluid** are all that stand between you and the cumulo-granite.

Threatening to sell them to Iran because you can't get parts? You think Iran can get parts? They've got a whole bunch of F-14As that've been sitting on various tarmacs for more than thirty years because they can't get parts. Even if F-16 parts are easier to get, you're still bringing an '82 Corvette to a race with '06 Corvettes, Vipers, and hell even a few McClaren F-1s. Achmed does not need these sorts of troubles.

But hell we're not the target for all of this. Clueless press monkeys and the folks back home are, and I'm sure it plays quite well with both.

---
* Badoom-CHEE. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.

** They may have changed by now, but back in the 80s Soviet combat aircraft had brake fluid that was essentially high-grade ethanol. Teenagers, in the middle of the steppe, with gallons of booze in big drums? You do the math. It's a wonder any of their aircraft ever made it off the ground.

Found on, I kid you not, space.com, this "Star Trek 2.0" parody certainly gave me a chuckle. I remember playing with those dolls action figures "back in the day." Don't seem to remember them being that flexible.

But hey, memory is funny like that, no?

Sometimes it's very, very easy to be cynical about the war in Iraq. Other times, all too rarely, it becomes quite hard indeed. Let it roll all the way through before you let your jaundiced views overtake you. It becomes harder as it goes along.

At least one of those kids looks enough like her to be Olivia's sister.

Via Countercolumn.

Fark linked up this nifty little bit of CGI intended as some sort of "demonstration" of the upcoming Transformers movie. Or not. Or maybe someone is trying out. Nobody's quite sure. Looks pretty slick to me.

Pat gets a no-prize with a maize god on it for bringing us this NYT piece on the discovery of what could be an entire new "epoch" of Mayan civilization:

The intriguing finds, including art masterpieces and the earliest known Maya writing, are overturning old ideas of the Preclassic period. It was not a kind of dark age, as once thought, of a culture that emerged and bloomed in Classic times, at places like the spectacular royal ruin at Palenque beginning about A.D. 250 and extending to its mysterious collapse around 900.

Unfortunately there's not enough writing for them to even begin trying to decipher it, but it's hoped other digs in nearby sites will reveal more examples with which to work.

Listen, my friends, undulating midriffs are Satan's playgrounds.

The article really does not make sense but then again do those people really make any sense?

Especially if we are "brazen women with veils and finger cymbals and foreign music — music that'll lead your sons and daughters into the clutches of animal instinct."

Ah, the suburbs... the McMansions, the manicured cul-de-sacs, the giggling teenage slackers, the exploding soda bottles...

The rich white boys in my home town didn't do this exactly, but they did things like it. Yet another reason I never really hung out with that crowd all that much.

I've seen other instances of this kind of "fun" cutting and breaking hands. If someone can come up with a way to seal/shake/throw these things via a 10-foot pole, I'm all over it. Until then, I'll just watch the video and shake my head.

Space.com is carrying news of some ambitious Mars-based programming coming soon from the Discovery Channel. Unfortunately it would appear to be slated for the Science Channel, that which we do not get at the moment*. Maybe we'll pick it up on re-runs somewhere?

----
* Our love of Tivo and my pathalogical hatred of cable boxes combine to keep us on the ol' basic cable standard. Which is still enough for us to usually have about 20 hours of programming stored at any one time. The upcoming cable card-based systems and new HD-Tivos may finally free us from this basic wasteland, but considering what the cost of the new gear will be, perhaps not any time soon.

Now that it's auto racing season, Olivia and I are having a good time watching "racecars!" Not NASCAR, but F-1 and (lately) CART and IRL. No, really, there's something about small, shiny cars shrieking around and around a track that really seems to appeal to her not-quite three-year-old attention span. Oh be quiet, Ellen beat you to the "compares nicely with your own" joke a long time ago.

But, like Ellen, I've learned one must be careful which habits are imparted to our self-propelled mimic machine.

We have, for reasons immediately obvious to the females in the family and completely not-obvious to me, a giant dressing mirror in the den. Olivia uses this to dance and preen and practice screamingly funny facial expressions, making her look sort of like Jim Carrey, if Carrey were 3 feet tall and wore clear plastic slippers and a pink tu-tu, that is.

