So I've had a Pioneer Elite receiver for the better part of five years now. All I ever did was a single 5.1 auto-MCACC calibration. Then, after I found a home theater forum, it suddenly occurred to me maybe doing an advanced calibration for just the two fronts and the sub might make a difference in how I listen to 2-channel music.

Yeah, I know, "DERP DERP DERP." The difference is startling, easily on the level of a component upgrade. And I got it for free!

So let that be a lesson to you. There's a reason why you get all those MCACC presets. Use them!

It's my blog. I'll post what I want to!

This week's Boston Globe photo essay revolves around vikings, horses, and fire. Here's to high-speed CCD photography!

Like most cars that look amazingly fast, you can't afford this one either. Danged Europeans get all the cool cars!

US TV news isn't quite as formulaic. Oh, who am I kidding? We just have a different formula on this side of the pond.

Sukhoi has posted a video of the first flight of its 5th-gen fighter prototype, and, as someone who remembers the YF-23, it sure looks mighty familiar. The question is, is the resemblance caused by arriving at the same solution, or is it caused by Xeroxing the blueprints? The Soviets Russians are fine aeronautical engineers, so if this thing ever goes into production I'd expect it to be formidable.

I'm just trying to decide if it should have a Northrop nameplate on it or not.

Zelda Rubinstein, best know for playing the clairvoyant in Poltergeist, died on Wednesday at the age of 76. She also did a bunch of voice over work for various creepy Discovery channel shows.

Mark gets a no-prize that makes the dolphin noise for bringing us this silly little bit of fluff.

Now that NASA's funding has been tossed up in the air again, advocates of quirkier launch techniques are once again coming out of the woodwork. The space cannon concept has been around a very long time. I think the last time I heard anything about it the main stumbling block was acceleration. It's a big freaking gun, and that means the forces are much higher than a conventional chemical rocket. Engineers weren't certain regular satellites could survive the stress, let alone a bunch of meat bags.

Seconded: "The fact that climate engineering is possible and affordable is why I do not expect south Florida, most of Bangladesh, and other large low lying places won't be submerged by melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica." And I also agree we need to be spending an appreciable amount of money on this as well. Others will likely disagree. I'm very interested to find out their reasoning.

Hey, if Wikipedia can't provide a list of papal tombs dating right back to the beginning, well, what good is it anyway? History nerd? Me? Guilty as charged.

Me, I want to come up with some sort of scanner thingy that will let me peer inside without disturbing the occupant. There's lots to learn from a skeleton!

I guess tattoo artists don't have the advantage of that red squiggly line you get in a word processor. Some of Ellen's ink looks mis-spelled, but that's because it's in Latin. How do I know it's spelled correctly then? Well, Mark (who wrote it out) is still breathing, right?

Scientists have announced the discovery of yet another weird kind of supernova will help them figure out more things about what make such vast explosions tick. The explosion in question looked like a gamma ray burst, but its energy was concentrated in radio waves. It's thought this discovery, combined with a soon-to-be activated new radio telescope array, will allow the observation of a much larger variety of supernovae than was previously possible.

It looks like the crash that resulted in the grounding of all Russia's Su-27s may have been caused by a pilot blackout. 5.5g doesn't sound like all that much, not for a professional fighter pilot at least, but the definition of "continuous" is I guess what matters. Me, I doubt if I could take that much for even a minute, but I don't do that sort of thing for a living. Still, I imagine it'll let all the guys at Sukhoi sleep again at night.

Scientists have for the first time confirmed the color of a dinosaur. Everyone knew China held spectacular fossils out in the Gobi. I'm not sure anyone counted on just how spectacular they'd actually end up being.

Sometimes there's just no improving on the lede: "Days after D.C. Superior Court Magistrate Judge Janet Albert broke up with her girlfriend, the judge found her former companion unconscious in her attic, above her bedroom, with some food and an ice bucket fashioned into a makeshift toilet, authorities say."

No, really!

