An Ionic blow dryer no less!

Happy Birthday Mark!

*age omited!

Sometimes you just can't do better than the headline: Aquaholic drinks himself to death by gorging on a hosepipe.

Sounds like a tragic case of unmedicated OCD to me.

Ron gets a moose-shaped no-prize for bringing us what seems to be a Swedish entry into one of NASA's X-prize contests. I'm thinking this is a lunar rover mock up, but who knows?

Mark gets a no-prize that's romantic on its own terms for bringing us a beer commercial that understands us. Hee!

We were getting ready for a show this past weekend and I took this shot mid makeup!

If the latest rumors have any substance, the LA Times is sitting on a bombshell. Yeah, I agree, video of Obama actually saying, "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" and that there's been "genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis" might just be a wee bit controversial.

That the LA Times would sit on something that explosive until after the election is unconscionable but not surprising. I wonder if it's even legal?

It would seem that, like certain 20th century politicians, chimpanzees keep an "enemies list" in their head. Yeah, it's a kind of "sky is blue, water is wet" sort of observation, but it does rule out that chimpanzees don't keep track of who is nice to them and who is mean.

Sic 'em girl! Sic 'em!

I do have to admit, Bill Burton and Megyn Kelly are very good at their jobs. Watch the jujitsu-like way he bypasses Kelly's questions and hammers home his talking points. Then watch Kelly simply not let him off the hook. Masterful performances, masterful!

And yes, I know it's Fox. No wonder most of you seem to hate them so much... I'd never seen such a clear example of a right-leaning press corps using standard MSM tactics so effectively. It's only fun when you get to spray the water hose, eh?

Keep remembering folks... it's not "95% get a cut", it's "95% get checks", and something like 40% of that 95% don't pay any freaking taxes anyway. What an awsome idea!

And hey, Ellen, I guess I owe you a pizza or something... as you predicted, they're already defining down what constitutes "rich". I wouldn't want to be a small business owner if Obama manages to take the prize, because I bet they'll move what they define as "big" business downward even faster.

There's nothing like an extended blackout pranging the network early in the morning to start the day. "I love the sound of staff panicking in the morning... sounds like..."

Well, you know...

more animals

The funny thing is, as I understand off-road traction at any rate, this thing probably wouldn't be all that bad in the country. Well, assuming wooden wheels can actually support something has heavy as an H3, that is. And gaining traction != a nice ride. I think the whole thing would probably shake apart driving across grooved pavement.

Mark will get his no-prize just as soon as the driver gets off 66 for bringing us this insider's guide to touring DC. DC's traffic, that is, which is just about all you'll see if you're not careful and actually try to drive around here most days.

Fans of weird wildlife may find this list of 20 "very strange" endangered species of interest. I personally didn't know the anglerfish was considered endangered.

Roger Kimball:

I’ve written about the “déjà-vu-all-over-again” phenomenon before in this space. Bill Ayers? Haven’t we done that? Jeremiah Wright? Haven’t we done that, too? Haven’t we tried Obama’s “soak the rich,” anti-business economic policies? Haven’t we tried his “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” foreign policy? Don’t we know that economics is about the creation rather than the redistribution of wealth, and that low taxes and strategies that encourage productivity and investment are best calculated to make the entire society, including the less fortunate, more prosperous? Don’t we know where appeasement and capitulation get us in foreign affairs? Don’t we remember Jimmy Carter? Haven’t we learned anything?

I rather strongly believe most of the people who are enthusiastic Obama supporters are too young to really, or even actually, remember the Carter administration. All the ones I've seen standing on street corners with signs certainly seem to come from the college student crowd. The dark side (the dem side?) is seductive, especially if one lacks first-hand memory of what it was really like the last time around.

Will the people who do remember, and take seriously, the malaise, depression, uncertainty, and humiliation of America between 1976 and 1980 turn out in greater numbers than those who don't, can't, or won't? Well, the old traditionally turn up at the polls in greater numbers than the young, so that's something. Will it be enough? I think it just might, certainly enough to give the MSM pause before they trumpet in their long-ago anointed savior.

Mike J. gets a no-prize with that distinctive profile for bringing us evidence that the Democratic party has been a known quantity for a very long time. It also shows how much Hollywood has changed, since that's probably the last time the Dems got a zinger thrown at them in a motion picture. Republicans, not so much; but you already knew that.

Lisa R. gets a no-prize that's a funny blue color for bringing us an example of how not to travel by train:

A passenger on a French train had to be rescued by firemen after having his arm sucked down the on-board toilet.

Cell phones do a lot of things well, but swimming isn't one of them. That thing was DOA when it hit the water.