Anyway, yesterday morning Olivia had decided to do a little swirly dance with one of her blankets when on the TV screen behind her a CART driver decided to have himself a little bit of quiet time by bounding over a barrier, spinning the vehicle around twice, and scattering an impressive amount of his car across the landscape*. I said, without thinking much about it, "uh-oh!"

Olivia suddenly spun around, threw her blanket up in the air, shouted in her hyper-cute LittleGirlVoice^tm, "GOD!" then threw the towel down to the ground, "DAMMIT!"

Barely suppressing a smile, I turned away from Olivia toward my left, where Ellen had been sitting typing away on her computer next to me on the couch. The look in her eyes as she stared at me would compare quite favorably to the one her snakes get when she puts a dead mouse in their cage.

"She got that one from you," she said.

Which of course caused me to turn back and say, "Olivia, we only say that when Schumacher or Alonso go out."

"Right daddy... soomahker alanso, right." Then she started making rubber faces at the mirror.

She's actually losing her timing a little bit. Normally this sort of thing is reserved for when A Gramma is around.

-----
* The quiet time came at the end, after all the "tink tink p-tang tink" sounds had died down.

Slashdot linked up this New Scientist article detailing new evidence for an upcoming magnetic field "flip":

By sifting through ships’ logs recorded by Cook and other mariners dating back to 1590, researchers have greatly extended the period over which the behaviour of the magnetic field can be studied. The data show that the current decline in Earth's magnetism was virtually negligible before 1860, but has accelerated since then.

The trend seems to indicate a total flip in perhaps 2000 years or so. During that time, the Northern lights will be visible across the whole planet and solar radiation will be "much more intense" at the surface. So ya better stock up on sunscreen, ya hear?

Personally, I blame Condi Rice.

Fark linked up this Cnews Canada article which takes a look at the "fallout" from a recent decency decision by that country's supreme court:

Those who prefer life closer to the edge of the conjugal bed say the high court's re-interpretation last December of the definition of indecency has fuelled a growing interest in private clubs that feature group sex, partner swapping, voyeurism and exhibitionism.

Like I said before, if the pictures found on exhibitionist websites are any indication, most people who want to be seen having sex are the people you least want to see having sex.

Rrrm... so I've been told. Yeah, that's it.. told.

So maybe we're not to blame after all:

New findings suggest that an ongoing, epic whodunit may actually be a whatdunit. That is, climate change, not humans, may be what killed off Ice Age mammoths, horses, and other large animals in North America.
...
The upstart forests [which grew as a result of climate change] transferred the landscape's nutrients to the treetops, out of the reach of large mammals. Elks and bison, it seems, adapted better to the new landscape than mammoths and horses.

15,000 BC or no, I blame Karl Rove.

You parked it where?!?

And, in the comments on Fark, also found:

• Gophers are a biatch. Where's Bill Murray when you need him?
• Careful where you park those Apaches dude, they're expensive!

Ain't aviation grand?

Happy mother's day Ellen!

And, in alphabetical order, happy mothers day also to:

Cindy
Donna
Didi (Deedee?)
Janet
Judy
Pat
Ree
Suzanne
Wendi
Wendy

And everyone else! :)

Terry Jones of Monty Python fame appears to have a new book coming out, and The Times Online has an interesting excerpt:

The unique feature of Rome was not its arts or its science or its philosophical culture, not its attachment to law. The unique feature of Rome was that it had the world’s first professional army. Normal societies consisted of farmers, hunters, craftsmen and traders. When they needed to fight they relied not on training or on standardised weapons, but on psyching themselves up to acts of individual heroism.

Seen through the eyes of people who possessed trained soldiers to fight for them, they were easily portrayed as simple savages. But that was far from the truth.

See Ellen! My ancestors weren't just a bunch of naked loons who painted themselves blue and danced around like maniacs! We had culture.

Hysterical!

(This time I spell checked it. Someone lost a no-prize for not spotting the first one!)

Your Quote of the Day:

"Remember, folks...finish your beer, because right now, there is a poor little boy in Africa who is sober."

Testify!