Mike J. gets a no-prize trying to balance on the gunwales of a row boat for bringing us news that haggis will once again return to our shores. Before Alfa Romeo. There is no justice in this world.

Alfas unreliable? Not according to race-day results! What? They're stripped junkers only lunatics with too much time on their hands drive? Why, you say that like it's a bad thing...

Following Fiat's disappointing but not surprising announcement Alfa isn't really coming over here is a follow-on that the marque will be merged with Abarth and Maserati. Conventional wisdom is that Alfa will likely be sold or shuttered in the next five years as the auto industry continues to wind down and reduce capacity. We'll see...

WIN!

A set of scientists has announced the amount of entropy in the universe may be as much as thirty times higher than previously thought. The detail of the article makes it seem, to me at least, that they don't really know what such a conclusion might actually, you know, mean. Bah. Dick Cheney's behind it all. I just know it.

Boeing has released videos of an IED-killing laser. Seems long on "ideal conditions" and short on "clever hajji" to me, but I guess everyone's gotta start somewhere. I especially liked how they put fake dummies next to the mortars.

Looks like Spirit is now in that sand dune for the duration. This is not to say it'll lose its usefulness, far from it. It's just now more weather station than it is rover.

NOTE: This is not one of those "giant loud scream at the end" practical jokes, so no worries there. I especially liked his tiny helper's advice at the end.

Now that flu season is on its way out, the MSM has the balls to ask was the whole thing exaggerated? Ah, but reading the article reveals the true source of hysteria. It's the government's fault! Really!

Scientists have created a theory which predicts oceans of liquid diamond, complete with solid diamond "bergs" floating in them, may exist on Uranus and Neptune. The evidence comes from two separate lines: the properties discovered when a proper small-scale technique for liquefying diamond were created, and the weirdness found at the magnetic poles of the two planets.

Week 2 of Grow A Frog. You can actually see it's little legs now. It is MUCH bigger today than it was when we took it home.

As expected, a cheap coat hanger makes for a speaker cable indistinguishable from a high-zoot Monster brand cable. At root, these are all simple electrical signals. We've known how to carry electrical signals efficiently for probably more than 150 years now. To wit: thicker cable, good copper. The rest is just marketing. Which is why I've never thought twice about using cheap, thick copper wire to connect my expensive components.

Don't even get me started about the guy who gave a positive review to a $230 power cable!

It's the kind of notoriety I wouldn't mind: "He was fast becoming one of the most hated debtors in Dallas, and part of an especially loathed minority of debtors in the country." The law is the law, people, and as long as the debtors are abiding and the collection agencies aren't, well, it stinks to be them, eh? World's smallest violin, etc.

It seems the Obama administration is getting around to reshaping NASA. The conventional wisdom seems to be the two Ares designs are the best launch platforms NASA will never be able to afford, so it's nice to see using EELVs is back on the table. I also like the apparent focus on sustainability, which never seemed as prominent to me as it should've been.

It looks as if the long-serving Mars rover Spirit may be facing its final winter on the red planet. They've survived far longer than anyone thought possible. Dying stuck in a sand trap is a rather ignominious end, but everyone's gotta go some day. But those NASA engineers are clever bastards, I wouldn't count them out just yet.

Nothing like a little forced perspective, strange sculpture, and the occasional human oddity to start the week. It's a curious, albeit not particularly surprising, conceit of people in their twenties that the only way to make a strange picture is with Photoshop. Photography's more than, what, 150 years old? People were making twisted photos before the grandparents of the designers of Photoshop had been born.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

My house...

Beer-making got a major boost during the Industrial Revolution, when steam power and artificial cooling made beers quicker to produce and easier to store. Breweries subsequently became a big business across Europe and the United States - stymied there only temporarily during the Prohibition years of 1919 to 1933.

COOL!

Happy Birthday Canned Beer!

YOU voted for him.

Possibly the most stupidest thing to happen with the Obama administration so far.

Asshats.