Scientists have found a solar system with both a "well behaved" Jupiter-like planet and an asteroid field. The implication is that this is the solar system most like ours found to-date, which makes it a leading candidate to host an Earth-like planet. The twist? It all orbits the star Gene Roddenberry picked as the home system of Vulcan, which all good Trekkies know is the home of Spock.

Mark gets a no-prize that looks suspiciously like the ones Lisa R. gets for bringing us this report of an Australian spider caught eating a bird. Apparently it's a video, but I got such huge heebie-jeebies from the picture I didn't have the guts to find the film. YEESH!!!

Fans of things outer space should find this collection of Enceladus photographs worth a look. Some of those shots would make for great posters.

Remember that whole, "95% of Americans will receive a tax cut" that isn't really a tax cut, but the government writing checks that may or may not have your name on them? Yeah, it's even worse than that. The Democrats, once again, are going to try complex legislation that inadvertently creates incentives for people NOT to work. Color me completely unsurprised.

See you next Tuesday!

Annie gets a no-prize that'll look good in Hell for bringing us this picture of people goofing around in an art museum. I'm pretty sure I've seen it before, but I can't recall it being in a linkable format like this. Good morning, all!

Mr Green Genes of New Orleans in the U.S. is the country's first 'glow in the dark' ginger tom.

In daylight he looks normal, but put him in a darkened room and switch on an ultraviolet light, and his face will beam out a bright green.

Everyone say awwwwww.

It's going to be closer than you think. The only thing that keeps me up at night is if the Democrats gain a big majority in the Senate. The last time it all lined up for them was 1964.

Ah Christ. If any of you really understood what 1964 meant...

Don't ask me... ask the 58,0000.

Oh. Wait...

NOT TO MISS! I laughed my ass off.

It's not every day that you get to see skateboarding budgies!

Ok...for you non-bird people. A budgie is also known as a parakeet. All budgies are parakeets, but all parakeets are not budgies. Confused yet?

Two words: dildo downpour.

Supporters of the Stockholm-based AIK ice hockey team scored an unusual hat trick of heckling on Tuesday night featuring dildos, profane banners, and a giant inflatable penis.

I was going to make a joke about "I went to a hockey game and a sex party broke out", but then I tried to picture what the average hockey fan might look like naked. Three showers later, I'm almost normal again!

Ron gets a no-prize that'll be an interesting conversation piece at his next get together for bringing us this most interesting of fan taunts.

Mark gets the coveted Charlie Brown Halloween no-prize* for bringing us a light-hearted look at what we might all have to look forward to next holiday season!

Hopefully we're not violating a copyright here. I've linked to the guy's main page. If this suddenly disappears, well, there ya go.

----
* A rock.

I was bad. I broke a blood feather in the shower.

Mum bird told me that it looked like a scene in a movie called “Psycho”.

I did not like that she snipped off the broken part and held pressure on it. Now I KNOW I have to see the Dr tomorrow. She made an appointment anyway for my year visit. Now I have a REASON to go.

I am most upset at Mum bird.

Right now I do not like Mum bird.

I had a short shower.

I’m not going to speak to Mum bird.

Wait… she has a treat.

I love Mum bird.

The "yes there is, no there's not" debate on whether there is water ice deep inside polar craters on the moon seems to have gotten another "no there's not" answer. However, just because the bottom of Shackleton crater doesn't look like an ice rink is no reason to think there's nothing there. We probably won't know a definitive answer until someone sends a probe specifically designed to look for the stuff.

While this home-made amateur Bumblebee Autobot costume is impressive, IMO it's not how it looks when it stands still, it's how it moves that determines just how sophisticated the build is. Then again, as I recall from watching Robocop out-takes, a lot of "selling" this as a massive robot has to do with the way the actor inside the thing is moving around.

It seems the Earth turned green later than previously thought. Exactly how they figured this out is just a little beyond me. Never go from reading about quantum physics to reading about the Archaean period in less than 5 minutes. Your brain will thank you.

Why buy a Lamborghini Countach when you can just build one yourself?

There are a lot of classic cars which could be built up this way producing a car that is essentially identical to the original. This isn't one of them, but hey, everyone's gotta have a hobby, no?

This is, apparently, one of the very first Pontiacs ever made. When we last saw it in 1999, it was a rusty heap that didn't even have tires. The years have indeed been kind

Sometimes the newer cars are just as entertaining. This was an early 90's Allante

And occasionally they're not perfectly clean. I'm not sure it's possible for this engine to ever be clean, with its pushrods and rockers on the outside and all. I bet this one tattoos its garage pretty extensively.

Honda-lover Damion would razz me about the "simple Spider." I always wondered why he never mentioned what Hondas were like in '71, the year our Spider was made. Now I know why.