Peak oil? What peak oil?

A New Zealand company has successfully turned sewage into modern-day gold.

Marlborough-based Aquaflow Bionomic yesterday announced it had produced its first sample of bio-diesel fuel from algae in sewage ponds.

Not much of a sample, but you have to start somewhere. Now, if everyone cracked down on those "greedy" oil companies and made sure they never made too much profit (while ignoring any losses), how far do you think something like this would've gotten?

Ah why do I even bother. Most of you still tell stories about 100-mpg carburetors and think the only reason we don't have solar energy is because you can't put a meter on the Sun. Foil hats on the left as you leave, please.

Problem: Young educated Americans can't get jobs because they're all being "outsourced" to India.

Solution: You got feet, don'tcha?

U.S. companies have been sending jobs overseas for years — 130,000 already in 2006, according to Forrester Research, which analyzes the technology market. It projects that the number will rise to more than 3.5 million by 2015.

But now there’s a twist — U.S. workers are taking jobs in India for what they see as a long-term investment in their future. And Indian companies are recruiting them.

The article plays up the low pay but makes absolutely no mention of the extremely low cost of living in India. The reason why Indians are flocking to these "poor" jobs is because those "poor" wages enable you to live quite nicely in a very upscale neighborhood. Now here comes a kid from a country with a legendary work ethic who already speaks the language of your customers. And he doesn't cost any more than the locals. You do the damned math.

Put that in your "giant sucking sound" and smoke it.

Slashdot linked up news that scientists have figured out how to make light so fast it travels in reverse. I tried to read the article, but half way through my head asploded. Those with harder noggins (i.e. Ron, Joshua, Pat, Tat, &c.) will have to give it a read and see if it makes more sense to them.

Fans of Joss Whedon's work should find this interview with an extremely convincing "fake" Joss Whedon amusing. As nerdy as cons can be sometimes, I love them still because they're usually chock-full of extremely clever people who are simply there to have a good time.

James H. gets a no-prize with one too many wheels for bringing us Italy's "next big thing" in scooter design. Unfortunately the article itself is in Italian, so only pictures for you!

If we didn't live so far away from work, Ellen and I would probably both be using scooters to commute. The look on The Grammas's faces when they saw Olivia strapped on the back would be worth the price of admission alone.

Happy Birthday Rich!

Rich, don't forget that number 30 is going to come out of your body and 31 will go in. I hope it doesn't hurt much.

Whilst trolling around in Google news I found this update on Alfa Romeo's return to North America. Still "soon, really really soon!" but at least they're still saying "soon".

Not that it'll matter. These things'll be in the $50k range, way above my reach. Still, it'd be nice to see the ol' cross-and-serpent wandering around these streets again. Maybe I could pick one up used...

Suzanne gets a no-prize with a secret companion for bringing us The Binary Research Institute, a place apparently dedicated to proving the Sun has a hidden, massive companion causing all sorts of irregularities in our solar system. You know, like cheese whiz and Hillary Clinton.

BBCnews is carrying this article detailing the discovery that plankton "blooms" seem to precede most major earthquakes. The discovery could lead to important advances in earthquake prediction in costal areas.

Personally, I blame George Bush:

The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again — even though electricity to the village was cut off.

With that many people nosing around I guess it must not be some enterprising unemployed teenage "yutes", but that's still my first choice as to what's going on.

Gamespot is carrying this E3 Xbox 360 update detailing the "AAA" list of games soon to be released. Yep, Halo 3 is on there. Now if I can just convince myself spending $$$ for just a single game is worth it. Daddy wants a new pair of bike shoes!

Making the rounds: a set of conjoined twins has been born in the DC area. Only word that I've seen so far is that they're "joined at the back", whatever that means. Here's to hoping it's a simple thing which can allow them to be easily separated!

Slashdot linked up news that dolphins apparently call each other by name:

Bottlenose dolphins can call each other by name when they whistle, making them the only animals besides humans known to recognize such identity information, scientists reported on Monday.

Since Dolphins are also famous for being so horny the crack of dawn isn't safe (another thing they share with humans), I imagine the conversations are along the lines of "fish and f*ck". Sort of like an angler's tournament, but with fins.