Ron gets a gold-plated no-prize for bringing us proof that poor taste knows no color nor national boundary. I think it also just might stand as the signal example of, "if you spend enough money on it, any damned thing can be made to look good." C.f. "Spelling, Tori."

Pat gets a no-prize with a glowing heartbeat for bringing us news of a star that provides a sneak peek at what our own sun will likely look like as it dies. It would seem that, with very few exceptions, even the most mundane of stellar objects will end up being interesting at some point in their life cycle.

The first meteor to hit Virginia in more than eighty years punched a hole in a doctor's office in Lorton yesterday. Luckily nobody was hurt. Explain that one to the insurance adjuster.

The saga of the secret codes appears to be over. As long as the sights keep shooting straight, I guess it's not that big of a price to keep the busybodies happy.

Mark gets a no-prize that's just flat had enough for bringing us this timely bit of advice to the currently ruling political class. One thing I think doesn't get enough notice on either side of the aisle is just how important the debt and deficit has become to most centrists. A very large number of people in the US were very happy when the country started to run surpluses. Failing to reign in spending is bad enough with such folks. Explosively increasing it makes it even worse.

Serves him right, wasting good booze like that. I thought it was fake, until the smoke alarm started going off. Heck it still might be, but it was an interesting explosion.

FROG!

Scott: "Oh no. I do not care what she got for Christmas, under no circumstances are you to send the postcard for the thing with a heart beat."

Right.

It came in the mail today.

Seems like the Japanese have some competition. A Korean firm has debuted a robot that'll do the laundry. I gotta get me one of these. Holy crap, how domestic is that?!?

The propeller-heads at NASA have designed an electric, one-person aircraft with VTOL capability and a cruising speed of perhaps 300 mph. Range isn't particularly impressive right now, and it would seem the whole thing is more concept than vehicle, but it makes for a nifty idea. As far as safety goes, something that small and light would almost certainly be a candidate for a safety parachute. It won't stop an erstwhile Buffy the Cellphone Slayer from running into a building trying to adjust her makeup, but it would definitely save the pilot's skin if the batteries conked or the wing fell off.

The mysterious visitor who's left roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at Edgar Allen Poe's grave for the past sixty years didn't show up this year. As I recall, this guy really started to get attention about five, six years ago. The Post in particular gave the impression it wouldn't be very hard to figure out who this was if they got serious about it, but there was such a groundswell of protest at the idea they didn't really try. I think it's always been a harmless little mystery. It'd be nice to think whoever it is just had a cold this year.

Another company has announced it's "getting serious" about space-based power generation. I seem to recall the Japanese are mulling this over as well. Even ten years ago, all you heard about was talk of concepts. This definitely seems to be a step forward, although I'm not sure just how big of a one it is.

Scientists believe they've found the earliest-known intact skeleton of an English royal. Princess Eadgyth was married to one of Europe's most powerful monarchs in the early 10th century. The body was found in a 17th century monument as part of a research project into Magdeburg Cathedral, located about 90 miles west of Berlin.

Remember that hard-hitting investigative report about bible thumpers encoding secret biblical codes on the gun sights they make? Yeah, the gun folks have known about that for years. Turns out all the citations reference light, which, considering glowing tritium features prominently in their manufacture, seems appropriate. Funny, I don't remember reading any such thing in that sophisticated expose. Did you?

These things just never stop being funny. Well, to me anyway.

It seems one of the more lurid predictions of climate change gloom, well, isn't going to work out after all. So, what you're saying is, reporters took an off-the-cuff remark, exaggerated it for effect, and used it to scare us all? Really? No way...

Man bites dog. Redskins beat Cowboys. Shoeless Joe says its so. In the annals of heinous impossibilities, all pale against the realization that the one seat in the senate the Democrats never had to worry about, the one who's long-time owner made government-run health care his primary concern, now belongs to a Republican. Now if that doesn't just scream, "appropriate irony," I don't know what does. 2010 is going to be a lot of fun. Well, for my side at any rate.

