I want to go here so bad..

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Another good one: Two guys were taking Chemistry at UNC. They were doing well in the class and thought that going into the final they had a solid "A". They were so confident that the weekend before finals week, they went to MSU to party with some friends. They had a great time. However, with hangovers and everything, they overslept all day Sunday and didn't make it back to Chapel Hill until early Monday morning, the day of the exam. Rather than taking the final then, they found their professor after the final to explain to him why they missed the final. They told him that they went up to the MSU for the weekend, and had planned to come back in time to study, but that they had a flat tire on the way back, and didn't have a spare, and couldn't get help for a long time, so they were late in getting back to campus. The professor told them they could make up the final on the following day. They were elated and relieved. At the final, the professor placed them in separate rooms, handed each of them a test booklet and told them to begin. The first problem, worth 5 Points, was something simple about Molarity & Solutions. "Cool," they thought. "This is going to be easy." The next problem was worth 95 Points. It asked: "Which tire?"

Well, I heard a good one: What do they call Santa's helpers? Subordinate Clauses

What the hell is this? (via fark.com)

This'll get your hearts racing, ladies. Modern Drunkard magazine "tracked down and cracked a forty" with five of the nation’s hottest single winos in America. My favorite is Shakey McShakerson, occupation: Aroma Distributor.

Sometimes sorry isn't always enough in politics. Isn't it interesting that politicians always try and apologize and never just step down? That is, when their apologies are real, instead of in passive voice, i.e. "Mistakes were made." Trent Lott is a classic example, going down while blaming his "enemies," when he should be addressing his actual remarks. Sure he's got enemies. Anyone in a position of power in this world does. But that doesn't mean that advocating segregationalist policies is any more correct.

I'm heading to Key West in two days

Anyone need a 3-dimensional 180 computer monitor? Plastic.com will still suck, I'm afraid, but mahjongg will become your world..

I keep meaning to go to this site, but I just can't seem to get around to doing it. Why go there today when you can just go some other time?

Iraq and the Arabs' Future , by Fouad Ajami.
The driving motivation behind a new U.S. endeavor in Iraq should be modernizing the Arab world. Most Arabs will see such an expedition as an imperial reach into their world. But in this case a reforming foreign power's guidelines offer a better way than the region's age-old prohibitions, defects, and phobias. No apologies ought to be made for America's "unilateralism."
Oh?

Footnotes to History is a compilation of nations you didn't learn about in school geography. (via metafilter)

Once again, Phish is on top of the live recording scene. Here you can download their upcoming new years shows for a fee. Each show even comes with a printable booklet and labels so you can make your own pofessional-quality cd. Not bad, not bad. I hope the shows are as good as evryone seems to assume they will be.

This comet will be visible to the naked eye on New Year's Day. That is, if you recover sufficiently..

Yo yo, dese homies be rappin' straight outta Hobbiton.

Creative writing programs are flourishing. Why aren't there more good books out there?

The mullet is back. Business in the front, party in the back..

Waaaaaaaaah Zuuuuuuuuup. Trent Lott's Kwanzaa Message to the Nation

Tompaine.com is offering $10,000 for whoever discloses the Tim Lilly Bandit:
In November, as Congress finalized the legislation authorizing a new Department of Homeland Security, two paragraphs suddenly appeared in the bill giving drug maker Eli Lilly & Company something it desired: a shield from lawsuits by parents who claim the company's vaccines caused their children's autism. The provision diverts those suits from state courts to a federal 'vaccine court' where damages are capped at $250,000 - small compensation for a child's lifetime of medical care. And because any damages awarded by the vaccine court are paid by U.S. taxpayers, manufacturers are relieved of liability. ... Who inserted the provision? Reporters tried and failed to find out. Lilly's lobbyists (laughably) claim ignorance. No one on Capitol Hill is proud enough of his handiwork to claim it. Democracy requires accountability, so TomPaine.com is offering a $10,000 reward to the first person who proves the identity of the Eli Lilly Bandit - the member of Congress responsible for inserting the company's special provision.