Like they always say, don't bid if you aren't going to pay:

A Chinese businessman who bought a Russian fighter jet online wants his money back after finding it could not be shipped to China, state media reported on Tuesday.

Since the guy still has his jet, I would imagine this would be pretty straightforward. With a minor deduction for processing, of course.

If it weren't for the sound track, I would've sworn this was just a sped-up video. Hey, everyone's gotta have a talent!

Slashdot linked up this Science Daily article detailing the discovery that immune system cells taken from a breed of highly cancer-resistant mice have been shown to combat cancers in "normal" mice. The research is hoped to eventually lead to a new method of cancer treatment in humans.

With pistons as big as golf carts and shell bearings that could double as hammock braces, I don't doubt this thing is the most powerful diesel engine ever. The shot with the crank installed makes me think, "Honey, I shrank the union!"

50% maximum thermal efficiency under load. Not too shabby!

While it's not uncommon for bits of crashed machinery to wash up on shore, I can't say I've ever heard of something traveling this far:

A tail section from a U.S. Navy fighter jet that crashed 3 1/2 years ago off Key West, Fla., has turned up 4,900 miles away on a beach in Ireland.

Fortunately the crew in the F-14 which once owned the tail section got out just fine.

New Scientist is reporting scientists have for the first time filmed a jelly fish's stinger in action. It moves with the speed and force of a bullet, using an elaborate "spring-and-trap-door" mechanism so small and fast it required a special camera to film it.

Who says white men can't jump? Well, ok, this white man can't jump. But boy that one sure can!

It would appear the great dragon has feet of clay:

ESTIMATES of the growing pile of non-performing loans (NPLs) in China appear to have caught many by surprise, especially because Beijing's efforts to clean up its rickety state-owned banks were thought to have greatly reduced NPLs and the risk of a full-blown financial crisis.

According to Ernst & Young, the accounting firm, bad loans in the Chinese financial system have reached a staggering $US911 billion ($1.18 trillion), including $US225 billion in potential future NPLs in the four largest state-owned banks.

This equals 40 per cent of gross domestic product and China has already spent the equivalent of 25-30 per cent of GDP in previous bank bail-outs.

It would be interesting to find out how many NPLs are carried by, say, British banks, if only for comparison*. Something tells me there are far, far fewer.

The Japanese economy flopped around like a fish in the bottom of a boat for a decade for many of the same reasons. However, Japan's infrastructure was far more robust, and it seems like they're now finally pulling out of it.

Will China do the same thing? Perhaps, but probably not. If such trends continue, expect to see another east Asian meltdown like we saw back in the mid-90s. Should that happen, the oil bubble that's been building for the past two or three years will finally have its prick (as it were), and we'll all be back to 70c per gallon gasoline. If that happens, look out world, because the US economy will come roaring back with Europe and big chunks of Asia right behind it. Mr. Chavez will finally have his day in the village square, while the Gulf states close their eyes and put their foot down, hoping something else moves the wall they're heading for.

Ain't economics grand?

-----
* You can't really compare most anyone else's banking sector to the US's, because ours is so incredibly de-centralized. Lots of banks, lots of branches, with comparatively little state control means it's quite difficult just to keep track of it all. Hence our own bad-loan S&L scandal of the late 80s.

First, gigantic self-propelled robot elephants, now this:

Robotic "tentacles" that can grasp and grapple with a wide variety of objects have been developed by US researchers.

Most robots rely on mechanical gripping jaws that have difficulty grabbing large or irregularly shaped objects. Replacing these with tentacle-like manipulators could make robots more nimble and flexible, say the scientists.

Includes video!

Mark gets a no-prize made of swiss cheese for bringing us The Buick of Truth. Ever wonder just exactly what happens when you shoot a car? Wonder no more! You'll need to scroll through six pages of comments to see all the main articles, but they're definitely worth it.

Years ago a Car and Driver columnist said shooting at a car was possibly the funnest thing you could do with one. These pictures do nothing to dispel that assertion.