A recent test pilot crash sees Russia grounding its entire fleet of Su-27s. This used to be pretty common in the West, say, forty years ago or so. Nowadays Western defense companies spend, what, five or ten years testing. Expensive, but worth it. I guess.

Ok, I get it, that chicks like to change things about their appearance and, you know, upgrade stuff. What I don't get is this whole "vagazzle" thing. Yeah, you heard me, that's what she said. Seems to me that'd, I dunno... itch.

I'm sure all the rest of you knew Garibaldi from Babylon 5 is now a radio show host and author, but I didn't. It's good to see he's still getting work.

In the, "don't you have anything better to do?" bin, we have this hard-hitting investigative report which proves a small Michigan company is casting very short, very small biblical references into its gunsights. Of course someone's going to have a problem with this. Once they found out about it, anyway.

Agreed: If Pontiac had been allowed to build cars like this, there would never have been a question of closing it. I don't even want to know how much it costs to create a bespoke version. But it sure is interesting to look at!

Glenn Bell, founder of Taco Bell, has died, at the age of 86. A pretty good run, if you ask me, especially considering how many college students and stoners he kept from starving!

Nothing like a scale model SR-71 with real jet engines to finish the day. The trick with these really big scale models is they handle like the real thing. This can be OK, but, as those guys with the RC B-52 found out, it can also be a sad explody-crashy thing too.

A++++!!! Would kill Nazzi scum again!!!

Hey, guess what? Swimming in shark-infested waters can be dangerous! The article starts out well enough, but the wheels fall completely off when the author tries to tie a rise in attacks with tourism and then (somehow) with sharks being over-fished.

It seems that marijuana is replacing the poppy as a cash crop in parts of Afghanistan. I think the most important thing to note is that weed is (as I understand it) legal in most places, and no worse for you than cigarettes. Can't say that about heroin, eh?

NASA officials have confirmed a baggie of cocaine was brought into the hangar complex which processes the space shuttles. Junkies are stupid, even rocket scientist junkies. I'm sure they'll catch the person, but, this being NASA, I'm sure it'll involve three dozen meetings, two press conferences, and the creation of at least seven new acronyms.

Took me awhile, but I finally found the real high-end of the hi-fi hobby. Feast your eyes on a forty-two-thousand dollar set of mono amplifiers. Auditioned with a $14,000 turntable, natch. I honestly have no idea who pays for such foolishness, but I guess if it keeps a small bunch of craftsman off the bread line, it's all good.

Who doesn't like a dress with pom-poms on it!

Mark gets a no-prize chock-full-o'-hope for bringing us this amazingly clever video.

And this was second prize???

Problem: A poor country with rickety infrastructure has just been shaken "like a Polaroid picture," making airlift relief very difficult.

Solution: Drive an airfield over and park it just off-shore.

Big-deck aircraft carriers: expensive, but darn well worth it.

Scientists have announced that a simple morphine treatment shows promise in treating PTSD. By all accounts I've ever read, morphine is great for treating lots of stress-related problems.

S-c-o-t-t B-r-o-w-n. I'm such a politics nerd I'm actually excited that the very first step in rolling up the Democrats could be to take Ted f'ing Kennedy's seat away from them. It would be like, I dunno, Dan Snyder buying Cowboy Stadium for the Redskins.

3... 2... 1...

NASA scientists have announced the discovery of two more meteorites which could hold conclusive fossil evidence of life on Mars. I'm pretty sure there is a tight knot of scientists who would deny the existence of life on Mars even while the little green man standing in front of them was setting his ray gun to "broast." For the rest of this, well, for me anyway, it's pretty cool!

Three words: Star Wars Disco. 70s Star Wars Disco. 70s, French Star Wars Disco. My brother and I almost wore a hole in a copy of that disco single when it was new. In our defense, I was 9 and he was 7.

That'd be Giant Tree: 1, Shed: 0. Explain that one to the adjuster.