Good news, everybody. Jane's Addiction has a new album coming out, Hypersonic. World tour to follow. Who's going on tour with me?

Another one from the Bizarre Christian Toy Collection: A Jesus doll that "walks on water" (via Fark)

If you work in the restaurant biz, here are some tips on how to get more tips. On a side note: ever wonder how tipping got started? According to Webster's Dictionary, the word "tip" is considered by many to be an acronym: T.I.P. - "To Insure Promptness" or "To Insure Prompt" service.

What would you do if a judge in your matrimonial suit issued the following ruling: A groom must expect matrimonial pandemonium When his spouse finds he's given her cubic zirconium. Given their history and Pygmalion relation I find her reliance was with justification. This judge seems to have found his muse. (via fark)

Hopefully you've never been scammed on eBay. This guy was. However, he found the crook. (via metafilter)

Having just finished it, I'm inclined to agree with the folks who decided Don Quixote -- best book ever.

Oh lord, it's the 12 days of Kitschmas. Get your Jesus bobblehead..

Have you bought a CD in, say, the past five years? Well, you are a member of the settlement group in the CD Minimum Advertised Price Settlement. Get your $5-20 back today. (via metafilter)

Critical Flaws: One Washington Post writer has identified ten ways in which we lapse into cultural criticism these days. For example, do you ever feel guilty for being so concerned with the events in your life when there are people starving in Africa? Well whose moral priorities have you inherited? And why? (via metafilter)

Were Trent Lott's statements at Strom's birthday a glimpse of a neo-confederate movement? Interesting article on this group, who believe Lincoln used the Civil War to extend federal power beyond constitutional limits and since then has ended states' rights.

The redneck cat carrier:

How to get fired, via opticalpoptitude

Thinking about Engrish got me tickled, so I went and found this Eric Crapton album.

Well, I ran across this one again. How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? The book is probably hilarious, as good an example of Engrish as any I've seen. But the funniest is the reader comments!

Via Metafilter, bartering exists! At Trodo, you post stuff and when people ask for it, you ship it to them. You get credits for this, no money. You can then use your credits to get someone else's stuff.

Damn. Stereolab guitarist Mary Hansen was killed in a cycling accident earlier this week. Hansen was a core member of Stereolab, playing guitars and providing vocals for the last decade. She was 36.

From New York Times article: North Korea recently disclosed that it has a program to make nuclear weapons from highly enriched uranium, in violation of its international agreements, but the United States has taken pains to defuse any sense that it is planning an immediate confrontation over the issue. That policy is in contrast to the administration's approach with Iraq, where the Bush administration has threatened military action to disarm President Saddam Hussein if he does not voluntarily dispose of any weapons of mass destruction. How true. Why aren't we relentlessly inspecting North Korea's nuclear facilities as well? Is it because there isn't a history of terrorism in southest Asia?

Lost in Translation is a fun site of much. It takes a phrase of your choice and runs it through BabelFish in several languages, then back into English. I typed in "I sure do wish someone would buy me the entire state of California for Christmas." and got back "Certain desire would buy to which it loaded the complete state of California for them." Huh?

"Erewhile there existed a jejune hoyden, who had secured the veneration of all, even those who had espied her for merely a singular discrete trice. Her consanguinities comprehended, among others, an enate predecessor, possessing the prosaic appellation of grandmother, and via the largess of this clement crone, she procured a Lilliputian capote, with a most vermilion capuche, whence her winsome sobriquet, "Little Red Riding Hood", was so engendered." Recognize this? It's Little Red Riding Hood, as told by Fairly Tales for the Erudite.

Cool site from my old blog, again. This dialect survey uses a series of questions, including rhyming word pairs and vocabulary words, to explore words and sounds in the English language. Their goal is to create dialect maps that chart speech patterns. Take the survey!

This site takes you on journeys from the microcosm to the macrocosm, from within a proton to the outer reaches of the universe. Requires Java Virtual Machine.

This site takes you on journeys from the microcosm to the macrocosm, from within a proton to the outer reaches of the universe. Requires Java Virtual Machine.