Anything that claims to de-bunk Noam Chomsky is at least worth a look:

More than 25 years ago, Professor Everett, then a missionary and now an ethnologist at the University of Manchester, decided to try to teach members of the obscure Pirahã tribe how to count. He would not succeed. Instead, he found a world without numbers, without time, one where people appeared to hum and whistle rather than speak.

This isolated tribe of some 350 people in tiny villages in the depths of the Brazilian jungle could turn our understanding of language on its head and disprove the main work of one of the world's most celebrated intellectuals, Noam Chomsky.

Cultural anthropology, like pretty much all "classic" fields of scientific academia, is as much about political bloodsport as it is real research. A bomb this big thrown this hard will reverberate for quite some time before the dust settles and we really learn anything. The fact that this guy's been studying the Pirahã for, what, thirty years and only now seems to be reaching the popular press speaks volumes about how long a new idea has to fight in the knife-scraped alleyways of academic journals to see the light of day.

Eventually they do, although it typically takes a really sharp journalist or TV producer to popularize things to the point that non-professionals start to take notice.

As much as I think marketing departments need their own category in the special olympics (just so the marketroids will have a chance), I can't help but think this thing is a complete, albeit elaborate, hoax. Nobody is that out of touch with pop culture, especially when their money is on the line. What, you think a mass-market toy of any sort is cheap to make? They don't make die tooling out of cotton candy, ya know.

Still, it's funny to look at!

Just when you thought Nintendo was down and out for the count, they go and surprise everyone again:

It's a remarkable experience. Instead of passively playing the games, with the new controller you physically perform them. You act them out. It's almost like theater: the fourth wall between game and player dissolves. The sense of immersion--the illusion that you, personally, are projected into the game world--is powerful. And there's an instant party atmosphere in the room. One advantage of the new controller is that it not only is fun, it looks fun. When you play with an old-style controller, you look like a loser, a blank-eyed joystick fondler. But when you're jumping around and shaking your hulamaker, everybody's having a good time.

The new console, dubbed the "Wii" (pronounced "we", apparently), suddenly looks a lot more interesting. No announced price point or release date (that I can find, at any rate), so two of the most critical factors in the success of any consumer electronics device are still up in the air. Nintendo has a well-deserved reputation for doing what it wants, when it wants, for its own reasons. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We'll just have to wait and see if it works this time.

Joshua gets a no-prize with a map for bringing us news of the opening of an extensive new multi-use trail in our area:

A 40-mile trail connecting northern and southern Fairfax County, which will open officially with a day-long celebration Saturday, could give root to a network of walking and biking trails in the congested county, officials said yesterday.

A more detailed description of the trail (found here) makes it sound less like a smooth ride and more like the set of connected disparate trails that it is, so I don't think we're talking about a North-South W&OD here. Still, anything that provides bike opportunities away from cars is always worth exploring!

It appears all is not well with the Venus Express probe:

An instrument on the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft is stuck, rendering the device useless until mission controllers can move it to its proper position.

The instrument's main purpose is to measure the temperature of the atmosphere and surface of the planet, potentially spotting signs of volcanic activity and weather. Controllers are still working on different fixes for the problem. The probe carries seven instruments, so the failure of one will not cause a failure of the entire mission.

Is The Sims the next barbie?

As far as we know, children have always played with dolls of one sort or another to act out variations on their own lives, or lives they observe or imagine. Today, a vast and growing number of kids are doing the same thing — but with a very new tool. Instead of dolls, they are using video games. And perhaps most of all, they're using The Sims.

Ellen was only interested in using cheat codes to build bigger and bigger houses, which she promptly tore down and re-built again. I still call the McMansions in our area "Sims houses" because they even look like the stuff she built. I'd never much thought of it before, but as I recall her interest in the game actually did wane when we bought a real house.

Me? Oh I played it too, but after awhile I realized it was essentially a real-time strategy (RTS) game, and I'd much rather muck around with the conquering armies more common to mainstream RTS. I'm a guy, whaddayawant?

AN ANCIENT riddle of the sands has been solved by modern hospital technology. The mummified remains of King Tutankhamun have been found to be, let us say, intact.

Read entire article here.

Joshua came out last night to take pixes of me dance at Tiger Cafe. Scott and I liked this one quite a bit and we wanted to share it. Many many thanks to BlueLens for the pix!