Hey, man, scaring the crap out of you as you do your death-defying bungee jump is just what friends are for. I know my friends very well. That's why they'll all be in the next county if I ever try a stunt like this. Kevin and Ron will have to be, I dunno, on Mars or something.

It seems even the porn industry is mulling over 3D. Ok, I'm not a particularly big fan of the technology anyway. The thought of Ron Jeremy's privates seeming to wave around in my living room? Yeah, I think I'll pass on that one.

Hey, if you can't link up a story about a stillborn lamb with a face like a human, well, what damned good is having your own website anyway? Let the Welsh jokes begin!

Two words: Cleavage caddie. Like I need another excuse to go rummaging around in there...

By modeling cold dark matter and the kind of winds a supernova create, scientists have come up with what seems to be a more accurate model of how dwarf galaxies form. The combination neatly explains the small voids found at the center of these puzzling cosmic objects.

Now I have seen it all. If you can't get home early enough to walk the dog, then you have a problem.

Old dogs that have urinary problem etc.. puppies, sure.. but really, be responsible.

Scientists are reporting on evidence that green tea offers important protection against lung cancer. Of course, not smoking at all is the best strategy, but every little bit helps.

How to gift wrap a cat.

Death. Metal. Chicken.

That's about what it sounds like to me, too.

This winter is so cold... [HOW COLD IS IT?!?] ... it's so cold, it renders sea turtles unconscious. Bonus: it's happening in Texas.

By rights, this is a giant trap about to snap into the hottest summer in decades. But I'm not betting money on it.

Fewer fans hit the 11th AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, even with the Consumer Electronics Show next door.

Fan attendance at the 11th expo was down between 10% and 20% from a year, and there were 267 exhibitors this year, an 11% drop from 2009.

For some reason, I don't think pRon is going to have much of a problem.

Nothing ends the Yuletide season better than mounting the ol' Christmas tree on a rocket. You'd think they would've used something lighter than a big ol' hunk of rebar to brace it. Would've flown farther, been more dangerous, that sort of thing.

Problem: Effete Westerners have got all fluttery about the lead you're using on the kids products you're selling them, and now block them.

Solution: use a different poison.

I wonder if it glows?

It looks like Sony's decided to reboot the Spider Man franchise only 8 years after it was started. This time it'll be without Raimi or Maguire. This being Hollywood, the change probably has little to do with "creativity", and a whole lot to do with SM 3's lackluster box office performance. Ah, well. I enjoyed this last brace of movies. If they don't suck, I'm sure I'll enjoy the next.

I've always thought statistical anthropology was one of the more fascinating, and little-known, aspects of the field. I guess it has to do with anth being the place where people fled from numbers. But when you read stuff like this, it suddenly becomes a lot more fascinating. As for why it's not more widely reported in the media... DUH!!! It's optimistic and doesn't mention Obama by name once. Why would they pay attention to that?

ClimateGate just gets better and better. How much better? How about the UN IPCC Chief is making millions on side-deals with companies specializing in carbon trades and "sustainable technologies?" Now, remind me again how these are the people who's advice to dismantle our economies we are to trust? I keep forgetting that part...

It's been slightly more than a year ago that the SCOTUS struck down DC's gun ban. Contrary to political opinion, the city did not immediately explode in machine-gun driven mayhem. Of course, the other side of the peanut gallery would say it's because of all the restrictions. Personally, I think some of the things DC is doing are good, since I'm convinced the vast majority of accidental gun deaths are caused by stupidity, not the gun in and of itself. Of course, most of the things they're doing are stupid and infantile. Which means it'll fit right in with the rest of the crap the DC government pulls every year.

A new theory about Enceladus' geysers is predicting the activity we're seeing is a regular, albeit very long-period, phase. The small moon is stubbornly resisting attempts by conventional theories to explain it. It remains to be seen if this new attempt will hold up under further observations.

Conventional theories of planet formation have a fundamental problem, in that they have a tendency to predict no planets will ever form. A new theory, however, manages to explain planet formation without predicting away the planet the scientist is standing on.