Jeff gets a purple heart no-prize for bringing us news of the opening of a new military hospital for dogs wounded in war. The Walter Reed reference was worthy of a cringe, but otherwise this seems nifty enough. Here's to hoping it doesn't end up filled with $100 per shot rabies vaccines!

Scientists have developed a device that allows a surgeon to operate on a beating heart. It works by using scanners and computers to move the operating platform exactly in time with the beating heart, providing the surgeon with a stable working area.

Cricket as big as your open hand, anyone? Every time I think the insect world couldn't get any creepier, I'm proven wrong.

Masseuse to customer: would you like one snake, or two? Corn snakes are on the list, so maybe we can get Cornbread a job.

Near:

Far:

It was like she was in a different zip code or something.

Strangely, this was the only series 2 pony car we saw. It was awful pretty thought.

It takes a page or two, but trust me, this is the most ridiculous rice-up job you'll ever see. Even non-gearheads will appreciate the color... combinations? ...this guy comes up with for his car. Go for the hand file to the head treatment, stay for the spray painted foot pedals.

Fans of abandoned places who have lots of patience should find this collection of abandoned urban areas around the world of interest. The site is really slow, and the text isn't as informative as I'd hoped, but it was still informative, at least to me.

Well duh!. But it wasn't all Alfa, all the time...

O decided that she was NOT going to be a balloon pilot after she felt the 'hot' that came off the balloon.

But she DID pull the switch.

You roll down... you must roll up. With a 'smile' of course.

She is Pro when it comes to water...what can we tell you?

I have NO idea what the results will be but do check out the website and make sure you go to your dermatologist if you have any concerns with any skin pigmentation changes!

Jeff gets a light but strong no-prize for bringing us the latest development in nano-tech production. It's still not a production-grade material, but they seem to have high hopes of getting there within a year.

Lisa R. gets yet another deadly no-prize for bringing us yet another example of Australia trying its level best to kill whomever tries to live there. Australia: go for the beaches, stay because the inhabitants put you into a box.

Annie gets a no-prize with a strobe mounted on it for bringing us a geeky/creative way to keep "kitteh" off the counter. The videos don't have sound, but they really don't need it. The guy should've kept his trap shut and sent at least one of them into AFV. He probably would've gotten on TV with it.

Scott, Mark and O hit the Rockville Car Show on Saturday.

This week's daddy day was spent at the Rockville antique car show.

Mark gets a no-prize that's only a model for bringing us this re-imagining of everyone's favorite medieval comedy. Must be a different version of the song... I could actually understand the lyrics this time around.

I've always known that when a media outlet runs a story about how Americans are just one card swipe away from debtor's prison it's more about how slow the news is that day than it is about any real debt danger. Now I have proof. Disappearing frogs have been a harbinger of imminent environmental collapse since at least 1981 (when I first remember reading about it), and the growth of consumer debt in the US has been the final signal of economic end times since at least 1985. Like most apocalypses, history's stubborn refusal to end as scheduled simply causes our prophets to move the goal posts and start ringing their bells again.

It has, I suppose, always been thus.

Lisa R. gets an explosive no-prize for bringing us news of yet another meteor impact in Australia. Geeze. If the magpies don't get you, it would seem the sky will.

Just in time for the market's collapse, Fiat has announced they're moving Alfa's introduction to the US up to 2010. It's encouraging to finally see the deadline move closer than further away. I just hope there's a market for the cars when they get here, because this thing sure does look nice.

Update: Alfa, Porsche, and Audi are being wooed by the IRL. Turbocharged inline 4s may not sound like much, but that's what F-1 ran in the 80s and 90s. Those were, as I recall, 1.5 liter 4 cylinder engines with output estimated to be 1200 horsepower in qualifying trim.

Nine teams have signed up to compete in NASA's "lunar challenge". The idea is to provide incentives for private industry to develop commercial lander technologies for both NASA and, well, I guess whoever else can pay for it.

I guess there are worse hobbies than teaching eagles to fly. Bonus: noble eagle birdy looks just like goofy green chicken parrot birdy when he climbs out of his travel cage.

After researching previously sealed reports and reams of old records, scientists have determined the bombing of Dresden did not in fact result in the deaths of half a million people. Instead, it was "only" about 18-20,000.

Sarah Palin has confirmed she will be putting in an appearance on this Saturday's Saturday Night Live. Risky, but if it works it could pay off big time. Here's our onside kick, let's hope we're able to recover it and keep the momentum going.

C# Problem:

You have one generic list of type<T>. Each T in turn contains two generic lists of type<A> and type<B>. A and B implement interface I. A method exists which requires a generic list of type<I>. From the parent list of type<T>, how do you feed the method its required list of <I>?