Fark linked up what must be one of the more original web games available. Hell it takes me half the available time just to figure out what's going on.

Damned press weenies. They always get to do the fun stuff. Bah, I guess I'm still happy for anyone who gets to go on a hop with the Blue Angels. I wonder if my old home town newspaper would credential me so I could give it a shot?

Pat gets a music box no-prize for bringing us this New York Times piece about a very special sort of ballet class:

... There are no lithe leaps, perfect pirouettes or pointed toes here. Most girls cannot walk or stand, much less make a shallow curtsy. Their crutches and walkers lie nearby and their customized ballet slippers are stretched over leg braces.

The eight little ballet students, who have cerebral palsy and other debilitating physical conditions, are assisted in class by teenage volunteers with strong healthy bodies and infinite patience. The teacher is Joann Ferrara, a physical therapist who owns and runs Associated Therapies, where most of the girls go for treatment.

It's nice to read things like this which renew your faith in humanity.

Problem: Adults are getting fatter, all over the world. Women in denial about this try and buy clothing too small for them, leading to any number of feminine fashion emergencies and men trying to claw their eyes out.

Solution: Cheat:

While Americans have statistically gotten larger, women's clothing has gotten smaller -- that is, if the numbers on the size labels are to be believed. It's no secret that retailers have been playing to women's vanity for years by downsizing the sizes on garment labels, but the practice has reached an extreme in recent months with the introduction of the sizes ''double zero" and ''extra, extra small." If vanity sizing continues on this path, analysts say, it is only a matter of time before clothing sizes are available in negative integers.

Ok, how to relate this to your garden-variety beer swilling male pig. Hmm... ok, remember when insurance companies started raping people when they tried to buy a high-performance car, so the car companies started low-balling the horsepower ratings? It's sort of like that, but in a skirt.

LOOKEE!! I'm posted under Friday night as a belly dancer!

Didn't momma tell you to always check where something's been before you put it in your mouth:

Hungarian builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine website reported.

Horrific pun from Joshua in 3... 2... 1...

Pat gets an explosive no-prize for bringing us news that sometimes astronomers get things right:

A star once hidden by a stellar death shroud is the source of odd behavior of its companion supernova, a new study has found.

The find has laid to rest lingering questions over how the supernova, known as SN2001ig, seemed to change its cosmic stripes within weeks while astronomers looked on.

Nice to see the predictions working out for once!

After 30 years of trying, it appears the busybodies have the upper hand:

Amid a growing public outcry over rising gasoline prices, several long-resistant lawmakers indicated yesterday that they may consider raising fuel economy standards for passenger cars for the first time in more than 30 years.

Certainly the fact that all car companies have models which get gas mileage well in excess of any proposed regulation has no bearing on this matter. Certainly the fact that these models are already seeing a spike in sales means nothing at all. Certainly the fact that the last time something like this was tried an entire industry experienced a decade of loss and contraction should be completely discounted. We know what's good for you! You're obviously not smart enough to do it yourself, so we're going to force you to do it!

Or, as someone else said:

America is a country rich in resources, both financial and natural. The Bureau of Land Management estimates that three trillion gallons of oil and 362 trillion feet of natural gas lie just offshore, maybe more. We also have enormous coal shale fields, and coal fields, and nuclear power plant technology, and endless alt energy ingenuity. While we should be launching a massive and comprehensive push for energy self-sufficiency, a bunch of point-scoring politicians are pandering to tree-huggers getting high on self-righteous Bush bashing down at the low-CARB CAFE.

We let a bunch of self-righteous liberals tell us all what to do in the early seventies because Watergate and Vietnam made us think maybe someone else out there could do a better job. Our reward? Forced integration, stagflation, recession, exploding social welfare rolls, cultures of entitlement and seperation, international humiliation, and domestic turmoil and riots.

Liberals had their shot and they blew it, because any doctrine which treats humans as they should be and not as they are is always doomed to failure. Will we let it all happen again?

Not as long as I can reach a ballot box.