Making the rounds: a local car club fished a complete pre-war Bugatti from the bottom of a lake. I'm actually a little surprised they're parting it out. These cars are rare, and simple, enough that skilled artisans can recreate what's rotted. Yes, it will be a $250,000 restoration, but at the end you'd likely have a $2.5 million dollar car. If you wait long enough, almost any interesting car will be worth restoring. And Bugattis are very, very interesting.

Sometimes there's just no improving on the headline: crime lord's fake penis falls off during raid. A hermaphroditic crime lord sounds like something out of a David Lynch flick. It also seems to provide even more proof of Mark Twain's axiom about truth and fiction.

Mark gets a no-prize hungry for brains for bringing us this nifty mod for your next trip to the shooting range. I wonder if it makes a splattery mess of the range itself?

Looks like Florida just got its decennial snow storm. The best part is watching this tie the global warming crew up in knots. No wonder they switched the name to "climate change."

A cat found literally frozen stiff has apparently been revived and is on its way to recovery. Best of all, it'll find its way back to its home as well.

My latest fun item in the kitchen is a yogurt maker. Why a yogurt maker? Well... it's a new year. My pants don't fit like they did anymore. ORrrr I can blame it on my age, but then again, I'm not *that* old. So eating healthier seemed the best and since I have a 6 year old yogurt monster, I figured it would just be easier to make it at home.

I won't tell you the machine I purchased since I don't get props from the company but I will say it has these cute little glass jars and a blue lid.

Now I've been making yogurt for the past few days with just 100% organic 100% full fat cow milk, and I have to say, it has come out great! No complaints from the 6 year old yogurt monster, especially if it's served in one of those "cute glass jars."

Then I remembered a fun thing I did a few years ago... make yogurt cheese! Hey, if I can make cow yogurt in 8 hours, the goat version is just as easy! The only problem is that my yogurt maker only makes 1 liter at a time. For decent cheese, you need at least 3.

Onwards to the... wait for it... goatyurt! It's EASY!! Especially if you have a machine!* If you don't have a machine, it sucks. Get a machine.

You will need 1 liter of organic goat milk. Ok, Ok... if you can't get organic, get the closest possible! Go to a farm stand (ours aren't open right now in the winter... so BOO on my end!) If all else fails, Trader Joe's, FTW! [And the husband doesn't get to protest that the parking lot is full of snow -- ed]

In a stainless steel or other NON REACTIVE pot, heat the milk to a boil. Remember to stir the milk frequently or even better... keep it moving with a slotted wooden spoon or spatula. NO hot spots in the milk. EVAR.

I bring my yogurt milk up to a boil... never a full boil, just to a boil. Remove from heat and put into a glass or plastic pitcher that you have CLEANED with soap and rinsed with boiled water.**

Cool the milk in the pitcher with a thermometer in it to 100 degrees. Yes, you must cool the milk or you will kill the live cultures you will add. 100 degrees is nice and cozy for lactobacilicus!

When you've hit your appropriate temperature you'll add 1/2 cup live cultured yogurt (non sweetened, not flavored etc., preferably organic) to your warm milk. Mix gently with your slotted spoon or spatula.

Then, using your handy dandy pitcher, fill those cute little cups to the edge and place in the incubator and incubate it for a minimum of 8 hours.

Remember, the longer you incubate it, the more tart the yogurt. The less fat milk you use, the thinner the yogurt.

After your set amount of time, you MUST refrigerate your yogurt for a minimum of 3 hours before enjoying. This gives the cultures time to slow down and the yogurt to 'gel' to the correct consistency.

NEXT ISSUE! CHEESE!

----
*machine=fancy incubator.

** Why boiled water? Because you are minimizing ANY microorganisms that will contaminate your yogurt and cheese. Remember, yogurt and cheese are living foods. Don't make your foods sick. You will only make yourself sick with them.