(My) Solution:

List<I> il = new List<I>();
topList.Select(x => x.ListOfA).ToList().ForEach(x => x.ForEach(y=>il.Add((I)y)));
topList.Select(x => x.ListOfB).ToList().ForEach(x => x.ForEach(y=>il.Add((I)y)));
Result r = SomeMethod(il);

Bonus:

Is there a way to implement this by re-casting the objects in listofA and listofB to I without using a ForEach() call?

Can both lists be combined into one using a single line of code instead of two?

Is it necessary to instantiate il before proceeding?

The above code actually does work. It worked on the first try, even! And I am genuinely curious about the questions. S'my site, I'll talk about what I want! :)

It looks like Hubble is experiencing even more problems. When a race car manages to break something new every time it's used, that's usually a sign it's time to get a new race car. Unfortunately I'm not sure the sentimental politics surrounding everyone's nearly 20 year old space telescope will allow the obvious conclusion to be drawn.

Oh well, it could be worse. We could've spent all that money and taken all that risk and then it could've failed.

Ah, Switzerland, where the watches are accurate, the chocolate is superb, and even the plants have rights:

For years, Swiss scientists have blithely created genetically modified rice, corn and apples. But did they ever stop to consider just how humiliating such experiments may be to plants?

That's a question they must now ask. Last spring, this small Alpine nation began mandating that geneticists conduct their research without trampling on a plant's dignity.

Equal rights for plants... coming to a progressive party near you!

So Obama says he's cutting taxes for 95% of Americans. Presumably being one of those 95%, I suddenly find myself feeling "not so fresh" in my support of McCain. Then I find out what the Democrats call a tax cut is not at all what the rest of us think is a tax cut. Jerry Pournell put it much more succinctly:

Obama's "Tax cut" will actually be a payment to a rather large number of "taxpayers". That is, anyone who sends in an income tax form is considered a taxpayer; but about 40% of those pay nothing. Some number of that 40% actually receive a "refund" although they didn't actually have taxes withheld; it's called "earned income credit" although how that income was "earned" is not clear to me.

Tell me Obama's cutting my taxes and hey, I'm all for it. Tell me he's going to take more of my money but give more of it back later and while it sounds icky, yeah, I guess I'm still with him. It's only when I realize what he's really going to do is take more of my money and give it to other people, people who won't be paying any taxes at all anyway and that's when I start having a big, fat, hairy problem with his idea. That's when it starts sounding a lot less like government being nice to me and a lot more like government knows best for me. That's when it starts to sound a whole heaping bunch like he's taking my money away and using it to provide even more benefits for people who won't stop having babies and who won't get a job.

In other words, it makes him sound a whole lot less like a reasonable, charismatic moderate and a whole lot more like the old fashioned big-city political boss people who've been paying attention have been calling him all along. In other words, a Democrat.

See? Feeling fresh and clean now, eh?

Like Joe the Plumber, ACORN, and Ayers, this one seems to be sticking. Will it be enough? It just... just... might.

Via, in various ways, Instapundit.

Looks like China's building a kind of "mini-Global Hawk". Hopefully it looks like GH because they read Aviation Week just like I do, not because they're sitting on purloined blueprints.

More than 2100 WWII-era bombs were recently discovered during a routine property survey in Germany. "The find is the biggest in Germany this year, the state’s military ordnance disposal service said."

This year?!?

Paramount is starting to publish pictures and information on the upcoming Star Trek movie. Going back to the time before the original series would seem to be just about the very last unmined area remaining. Here's to hoping it doesn't suck.

We've seen comic book heroes reboot the entire character, with Batman it's been done twice. Sometimes I wonder if it would be productive to just restart the whole Trek universe.

Alternate title: Paging the Church Lady, white courtesy phone please. I picked a different one because nobody under 20 will know what the heck I'm talking about.

The tomb of the person who's life inspired the movie Gladiator has been found. It seems it had the good fortune to be buried under river floods, and seems to be fairly complete.

No, really! When magpies attack:

A little girl from Mandurah [Australia] may lose the sight in one of her eyes after a terrifying magpie attack last week.

Lisa R. gets an innocent looking no-prize with a mean streak for bringing us yet another example of wildlife which is harmless everywhere else but downright dangerous in Australia.

Oh, and "sunnies?" I think she may be going native on us.

"It gets really weird when you have a piece of mom's skull hanging around your neck," [Capt. Paul Hosler of the Tehama County Sheriff's Department] said.

Rrmmm... ya think?

Fans of monster trucks and all things military transport should find Navistar's latest and greatest of interest. The comments (one of which from our own regular DensityDuck) are also quite perceptive.

No, Ellen, you can't have one.