Alabama Highest Named Summits. Get your oxygen tanks ready, we're summitting.

another post from my old blog: Post-Modern Condition Upgraded To Pre-Apocalyptic CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA--The postmodern condition of alienated, disjointed late-20th-century humanity was officially upgraded to pre-apocalyptic Monday, when new findings from leading postmodernist theorist Richard Rorty were published in the new issue of Semiotexte. ''I was flipping through the cable channels the other night, trying to get an abstract sense of the way emergent processes of change and transformation generated by contemporary high-tech society are challenging cultural assumptions regarding diverse aesthetic forms to create a novel state of history,'' Rorty said, ''when, all of a sudden, I realized that everything I was looking at was the biggest load of unimaginably horrific crap ever.'' At this point in the socio-cultural discourse, Rorty said, the key question is no longer whether or not social fragmentation, cultural meta-juxtaposition and socioeconomic problematics require new modes of experience and interpretation, but rather, ''When will the seven-headed dragon of the End Times descend upon us all in unholy fury?''

I've posted these before, but on another site: -- When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl. -- May your life be like toilet paper... Long and useful. -- Writing about music is like dancing about architecture -- Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again -- When the candles are out all women are fair. Plutarch (46 AD - 120 AD), Morals -- Slogan of 105.9, the classic rock radio station in Chicago: "Of all the radio stations in Chicago ... we're one of them." -- A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother. -- A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water -- Always remember, three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population -- If you want people to know where you stand, wear the same socks for two weeks -- There are only three kinds of people; people who can count and people who can't

"I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it: we must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul. It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!" - Henry Miller (1934)

Oh My God, I Am So Totally Not A Fully Developed Person

This is crazy. Artist creates exact replica of himself, and audiences cannot tell which one is real.

For you bloggers, try the Blogger archive script generator.

The intrepid kayaker on a date:

This is just about the coolest kayak I've seen come along. It has detachable ends that allows you to change your boat from a super short looper to a longer slicemachine. I wonder how she handles, though. I smell innovation on the air..

Dave Barry was the first to discover the incredible phenomenon of Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches, but these guys put Dave's theory to the test. Pretty funny.

I know the abortion arguments are hackneyed and stale, but this article on WorldNetDaily really got me thinking ('oh crap, run! He's been thinking again!'). It reports that "Georgia legislators will introduce a bill early next month that refers to abortion as an ''execution'' and will require any mother seeking an abortion to go to court to obtain a death warrant." ''A mother would have to argue why the child should die and why her rights would take priority over the rights of the child,'' said Rep. Bobby Franklin, R-Marietta, who sponsored the legislation. Can we say bully legislation? While a woman should have valid reasons for having an abortion, this bill sounds like another attempt to outlaw it, by presupposing the act is morally wrong but then letting women try and justify why they want to do a "wrong" thing. What judge would allow anyone to perform an "execution"? None who want their jobs come election year. Excuse me, but this isn't how the law should work. These legislators can't get a bill outlawing abortion passed, so they finegle the wording of another law to make getting an abortion inconvenient. Also, what sort of reasons would be considered good or valid for allowing an abortion under this law? If a 17-year-old girl gets pregnant and can't afford the baby, what if a judge thinks she can? What kind of life would that child have? Yes, I am pro-choice and no, abortions are terrible and we should avoid them at all costs. But bully-pulpit bills like these irritate me, because they are designed to harass rather than instruct.

We all need a Portable Stripper Pole in our house don't we? As ridiculous as this is, it will probably sell like a champ.

Why the Middle East is in such deep crap:

  I'm writing a story about Eric Harshbarger, the lego artist who lives in Auburn, and his works got me thinking about Alice in Wonderland, which I haven't read in years (Eric's really into Alice). But I do remember my favorite part, which still cracks me up: "What I was going to say," said the Dodo in an offended tone, "was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race." "What is a Caucus-race?" said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything. "Why," said the Dodo, "the best way to explain it is to do it." (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.) First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, ("the exact shape doesn't matter," it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no "One, two, three, and away," but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out "The race is over!" and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, "But who has won?" This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, "Everybody has won, and all must have prizes."