Nothing quite as embarrassing as calling the fire department to cut your winkie out of a steel pipe. In the emergency room, no less. Not quite as bad as the story of the guy who got his junk caught in a machine belt so tight it threw him across the room and he tried to stitch it up with a stapler*, but you can see it from there.

---
*I'm not kidding. Google it.

It seems even non-loony pundits are cautiously admitting the Dems might lose everything in play this November. Unfortunately, like most villains, they're on track to screw in the last bits of their Genesis Device (aka, "Obamacare") just before we're able to stop them.

Nothing like a few really choice TV news bloopers to start your Friday off right. Includes the infamous, "keep f-ing that chicken" clip that Stern kept playing late last year. In that one, the look on the lady on the left's face is priceless.

Ellen has always insisted The Weather Channel is the most interesting channel on the dial. If stuff like this happened more often, I'd be more likely to agree. One thing we both do agree on: if Jim Cantore shows up in your neighborhood with a camera, head for the hills!

This website is OLD and RICKETY and a pain in the ass to update.. so you get the SAME story from 2 ppl on this site... FACELIFT needed here!

Making the rounds: a funeral home is being sued because, apparently, they sent gramma's brain home with the flowers. Ok, suddenly my own mom's plan to be cremated is getting this giant silver lining...

When we went up to Maryland to visit Uncle Jeff, Olivia was most impressed with their Nerf chain gun. Yes, there is a nerf gun which shoots... oh, hell, I dunno, a lot of Nerf darts per minute. It's freaking belt fed! Apparently bouncing several dozen Nerf darts off one's cousin's head pretty much defines a good time. I'm not sure, because I was busy bouncing the same off her uncle's. He told me there were mods that made it even more awesome, but I didn't believe him. So he went and proved me wrong.

Ok, just to repeat: A belt-fed Nerf gun. It just don't get much better than that.

It's not exactly an original story. A person is stuck in a crowd of people they don't know who act in unexpected ways. That person creates a bridge to the strange people by presenting them with a gift of food or drink, which allows them to see they have things in common. The stranger is then welcomed to the group. It's a story much older than advertising, and in fact works well in commercials, except when the stranger is white, the crowd is black, and the audience watching the commercial is American.

The one thing that can always be counted on is America's over-reaction to race. There are reasons for this, some good, most bad. That's why this ad was never intended to be seen here, and bravo to KFC for sticking to their guns and not pulling it from its intended market.

I love the smell of markets at work. Smells like... victory. High prices, driven by demand, which allow profits that are not confiscated by the government create incentives for efficiency and exploration. The result? Commodity prices always go down over time. Times when this has not been the case are usually rooted in government policies which either distort demand or destroy incentives for innovation.

Mike J. gets another no-prize he'll have to hide from the climate change police for bringing us proof that protesting environmental policy will not stand up to big flakes of global warming raining down on people's heads. This current winter reminds me very much of the sorts of winters we used to get in the mid '70s. It remains to be seen if the trend will continue, or if we'll snap back to warmer seasons in the future.

So it seems Olivia's most favorite show of all on Boomerang is Thundarr the Barbarian. It seems post-apocalyptic fantasy adventure has an appeal for children who didn't grow up during the Cold War. Who knew?

I remember it mostly because of Princess Ariel and her costume. In an era before the pronocopia of the Intartubes, we took all the opportunities we could get. 12 year old boys don't need much, after all.

See? See, The Grammas? Snakes can be helpful family pets! Yeah, I call "shenanigans" on it, too, but it makes for a fun story. Us? Oh hell no. There's a REASON Oriana's cage has 30 pounds of books sitting on its lid.

It turns out George Lucas really does have a sense of humor. I know, I know. It just seems like the very few interviews he seems to give mostly involve him patiently putting up with the reporter. Well, yes, he does that here too, but at least laughs at the end.

Remember all the fuss about Second Life? Yeah, it'd been so long since anyone's mentioned it around me I'd forgotten about it too. Turns out it's still out there, and if you know where to look, it's just as seedy and weird as you'd expect.