Britain is on the verge of deploying speed cameras which will monitor all highways, all the time, everywhere. The Japanese wanted similarly strict speed compliance but chose a different route. Well, they did back in the 80s when I was following such things. In those cars, any time you exceeded the national speed limit an apparently really loud and really annoying buzzer would sound. The British solution has the advantage that it can't be disconnected like the buzzer can.

Mr. Chavez's appointment with a public square* gets closer as the price of oil gets lower. Maybe instead he actually will end up sipping drinks on the Riviera. All I can hope is it happens sooner rather than later, because the damage caused by "real, practicing socialism" gets harder to fix the longer it's in place.

----
* Think this.

Fortunately, for now, our kids are too young for their various grandparents to fall for this:

Delpha Speak has 13 grandchildren and she didn't think it was completely implausible that one of her grandsons-in-law would call her to say he was in trouble. The 72-year-old retiree could tell something was wrong, and she wanted to do whatever she could to help.

But it was that concern that almost caught her up in what the state attorney general's office said is a common scam targeting older folks.

Geeze. Now we're gonna have to get gramma her own safe word.

So, is ACORN a nefarious left-wing organization which systematically committed voter fraud, or is it a an innocent community organization getting smeared by The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy^tm?

I'm not all that sure the Republicans are going to get much traction on this one. After all, the left has been crowing for nearly a decade now about how various Republican electioneering efforts "stole" the past two elections.

The trick, I suppose, is just how much evidence there is, and whether there are actual laws being broken. Unlike activists on the other side, I know both parties do absolutely everything in their power, legally or otherwise, to ensure a win for their side. It just seems that the Republicans are better at keeping just barely in-bounds. Will the Democrats prove as adept? Hard to say. If history is any guide the Republicans seem to get busted long after the score, while Democrats seem to cough the ball up long before they're anywhere near the goal line.

It seems Saturn has massive storms on both its poles:

New images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal a giant cyclone at Saturn's north pole, and show that a similarly monstrous cyclone churning at Saturn's south pole is powered by Earth-like storm patterns.

I wonder just what the conditions are like inside the eye of a storm big enough to cover the pole of a gas giant? Maybe, unlike Jupiter or Venus, this could be a place we could live without a pressure suit? Probably be pretty cold though...

The Army is testing a "heavy fuel" engine which could end up powering a variety of different vehicles. I'd never heard of "opposed piston, opposed cylinder" engines before, but the concept certainly sounds interesting. The new proposal makes it sort of sound like lego engines... you just keep stacking more in until you get the power output you want.

An environmental sciences company has announced they've developed a system that economically turns CO2 into hydrocarbons. Announcing you can do something and actually doing it are, of course, two different things. It'd be nice to find out this wasn't some sort of vaporware, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Ok, so the Redskins dropped it in the pot and now Romo looks to be out for a couple of games. At least nobody died.

A certain regular commenting, "it would've been good if it happened to the Eagles" in 3... 2... 1...

Ron asks, and we provide:

As The Wall Street Journal has reported, Ayers and Obama worked for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. "CAC translated Mr. Ayers' radicalism into practice," notes the Journal. "It required schools to affiliate with 'external partners' " for their funding.

"Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead, CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers," such as ACORN.

I mean, didn't we all learn long ago that things like math and science take care of themselves when one's children have the proper ideology and politics? I mean, it's worked so well in the past, why not try it again?

Via Instapundit (who finally seems to have seen the traction on this, even if he doesn't give proper credit!)

Annie gets a no-prize with an obsession with water for bringing us the root cause of one man's incredibly high water bills.

Every cat I've ever known goes through a phase when they're obsessed by the toilet. Some are just more enterprising than others in kicking things off.

A Turkish creationist is offering [pinky to mouth] 7.5 trillion dollars[/ptm] to anyone who can produce an actual transitional fossil. Of course, it's "transitional" by their definition, not anyone else's. Heck, I'd offer that much money in a contest I got to judge. He's probably as likely to actually have said cash as I am.

Actual guy on my bus.

The Sterling Police Department were really cool about photo ops! I promised to send the department photos for their community photo album.

Nothing says, "disconnected from reality" like dressing babies up as food dishes and setting them on the table. Relax, no children were even vaguely annoyed in the film. Martha Stewart's reputation, well, I can't vouch for that.

Alternate title: sometimes you're the earthquake, sometimes you're the engineer. Boingy boingy boingy!

The Obama-Ayers connection doesn't seem to be going away:

Turn on the TV news when John McCain is picking up undecided voters by invoking Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers and, invariably, some liberal talking head will sniff in disgust and say Ayers is no big deal where Obama comes from.

...

Obama and Ayers are neighbors and they worked together on school issues with the same foundation. Obama's political coming-out party was held in Ayers' living room when Obama was running for his first political office.