Oh I wish I was in the Smokies..

Check out this article on "acoustic fridges," refrigerators that cool using extremely loud sounds. The fridges would use sound so loud that if a human were exposed to it his hair would catch on fire. Why not just put The Who in some of these things?

UFOs in 15th century paintings? Odd article here.

STUDS

The Jive Server, once again, rocks. I have no brainstorm y, but dis one random memory from mah yout' sprang into mah thinka' yesterday an' left me fallin' out. I tried t' trace da damn trail o' thoughts dat led me t' da damn memory, but I wuz joggin' at da damn time, mah mind scramblin' all ova' da damn place random-like. Anyway, I remembered how in art class in fift' o' sixt' grade we cut potatoes in half an' carved letta's into them likes stencils. It wuz right b4 Christmas, an' da damn brainstorm wuz t' do lots o' aisy, stenciled potato Christmas cards wit' tiny-ass decorashuns all ova' them. Well, dis one kid Alec wuz doin' some card dat wuz supposed t' say N-O-E-fuckin'-L, but becuz he gots confused o' wuz dyslexic, wassups card came out sayin' L-E-O-fuckin'-N. Dis wouldn’t have been funny, 'escept dat we went down t' have some maintenance dude named Leon who worked at our school. While we wuz all fallin' out at Alec at wassups blunda', our learna' piped down an' suggested we give da damn card da damn Leon. We loved it. So's afta' class Alec carried da damn card t' gym class, where we know'd we would find Leon doin' laundry o' sump'n. I will neva' forget Leon’s face – he wuz 24/7 some tru-ly supa' fine guy who enjoyed da damn kids – when Alec went down an' gave him da card. Now dat I think back on it, it wuz shea' tact dat kept Alec from tellin' Leon how da card came about; I rememba' he gave it t' Leon as if we had made it 4 him, an' he loved it. I rememba' him fallin' out so's rock. Alec definite-like made wassups week. Afta' dat, Leon wuz 24/7 particular-like friend-like toward Alec an' da damn group o' us dat wuz present when we gave him da card, callin' out t'us in da hallways o' smilin' at us when he pushed wassups trash kin an' clainin' supplies past our classroom. It’s fun t' think dat afta' he left – we came back from summa' vacashun an' wuz bummed t' find out he had gotten anotha' 9-to-5 – he still had dat card, some reminda' o' how some bunch o' pale kids he would have neva' come into contact wit' otherwise, liked him. I guess I find dat hopeful. I bet he’s still gots da card.

Whew - Landover Baptist is at it again, raking Tolkein's The Two Towers over the Christian coals and brimstone. Warning: This site parodies Christian excesses and is not to be taken seriously, or there will be a stoning. The very title of the film, The Two Towers, should raise suspicion among True Christians®. Secular humanists and Atheists always chide us for seeing sex where their foolish, ignorant minds cannot. But alas, it is there, raising its malignant form as usual. It's Satan's way of being childish, and it's our job to call him on it. This time around, you don't have to be a Bible Scholar or a Creation Scientist to see that The Two Towers are giant structures built to glorify and honor the aroused genitalia of two of the most powerful evil beings in the movie.

This is rather interesting. Scientists have found a way to store information inside a molecule, though it doesn't stay there very long. I'm not sure why we would ever need to keep pictures inside molecules, or how we would ever use something like this in our everyday lives. A Molecular Briefcase perhaps? A 9.6 bazillion-gigabyte hard drive the size of your pinkie toe? The only drawback to technology that gets smaller and smaller is the lack of memory upgrades in our brains to allow us to use these things without losing them in the sofa cusions.

WOO HOOO Let the adventure begin. Nate and Jill have set out for distant destinations, traveling across the globe to Fiji, where they will stay for a few days before heading to Australia and New Zealand. You can go to to their Web site, Nate and Jill's Travel Page, and trace their journeys across the backside of the world. Wish them luck! Wish them health! Wish you had the money and time to blow on a four-month vacation!