"He's a sweet old guy, and he's been through a lot," said Brian Pressman, 33, who received the cat as a birthday present during middle school. "But no matter how weak he seems or how many times he's diagnosed with something fatal, he just keeps bouncing back. Every single time."

Added Pressman, with a sigh, "He sure is a persistent one."

Its' a JOKE people!

Another day, another miraculous picture of the early universe. This time the galaxies imaged by Hubble are thought to represent the universe when it was only a fraction of its current age. Bonus: it would seem the Spitzer telescope is designed to get us all the way back to the reionization era, the furthest back we can see.

It would seem The Next Big Thing in TVs will be 3D. Ellen gets tremendous migraines whenever we go to a 3D movie, so I don't see this ending up on our Christmas list any time soon.

Nothing like a bored roommate with access to gay porn to ruin your whole day (SFW). Lemme tell you, one of my family members does that to my electronics, There Would be a Reckoning. And that's only if I got to them first. When Ellen handles things, people just don't show up to work the next day. Or ever.

What I remember most was, later on, discovering that Omni looked so damned much like Penthouse. Omni was a regular read of mine all the way through high school. I remember the antimatter section being gold, not red, but that's likely just faulty memory.

It seems that on Friday, Houston could be colder than McMurdo Station in Antarctica. It's scheduled to stay below freezing all week over here. If it does this again next year, I'm expecting the media to start crowing about the coming ice age.

Dig out your own minature *yes its FAKE* dinosaur!

*Yes I say fake because I know there is some weirdo out there that will comment on this site and complain about the exploitation of fossils.

Curtis Allina, inventor of the iconic Pez dispenser, died on December 15. Pez was always too sweet for me, and (as I recall) Dumas was too rural to have anything approaching a collection. That said, Olivia already has 6 or 7 dispensers, and loves those silly little bricks. Good job, sir.

The world's tallest building has officially opened its doors. The mile high skyscraper was considered a pipe dream when I was a kid. Who would've thought the first one to exceed half that distance would be built in the Persian Gulf? And why not? Now that they've got their own F-1 race, Dubai just seems that much cooler.

Fark just announced the winners of its "Best Headlines of 2009", and they really are that special. Yeah, it's a cage full of shrieking chimps flinging poo, but it's my cage full of shrieking chimps flinging poo. Unlike Face the Nation, at least these chimps are funny. About as useful, too.

I'm sure we'll all remember the headlines trumpeting not one US combat death in Iraq in December. Because the media's all about honest reporting and keeping us all informed of important developments. Right?

After decades of observation, scientists have confirmed all three scenarios to generate "blue straggler" stars are possible. These mysterious stars live longer than they should, shine more brightly than they should, and seem to gain mass as they age. Exactly what it all means, who knows?

People who claim to know how money works, i.e., diplomats and politicians, are famous for their ability to spend $10 on something nobody else would want for $1. People who actually know how money works, not so much. But by all means, let's give more power to the politicians. It's worked out so well up to now.

Mike J. gets a no-prize he better keep safely hidden from view when his progressive friends come over for bringing us news that Britain is facing one of its coldest winters in a century. Ah, but hang on then. Doesn't climate doomsday actually predicate Britain being turned into Eastern Iceland? Very well then, carry on.

NASA has kinda, sorta, but not really decided where the space shuttles will go after retirement. Common sense has said "Smithsonian, Houston, and Kennedy" for quite some time, and this just confirms it. Or does it?

Best. Esoteric. Speaker. Description. Evar: For many years electrostatic loudspeakers had a reputation as a generally unreliable and occasionally dangerous product.

I know, I know. It's just that I've been flittering around electrostatic speakers for nearly thirty years now, and I've never seen such an appropriate description.

Scientists have discovered that the devastating cancer that's killing off the Tasmanian devil likely came from a different species, and is spread by bites. It's hoped the discoveries will assist in the creation of a vaccine to stop the disease, which otherwise may threaten the iconic animals with extinction in the wild in as little as 25 years.