...

One friend of Obama and Ayers is former '60s radical Marilyn Katz, now an Obama fundraiser, strategist and public relations maven. She's often a go-to quote for reporters to knock down the Ayers-Obama story.

...

Clearly, if she wasn't a good soldier for [Mayor Daley] her list of clients would be quite small. Katz is often aggravating, but she's also funny and smart, so I called her to submit my theory: That by buying off the political left—through PR contracts to Katz, through his own support for Ayers—Daley maintains control over message and symbolism.

"I don't see it that way," said Katz. "As kids, our issues were schools, the environment, housing—and these things are the same things that the mayor cares about. So we have this in common. The agendas that drove us pulled us together. It's about respect for each other's point of view, not what we did when we were 19."

So lemme get this straight here. Ayers doesn't count because Obama was just a kid when Ayers was running around blowing stuff up. We know this is true because one of Ayers's associates, who is a "go-to" person for a quote and helps run the Obama campaign tells us so. They just all have the same views on a range of issues like public education, that's why they've crossed paths recently. This is completely not a story, because we all know radical progressive experiments in education have turned out so well in the past.

Definitely not a story here. Not at all. Because, after all, the Obama campaign people tell us it is not.

Via Instapundit, who frequently mentions Ayers' terrorist credentials while too infrequently mentioning the destructive, recent, and (IMO) far more relevant connections with school policies.

I know he reads his trackbacks, hopefully he'll check out where the real traction is in this story. It ain't terror, it's schools.

We performed at Sterling Fest today. The local police department was having demonstrations and invited us to take photos with them.

We still managed to keep our mini mascot, Olivia with us!

Actually, I'm surprised it's taken this long for the SCA crowd to turn a sex toy into a weapon. Video is completely SFW.

Texans + rocket powered scooter (no, really!) = well, this. Just when you thought a redneck couldn't get any dumber...

Fans of Mythbusters should find this brief clip of Adam Savage at a hacker's convention of interest. I hope the two clips he shows from an upcoming episode actually make it into the broadcast. This is one of Olivia's favorite shows, in no small part because she thinks Carrie is a very neat lady.

Note: Clip is completely SFW, but the ads surrounding it are marginal (but not awful). I can't vouch for the rest of the site.

Posting from home rox!

Those gear shifts, man, they can be some clever things. I love how it keeps bouncing off the rev limiter at the end of the clip.

Those of you wondering what it's really like to sleep with a cat in the house need wonder no more. This at least appears to be a single-cat home. Those of us cursed blessed with more than one of the puke/pee/poop machines darlings get the added bonus of being used as bunkers during bed territory wars.

Making the rounds: a new kind of robot that assists the elderly and disabled getting around is now for rent in Japan. Bonus: the company's name is Cyberdyne. So if any elderly people are seen chasing after anyone named Conner, well, there you go.

Apparently in the UK it takes them five years to investigate why someone on the government dole isn't paying rent. And what's up with family members who don't visit for the entire time, leaving a corpse alone watching TV?

A team of scientists at Stanford have discovered that, at least in some organisms, aging is driven by genetics, not by "rust". If it's a gene getting turned on that causes us to grow old, it's possible to figure out a way to turn it off.

Ron gets a no-prize that carries its house on its back for letting us know the latest news in turtle evolution. And for giving us the title of this article, of course.

I've always thought it more than amazing that a turtle's shell is essentially its front and back ribs spread apart and fused together. It's nice to know we're finally figuring out just how that happened.

Far as I'm concerned, life tends to come in 3's. Tends to. No one prepares you for the other odds.

When your career is to fix the hurt, no one ever realizes that 'fixing' that hurt can mean ending the hurt. Permanently.

Eventually 3's turns into 5's. Then 7's. Then 9's. The odds keep adding up, after a while.

Now, normally Wednesdays on my end are quiet days. They are boring days. You watch the clock, wonder what you'll eat for lunch or what the cat gets to make them come out and play. You never think the worst. It's a Wednesday, and it will always remain boring. Must remain...

Suddenly a Wednesday will somersault on you and make you dizzy to the point that it takes hours for you to realize what you did.

Wednesdays are slow days. Must remain...

Not today.

Today started with a euthanasia and ended with one.

Not my favorite kind of day.

You... well, I... literally become hardened on the outside, yet your insides want to scream and cry and wail but you have to... must prove yourself to the newbie that in the end it does not hurt after a while.

12 years later, it still hurts, and yet you have no tears. Well, on the outside.

I came home today after euthanizing 4 cats. 3 of which I knew well. Fortunately, for 3, I knew their time was right.