BBCnews is carrying this article detailing a new advancement in cloaking technology. Yeah, you heard me, cloaking technology. Turns out it might be possible to create a gizmo that makes things invisible, using a "superlens" made out of newly discovered materials. So far the scientists are only talking about making a bit of dust invisible but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

Will women's locker rooms ever be the same again?

Never one to turn down a loose buck, Lucasfilm is preparing to release another "limited edition" Star Wars DVD set:

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you'll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.

I wonder if they'll clean up the originals, or just do a straight transfer? If the latter, fans may not be as happy as they think they will, as a remastered transfer almost always has better picture quality.

Fark linked up news that a giant new feature has "grown" out of the Mount St. Helens caldera:

A slab of rock the size of a football field is standing on end inside the crater.

The giant 'fin' is pushing upwards of four to five feet a day, but is not growing taller because it tends to crumble as it grows.

Don't mess with mother nature. Includes several extremely impressive pictures!

Quote of the day:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James D. Nicoll

Insert Bush administration joke here:

A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs has asked for his job back after being fired by the country's Supreme Court.

Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy.

The thing is, motorcycles have suspensions, and brakes. Shopping carts don't.

And you thought it was just homeless people who stole shopping carts.

New Scientist is carrying this article detailing efforts to protect future lunar astronauts from something nobody seems to have mentioned before:

A meteoroid blasting through a Moon base would be a bad day in space. So, with NASA now planning to return astronauts to the Moon as early as 2018, scientists are combing through 30-year-old seismic data to see exactly how big a threat impacts pose to future lunar explorers.

So much for the "useless" Apollo missions, eh?

Hey, they're a proud sponsor of Jesus Christ, you know their stuff's gonna be good. Right?

Meh, what's a little pretension between friends?

Now why didn't I think of this:

Electronic road signs are annoying. I don't have a problem with these signs warning me about road construction, except when they're left up -- flashing their stupid warnings -- well after the work is completed. Recently a construction company left a pair of these signs in my neighborhood, blasting out their pointless messages. Being a creative tinkerer, I decided to do something about it.

I know why. Because whenever I try a prank like this, without fail, it blows up in my face. Guarantee you a cop would be taking a leak in the woods behind the sign, or would be cruising for no good reason just as I was punching buttons.

With pictures!

Watch the ENTIRE thing!

Lisa R. gets a gigantic no-prize for bringing us BosnianPyramid.com, a site that seems to be a combo blog/website containing lots of detail about the Bosnian pyramids we linked up earlier today. I didn't search through it in-depth, but from what I scanned I still couldn't find any indication of how old people thought the things actually are. Weird.

"It was as if millions of voices cried out in terror, and then were suddenly silent. I fear something terrible has happened:"

Cargonews Asia reports that a massive fire on board a container ship en route from Singapore to Rotterdam may have been caused by an explosion of fireworks in a container.
...
It went up in flames at the end of March but only now is it becoming clear that many of the containers on board were full of bicycles and bike kit.

Bike-eu.com said: "Dutch AGU for instance, knows that a container with bike underwear, which they badly need, is some still somewhere on the ship, apparently safe. Other containers are packed with the full year’s production of certain types of bikes."

Shorts my friend, bike shorts.

Thomas Sowell first lays the smack-down on all those foil hat conspiracy theories about rising gas prices, and the people who make them:

Ironically, the people who are making the most noise about the high price of gasoline are the very people who have for years blocked every attempt to increase our own oil supply. They have opposed drilling for oil off the Atlantic coast, off the Pacific coast, or in Alaska. They have prevented the building of any new oil refineries anywhere for decades.

They have fought against the building of hydroelectric dams or nuclear power plants to generate electricity without the use of oil. They love to talk about their own pet "alternative energy sources," without the slightest attention to what these would cost in terms of money, jobs, or our national standard of living.

Even when one of their pet "alternative energy sources" -- windmills -- is proposed to be built near them, suddenly it is not right to spoil their view.

Then he sounds a warning about what might happen if those evil oil companies are "brought to heel:"

"Windfall" profits and windfall losses are all part of the same adjustment process. If politicians seize the windfall profits and leave windfall losses alone, what that means over a cycle of years is that the average rate of return on oil production falls below what is needed to attract the investments that greater oil exploration and production require.