I love it Nation’s only unionized peep show workers picket San Francisco club, demand better pay By MICHELLE R. SMITH Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO — Workers at the nation’s only unionized peep show walked the picket line, arguing that a contract offer by management at the Lusty Lady is too skimpy. Wearing pink T-shirts that read “Bad girls like good contracts,” dancers banged on pots Monday and chanted, “Two, four, six, eight, pay me more to gyrate!” “We want respect,” said Vivian, 27, who has worked at the Lusty Lady, in the city’s touristy North Beach district, for a year and a half. The dancers are complaining the club’s latest contract offer cuts hourly wages and eliminates their one day of sick pay. Sick pay was one of the victories the union won when workers approved their first contract with management in 1997, a year after unionizing. The Exotic Dancers Union, a chapter of the Service Employees International Union, Local 790, wants management to restore $3 an hour in pay cuts made during the past 20 months, back to a top scale of $27 an hour. The club said the cuts were “revenue-based,” but dancers say management has failed to justify the cuts financially by opening the club’s books. The union also wants the club to institute a hiring cap so there are enough shifts to go around, and to change the way schedules are made. A man who answered the phone at the Lusty Lady refused comment. “We are grossly undercompensated,” said Pepper, 31, a dancer and union shop steward. Though she’s worked at the Lusty Lady for four and a half years, Pepper said she’s only able to get about 12 hours a week of work at the club, less than the 20 hours she’d like. “It’s not enough to survive on,” she said. The club uses its unionized status as a selling point, boasting on its answering machine that it is “San Francisco’s only peep show where you can be sure the dancers will be beautiful, smart and unionized.” “They use the union to promote the club, yet they don’t support it,” said Vivian. “It feels like exploitation.”

Yesterday I covered and wrote a story on a symposium over at UAB on plant and animal genomes which was technically way over my head, it being a discussion for scientists and researchers deep in their fields, but later as I was writing the story and calling other professors to talk about genetics Luke and I started up a discussion over the ethics of cloning. To tell the truth, I’m really not sure how I feel about it, but that’s mainly because I know so little about what actual research is being done. Something in my gut tells me that tampering with our gene code is not as much wrong as it is dangerous. To use the cliched Pandora’s Box metaphor, genetic manipulation would change the rules in the game of survival, opening up huge possibilities for human characteristics and behavior that would be subject only to our imagination and whimsy. Want a child super-smart? No problem. Want one immune to diseases and stronger than a bodybuilder? Done. I realize that these possibilities are distant or most likely impossible, but you never know. So was flying at one point. I suppose the worst part is that the miracle (and I use that word in its strictest sense) of nature could be reduced to a series of choices we would make before a child is born. The idea of going into a doctor’s office and choosing what characteristics my baby will have seems as disappointing as it does abhorrent. But the other half of me knows that as mysterious and incredible as the natural human body is, it still works in patterns that are painful, destructive and avoidable. Being natural is great, but cancer still sucks. If we can use genetic research to reduce pain and suffering, I’m all for it. I say let’s put mother nature under the knife and see what happens. This does not mean we should indiscriminately exploit the genetic the possibilities of the human body, but reduce certain factors that limit our human potential. I have faith in the human ethical component to decide, after time, what medical uses genetic research should and should not allow, and that the final result will by and large be beneficial. For now our technology and understanding are too rudimentary to really pose much of a threat to the integrity of our DNA, but that time is not far off. Right now three women are carrying cloned fetuses that will be born in January, and the world will watch and see whether we can stomach what we’ve created. We are in uncharted waters indeed. And like on the maps of old, here there be dragons.

Spank George Bush

I wish my computer gave me this error message every time it screwed up..

This is crazy. If we are to believe swashbuckle, he had a midlife crisis/panic attack and turned his criminal brother in for 40,000 and is now taking a "big adventure." It will be interesting to see what happens. Or doesn't.

We all need a virtual dancer on our desktop, don't we? DON'T WE.

Oh I need some sleep. Can someone lend me a little? I'll give it right back.

Get your astronomy picture of the day.

Get your Astronomy picture of the day. As Dylan Thomas said, suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

Snap your virtual bubble wrap.