Max, I love you even if you were so cranky and you always wanted to bite me no matter how much I tried to win your heart. Your Mom loved your haircuts and you got a tad sweeter every time I saw you. Today you were quite kind to me. I love you. Always have, always will.

Wawa, you were sweet no matter how cranky we all thought you were. I'm sorry you had cancer. Your Daddy loves you so much. He proved it today.

Peanut, your Daddy loves you and Grandma could not bear to watch you leave so she sat on the couch with Emme and Cricket to comfort her. I was there to help.

Big Boy... last man out. I am so sad for you. Your mom was moving to Bolivia for some reason unknown to us. She would only let us do x-rays and an exam and refused all else and decided to euthanize you because you were vomiting all the time. I hope someone throws up in her car and can't get the smell out. Or her plane falls into the ocean, or her car overturns on one of those Bolivian roads. It's happened before!

I am sorry I could not help you other than making your passing a nice, quiet and loving one.

Tonight... tonight I looked down at my hands when I got home from work and realized I had ink all over them. Ink from doing 8 paw prints on 4 cards in a day. No matter how hard I scrubbed it would not come off. I even noticed the smeared paw prints on my arm in the shower.

No matter what, I hope I made your passing an easy one.

[What else does the harvest have to hope for, dear Lord, except for the care of the Reaper Man? -- Ed.]

Must... never... always... remember...

Not bruises. Well, not on the outside.

Remember...

... sitting in the basement blogging in one's underwear scratching one's itchy places after a shower after a bike ride.

Well, sure, I have some "thought bleach" right here... here ya go. Scrub hard!

The worst part? Learning your "10/10ths" classic car acquisition was actually more like "8/10ths", and spending most of the rest of said vacation lifting it from the lower status to the higher. Which is why the "hooray for us!" pictures haven't been forthcoming. Hard for it to look attractive half apart in my garage, donchaknow?

But soon. Very soon!

Yeah, ok, I get it. Lots of people were radical in the 60s. A few of them even blew up the occasional mail box. You may have known some of either type. But when's the last time you talked to any of them:

"He [Obama] said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005" (New York Times, 10/3)

Why in the world was Barack Obama still communicating on the phone or via email with Bill Ayers up until 2005 — when in 2001 Ayers gave widely publicized interviews claiming he had no regrets about the bombing, indeed regretted that he had not done enough, and did not necessarily have any remorse either about his Weathermen career?

I take this all so seriously not because Ayers was a bomb-throwing nutjob in the 60s, but because to this day he supports radical progressive experimentation in public schools. The only place progressives really got to implement their agendas in the '60s and '70s was in the public schools systems. The results were disastrous, igniting riots and consigning who knows how many children to unemployability all in the name of their intellectually pure agendas. The echoes of that failure ring across school systems to this day.

Progressives had their shot and it failed. Now they've picked a candidate who pals around with one of the remaining relics who refuses to admit that anything ever went wrong. It is my opinion Obama is vulnerable here because of the education angle, not because of the terrorist angle. I can only hope the McCain camp starts running with this ball, because we're already past the two minute warning and we only have one more time-out left.

Via Instapundit

Well, at least she's fertile:

The National Enquirer is reporting that 17 year old Jamie Lynn Spears is now expecting for the second time just three months after giving birth on June 19 to baby Maddie Briann.

Hell even I thought it wasn't possible to get pregnant when breast feeding.

Engineers at the University of Tokyo have created a system that renders objects in a car that would cause blind spots invisible. Back in my old sim days, this was called cheating. Of course, since it's the real world, "cheating for safety" actually works. Not too sure about the giant hat you have to wear to get it to work. Then again, this is only a prototype.

As expected, as soon as one candidate shows signs of pulling ahead, and only when one candidate shows signs of pulling ahead, the MSM stampedes in the opposite direction:

I'm becoming increasingly convinced they're treating this as I would a football game played by teams I don't care about... they just want it to be close, and (in their case) they root for whoever is playing defense on that particular play. Ball changes hands, they change sides. Except, of course, when I do that it doesn't actually influence the outcome of the game.

Via Instapundit.

Remember folks, you can't fool owls. Turn it off after the first repeat. Far as I can tell, it'll loop forever until you do.

Sometimes, a lover's quarrel just makes a body hungry:

The first winner of the Mr Gay UK contest stabbed a man to death before carving a piece of flesh from his thigh, seasoning it with fresh herbs and cooking it in olive oil, a court heard yesterday.

And all this time I thought olive oil's smoke point was too high to make it a good stir fry medium.

I can't have a snake like this...

Who needs ADT when you can have a Cobra tank by the door!

SKUNK!

No, really, when teleprompters attack.

Ok, well, when teleprompters get snippy, how's that?