One thing he doesn't point out, which has only been mentioned in passing in the MSM, is that the economies that are largely driving these price increases are doing so because of subsidies of their own. India, China, and Malaysia in particular heavily subsidise their fuel prices. These artificially low prices therefore provide no incentive for people to cut back or become more efficient. So, while fuel use gradually goes down and efficiency goes up here in the West, exactly the opposite is happening in the East, and so the prices stay high.

But, as Mr. Sowell points out, trying to make reality go away through politics is like keeping a tiger in your house because you have a fridge full of meat. Eventually the fridge goes empty, the tiger gets hungry, and suddenly all the good intentions in the world aren't enough to save you.

As if we didn't already know Hollywood was completely out of ideas:

Kyle Newman has signed on to direct "Revenge of the Nerds," a remake of the seminal 1984 teen comedy.

Oh hell what do I know, damned thing will probably end up being pretty good. NERRRRDSSSSSS!!!

Countercolumn linked up this Marine Times article detailing recent efforts to nab everyone's favorite islamoloon Zarqawi. Judging by the number of times we've almost had him, it's not a matter of if, but when.

Making the rounds: Scientists have discovered what could be an ancient pyramid far larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. The really interesting part is where it's located:

Researchers in Bosnia on Wednesday unearthed the first solid evidence that an ancient pyramid lies hidden beneath a massive hill — a series of geometrically cut stone slabs that could form part of the structure's sloping surface.

So far I haven't found any word on who might've built them, or when. Maybe when the Discovery documentary comes out they'll have it all figured out.

Many thanks to BlueLens for the excellent pix!

So which is harder, Japanese or German? Why is English a comparatively easy language to learn? How do you start? This comparative table of languages provides answers to those questions and more. It tracks well with what I remember of German (there is one way to speak, it is German, and there are no variations. None! Repeat! None! Repeat!), and what I've read of English as a language (no genders + simple grammar + monster vocabulary = hyper flexibility).

Via ASFD.

Ellen, of course, would want to paint a cat on it:

A Chinese businessman has bought a MiG-21f plane from a U.S. seller on the online auction Web site eBay for $24,730 and plans to use it to decorate an empty space at his offices, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The article also provides a brief update on that aircraft carrier some Chinese businessmen bought from Russia. You know, the one that circled in the Black Sea, towed by a tug, for something like three years? It still doesn't have a real home.

What. The. Hell:

A warm evening and a broken air conditioner prompted a 38-year-old woman to sleep naked with her window open Friday night.

She awoke to a tongue being slipped inside her ear by a stranger, whose body was partially inside the window.

It never ceases to amaze me the crap some men think they can get away with when they're around women. The dude's also lucky to be alive, as there are many women who routinely sleep with a gun nearby, and there's not a jury in this country that'd convict in this situation.

While not exactly "Man Bites Dog", Alfa winning a BMW design prize is still a backward sort of headline. The car is gorgeous, though I imagine if it were ever produced all I'd be doing is admiring from afar.

(Self medicate, that is...)

It would appear domistication hasn't bred out all the smarts of your garden variety sheep:

In anecdotal reports, primates have been observed engaging in self-medication by selecting a specific plant when something has made them ill. Now biologists at Utah State University, Logan, have run experiments that show sheep choosing the right drug to cure an illness.

Seems like a "well DUH!!!" sort of experiment to me, but you never can tell what goofy result will lead you down a whole new path of discovery. Follow that sheep!

"Look Martha! There's porn in that there house!"

The tale of the Hayvenhurst cul-de-sac, where several adult productions have been shooting almost nonstop for two weeks (and were booked to continue through Monday), pulls back the curtain on how one of the region's most thriving industries — pornography — coexists with the city itself.

Which just goes to show a paper which most likely accepts advertising for escort services can be just as prudish and self-contradicting as the people who create it. Had the cops actually tried to shut it down, I have no doubt we'd see a story on "the oppression of free speech."

That is, if the porn guys had a good publicist anyway. What, you think the LA Time just stumbled onto this story? Hint: rich people know how to create press releases too.

Love ya more each day!