And yes, I know, they did a little "enhancing", but it's still nice to see that The Messiah does indeed flub lines every now and then.

Double the engines, double the fun? Seems to me it would be "double the engines, double the weight and expense," but wtf do I know?

Parking brakes: they're not just good for civilians. I want to know what he crashed into at the end.

Scientists have long known that organic chemistry is made possible on Earth by the quirk that the molecules required are all "handed", in this case, left, on this planet. Yet nobody knew why, or why that particular direction. Until now.

Don't look at me. I barely got out of high school Chemistry with a C-. I just thought the whole concept was neat.

The latest news on Alfa Romeo's return to the US, well, isn't. Other than calling the 2010 deadline "firm", the rest is old news, and not particularly heartening. Putting your vehicles in the dealerships owned by a close rival and then using excess capacity in Detroit to produce them sounds like a perfect storm of "fail" to me.

Scientists have demonstrated that even under extreme conditions, the result of a black hole collision is not a naked singularity. It's not a proof, in the mathematical sense, that Penrose's "cosmic censor" exists, but it definitely seems to provide more evidence for it.

I guess I'll have to amend my saying to, "most people turn to a life of crime because they're too stupid to do anything else":

Monroe police are searching for a man who robbed an armored-car guard Tuesday morning then fled with the money — down a nearby creek on an inner tube.

Police say the robber also may have recruited a host of unwitting decoys through a Craigslist ad.

As with most genuinely smart crooks, this guy hasn't been caught yet. I still think it's only a matter of time. Sending out lots of e-mail messages to decoys and having an accomplice or two most likely will leave enough of a trail to follow. It's also my understanding that a high percentage of these sorts of robberies are inside jobs, so it wouldn't surprise me if this one is too. I wouldn't want to be employed with that particular armored car company this morning, that's for sure.

It's official... the great rift valley will one day soon become a brand-new ocean. The region that gave birth to humanity will eventually be submerged and lost to time. Seems appropriate, somehow.

Getting dragged by a bus for 4 miles just ruins your whole day, donchaknow? Explain that one to the insurance adjuster.

Builds fitness, enables reenactment. Just don't get no better than that!

The Skeptical Optimist: it's not funded by the taxpayers. This one includes nice, simple pictures for those of us who's financial knowledge is roughly at the "you have more paste to eat than I do" level.

And then he followed it up with something even Dora could understand

It appears the F-35 has a wicked "360 bad guy tracker" installed as part of its defensive suite. If the limitations AvWeek have been harping on are not exaggerated, it's going to need all the help it can get. "An aircraft the size of an F-4 which can carry a 2000 lb payload" sounds neither useful nor survivable. No wonder the Air Force wants ~ 300 of them.

An Israeli scientist is claiming people can see with their skin. Unfortunately, exactly how this is supposed to work is not explained in the article.

Just in time for election, science news is carrying the closest thing we can get to 1908 debates. What I think is remarkable is that these men have obvious accents which I simply can't place, because they don't exist anymore.

... scarin' da help:

With chickens, goats, ducks, geese and rabbits on his 800ft allotment, Ronnie Kenyon runs a proper little menagerie.

But even he draws the line at his latest guest - a 17ft python.

My life 10 years from now, let me show you it...

My life.

Lisa R gets a no-prize with eyes that'll glow in headlights for bringing us a sad tail of someone trying to blame everything else but his behavior as the cause of a fatal car accident, even the cat. Article includes impressively mangled car remains picture, but no sign of the perp feline.

Jim Treacher scoops, well, the whole worldwith an advanced look at the questions due to be asked at tonight's VP debate. It's funny because it's true.

Oh, right, sorry. Fox news is the true enemy, the one really in the pocket of a political party, eh?

Scientists have determined the AIDS virus is probably 100 years old. I can remember when Time reported the entire epidemic could be traced to a single male flight attendant in, as I recall, 1979. Sorta puts the kibosh to that one, eh?

It would seem they've finally found Steve Fosset. Well, they've found his plane anyway; he can't be that far from it.

Ah well, we all gotta go sometime. Doing something you love is definitely not the worst way to go.

Allstate is examining if playing computer games makes you a safer driver. The thinking goes that older people who play computer games are kept mentally sharper than those who don't. It's still an experiment, but if it pans out the insurance company plans on offering special discounts to folks who complete an approved course of games.

See, mom? I told you playing video games would pay off some day!

It's crap like this that kept me from ever really taking skateboarding as a hobby seriously. I have enough trouble just walking down the street without falling down.

Being on vacation means I get to troll some of the saucier sites, and this is no exception. Video is SFW, but surrounding ads... well, they're not what I'd call porn, but they're pretty darned close.

Jesus pulled rabbits out of his hat!

*Really neat article.